Chapter 164: Goodbye, Master

Li Huowang, carrying pastries, was panting heavily as he struggled to climb the dirt road on Mount Henghua.

With only one hand and a large quantity of pastries, his ascent this time was even more arduous than before.

To prevent his sweat from dampening the pastries, Li Huowang deliberately held them further away, which made the climb even more tiring.

Finally, at a bend in the road, Li Huowang could no longer endure it. He set the pastries down and leaned against a crooked-necked tree, gasping for breath.

Having just rushed to the foot of the mountain and immediately started climbing, Li Huowang suddenly felt a pang of hunger.

Li Huowang considered for a moment, then reached into the pastry box, pulled out a mung bean cake, and began to eat it.

The crispy-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside pastry soothed Li Huowang's hungry stomach. He had never tasted such a pastry before, but after taking a bite, he found it unexpectedly delicious.

The pastry seemed to have been freshly made that day; it was crisp and fragrant, tasting better than any cream cakes or chocolates he had eaten before his transmigration.

As for eating the abbess's pastries, Li Huowang didn't feel anything wrong with it.

It wasn't his first visit, and there was no need to be formal with the abbess; she surely wouldn't mind.

"With so many pastries, it should be enough for the abbess, right?" Li Huowang said, looking at the stack of pastries, then immediately smiled knowingly.

"No, even twice this amount probably wouldn't be enough for the abbess."

Li Huowang first smiled, then paused, wondering when his relationship with Abbess Jingxin had become so close.

Reflecting, he realized that despite her greed, laziness, and slovenliness, the abbess was the kindest person to him in this world, aside from his fellow disciples.

She hadn't harmed him for being a 'Heart-Elemental', had helped him banish Dan Yangzi, and before he left, out of concern for his safety on the road, she had even given him a sword.

"If I weren't taking Bai Lingmiao and the others home, staying in the town at the foot of the mountain would be a good option. This is An Ci An's territory, and other factions wouldn't bother me here."

While pondering these random thoughts, Li Huowang had eaten most of the box of mung bean cakes. He quickly stopped himself.

Gazing at the lush green scenery of Mount Henghua, Li Huowang slowly exhaled. He suddenly remembered something, reached into his robe, and pulled out a book: a translation of the "True Scripture of Fire Robes."

As he slowly opened it, Li Huowang intended to check how much he had been influenced by Dan Yangzi. To his shock, he found he couldn't recognize a single character on the page.

This alarming change instantly made Li Huowang's heart clench, just as he was catching his breath. "No, I have to hurry! Dan Yangzi's possession is accelerating! If I delay any longer, I'll be completely assimilated by Dan Yangzi!"

Li Huowang quickly tucked the book into his robe, picked up the pastries again, and continued climbing the dirt road.

Finally, after the moon had risen high, Li Huowang returned to the mountain gate of An Ci An.

Seeing the diamond-shaped couplet with female script again, Li Huowang immediately felt a surge of familiarity.

"Abbess, I'm back! Look what I've brought you!"

An excited Li Huowang shouted as he walked toward the completely dark An Ci An.

"Are there no lights lit inside the nunnery? It seems they were too lazy to light them."

As soon as his front foot stepped into the dilapidated Bodhisattva temple, Li Huowang suddenly felt that something was amiss.

"How... how come it doesn't stink anymore?"

Li Huowang dropped the pastries in his hand, stood still, and took a few deep breaths. To his shock, the strong stench that typically permeated An Ci An had vanished without a trace!

"No! Something is terribly wrong!" With a pounding heart, Li Huowang ignored everything else and rushed deeper into the nunnery.

"Abbess Jingxin! Miaoyin! Miaoxin! Where are you?!"

Li Huowang's voice echoed repeatedly through the nunnery, but there was no reply. His heart completely sank.

Suddenly, Li Huowang heard a sound in the distance. He quickly rushed toward it, only to realize, as he got closer, that it was the grunting and snorting of pigs.

When he arrived at the pigsty behind the latrine, the sight before him froze him on the spot.

A large, obese person, as big as a small hut, lay in the pigsty, surrounded by fat, black-bristled pigs, acting like piglets suckling.

However, they were not suckling; they were eating a person!

The pigs' tusks, used for eating slop and excrement, opened and closed, tearing off greasy flesh and blood from the massive figure and swallowing it. Each pig's snout was rubbed raw and bloody, and they ate with gusto.

"Get out!" With bloodshot eyes, Li Huowang drew his sword and charged. Without waiting for the pigs to turn around, he executed a sweeping strike, cutting them all in half.

The remaining black pigs scattered and fled, terrified by Li Huowang's murderous aura.

When Li Huowang reached the deceased fat person, he slowly knelt, cradling the head, which was gnawed until only half a face remained. It was the face of Abbess Jingxin.

"Aaaahhh!!" Li Huowang's heartbreaking scream echoed throughout An Ci An.

Clinging tightly to the abbess's face, Li Huowang's tears fell to the ground. Abbess Jingxin was dead; the only person in this world who had been kind to him had taken his hope with her.

"Who?!" Li Huowang, nearly mad with rage, burst out of the pigsty like a whirlwind, searching for his enemy in the nunnery with his sword raised.

However, he found no one else in the nunnery, only more corpses of nuns.

Abbess Jingxin had been dead for some time. Whoever they were, those people had long since left.

"Who on earth killed her?!" This thought consumed Li Huowang's entire mind, but as he drew his sword and rushed towards the mountain gate, he gradually slowed to a halt.

With bloodshot eyes, Li Huowang returned to Abbess Jingxin, pulled out his long sword again, and began digging a pit nearby. He wanted to bury the abbess; he couldn't bear the thought of her corpse being gnawed by pigs even in death.

The pit needed to be very large to bury the abbess, and Li Huowang dug for a very long time, barely finishing by noon the next day.

Just as Li Huowang was about to push the abbess's body into the pit, he noticed something unusual: her corpse had been there all night, yet showed no signs of decay or attracted any flies.

Seeing this, Li Huowang instinctively recalled the bodies he had seen on the water's surface; they too had not decayed and appeared lifelike.

"Could they all have been killed by the same group of people? Do those killed by them stop decaying? Who are they?!"

"Something is wrong! Wait!" Li Huowang suddenly realized he had overlooked something. After a moment's thought, he rushed back into the pigsty and looked at the black-bristled pigs he had killed earlier.

After a night and a day, the pigs he had killed also showed no signs of attracting flies or decaying.

Li Huowang staggered out of the pigsty, looking around in disbelief at the complete absence of any signs of struggle.

In any world, decay is an indispensable process.

Yet, at this moment, it was as if something had gone wrong with this world; the function of decay seemed to have failed.

"Perhaps... the abbess wasn't killed by someone else."

Li Huowang, belatedly realizing, turned to look at Abbess Jingxin. Her skin, which should have been rotting, covered in pustules and maggots, was now remarkably smooth and pale.