Chapter 957: Attack

Chapter 957: The Attack

Within the borders of the Chen Kingdom, beneath the rent sky, lay the colossal form of Zuoqiu Yong.

Before Li Huowang, that mountain-sized body trembled, struggling to pull itself upright once more.

Yet, as the hollows riddling his flesh writhed in frantic agitation, he lost control again, crashing heavily back against the earth.

"Is this the backing the Dice has? Can these grotesque things truly be the Deities of the Eternal Life Heaven? What kind of Heavenly Dao do they govern! To be this formidable!" Li Huowang’s pupils constricted violently at the sight.

He knew not what had transpired moments ago, but he knew this: the once-arrogant Deity of Growth had been effortlessly crushed by the enemy.

Whatever had fallen through that breach was far more powerful than the haughty Zuoqiu Yong—perhaps many times over.

"Qing Wanglai! This is no coincidence! The Deities of the Eternal Life Heaven prepared this contingency long ago!" Li Huowang shouted to his companions.

"Seeing their mole extinguished, they immediately pivoted to their next gambit!"

"Do not think yourselves the only clever ones! We invaded their elephant, and they have invaded ours in return! Prepare yourselves! They have begun their counter-offensive!"

Li Huowang readied himself to strike. Whatever these horrors were, he had attained the perfection of cultivation; so long as they possessed a physical form, he could surely contend with them.

Just as he raised his hands, intending to seal those hollows shut, a dry, aged cough echoed through the air.

"Who goes there!" Tense as a coiled spring, Li Huowang snapped his gaze to the left, where he saw an old beggar, leaning on a staff and clutching a broken wooden bowl, standing tremulously nearby.

The beggar’s left leg was withered and twisted, his gait a jagged limp. His rags seemed never to have been changed, mere strips of filth barely covering his frame. His wrinkled, soot-blackened face was a map of life’s bitter hardships.

Though he appeared no different from the beggars of the Upper Capital, Li Huowang knew this was no ordinary vagrant.

Zuoqiu Yong was the Deity of Growth; had a mortal stood upon his body, the man’s flesh would have been twisted into grotesque, unnatural blooms.

When Li Huowang saw the old beggar’s eyes begin to bulge, with strange, cyan-colored maggots writhing within the sockets, he knew the man’s identity: he was another Deity from the Eternal Life Heaven!

The other one, besides the insects!

Li Huowang glanced at the gaping craters of Zuoqiu Yong, then back at the beggar. "What? Is that all the Eternal Life Heaven sent? Just the two of you?"

As he spoke, his vigilance reached its zenith, his mind racing to anticipate the nature of the Deity’s assault.

Given how easily they had defeated Zuoqiu Yong, and the bizarre Heavenly Dao they commanded, he could scarcely imagine the cataclysmic scale of the attack to come.

Even with his cultivation perfected, he could not guarantee he would survive it.

"Do not fear, we are here," the voices of Zhao Shuangdian and the others behind him steadied his resolve.

At that moment, the old beggar drew a shallow breath, his throat rattling with the sound of thick phlegm. "Two are enough."

With that, he tremblingly reached into his rags, clearly preparing to unleash his strike.

Li Huowang would not grant him the initiative. His eyes flared, and under his piercing gaze, the beggar’s body began to rot and collapse, dying in an instant.

Yet death seemed not to hinder the old man. Even as his head decayed, his body moved, using its final shred of strength to thrust something from his rags toward Li Huowang.

Facing the object, Li Huowang shielded his face and scrambled back several paces, heart pounding.

But there was no overflow of Heavenly Dao, no earth-shattering tremor; there was not even a whisper of sound. The attack was far lighter than he had feared.

As the beggar’s final hand rotted into bone and fell to the earth, the object it held tumbled and rolled to a stop at Li Huowang’s feet.

"This is..."

"Don't look!" Though he knew not whose warning it was, it came too late. Li Huowang had already seen it.

The Deity’s attack was no terrifying weapon, no lethal entity. It was merely a button from an ordinary woman’s coat.

"A button... a button?" Li Huowang stared, frozen in place. The button seemed to possess a strange, binding magic.

"What is it? Are you hurt?" When Xuan Pin arrived, spine-sword in hand, followed by the others, she found him in this bizarre trance.

Li Huowang could not hear the world around him. He stared blankly at the button, and the overlapping layers of his reality began to tremble at high frequency.

Suddenly, Li Huowang moved. He stooped and picked up the button. "I remember now. This is a button from my mother's coat. She loved that garment dearly."

As the words left his lips, his pupils shrank to pinpricks. He jerked his head up to stare at the rent sky.

He remembered. He finally remembered. Back at the Anci Nunnery, he had tried to discern which side was real, and had deliberately hidden a button from his mother on the other side.

But when he returned, he had found no button, leading him to conclude that the reality he lived in was a fabrication!

"If this button was truly brought here by me... then that means that world is real?"

"Wait! That world? Which world is that?!"

As the thought bloomed in his mind, a torrent of memories and images flooded his consciousness.

He remembered. He finally remembered everything he had forgotten under Yi Donglai’s hypnosis. In this moment, the truth was laid bare!

"I am not a person of this place at all! I am a traveler from the modern world!!"

With a sharp *snap*, as if something had broken, Li Huowang clutched his agonizing head and collapsed, his expression vacant.

When he opened his eyes again, he found that his seven wheels had reverted to six; the surrounding distortions had vanished.

"No! I cannot retreat now! The Deity of the Eternal Life Heaven is right beside me! Without the seven wheels, I am no match for him!"