Chapter 54: Master You

Chapter 54: Lord You

"Thwack!" The massive wooden club slammed heavily into the earth, kicking up a thick cloud of dust.

Immediately after, the hefty club was hoisted high once more and brought crashing down with brutal force.

Supported by Bai Lingmiao, Li Huowang watched from the sidelines as the fool swung the wooden club.

Though the wound on his neck had not yet fully healed, a few days of lying dead to the world had allowed him to barely stand on his own two feet.

"Harder! Smash it harder!" Li Huowang shouted from the side.

By the campfire, Lü Zhuangyuan approached with a beaming smile, holding two coarse grain mantou. "Little Daoist Master, what are you up to? Making quite a racket."

With every strike of the club, the surrounding woods and shrubs were battered into a chaotic mess.

"Heh, nothing much. It would be a waste to have such a giant only carry people and luggage, so I am putting him through his paces."

"Ah, that is splendid, truly splendid." Lü Zhuangyuan nodded repeatedly as he retreated.

Li Huowang turned his gaze back to the bare-chested fool before him, glistening with sweat.

The fellow might be slow in the head, but his physique was truly formidable, Li Huowang mused, taking in his broad, bear-like back and tiger-like waist.

"With a build like that, he might not be good for much else, but he should be more than enough to handle ordinary bandits."

This was Li Huowang's plan: to bolster the strength of his group. Relying solely on Lord You and Master Danyang, with their massive side effects, was unsustainable; even without understanding the mystic arts of this world, he still knew the most primal methods.

Savage or not, having something was always better than having nothing.

Not to mention assisting in future encounters with enemies, the fool could also stand guard when Li Huowang's affliction flared up.

"Enough! That is a hundred strikes, you can rest now!"

Hearing this, the bald fool tossed the wooden club aside and strode toward the campfire in heavy, panting breaths.

Without pausing to rest, the fool wordlessly grabbed his oversized bowl and began slurping down his noodles with ravenous gusto.

In no time, another jin of noodles vanished down his gullet, yet the towering simpleton was clearly ravenous after his exertion, marching over to the great black pot to ladle out more.

Watching him devour yet another jin, Li Huowang sighed inwardly; it was true that scholars could be poor but martial artists needed wealth. Fortunately, he still had some silver left, otherwise this glutton would have eaten him into destitution.

A sudden thought struck Li Huowang, and he reached up to draw out his Daoist bell.

Staring at the bell in his hand, his mind flashed back to Lord You, smashed to a bloody pulp.

"Can this thing still be used?" A lingering doubt formed in Li Huowang's mind.

In this bizarre and phantasmagoric world, possessing such an artifact was a matter of grave importance.

"Come, help me into the woods over there," Li Huowang said to Bai Lingmiao.

He only stopped when they had gone far enough that the sounds from the campfire could no longer be heard.

"You go back first." But this time, Bai Lingmiao did not obey.

"Go ahead and relieve yourself, I will not look..."

Her words left Li Huowang both amused and exasperated. "I am not here to piss. Go back first, and return in a quarter of an hour."

Waiting until he was utterly alone in the woods, Li Huowang leaned against a birch tree, pressed a hand to his forehead, and began to shake the Daoist bell.

As expected, everything around him began to warp and twist, but the lines darted about chaotically, failing to coalesce into Lord You.

Refusing to give up, Li Huowang shook the bell with greater force. "Is this thing truly ruined?"

The thought had barely formed when the writhing lines around him merged anew, coalescing into a fresh manifestation of Lord You. "Beitianshen?"

Yet, in the face of Li Huowang's bewildered inquiry, Lord You's bizarre utterances remained devoid of any emotional fluctuation, as if it were not the very same entity that had been swatted to death by the Buddha's palm.

Enduring the dizziness, Li Huowang quickly conversed with Lord You, uncovering some unexpected revelations.

First, Lord You did have a name, but it was simply impossible for human vocal cords to pronounce.

No one knew what the first person to encounter it had experienced, or why they had chosen to call it Lord You.

Second, entities like Lord You had no concept of death, or rather, they were not living beings to begin with.

Beyond lacking the concept of death, they also possessed no concept of quantity.

"No concept of quantity?" Realizing something, Li Huowang shook his head vigorously, making his already spinning mind reel even more violently.

Everything he looked at now was doubled, including Lord You.

Staring at the two overlapping afterimages of Lord You, Li Huowang seemed to grasp something, and he intensified his shaking once more.

The more he shook his head, the more Lords You appeared, until the dizzy Li Huowang beheld nearly twenty or thirty of them before his eyes.

"Urgh..." Unable to endure the vertigo any longer, Li Huowang finally doubled over and retched violently.

The ringing ceased, the surroundings returned to normal, and those Lords You swiftly vanished.

After vomiting up the lunch he had just eaten, Li Huowang began to heave up clear water.

He retched until there was nothing left to expel, nearly bringing up bile, before he finally stopped.

Propping himself up, Li Huowang wiped the saliva from his mouth with the back of his hand, panting heavily as he held the Daoist bell before his eyes.

"If I had known this trick earlier, would I have been spared from mutilating myself to summon Master Danyang?"

After a moment's thought, Li Huowang put the bell away. "No, summoning Lord You costs lifespan. Three months for one summoning. With so many of them in action, a single summoning might cost me a decade of my life."

Leaning on a tree trunk, Li Huowang staggered somewhat as he retraced his steps.

Just as he reached the roadside, he saw his own group and Lü Zhuangyuan's men gathered in a tight circle.

"Ladies and gentlemen, take a look, all top-quality goods! If there is a single shoddy or spoiled item in here, may I, Zhu Dexi, die a horrible death! May my ancestors for eighteen generations be beasts!"

Walking over to take a look, Li Huowang realized it was a peddler with a mule-drawn cart, eloquently hawking his wares to the others.

Bai Lingmiao stood by the cart with the hairy woman, hesitating over some needles and threads.

"The world is in such chaos, and you still dare to travel and sell goods? Are you not afraid of being robbed by highwaymen?"

In response to Li Huowang's question, the young man with a large, hairy mole by the corner of his mouth merely chuckled, offering no explanation.

"Daoist Master, need any cinnabar? I have got it all right here!"

Lü Zhuangyuan, who had been watching from the sidelines, leaned in and whispered disdainfully into Li Huowang's ear, "How could highwaymen rob him? Peddlers like this are cut from the same cloth as those damned bandits. The bandits do the robbing, and fellows like him buy the loot to sell!"

"So that is how it is..." Li Huowang nodded in understanding. It made sense; even bandit strongholds deep in the mountains needed goods to circulate, and these scattered itinerant peddlers were the most discreet.

"Daoist Master, if you do not want cinnabar, take a look at my other wares? I have a most comprehensive stock." Zhu Dexi paid no mind to the stares of others, continuing his relentless sales pitch.

Li Huowang pondered for a moment before asking, "A comprehensive stock, you say? Do you have anything meant for killing?"

As soon as the words left his mouth, everyone around turned to look at him in unison.

Zhu Dexi clapped his hands together in excitement and began rummaging through his mule cart. "Yes! Yes, yes, yes!!"

(End of Chapter)