Chapter 91: Li Huowang

Chapter 91: Li Huowang

On the way back, the surroundings were eerily silent, with no sound other than their footsteps.

Walking through a place like this, everyone's heart was hanging in their throat.

However, they hadn't gone far when the footsteps suddenly ceased. Li Huowang and the others stared unblinkingly into the surrounding darkness, and at the sudden emergence of glowing green eyes within it.

It was not just one pair, but a whole swarm. The things in the dark did nothing else but stare at them fixedly with those green eyes of varying sizes. To Li Huowang and the others, it seemed as though the darkness itself was breeding a monster covered entirely in eyes.

"Damn it!" Provoked time and again by their tormentors, an irritated Li Huowang's expression twisted into a grimace. With a sudden, fierce jerk of his right hand backward, the red bamboo slip unfurled rapidly before him.

Li Huowang raised his right index finger, bringing it close to the razor-sharp edge of the bamboo slip.

With another sharp pry from Li Huowang, his fingernail tore away from its owner, spinning into the surrounding darkness with a trail of blood.

Before long, accompanied by a miserable shriek, one pair of the glowing green eyes in the darkness vanished.

Li Huowang felt this was not enough. After three fingernails were sacrificed, all the eyes in the darkness disappeared entirely, and the air began to fill with a foul, fishy stench.

When they walked over holding their lanterns, the light revealed the gruesome, mangled scene of flesh and blood before them.

Only then did Li Huowang and the others realize that those eyes did not belong to any evil spirits, but to forest animals—lynxes, hedgehogs, foxes, and all manner of creatures. Only now they were all dead, their corpses torn to pieces, not a single one left intact.

"Senior Brother Li, have we broken the rules again? Didn't they say we shouldn't provoke these beasts?" Xiao Man's words sent a chill down the spines of everyone present.

Li Huowang, however, thought otherwise. He lifted his right foot and stomped down fiercely, crushing a fox's head at his feet into a pulp.

"Screw the rules! It's all just cheap parlor tricks. If this thing could beat us in a fair fight, would it bother with all this nonsense? In matters like this, don't let others lead you by the nose. Back to the courtyard!"

After walking for another half-incense stick's time, they finally saw the lights of the Wu family compound once more.

"Li Huowang!" A shout, seemingly echoing from an unfathomable distance, brought them all to a halt.

"Who's there!" Li Huowang spun around, peering into the darkness, yet still finding nothing.

"Keep up your charades! One day, you won't be able to fool anyone anymore! The eighteenth day of the twelfth lunar month, I'm telling you! I will have those eyes of yours!!"

Having hurled this vicious threat, he led the others back into the brightly lit Wu family compound.

The goat-bearded village chief, who had been lying on the ground, was tied to a pillar. A bowl of cold vegetable soup was lifted from the table and splashed right into his face.

"Cough, cough!" As Wu Qing groggily opened his eyes, he was immediately met with the fiercely hostile face of Li Huowang. He shuddered in fright. "So you're actually bandits!!"

"Smack!" A slap was delivered across his face, and half of Wu Qing's cheek visibly swelled up. He was instantly dazed by the blow.

"Speak!! Where is the eighteenth day of the twelfth lunar month? What exactly is your connection to it?"

"What are you even talking about? I... I'm telling you, this is Wu Family Village, and everyone here is surnamed Wu! If you really want to use force, you'd better think twice!"

Seeing Wu Qing still feigning ignorance, he bared his teeth in a wide grin, revealing a gleaming row of white teeth.

"Old man, I'm offering courtesy before resorting to force. The eighteenth day of the twelfth lunar month determines whether I live or die. If you still stubbornly protect it, don't blame me for being heavy-handed."

As he spoke, he raised his right hand, still dripping blood from the torn-off fingernails, and patted the torture instruments spread out on the hem of his robe.

"I don't just plan to use these on myself. At crucial moments, these things are also keys—keys that can unlock the hearts of all people!"

Hearing this, Bai Lingmiao, her face etched with worry, took a step forward but was immediately pulled back by Xiao Man, who gently shook her head.

"What... what exactly do you want? What eighteenth day of the twelfth lunar month? Qingming just passed, and the twelfth month is still far away. Young man, please spare me, take pity on this old man." Wu Qing's face had turned pale with terror.

Seeing the man still stubbornly playing dumb, Li Huowang crooked his right hand, and a small, long awl with a blade covered in barbed hooks appeared in his grasp.

Wearing a cruel smile, Li Huowang gripped the terrifying awl and moved it toward Wu Qing's collarbone at an agonizingly slow pace.

Wu Qing was clearly panicking. He shouted in frantic terror and struggled desperately, yet he refused to utter a single word about the eighteenth day of the twelfth lunar month.

Just as the blade was about to pierce through his clothes, a large hand pressed down on his wrist from behind. "Enough. It seems he truly knows nothing."

"How do you know if we don't try? This guy is obviously suspicious. The moment we entered the village, he started talking about rules and regulations. He must be connected to the eighteenth day of the twelfth lunar month!"

"Calm down. You weren't like this in the past. Acting this way will only make you more and more like Danyang Zi."

Hearing this, his heart gave a sudden jolt. Unconsciously, he had indeed stopped treating others as human beings, exactly like that bald-headed lunatic who refined humans into elixirs.

He quickly retracted the long awl in his hand and turned his head to say, "Thanks for the reminder, Senior Brother Li. If you hadn't said anything, I almost wouldn't have snapped out of it."

Immediately after, he saw Li Huowang, clad in a blood-red Daoist robe, flash a familiar, gentle smile.

"We're fellow disciples, so why bother with such polite formalities? We should be thinking about what to do next now that we have no other clues."

Frowning deeply, he stared at the old man, who was on the verge of fainting, silently pondering the problem.

Although his heavy-handedness just now might have been influenced by Danyang Zi, he also knew it was inextricably linked to the increasingly pressing lack of time.

If he couldn't find the eighteenth day of the twelfth lunar month, he couldn't rid himself of Danyang Zi attached to his body. He could only watch helplessly as he became more and more like Danyang Zi; he truly could not wait any longer.

"How about we wait until daybreak and ask the other villagers? Maybe someone else knows," Gou Wa suggested.

"Alright. We've been through so much tonight, and everyone is exhausted. This is our only option for now. I'll go ask when it gets light."

Hearing Li Huowang say this, he didn't say anything more and turned to walk toward the west wing.

When daybreak came and he woke up, he found that the other senior and junior brothers had already left their quarters.

Upon going out, he was surprised to find that his senior and junior brothers and sisters were acting as if nothing had happened, eating porridge together with the Wu family, despite how he had just treated Wu Qing.

"Come and eat. I've explained your difficult situation to Village Chief Wu. Village Chief Wu is not a petty man," Li Huowang said to him.