Chapter 997: Change

Chapter 997: Transformation

"Stay back, for the love of God, stay back!" When Li Huowang shouted these words, Yi Donglai froze in his tracks.

He stood in the pouring rain, staring at the scene before him. At this moment, his mind was a chaotic, tangled mess.

Yang Na looked at Li Huowang, who appeared as frantic and demonic as a madman, her eyes brimming with heartache. She immediately turned to Dr. Yi outside the door. "Dr. Yi! Since you are awake, please, help him!"

"Li Huowang cannot hold out alone against so many of Fusheng Tian's deities!"

"I... I..." Yi Donglai’s breathing grew ragged, spiraling into disorder. He gritted his teeth, uncontrollably slamming his fists against his own forehead.

He even felt the urge to pull out his mirror again to check if his face had truly grown younger, to verify if what he had experienced was reality or merely a hallucination.

In the past, he had never understood why his patients acted this way; now, he finally knew.

Just then, Li Huowang, covered in grime and blood, roared as he burst from the dust. He raised his military saber, leaped with a violent surge of force, and kicked another clay idol to his left.

The sheer power toppled the idol, and Li Huowang collapsed with it, crashing into a nearby pillar.

With a screech of splintering wood, the half-rotted column began to buckle and tilt.

A sharp crack followed as the pillar snapped. Moss-covered tiles rained down from above, their numbers increasing by the second.

"Get out! The temple is collapsing! If you don't leave now, you’ll both be buried alive!" Seeing the dilapidated temple swaying, Yi Donglai cast aside his own fractured perception and shouted a desperate warning to them both.

Hearing this, Yang Na’s heart tightened. She grabbed Li Huowang’s arm, trying to pull him toward the exit.

Li Huowang had no desire to linger in such a situation, but he was trapped; his left foot was wedged deep within the chest cavity of the clay idol, refusing to budge.

Watching the tiles fall thicker and faster and feeling the temple tilt, Li Huowang didn't hesitate. He shoved Yang Na with all his might, pushing her out the door.

The next moment, he heard a viscous, chilling sound of swallowing and gulping echoing above him.

Li Huowang’s body began to tremble uncontrollably—not from his own fear, but because the Bai Sui that stitched his very form together was quivering.

As the shaking intensified, the Bai Sui of the Lion Dance Palace began to melt, dripping from his body as pools of blood. Without the Bai Sui, the General’s Head was also stripped from his flesh.

Suddenly sensing something, Li Huowang, unable to escape, looked up. An oppressive, inverted, hollowed-out black mountain dominated his entire field of vision.

Something seemed to be roaring and struggling within the hollow mountain, and the influence of the Heavenly Dao emanating from it began to erode Li Huowang’s body.

As the inverted black mountain descended with the crushing weight of a tombstone, he suddenly realized: this was no mountain! It was a tooth! Something was trying to eat him!

If a single tooth was this massive, how large was this deity of Fusheng Tian? What did it govern?

Li Huowang understood, but it seemed too late. As the tooth pressed down, Li Huowang, unable to move an inch, could only watch as the abyss behind it plunged him into total darkness.

Yet, he did not die. In a state between dream and waking, Li Huowang saw things—fragments of his past, memories of his childhood.

In his sallow, yellowed home, his mother, Sun Xiaoqin, was walking toward him with a smile, carrying a cake box.

He remembered this; it was his tenth birthday. He had played games all day long, the happiest day of his life!

But then, darkness swept in from the left. In a brief flash, the scene brightened again: the cake’s cream was splattered across the floor, and the ribbon from the box hung from the ceiling fan, dangling the corpse of Sun Xiaoqin, her tongue elongated. Everything froze in that moment.

It froze not just before Li Huowang’s eyes, but within his memories as well. After the age of ten, Sun Xiaoqin’s figure vanished from his life.

Li Huowang’s body, which should have been healthy, grew gaunt and sallow in his memories once his mother was gone, his complexion turning ghastly, his stature stunted.

And this was only the beginning. Every beautiful memory was gradually replaced by scenes of repression and despair.

He saw his father descend into alcoholism, hanging him up and beating him savagely, until he finally drank himself to death on the sofa.

Li Huowang felt his heart grow dark, his personality shifting, consumed by an uncontrollable hatred for everything.

"No! This isn't right! It shouldn't be like this!" Feeling these horrific changes, a frantic Li Huowang struggled desperately in the darkness. He didn't know what was happening, but he knew with chilling certainty that something was terribly wrong!

When he watched his past self in the memory pull out one of Yang Na’s fingernails, then bite off one of her fingers with his own teeth, moving on to the next, he let out a hysterical roar.

"No! This isn't my memory! This isn't mine!" In the darkness, Li Huowang pried open his own skull, reached inside, grabbed something, and ripped it out.

The desperate, oppressive memories vanished, but his past did not return; the space left behind was nothing but a vast, white void.

"I have to leave this place! I must leave! I want to leave, and I will!" Li Huowang declared with iron resolve. He tore off the remaining Dragon Qi from his body, wrapped it around his hand, plunged it into the darkness, and pried it open. Rain and the light of lightning flooded in from outside.

One rough hand and one delicate hand reached in simultaneously, grabbing Li Huowang’s clothes and dragging him from the temple ruins.

The rain continued to fall, the icy water lashing against Li Huowang’s face.

Though he ached in every fiber of his being, he ignored it. His first instinct was to grab Yang Na’s hands and inspect them.

When Li Huowang saw that Yang Na’s right index finger was indeed severed at the root, his pupils constricted violently.

Seeing him staring at her missing finger, Yang Na shook her head. "It’s okay. I don’t blame you. I know you couldn't control yourself. Let’s leave quickly; this place is too dangerous."