Chapter 363: Heaven

Chapter 363: Heaven

Li Huowang, free from all pain, stood motionless, breathing in the scents around him. At this moment, his merged senses could feel that the yin and yang that had once fused had now torn apart.

It wasn’t because yang hadn’t come—it was because yin had awakened. Only living things could feel pain. When that dead heart-mud let out a scream so terrible it could make heaven weep, he, like the stones and trees that screamed with him, came back to life.

Li Huowang staggered forward, trying to take a few steps, but his frail body instinctively collapsed forward. Several black, writhing tendrils reached out, supporting him like pillars on the ground. “Father…”

Then Li Sui opened the wound in Li Huowang’s chest and quickly crawled inside.

Li Huowang opened his mouth, trembling as if trying to speak, yet all that remained was a blood-soaked hole where his mouth should have been—no sound could come forth.

His right hand, without fingernails, raised itself, trembling toward the south. He could sense a crack there.

Bai Lingmiao immediately understood what Li Huowang meant. She quickly picked up the *Great Thousand Records* from the ground and slung Li Huowang over her shoulder, walking toward the south with the two spirits.

As they walked, everything suddenly flipped upside down. The three felt their bodies grow light and began plummeting straight toward the black, cracked dome below.

When they passed through the gap, blinding sunlight forced them all to close their eyes. Inside, it had always been black; outside, the sky had long since dawned. They were free!

Looking down at the expanding yellow earth beneath them, the two spirits quickly turned, wrapping Li Huowang and Bai Lingmiao in their arms.

“Bang!” A violent tremor shook the air. Li Huowang’s fused features gradually separated, returning to their proper places. Ba Hui’s gaze upon him faded, and the numbness that had left him slowly returned.

“Huowang! Are you alright? Snap out of it!” Li Huowang heard a familiar voice. When he opened his eyes, he saw the faces of Bai Lingmiao and Yang Na overlapping completely.

They had fused together, as if becoming one person. Both spoke at once, asking the same question.

In that moment, the two faces overlapped so completely that Li Huowang couldn’t tell whether he was in reality or illusion.

“Huowang!” Bai Lingmiao, panic in her heart, lightly slapped his cheeks with her slender hands, but he gave no response.

Panicking, she grabbed her drumstick and struck the leather drum at her waist urgently, preparing to summon Grandmother Bai for healing.

Suddenly, Li Huowang’s hand grasped hers. He shook his head slightly. In that instant, he knew—he was in reality. Before him was Bai Lingmiao. There was no Yang Na.

He struggled to turn onto his stomach, gasping heavily. From the bloodied hole in his mouth, chunks of flesh slid down his chin to the ground.

With great effort, he lifted his head. Looking around, he saw the *Great Thousand Records*, stained with mud, far away. With all his strength, he dragged himself toward it.

Seeing his movement, Bai Lingmiao ran over, picked up the still bleeding red bamboo scroll, and held it before him.

Li Huowang extended his trembling hand, unrolling the scroll like opening a gift. A blood-soaked tongue and entire throat lay before them.

Weakly, Li Huowang raised his head, mouth wide open, holding the long object upright and lowering it into the horrific bloodhole in his mouth.

Soon, delicate tendrils emerged from his mouth, wrapping around his tongue and organs, adjusting their positions, binding them to where they belonged.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. You scared the hell out of me!” Bai Lingmiao held him tightly, her voice shaking.

Recalling the events in his hallucination, a faint, strained smile appeared on Li Huowang’s face. He reached out and embraced Bai Lingmiao, controlling the icy tongue as he said, “Why… why did you… cough cough… hurry ahead?”

He had not yet killed Yang Na in the illusion when Bai Lingmiao had already begun the Cangshen Ascension.

“You said to act during the most painful moment. I thought you were about to faint. Did I do something wrong?”

Li Huowang shook his head slightly. “No… just… right…” Although Yang Na was injured, she was not dead.

“Thank you… Lingmiao… Lingmiao…” Li Huowang kissed her neck gently.

She had saved Yang Na by acting early. Otherwise, he would have stabbed her for sure. He didn’t understand why he cared so much about a hallucination—but thinking that Yang Na was alive made him happier than anything else.

At that moment, Li Huowang realized: Ba Hui only wanted pain—it didn’t want death. It was others who died, perhaps the giant white-bone Bodhisattva he had seen, or something else entirely.

There was no need to kill Yang Na. When he had decided to kill her, that unbearable agony had already been enough to trigger the Cangshen Ascension.

“Yang Na… I’m sorry…” Li Huowang murmured into the void. “I left a scar on your chest. Go call 120 to get treated…”

Hearing his words, Bai Lingmiao frowned slightly, but said nothing. She painfully helped him up and walked toward the side, wanting to leave this ghostly place first.

Only then did Li Huowang have a chance to look around. But all he saw was mud—nothing like where he had originally been.

“Where are we? Have we not escaped yet?!”

A chill went through Li Huowang’s heart as he tried to raise his vision upward, finally spotting some familiar green forest.

But those trees were tall, towering above distant cliffs. Li Huowang remembered there were no cliffs nearby, nor even mountains of such height.

“Cliffs? Why would there be cliffs here?” As he looked around, he found cliffs rising in all directions. Only then did he realize—they weren’t cliffs.

That was normal terrain. He was in a valley. He was inside an enormous basin.

When the two heart-muds—one living, one dead—touched, they didn’t just hide them—they dug deep, scraping away everything within several miles.

“Huowang, look! What is that in the sky?!”

Li Huowang strained to look up. Above him, the cloudless sky had a missing piece. That was where they had fallen from. Inside was a black night filled with cracks.

“So this is the power of the heart-mud…” Li Huowang was utterly stunned, his mouth agape. “What exactly is this heart-mud? How can two living and dead heart-muds merge and hide the heavens themselves?”