Chapter 1000: Changes

"Don't come closer, please don't come closer!" Yi Donglai froze instantly when he heard Li Huowang shout this. He stood in the pouring rain, watching everything inside. At this moment, his mind was chaotic, truly chaotic.

Yang Na looked at Li Huowang, who seemed deranged, her eyes filled with heartache. She immediately turned to Dr. Yi, who was outside the door, and said, "Dr. Yi! Since you're awake, please help! Huowang can't handle so many divine beings from Funshengtian on his own!"

"I... I..." Yi Donglai's breathing became erratic, increasingly so. He gritted his teeth, uncontrollably hitting his forehead repeatedly. He even wanted to take out his mirror again to check if his face had truly grown younger, to confirm whether his previous experiences were real or just hallucinations. In the past, he hadn't understood why patients acted this way; now he finally did.

Just then, a dust-covered, bloodied Li Huowang roared as he emerged from the debris. He leaped, raising the military knife in his hand, and kicked fiercely at another clay statue to his left. The powerful force knocked the clay statue down, sending it crashing onto a nearby pillar along with Li Huowang. With a creaking sound of splintering wood, the half-rotted pillar began to tilt and bend. Then, with a snap, the pillar broke completely. A moss-covered tile shard fell from above, followed by more and more.

"Run! The temple is collapsing! If you don't get out now, both of you will be buried inside!" Seeing the dilapidated temple begin to sway, Yi Donglai, ignoring his own confused state, anxiously warned the two.

Hearing this, Yang Na's heart immediately tightened. She grabbed Li Huowang's arm with both hands, trying to pull him out. Naturally, Li Huowang didn't want to stay in this situation, but he couldn't leave. His left foot was currently stuck inside the clay statue's chest cavity, and he couldn't pull it free. Seeing more and more tiles falling from above and the entire temple beginning to tilt, Li Huowang didn't hesitate. He forcefully pushed Yang Na out the door.

The next moment, Li Huowang heard a chilling, viscous gurgling and swallowing sound directly above him. Li Huowang's body began to tremble uncontrollably, not because he was trembling, but because the white filaments that made up his current body were shaking. As the trembling intensified, the white filaments of the Lion Dance Palace began to melt, turning into pools of blood that dripped from Li Huowang's body. Without the white filaments, the General-Chancellor Head also peeled away from inside him.

Suddenly sensing something, the inescapable Li Huowang abruptly looked up. Immediately, an oppressive, inverted, hollow black mountain dominated his vision. Something seemed to be roaring and struggling constantly within the hollow mountain. The pervasive influence of the Heavenly Dao emanating from it continuously eroded Li Huowang's body.

As the inverted black mountain, accompanied by an unrelenting sense of oppression, bore down on Li Huowang, he suddenly realized: this wasn't an inverted mountain at all! It was a tooth! Something was about to eat him! If a single tooth was this massive, just how enormous was this divine being from Funshengtian? What did it control?!

Li Huowang understood, but it seemed his realization came too late. As the tooth pressed down, Li Huowang, unable to move an inch, could only watch the deep abyss behind the tooth, before plunging into darkness.

However, he was not dead. In a semi-conscious state, Li Huowang saw things: his own past memories, fragments from his childhood, or rather, just memories. In his pale-yellow home, his mother, Sun Xiaoqin, was smiling as she carried a box of cake, walking towards him. He remembered this; it was his tenth birthday, a day he spent playing games, the happiest day of his life!

Just then, darkness swept in from the left. For a brief moment, the scene brightened again: cake frosting splattered across the floor, the ribbon that had tied the cake box hung from the ceiling fan, dangling Sun Xiaoqin's body with her tongue elongated. Everything was frozen in this horrific tableau. This scene not only froze before Li Huowang's eyes but also became fixed in his memory. After his tenth birthday, Sun Xiaoqin's presence vanished from his recollections.

Li Huowang's originally normal and healthy body, after the absence of his mother in his memories, became strangely gaunt and pale, his complexion terrible, and he even seemed to shrink in height. This was just the beginning. All the beautiful moments in Li Huowang's memory were gradually replaced by scenes of repression and despair. He saw his father begin to drink heavily, then hang him up and beat him furiously, eventually drinking himself to death on the sofa. Li Huowang began to feel his heart grow dark. His personality started to change, and he uncontrollably resented everything.

"No! This isn't right! It shouldn't be like this!" Feeling these terrifying changes, the frantic Li Huowang struggled desperately in the darkness. He didn't know what was happening, but he clearly felt that something was profoundly wrong! As Li Huowang watched his memory-self pull out one of Yang Na's fingernails, then bite off one of her fingers with his teeth, and begin to move on to the next, he roared hysterically.

"No! These aren't my memories! They're not mine!" In the darkness, Li Huowang opened his skull, reached inside, grabbed something, and forcefully pulled it out. Those despairing and oppressive memories vanished, but his past memories didn't return. The void left behind was a blank white expanse.

"I need to leave this place! I must leave this place! I want to leave, and I will be able to leave!" Li Huowang declared firmly, then tore off the remaining dragon qi (dragon energy) from his body. Wrapping it around his hand, he plunged it into the darkness before him and twisted forcefully. Rain, mixed with the light of lightning, shot in from outside.

Simultaneously, a rough hand and a delicate hand reached in from that side, grabbing Li Huowang's clothes and yanking him out of the temple ruins. The rain continued to fall from the sky, icy drops constantly hitting Li Huowang's face. Although his entire body ached, Li Huowang paid no mind to it. His first instinct was to grab Yang Na's hands and examine them carefully.

When Li Huowang saw that Yang Na's right index finger was indeed severed at the root and gone, his pupils immediately constricted. Seeing Li Huowang staring at her severed finger, Yang Na shook her head. "It's alright, I don't blame you. I know you couldn't control yourself then. Let's get out of here quickly; it's too dangerous."