Chapter 127: Who Is It?

“Was it me? Did I slaughter the entire town? Did I kill Yingzi’s whole family?”

Trembling, Li Huowang turned his head to look into the eyes of the dead girl before him. Her lifeless pupils were fully dilated, and a mocking smile still lingered on her face.

“I killed her? I killed a good person who sought revenge for her parents? Am I the one who deserves to die most?”

At that moment, Li Huowang felt an extreme fear. He abruptly pushed Yingzi’s corpse away and quickly stumbled backward. Li Huowang shakily raised his hands, seeing them completely stained red with Yingzi’s blood.

“No, this isn’t right! It’s not like this. I didn’t even transmigrate four years ago! Even if I had, I couldn’t have killed everyone in the town! And I certainly wouldn’t have caused such a commotion inside the Ao Jing Cult! I’m just an ordinary madman!”

“You’re not ordinary. An ordinary person wouldn’t have your ability,” someone interjected.

Watching the red-robed Daoist grow increasingly terrified, Shou San, who was nearby, continued, “Logically, I didn’t want to have much contact with you. Who knows if you might go crazy halfway? But since Master Jingxin spoke up, we granted her that favor.”

“Shut up!!”

“Don’t try to trick me! Aren’t you the greedy elemental spirits? Stop pretending! I’m right here! Stop acting! Make your move!!”

Seeing Li Huowang glare furiously at him, Shou San took a slight step back. “Young friend Xuanyang, please calm down a bit. We’re here to help you. You shouldn’t repay kindness with hostility by attacking us.”

The other person’s words were completely unhelpful; instead, they deepened the fear in Li Huowang’s heart, sounding as if they were true. Gasping for breath, Li Huowang lunged forward, grabbing Shou San’s robe and glaring fiercely at him. “Attack me! Attack me! Quickly! Show me your cult’s true ferocity!!”

Shou San gently waved his hand, signaling the other Ao Jing Cult members, who were ready to act, to step back.

“Young friend Xuanyang, although our Ao Jing Cult has a bad reputation outside, we are different from you. We don’t kill indiscriminately. Everything we do requires a legitimate reason.”

Glancing down at Yingzi’s corpse once more, Li Huowang, with bloodshot eyes, gritted his teeth and dashed out of the cave. Seeing Li Huowang charge out with such ferocity, any Ao Jing Cult members in his path quickly pressed themselves against the walls, making way for him.

Outside the cave, it was night. A round moon hung in the sky, and the cold wind blowing against his face helped Li Huowang clear his head slightly. He stumbled over to a tree, leaned his back against the trunk, covered his face with his hands, and crouched down, his body shaking uncontrollably.

“Am I a cold-blooded killer? Am I even more despicable than Danyangzi? Did I really kill Yingzi’s entire family?” Intense guilt and overwhelming suppression weighed down on Li Huowang like a mountain, stretching the string in his heart to its breaking point.

Li Huowang’s acute hearing picked up approaching footsteps, but all he wanted to do was hide and ignore everything. Suddenly, he felt a light tap on his shoulder. A voice, tinged with concern, asked, “Young friend Xuanyang, are you leaving? Does what we discussed earlier still count?”

The other person’s words easily shattered Li Huowang’s fragile self-isolation.

“Impossible! Absolutely impossible! I’m going to find proof! There’s no way I destroyed that town!”

Li Huowang stood up again, pushed Shou San aside, and charged directly towards the town down the mountain. Watching Li Huowang disappear down the mountain path, Shou San turned respectfully to an Ao Jing Cult follower with a square face and asked, “Elder Shenbenyou, what do you make of this...?”

The square-faced man frowned slightly, thought for a moment, and then replied, “Go follow him and take a look. Be careful, don’t get yourself into trouble.”

Accompanied by the moonlight, Li Huowang returned to the desolate town. In the darkness, the deserted, silent town nestled within sparse, withered woods created an incredibly chilling atmosphere. But Li Huowang didn’t care about any of it. In a frantic rush, he charged in and began searching, not stopping even when he cut himself and bled profusely.

When he found a skeleton lying on the ground, his eyes immediately lit up. He pulled out a phosphorescent stone from his pocket and leaned closer to examine it carefully.

“The left side of the skull is completely shattered! This person died from a blunt force trauma. That’s not my style of doing things, and besides, I don’t like using blunt weapons at all.”

Li Huowang’s mood gradually stabilized as he systematically continued to search for other skeletons.

“This corpse’s bones are charred black and crumble to the touch. This person was burned to death by intense fire, which I couldn’t have done.”

“And this is even more absurd: half of his body is exposed, while the other half is stuck in the wall. How could I possibly do that?”

The more gruesome deaths he witnessed, the more relieved Li Huowang became. Yingzi must have been mistaken; he hadn't killed anyone at all. Seeing a skeleton sprawled out on the ground like a blooming flower, the weight in Li Huowang’s heart was completely lifted.

“I didn’t kill anyone. I’m not a murderer. I’m just an ordinary person,” Li Huowang reaffirmed his identity repeatedly. However, immediately another question popped into Li Huowang’s mind. “Why would Yingzi be mistaken? Was there an evil person who looked exactly like me back then?”

“Hmm… this is troublesome. I might even get into a lot of trouble because of this in the future.”

“But let’s worry about this later. For now, I need to figure out how to deal with Danyangzi.”

Just as Li Huowang was about to leave the dilapidated wooden house, some papers nearby caught his attention. Now calm, he walked over and picked up the papers. They were stained with a lot of blood, seemingly written shortly before death. Li Huowang could barely make out the content written on them; many of the characters were unfamiliar to him.

“Wait, these three characters look very familiar.”

Frowning slightly, Li Huowang traced the last three brushstrokes with his finger, a deep sense of confusion growing within him. He pondered over them for a long time, and just as his brows furrowed even deeper, something suddenly exploded in his mind.

“Li Huowang! These three characters spell Li Huowang!”

After excitedly exclaiming the meaning of the three characters, Li Huowang instantly felt as if he was being strangled. Li Huowang looked back at the surrounding skeletons, his pupils dilating and contracting. Fear began to gradually consume his mind.

“No… impossible! Yingzi must have been mistaken! Their parents weren’t killed by me! These people weren’t killed by me!”

The neurotic Li Huowang mumbled continuous denials, but his emotions grew increasingly agitated. He could find all sorts of reasons to deceive himself, but the three characters on the paper in his hand forced him to confront reality. With a sound like a taut string snapping, Li Huowang’s last thread of sanity broke.

“Li Huowang! You killed them! You lunatic!!”

“No! I didn’t! I didn’t! I didn’t! I’m a good person! I’m different from Danyangzi and the others!”

With veins bulging on his forehead, Li Huowang knelt amidst the skeletons, all displaying tragic manners of death, and screamed hysterically into the air.

*Whoosh* A hairy pill tumbled and flew into Li Huowang’s mouth. Instantly, the suppression and pain in his heart magnified many times over, almost completely consuming him.

At that moment, a person slowly walked in. It was Shou San. Charred all over, he softly snapped his fingers, and thick, fierce flames instantly enveloped his entire body, making him crackle. With a gentle wave of his hand, the scorching flames on his body quickly spread across the ground, completely engulfing Li Huowang.