Chapter 538: Guankou

Chapter 538: Guankou

Qiu Chibao clutched the child tightly to her breast, swallowing her saliva continuously as her eyes burned with longing while watching the red-robed Daoist gnaw on his dry rations. Her voice, nearly a desperate plea, cried out, "Have mercy, Master. Could you give me just a little bite? I haven't eaten in three days. I am so terribly hungry."

Looking down at the pitiful woman beside him, Li Huowang reached into his robes once more and pulled out a steamed bun. Yet, seeing that the bread was thoroughly saturated with blood, having turned into a morbid, crimson mass, he carelessly cast it aside.

Qiu Chibao’s eyes flared instantly with a manic light. Like a starving tigress leaping upon its prey, she lunged forward, desperately trying to scoop up the blood-soaked bun and cram it into her mouth.

Yet it was entirely in vain; the bun resting on the dirt passed through her palms time and time again, completely beyond her grasp.

Lifting a face stark with utter despair, Qiu Chibao stared up at Li Huowang and shrieked in a wretched voice, "What are you doing! You clearly didn't want this bun anymore, so why won't you let me pick it up! A bun this size could save a human life!"

"Waaaah! I'm used to starving, I'm not afraid of the hunger! But if I starve, my body won't produce milk, and my son will starve to death! Do you have even a shred of conscience left in you!" As she screamed, she bit into her own finger, thrusting the bleeding digit into the swaddling clothes.

Watching Qiu Chibao weep and wail in hopelessness at his side, Li Huowang sighed with a touch of irritation, stood up, and began walking toward the east.

It had been so long since a new hallucination appeared that Li Huowang had almost forgotten that he, as a Xinsu, possessed this troublesome and peculiar trait.

"How exactly did this happen? Why did she become one of my hallucinations?"

"Countless people have died right before my eyes, so why did this madwoman of all people have to become my hallucination?"

This was a riddle Li Huowang was destined never to solve; even Zhuge Yuan did not know the answer.

"Why won't you let me eat! You wicked villain!" Clutching that rusty cleaver, Qiu Chibao charged ferociously right before Li Huowang's eyes and drove the blade squarely into his left eye socket.

Without breaking his stride, Li Huowang’s body overlapped with hers, and he ultimately walked right out from behind her back.

He had tried to communicate with this woman a few times at the very beginning, but he quickly gave up.

Whether he told her that she was already dead, that her child was dead, or that she had merely become a hallucination, none of it registered with her.

This woman named Qiu Chibao was completely out of her mind; even as a phantom, she remained utterly insane.

Sharing a similar plight, Li Huowang could understand her, yet that did nothing to change the fact that she was forever trapped within her own world.

Fortunately, the method to quiet her down was not complicated.

Li Huowang drew the last piece of dry food from his bosom and tossed it into Qiu Chibao's arms. The ecstatic woman settled down instantly, ravenously devouring the piece of steamed bun.

Even as she ate, she glared menacingly at the other hallucinations drifting about, as if terrified that they might steal her food away.

"Peng Longteng, Jin Shan_zhao, Zhuge Yuan, the Monk, Qiu Chibao. The Zuo Wang Dao, Jiang Yingzi." Li Huowang calculated the pattern of these individuals turning into his hallucinations within his mind.

It seemed that whenever these people died near him, his own emotions had been violently fluctuating, which caused them to manifest as his phantoms.

If he wanted to prevent more hallucinations from appearing, he would have to avoid similar situations from happening in the future.

Yet, after pondering a moment longer, Li Huowang realized that while certain rules fit some of his hallucinations perfectly, they were utterly inapplicable to others.

For instance, to this very day, he still could not fathom whether the Monk's true body was actually dead or alive.

Furthermore, not all of these figures had shared a close bond with him; this newly appeared woman had not even exchanged a single word with him while she was alive, yet she had somehow become one of his hallucinations nonetheless.

"Could it be... that there is more than just one way to become my hallucination?" Li Huowang muttered to himself.

"Brother Li, it is best not to dwell on these non-urgent matters right now. Let us first seek out the Shangji Guankou. Once we find it, we must return quickly. The Great Qi is unstable these days; it is dangerous for you to linger here."

Hearing Zhuge Yuan’s words, Li Huowang nodded and promptly collected his thoughts.

True enough, the trouble with Dice was the most critical matter at hand. With so many hallucinations surrounding him anyway, what difference did one more or one less make? When debts accumulate, one stops worrying; when lice multiply, one stops itching.

Perhaps once his cultivation of the true-shaping techniques reached absolute mastery, he could simply turn all of these people into reality and send them away from his side.

"No... No... No..." Jin Shan_zhao’s words drew Li Huowang's gaze toward him.

Presently, Jin Shan_zhao stood there with his hands resting vaguely against the ground, looking toward Li Huowang with a jovial smile.

"Good... Good... Good!" After uttering a few syllables of praise, Jin Shan_zhao dragged his severed lower half over to Qiu Chibao, gently patting her calf in silent consolation.

Li Huowang said nothing, quickening his pace as he ran in the direction Zhuge Yuan had indicated.

The sun in the sky gradually shifted its course. As Li Huowang drew closer and closer to the so-called Shangji Guankou, his expression grew increasingly solemn.

The debarked, skeletal tree trunks grew sparser by the moment. Li Huowang followed along a dried-up riverbed, and just as the sky began to darken, a massive sinkhole finally materialized at the riverbed's end.

Peering down into the sinkhole, it appeared that due to the severe drought, a bottomless pool of deep water lay hidden away in its deepest recesses.

Glancing at Zhuge Yuan beside him, Li Huowang furrowed his brow tightly and asked, "This is the Shangji Guankou?"

"No, because it is currently the Zi hour, the Shangji Guankou is presently concealed within this water. Once the Zi hour passes, it will move elsewhere."

"To think it has a specific hour requirement, just like refining elixirs." Li Huowang dared not delay a moment longer; hoicking up a large boulder from the ground nearby, he took a fierce plunge and hurled himself toward the pool inside the sinkhole.

With two heavy splashes, Li Huowang and Li Sui crashed against the water's surface. Before he could even draw a deep breath, the boulder in his arms dragged him downward into the abyss.

The water within the deep pool was freezing, so cold that it numbed Li Huowang’s limbs. Surrounded by an all-encompassing blackness, Li Huowang suddenly felt something slick and slimy brush past the back of his neck, yet he had no way of knowing what it was.

Gritting his teeth, Li Huowang managed to free one hand and fished a fluorite stone out from his robes.

As the sickly green, gentle luminescence illuminated the surroundings, the darkness and the things lurking within it swiftly retreated.

Still clutching the boulder, Li Huowang continued his descent; this pool was far deeper than he had anticipated.

He gesticulated wildly toward Zhuge Yuan beside him to inquire, and Zhuge Yuan spoke through the bone-chilling waters, "Do not panic, Brother Li. Set your mind at ease. The hiding place of the Shangji Guankou is exceptionally concealed; malicious spirits and anomalies cannot find it at all, so there is no danger whatsoever."

Hearing this, Li Huowang finally relaxed his mind and continued to sink.

In the pitch-black, freezing depths of the pool, there were no other sounds, save for Qiu Chibao’s miserable shrieks echoing without end.

"Aaahhhh!! I’m drowning! I’m going to drown!!" She struggled frantically toward the water's surface, which was shrinking into a tiny pinprick above, her hands holding the swaddled infant high in the air, desperate to keep the child as close to the surface as she possibly could.