Chapter 130: New

Chapter 130: The New

"Slurp~" A massive tongue lapped at Li Huowang's flushed cheek, tearing away a large patch of his newly grown skin.

The searing agony, as if his face were being scrubbed with a steel brush, forced Li Huowang to pry his eyes open once more.

Li Huowang gazed around in a daze, realizing he was still within the Dead Town, albeit with far more collapsed houses than before.

After he had fainted yesterday, it seemed a great many things had transpired.

The day was now fully bright, and judging by the sun's position leaning toward the west, it appeared he had lain there for an entire day.

"Whimper~" Mantou circled Li Huowang, whining incessantly, seeming eager to approach yet too afraid to draw near.

Only then did Li Huowang belatedly notice the strange sensations emanating from his own body.

Having been scorched from the inside out by flames last night, by all rights, he should have been dead beyond any doubt.

Yet here he was, very much alive; the charred crust had sloughed off, leaving his body sheathed in a thin layer of fresh skin.

"It seems my regenerative abilities have increased again. No, it's not just regeneration; this is an amplification of everything."

Li Huowang looked down at his crimson, scalded-looking body and pondered.

Every scrap of clothing on his body had been burned to ashes.

Fortunately, neither the Record of the Myriad Realms, nor his longsword, nor those iron torture instruments had been damaged by the flames.

He staggered to his feet, the gentle breeze stinging his bare skin.

Completely naked, Li Huowang wandered through the entirety of the Dead Town with his dog.

After pacing around a few times, he found new clothes in an old clothing shop draped in cobwebs.

Stepping past the headless skeletal shopkeeper behind the counter, Li Huowang found a cyan Daoist robe to drape over his shoulders, then tore off a large piece of cloth to wrap all the items in his arms.

The tender new skin was easily scraped raw by the fabric, and specks of "peach blossoms" gradually bloomed across the Daoist robe.

With his flesh and skin fused together, every movement brought Li Huowang a knife-scraping agony; each step was sheer torture.

Inside the old clothing shop, he found a long bench, sat down trembling, and waited quietly for his skin to heal completely.

As Li Huowang waited in the shop filled with garments, the passing hours slowly dimmed the interior.

The old clothes hanging from the rafters, set against the encroaching darkness, looked like a row of hanged ghosts suspended in the gloom.

A breeze from an unknown source drifted in, causing the garments to sway gently, rendering the entire room eerily macabre.

"Woof! Woof woof!!" Mantou barked at the swaying clothes while timidly shrinking beneath Li Huowang's bench.

"Shh, don't bark. There are no ghosts in this world; when people die, nothing remains. Otherwise, they would have come to claim my life long ago," Li Huowang murmured, gently stroking Mantou's head.

Mantou gradually quieted down, licking the palm of Li Huowang's hand.

When it inevitably broke Li Huowang's skin again, it immediately stopped licking, gazing up at him with guilt in its eyes.

Ignoring his own wounds, Li Huowang began to examine Mantou's injuries, carefully pressing a hand against its kicked abdomen.

The blood at the corners of its mouth proved Mantou was indeed hurt, but judging by its ability to run from the mountain down to the town, the injuries were not severe.

If Jiang Yingzi truly wanted to kill a dog, it would have been as easy as turning her hand; there was only one reason Mantou survived.

It was because she still possessed a kind heart and did not wish to kill Mantou, even though the dog had taken its enemy as its master.

"Yingzi..." In the dim old clothing shop, Li Huowang stared blankly at the garments swaying gently before him.

In that moment, his mind raced with countless thoughts.

Suddenly, disregarding the agonizing friction on his skin, he stood up.

Li Huowang walked over to the headless shopkeeper, reached out to lift the body, and carried it outside.

That sword, sharp enough to cleave iron, was once again put to use as a shovel to dig a grave.

A large pit was soon formed; Li Huowang carefully aligned the skull and the headless skeleton he had found in the shop, then buried them once more.

A door plank was pried loose; Li Huowang wanted to carve an inscription, only to realize he had long forgotten how to write the characters.

In the end, he simply used the tip of his sword to carve the pattern of a garment, planting it before the mound of earth.

Next, Li Huowang turned and entered another room, carrying out the corpses of a mother and her daughter.

Skeleton after skeleton was laid to rest, and tombstone after tombstone bearing carved patterns was erected.

With his skin not yet fully healed, the constant friction from his clothes soon tore it all to shreds.

Amplified by his heightened sensitivity to pain, this was no different from being subjected to the death of a thousand cuts.

Yet Li Huowang did not pause for even a fraction of a second; the more his body ached, the more his soul found a sliver of solace.

As Li Huowang continued his endless hauling, his Daoist robe gradually turned a deep, dark crimson once more.

When Li Huowang stepped back into a single-story house, he froze; inside rested a bamboo cradle.

Seeing that object, he found himself hesitating to approach.

"Heh... compared to you, wouldn't I be a saint?" A familiar voice exploded beside Li Huowang's ear like a thunderclap.

He whipped his head around to see Danyang Zi, with his three heads, standing upon the rubble of the opposite house, staring right at him.

Gazing at the ambiguous, half-smiling expressions on those three heads, Li Huowang felt as though he had been plunged into an icy cavern in an instant.

The next second, Li Huowang moved; ignoring Danyang Zi on the roof, he slowly turned and began walking toward the distant mountains.

It started as a slow walk, then a jog, and finally, gritting his teeth, he broke into a full sprint, his dripping blood leaving a trail in his wake.

"Explain this to me! What on earth is going on! Why is Danyang Zi still here!!"

Inside the brightly lit cave, surrounded by a crowd of Xuanjing cultists, a panting Li Huowang, his face streaming with bloody water, loudly demanded answers from the several niches carved into the wall before him.

An aged voice echoed from one of the niches. "Young friend, all is settled between us; your master's soul has long been scattered to the winds. We have not seen even a trace of him upon your person."

At that very moment, Li Huowang's pupils contracted to pinpricks as he pointed a trembling finger toward a certain opening.

"Then tell me what that is! What is that! Are you all blind? What bullshit about a scattered soul! His influence over me is greater now! He can appear at any time! This thing was never eradicated!!"

Immediately after, as if seeing something else, Li Huowang inhaled sharply, "No! Even Jiang Yingzi is there! She's right beside Danyang Zi now!"

The moment these words left his lips, all the Xuanjing cultists around him were struck with astonishment, and even Li Huowang himself felt something was amiss.

Danyang Zi existed because he cultivated immortality, but what about Jiang Yingzi? She hadn't cultivated anything!

Li Huowang's eyes stared fixedly at the woman in the distance, her limbs severed and her body a mangled mess of flesh and blood, his mind buzzing loudly.

Even now, she continued to glare at him with eyes burning with absolute hatred.

"Young friend, we made a pact beforehand; we were only to expel your master. Those bizarre illusions of your Heart Su are beyond our jurisdiction."

(End of Chapter)