Chapter 77: Ba Hui

Chapter 77: Ba Hui

"One tongue turns the wheel! One blink, a thousand worlds! The wondrous realms reach their zenith, beyond the reach of words! The heavens are good, the gods are bizarre, carved by the breath of the divine! My Lord is supreme! How dare we be startled!?"

As the wooden bamboo slips spoke these words through a human flesh tongue, everything around them began to warp, and the sensory perceptions of everyone on the island simultaneously began to shift.

Sight, taste, smell, and hearing—all of these gradually merged together, forming an entirely new perception incomprehensible to ordinary mortals.

Through this exceedingly bizarre perceptual ability, Li Huowang and the others broke through the limits of human perception.

They saw the deepest reaches of the sky, where within an unfathomable, vast abyss of darkness, amidst the swirling of countless deeper black worlds and suns, something was moving.

Li Huowang caught the faint scent of the gaze emanating from that entity, tasting the terrifying aura upon that gaze that made him tremble uncontrollably. He also saw the bizarre melody brought about by the entity's slight movements.

"Thump~ thump thump~ thump!!"

Li Huowang felt it was incredibly far away from him, yet its melody was so captivating and clear.

Li Huowang could not find a corresponding counterpart to this melody in reality; the only thing remotely similar was the thunder before the appearance of the God of Joy.

Yet this entity was far, far more powerful than the God of Joy; the weak God of Joy was like a grain of sand compared to a mountain peak before it.

Li Huowang made this judgment almost without hesitation, even though he could not comprehend what exactly it was that he was perceiving.

"Commit suicide to bring Danyangzi out? No! Danyangzi is less than a fart in its presence! The difference between them is too vast!!"

Li Huowang despaired as he realized this point; before that entity, mortals did not have the slightest possibility of resistance.

Just as Li Huowang had completely lost all hope and stood there waiting for death, his twisted sensory perceptions inexplicably returned to normal.

"Hm?" Before Li Huowang could figure out what had just happened, his expression hardened, and he decisively raised his sword, rushing toward Yuan Er outside at top speed.

At this moment, Yuan Er, completely blind in both eyes, was on his last breath; he merely made a slight turn of his head, and with a forceful swing of Li Huowang's sword, his head instantly flew into the air.

As the head hit the ground, everything around them returned to normal.

Panting heavily, Li Huowang stood there with his sword, looking up at the pitch-black sky with lingering terror.

There was nothing there anymore, as if everything before had been an illusion, but Li Huowang knew it absolutely could not have been an illusion; that thing truly existed.

Li Huowang tried to piece together what he had perceived earlier, but to his shock, he found he could no longer recall what that thing felt like.

With his current five senses, he could not comprehend what kind of sensation it was that he had just experienced.

Although the danger had passed, the island was utterly silent.

Everyone was frozen in place, their eyes revealing deep terror; what Li Huowang had seen, they had seen too.

Each person's face was deathly pale, their bodies beginning to tremble involuntarily; they all felt incredibly cold, a bone-chilling coldness flowing from within their hearts.

"That's it? Yuan Er exhausted everything he had, just to scare us?"

Looking at the others around him, completely unharmed, a trace of doubt arose in Li Huowang's heart.

Their current state of safety instead made him feel inexplicably uneasy.

Li Huowang took a deep breath, using his bloodied longsword to pry open the curled red bamboo slips, only to find the flesh and organs inside had withered and turned black.

Li Huowang squatted on one knee, vigilantly observing the contents on the red bamboo slips.

The black characters carved on the red bamboo slips were exceedingly small and utterly bizarre.

He had never seen this kind of script before, yet strangely, when he focused his gaze, he found he could actually recognize what was written upon them.

"White pills... precious dew... swallow its belly... pluck its bones..."

This was an extremely sinister scroll of bamboo slips, its contents entirely recording how to use one's utmost pain and flesh to exchange for things with a certain existence.

Among the mildest of these was how to insert a bamboo splinter horizontally under one's fingernail, prying upward to rip the entire fingernail off.

A more severe one involved chewing a large packet of rusted iron filings and forcing them down the throat.

Further still, it even instructed the reader on how to sacrifice their own flesh and blood kin to strike bargains with certain entities.

The further one read, the more bloody and terrifying these methods became, nearly exceeding Li Huowang's capacity to endure.

Finally, after reading halfway through the contents, Li Huowang could not help but vomit violently.

After vomiting up all the pork from earlier, his face deathly pale, he suppressed his nausea and gritted his teeth to continue reading.

If he didn't find out what Yuan Er had been doing before, he simply could not rest easy; what if it was some kind of curse? That would be a massive problem.

Enduring the nausea, he continued to flip through, finally finding Yuan Er's method on the very last, fourth bamboo slip.

"No, Yuan Er wasn't just trying to scare us; he originally intended to summon something, but he failed."

"Ba Hui," that was the name of the entity, and the source of all the suffering on these bamboo slips.

Yuan Er failed because he could not pay the price to summon it; according to the requirements on the slips, although his physical body was in extreme agony, his inner mind was not in enough pain, and even though his entire family had just died, it was still far from enough.

To invite Ba Hui forth, one must endure extreme physical and spiritual agony.

Li Huowang turned his head, taking another look at Yuan Er's eyeless and mouthless skull.

It seemed he had only just learned how to use these bamboo slips and was not yet proficient.

But that was normal; using any of the methods on these slips even once would bring one close to death, making it impossible to survive long enough to become familiar with them.

Although they were safe for now, Li Huowang's heart did not settle.

As for where the river bandits got such a disgusting set of bamboo slips, he couldn't be bothered to care; what he cared more about was who had written them.

Could there be a sect similar to Zhengde Temple?

Only instead of cultivating flesh and blood techniques like the monks, they pursued ultimate suffering?

But if one were to practice according to the contents above, I'm afraid there wouldn't be many people left alive.

"Unless their sect possesses some method that allows those who have endured such grievous wounds to survive."

Li Huowang stared at the bamboo slips in his hand, making wild guesses.

At this moment, Li Huowang realized that his previous conjectures about this place, even the darkest ones, had been far too optimistic.

This place was far more dangerous than he had imagined; he already knew of the existence of immortals and the God of Joy.

But today's experience had truly opened his eyes; some things were far more terrifying than them.

"Ba Hui..." Li Huowang, frozen in place, muttered to himself.

(End of Chapter)