Chapter 21: Achieving Immortality

Chapter 21: Attaining the Dao and Ascending to Immortality

He gazed at the two fist-sized red pills with a metallic sheen, the two flesh pills writhing like living creatures, and the two decayed black pills emitting a pungent, eye-stinging odor.

Li Huowang nodded in satisfaction; he had thrown in everything he could think of, and with so many ingredients, this concoction was absolutely lethal, leaving not a shred of vitality behind.

Beside him, a stick of incense was planted, marking the remaining time of the year; according to the fabricated cultivation method, he had to practice at the exact moment of the year's transition to absorb the spiritual energy bestowed by the Heavenly Dao.

Sitting cross-legged, Li Huowang first picked up the fist-sized red pill, ready at a moment's notice. Death was imminent, yet he found himself surprisingly calm.

Indeed, he hadn't prepared any fallback plan whatsoever.

Li Huowang knew full well he had to take these pills himself; if he didn't, Danyang Zi would never swallow them.

Despite the amiable facade he had put on during the New Year's Eve dinner, his talk of ascending to immortality together was merely a ruse to use Li Huowang as a guinea pig.

Yet for all his meticulous calculations, Danyang Zi never anticipated that Li Huowang cared nothing for his own life.

Li Huowang had long grown indifferent to life and death, for he never truly belonged here in the first place.

His sole purpose in living now was to watch a disgusting piece of trash like Danyang Zi be lured into the grave by his own manipulations.

At this moment, Danyang Zi sat opposite him, likewise picking up a red pill first.

Under the gaze of both men, the glowing tip of the incense stick gradually lowered.

Just as the incense was about to burn out, Li Huowang took a deep breath, shoved the pill into his mouth, and swallowed it whole.

Danyang Zi, however, paused his motion to take the pill, his entire focus fixed intently on Li Huowang's every move.

Seemingly oblivious, Li Huowang, his expression somewhat frenzied, proceeded to swallow the remaining two pills directly, then closed his eyes and formed hand seals, resting them on his knees.

Sweat streamed down his face, and his meditating body began to tremble, yet an irrepressible ecstasy gradually spread across his features.

"So much innate spiritual energy! This... these are... I see, I've comprehended it, I've comprehended it!! I'm going to become an immortal~!"

Hearing this, a hint of anxiety flickered in Danyang Zi's eyes, but he still refrained from taking the pills immediately; it wasn't until he saw wisps of white smoke beginning to rise from Li Huowang's head that he wolfed down the three pills.

As the cross-legged Danyang Zi closed his eyes and began to circulate the microcosmic and macrocosmic orbits, Li Huowang slowly opened his, his smile widening even further as he looked at his master.

Seeing white smoke also rising from Danyang Zi's head and dark things crawling through his veins to cover his entire body, Li Huowang uncrossed his legs, clutched his agonizingly painful stomach, and burst into manic, hysterical laughter.

"Hahaha, you mangy bastard! Mangy bastard!! You'll never become an immortal! You can only become a ghost, let's keep each other company on the Bridge of Helplessness, hahaha!!"

Danyang Zi seemed to hear it, yet he showed no reaction, his eyes tightly shut and teeth clenched as he sat cross-legged, frantically circulating the inner and outer macrocosmic orbit techniques.

"You're still practicing? I made it all up! I copied it all from xianxia novels, hahaha, ouch, my stomach hurts so much, hahaha."

Li Huowang crawled on the ground, slowly dragging himself to Danyang Zi's side, staring at the man's ghastly pale face with a crazed grin; trembling, he raised his right hand and slapped him across the face. "Hey, are you deaf? I'm talking to you."

He followed up with a backhanded slap, yet Danyang Zi remained completely motionless.

Trembling, Li Huowang fished out a pill and stuffed it into his mouth; instantly, his veins bulged, and he felt surging with strength.

"I told you to stop practicing! Didn't you hear me?" Li Huowang punched Danyang Zi in the face, caving in his protruding jaw and nose.

Mouth full of blood, Danyang Zi suddenly snapped his eyes open, glaring viciously at Li Huowang before sweeping his Daoist robe and sending Li Huowang flying.

"Get lost! You inner demons won't hinder this Daoist's ascension!! I'm about to become a true immortal! The Patriarch is coming to fetch me any moment now!"

Thrown to the ground, Li Huowang didn't bother sitting up; he just lay there watching him, muttering to himself, "He's gone mad, this guy has been driven completely insane by his obsession with immortality. Ouch, my stomach really hurts."

Thus, one sat cross-legged while the other lay flat as time ticked by, and the pain in Li Huowang's abdomen grew increasingly severe, his body instinctively curling into the shape of a shrimp.

"Hiss, why does it hurt so much? How long do I have to suffer like this? I really regret not bringing a knife to slit my throat," Li Huowang groaned, rolling all over the floor in agony.

Amidst the excruciating pain, Li Huowang's consciousness gradually blurred, and in his daze, he saw Yang Na's face once more. "Yang Na, have you come to take me away?"

Yang Na's face quickly melted and reassembled into the visage of his attending physician. "Bed 14 is losing consciousness, preliminary diagnosis is food poisoning! Quick! Bring the electric aspirator over for gastric lavage!"

Li Huowang slowly closed his eyes, an exceedingly faint whisper slipping from his lips.

"Lavage my ass... don't forget, this is a psychiatric hospital... where would you even get... a gastric lavage machine... can you hallucinations at least... be logically consistent..."

Having spoken these final words, Li Huowang's consciousness lost all perception of his surroundings.

He felt quite comfortable now, for his stomach had finally stopped aching.

Li Huowang felt his body plummeting endlessly, yet never reaching the bottom.

"Huowang, hold on, you promised me!" A hazy, urgent female voice exploded in his ears.

Not knowing how much time had passed, Li Huowang suddenly snapped his eyes open, propped himself up on his hands, and began to vomit violently.

A mass of deformed flesh and blood mixed with black water and strands of hair, along with dumpling crumbs and fragments of internal organs, was heaved directly out of his mouth.

The flesh and blood lying in the black water twitched a few times before going still.

This sudden turn of events left Li Huowang stunned in place; he was still alive? How was that possible? And if he was still alive, then didn't that mean Danyang Zi—!

At this thought, cold sweat instantly poured down Li Huowang's face, and he instinctively whipped his head around, his jaw dropping involuntarily to its widest. "Holy shit, he's become a god... or what?"

He saw that his cheap master's body had completely mutated; his hideous head had split open, and three massive, fleshy maws protruded from within, each nested with three or four smaller mouths inside, all intertwined and gaping toward the ceiling with disgusting yellow teeth.

Besides his head, his body had also undergone drastic changes, with tar-matted feathers piercing through his flesh like sharp spikes.

"What the hell is this? Three flowers gathering at the crown, shedding the mortal body to ascend?"

Just as this thought burst forth in Li Huowang's mind, the three maws stretched to their limits, simultaneously emitting Danyang Zi's voice in the tones of a youth, a middle-aged man, and an elder. "I see, this Daoist has comprehended it, I've comprehended it!! Hahaha!!"

"Bang!!" Accompanied by a deafening explosion, Danyang Zi's entire deformed body instantly burst apart, splattering flesh and blood all over the alchemy chamber.

(End of Chapter)