Chapter 436: Zuo Wang Dao

Chapter 436: The Sect of Sitting and Forgetting

"It is looking at me? Why is it looking at me?" Li Huowang raised his head, staring at the eyeball embedded within the celestial Taiji diagram of yin and yang above, his heart trembling as he pondered this very question.

This inquiry was destined to remain unanswered; the sole truth Li Huowang grasped was that he had indeed become the focus of this Doumu deity's gaze.

With scarcely a moment's hesitation, Li Huowang threw himself sideways, plunging toward the surrounding ground, which now churned like a liquid expanse.

Even if it meant being entombed fathoms deep within the earth hereafter, Li Huowang refused to share the fate of those so-called ghostly eyes of the sacred mountain, pulled into the depths of Doumu's own form.

Just as half of his body sank into the mire, a sudden sensation overcame him in the next instant, as though the entire cosmos had been turned upside down.

The ground within arm's reach before him was in truth the ceiling, while that distant sea of black and white far beneath was the actual earth.

Inverted and suspended in mid-air, Li Huowang's body fell helplessly toward the Yin-Yang Doumu looming below.

"I refuse to accept this! I was so close to obtaining the cultivation techniques! I was so close to becoming a normal person!!" Gritting his teeth, Li Huowang fiercely jerked his right hand.

The flesh-colored worms inside his belly erupted forth, twisting and braiding themselves into a thick hemp rope that bound tightly to a half-collapsed stone wall on the ground.

Though his descent was barely halted, his predicament grew no lighter, as the pulling force exerted upon him steadily intensified.

Gradually, transparent threads invisible to ordinary eyes materialized above Li Huowang's head, and as the black and white ocean surged, the threads attached to him began to unravel.

Subsequently, several threads buried deep within were stripped bare, while others on the exterior were obscured, and yet more lines were woven together.

He had assumed that this stalemate would simply endure, but bit by bit, a succession of images began to flood into Li Huowang's mind.

First came a colossal bull's head, towering higher than several of himself combined; Li Huowang remembered that this was the terror he felt at six years old when he saw a water buffalo for the very first time.

Next was the intimidatingly high counter of a pawnshop, a memory from when he was fourteen, sent to the town to apprentice under a master at a pawnbroking establishment.

Then appeared a weeping, scrawny man, who was the proprietor of that pawnshop and his master, ruined and defrauded of all possessions after falling prey to a gang of swindlers during a transaction.

It was from that moment onward that he lost his livelihood and had to forage for his own sustenance, and it was precisely due to this that he crossed paths with the Sect of Sitting and Forgetting.

These images flickered slowly at the start, but soon accelerated, flashing across his consciousness like a rapid sequence of slides.

Following this, certain blurred memories began to sharpen into clarity—memories of a highly peculiar nature.

Recollections concerning arts of deception and his own experiences in learning the divine transformations of the Sect of Sitting and Forgetting gradually manifested.

"Leader Hong Zhong, what are you doing? No way, right? Are you really playing it this big? Playing with a Heart-Element like this? Aren't you afraid of getting trapped yourself?"

"Ah, San Yuan's realm is simply too profound for me to truly comprehend. Fine, fine, since you say so, I shall do as you command."

Those memories, crystallizing with increasing clarity, struck Li Huowang with an unprecedented terror, causing his pale lips to tremble as he muttered, "I am not Hong Zhong... I am Li Huowang... I am not Hong Zhong... I am Li Huowang..."

Yet such deathly pale repetitions could soothe no one; if a person cannot conceive of things they have never known, then what was this knowledge currently multiplying inside his mind!

As the foreign memories multiplied within his brain, his grasp upon the stone wall grew looser; if everything about Li Huowang was merely a fiction concocted by Hong Zhong to deceive himself, was there any purpose left in struggling so desperately to survive?

Beside him, Zhuge Yuan noticed Li Huowang's erratic state, his brow furrowing deeper as he reached for his waist and swiftly drew a slender, flexible sword.

Without hesitation, he stomped his feet violently against the scroll, utilizing that momentum to bound upward, left foot stepping upon right.

His white-robed form swept past Li Huowang, charging with an indomitable aura straight toward the Doumu deity that blanketed the entire heavens.

The moment he shielded Li Huowang from that cosmic gaze, the pulling force on Li Huowang vanished instantly, causing him to crash heavily against the wall.

The flashing images within his mind dissipated, yet those memories of the past grew ever more distinct, as though they had truly existed.

"No, no, no, no!" Li Huowang reach up to touch his own face with trembling hands, his features, flesh, and bone structure shifting rapidly until they assumed the visage of Hong Zhong.

This was no longer a form forcibly maintained by Li Sui's tentacles, but an subconscious action of his own, as natural as eating or drinking.

Furthermore, as Li Huowang's thoughts raced, his face continued to alter, shifting through the countenances of Gou Wa, Lü Zhuangyuan, Gao Zhijian, Bai Lingmiao, Zhao Wu, and Chun Xiaoman.

Face after face appeared and vanished upon his features, causing Li Huowang's recollection of his original face to become increasingly indistinct.

"Cleave!" A thunderous roar erupted, causing Li Huowang to look up just as the flexible sword in Zhuge Yuan's hand shattered into countless fragments, sending a massive blade-energy flying toward the Doumu in the sky.

Yet when that immense arc of light struck, it proved to be nothing more than a ripple upon a vast pond before the vault-like magnitude of Doumu.

Seeing that colossal eye shift back toward Li Huowang, Zhuge Yuan flipped backward through the air, planting himself firmly in front of his companion.

Confronted by the Doumu that smothered the heavens, Zhuge Yuan showed no trace of fear; keeping his left hand behind his back, his right hand gripped the cracked judge's pen, pointing it directly at the single eye in the sky.

"Brother Li! Go first! I shall hold it back for you. Fear not, the other Siming are watching closely; it cannot descend to the mortal realm!! Once you are out of the capital city, you will be safe!"

Bearing the countenance of a stranger, Li Huowang gazed with a complex expression at the upright figure of Zhuge Yuan. "That is a Siming, Brother Zhuge. Why must you do this for me?"

"True companionship values mutual understanding of the heart! Why must there be a reason for everything in this life! This scholar wishes to do it... so he does it!"

With a rustling sound, pages of a yellowed old almanac scattered across the sky; Zhuge Yuan suspended himself in mid-air, using the earth as his inkstone and the sky as his paper, furiously wielding his judge's pen to write. "Prohibit the Manifestation of the Siming!!"

The words had barely been spoken when all the almanac pages burst into flames simultaneously, drifting toward the celestial Doumu like yellow talismans wrapped in fire.

As those words echoed, the whole world brightened slightly, and the black and white form of Doumu in the heavens began to grow dim.

Witnessing the spectacle above, a bewildered Li Huowang gritted his teeth and clenched his fists tightly. "Flee? How could I possibly abandon a friend to save my own skin!"

"Don't be foolish, that is the true body of Doumu. How could you possibly fight it? It's rare to find a fool willing to block it for you; save your own skin while you can," the hallucination of the Sect of Sitting and Forgetting hastily advised.

"Bullshit! We are both of the Sect of Sitting and Forgetting, who do you think you're fooling!! The Dice Lords can only summon an avatar of Doumu using the Wang Tian Bao Gao! They cannot summon her true body!"

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