Chapter 4: Black Cauldron

Chapter 4 The Black Cauldron

Seeing Xuanyang clamp a hand over Li Huowang's mouth, the others clutching their fireboxes rushed forward, encircling Li Huowang with hostile glares.

"Refusing to leave, are you? Then you can just die here today! There is absolutely no way we will let you go tip off that scabby-headed bastard!"

Facing this life-and-death predicament, Li Huowang was not panicked in the slightest; he rolled his eyes in speechless exasperation, silently cursed the narrative direction of this hallucination, and simply closed his eyes to draw in a deep breath.

When he opened his eyes again, he found himself strapped to a hospital bed with wide leather restraints, and the senior and junior martial brothers who had surrounded him had vanished.

"Auntie Wang, I'm awake, could you help untie me?" Li Huowang called into the bedside microphone for the night shift nurse, desperate to check if the jade pendant was currently tucked inside his clothes.

Yet after shouting for quite a while there was no response, and Li Huowang realized Nurse Wang was once again secretly binge-watching melodramatic soap operas during her night shift, as she always loved to slack off.

Li Huowang looked down at his chest wrapped in the blue-and-white hospital gown, writhing desperately to sense through pressure whether the jade pendant was actually resting against his skin.

But with his body now bound so tightly, he felt it might be there and then again it might not, and after a few attempts he gave up in helpless resignation.

Yawning, Li Huowang could only lie in bed now, praying that once Nurse Wang finished her show she would mercifully glance at the security camera.

In the dead of night, even the second floor housing the critical patients was profoundly quiet, and Li Huowang drifted into a drowsy sleep, only to wake again and find himself lying on the freezing floor of a limestone cave.

He was still in the same spot, but not a single one of those fellows who had previously attempted to flee was anywhere to be seen.

"Tch, you bunch of NPCs think you can deal with me?" Li Huowang pulled the jade pendant from his bosom, tossed it lightly in his palm, and tucked it back inside his robes.

Half an incense stick's time later, he returned to the communal dormitory where he lived, lying patiently in the haystack waiting for dawn, yet the thought of the jade pendant's value left him far too excited to sleep.

Without a clock, Li Huowang had no idea how much time had passed, but when he saw the martial brothers on either side beginning to stir, he sat up as well.

"It is daylight here, so Auntie Wang must be changing shifts by now; perhaps I should go back and check first, since Nurse Ai is far more dedicated than she is."

Just as Li Huowang was hesitating, a flurry of hurried footsteps echoed from the doorway.

A young Daoist apprentice clad in black robes, his hair tied in a topknot, scrambled inside in a frantic rush.

"Hurry, all of you! The Master has ordered everyone to assemble at the Hui'an Hall!"

This sudden announcement left everyone utterly bewildered, but since it was their master's summons, they had no grounds to refuse.

Soon, within the largest cavern that served as the so-called Hui'an Hall, all the disciples had gathered, the torchlight illuminating the confusion on every face with stark clarity.

Li Huowang keenly noticed one detail: the crowd was missing a few people, and besides Xuanyang, several of the scabby-headed master's personal disciples were conspicuously absent.

"My, did they run away with the rest?" he mused with the detached amusement of an onlooker, the scene before him feeling much like watching a television drama.

When an ugly head emerged from the dark tunnel, every young apprentice except Li Huowang instinctively bowed their heads.

It was their master, Danyangzi.

A single cough made everyone's bodies tense up.

"Last night during the second watch, some tried to flee, and among them were two of this Daoist Lord's personal disciples, which breaks my heart deeply!"

He spoke of heartbreak, yet the malice on his face was so immense it nearly condensed into a physical substance.

"Caught already? Xuanyang and those guys are truly pathetic," Li Huowang muttered, curling his lip.

"As the saying goes, nothing can be accomplished without rules, and transgressions must be punished; this is the law of our Xishan Donghua Sect! Follow me."

Not a single disciple dared to breathe heavily as they silently followed Danyangzi forward.

Passing through caverns large and small, and crossing beside a rushing subterranean river, they soon arrived in a damp cave roughly the size of a classroom.

Li Huowang saw that every last one of those who had fled the previous night was now tightly bound and piled in the corner.

Their expressions haggard, they struggled frantically upon seeing their master, seemingly desperate to plead their case, but the rags stuffed in their mouths rendered them utterly speechless.

Danyangzi seemed to have no desire to hear their defenses either; with a single hand he formed a Daoist seal and pointed forward, commanding, "Open!"

The smooth, water-scoured floor of the cavern suddenly yawned open into a massive pit, and the fugitives instantly tumbled inside.

The next moment, hysterical muffled shouts and agonizing screams echoed continuously from the pit, accompanied by the sickening sound of flesh being torn apart.

Faced with this horrifying spectacle, many of the young apprentices found their legs trembling, wishing desperately they could just shut their eyes.

"Come closer! This is the fate of those who flee!" Danyangzi's words drained the color from everyone's faces, leaving them ghastly pale.

No one dared defy the master's order, and the crowd shuffled and pushed their way to the edge of the pit.

The pit was dark, exceedingly dark, an abyss of pitch black.

The pitch-black circular cavern was like a vortex, as if threatening to swallow everyone whole.

Peering carefully, Li Huowang discerned a massive black cauldron within the pit, its rim weighed down by certain twisted talismans.

Something seemed to be moving inside the cauldron, but Li Huowang could never quite make it out; the only information his senses could gather was the pungent, nauseating stench of blood wafting from within.

Whatever was contained inside, it was absolutely certain to be exceedingly dangerous.

"Logically, things in a hallucination shouldn't be able to harm me; nothing like that has ever happened before."

Even as he told himself this, his heart hung in suspense, ready to retreat back to the hospital at a moment's notice.

With a sudden swoosh, a ring of writhing black shadows shot out from the pit, enveloped a junior brother beside Li Huowang, and violently retracted.

Terrified by this sight, everyone scrambled backward against the smooth cavern walls, and had Danyangzi not been watching right there, they surely would have fled.

The expressions of nearly everyone present were now fraught with sheer terror, their minds trembling as they guessed what that thing could have been.

Yet Li Huowang was not among those guessing, for he had stood the closest and had seen it clearly.

It was a mass of black, fleshy-textured substance, its slick and viscous skin sprouting clusters of short, constantly quivering black tentacles!

On this basis alone, Li Huowang could be certain that whatever Danyangzi was raising in this pit was absolutely no normal creature of this world.

As for exactly what it was, Li Huowang could not guess, nor did he want to walk over and look again.

Though he knew these things were conjured by his own brain, Li Huowang truly wondered why he would fabricate such a monstrosity.

Surveying the incredibly real surroundings, a dreadful conjecture suddenly struck him: "Could this terrifying, bizarre world actually be real?"

This thought instantly set Li Huowang's body trembling; he thought of those who had died before, and if those people were real and not mere hallucinations, would he too have died had that thing dragged him in?

Nearly crushed by this suffocating dread, Li Huowang forced himself to take several deep breaths, immediately employing the self-counseling techniques Dr. Li had taught him.

"These are all hallucinations, no matter how real they seem they are just hallucinations; Li Huowang, you absolutely must not lose yourself in them again, they are your own creations, what is there to fear?"

"Yang Na is still waiting for me, I cannot let her down; I can overcome all of this, I surely can!"

Through this self-reassurance, Li Huowang's emotions gradually stabilized, enough to face everything before him with calm composure.

(End of Chapter)