Chapter 530

Inside the desolate Cold Palace, Li Huowang looked at the monk illusion before him with a hint of dissatisfaction.

Li Huowang was not a hard-hearted person, but at this moment, he clearly had no time to deal with an old eunuch of unknown origin who was pregnant.

One must remember this was Great Qi, not Great Liang; heaven knew if this person was a trap.

His top priority was to return quickly and inform the Censorate about King Ren's clandestine dealings with the Dharma Sect. That was the real urgency.

"Let's go!" Li Huowang said, turning to leave. But just a few steps later, a bloodcurdling scream came from behind him. The eunuch, holding a sharp knife in one hand, had plunged it forcefully into his swollen belly. A liquid resembling pus, a mixture of amniotic fluid and blood, gushed out from the opening.

Seeing Li Huowang wouldn't help, it seemed he intended to deliver the baby himself.

Witnessing this gory scene, the monk could no longer sit still. He scratched his ears and cheeks, once again blocking Li Huowang's path.

"Daoist, save him!" he pleaded. "As the saying goes, saving a life is more virtuous than building countless pagodas. Even if you don't save him, the child in his belly is innocent, isn't it?"

"It takes countless lifetimes of merit to be reborn as a human," the monk urged. "This is a human life!"

Li Huowang sighed softly, looking at the monk in front of him. He pressed his temple with one hand. "Alright! You are kind-hearted, you are a living Bodhisattva. If you want to save him, you do it yourself."

For a moment, the monk didn't realize what was happening, but soon he discovered a change in his own body.

"I'm alive! I'm alive!" The monk slapped his bald head with delight, jumping and bouncing like a child.

"Aren't you going to save him? Go now!" Li Huowang urged. "I can't hold on much longer."

"Oh, right, right!" Coming to his senses, the monk hurriedly walked towards the eunuch.

However, facing the gory scene before him, the monk seemed somewhat helpless. Clearly, he wasn't very skilled at delivering babies.

Seeing someone had come to help, the seemingly dying eunuch didn't care how this person had appeared. He quickly propped himself up, covered in sweat.

He parted his chapped and cracked lips and said tremblingly to the monk: "Venerable Master! Don't save the mother! Save the child! You must save the child! It doesn't matter if I die; as long as the Wang family has an heir, even if I'm gone, I won't shame our ancestors in the underworld!"

"Oh, oh!" The monk nodded repeatedly, quickly knelt on the ground, gripped the knife in the eunuch's belly with both hands, and with a resolute heart, pulled it down forcefully.

"Ahhh!" Accompanied by the eunuch's agonizing scream, blood and amniotic fluid spurted from the opening, covering the monk's entire body and face.

"Thank you, Venerable Master... I wish you... I wish you a speedy... speedy enlightenment." After the eunuch used all his strength to shout his last words, his head slumped to the side, and he immediately lost all signs of life. A satisfied smile appeared on his sweat-soaked face.

Seeing that the eunuch was dead, and the monk, covered in filth, was still rummaging, Li Huowang found it unbearable and walked over.

The monk now felt as if he had a blood-red treasure basin before him. He was rummaging and pulling with both hands, as if swimming.

Suddenly, he felt he had grasped a child's ankle. His face lit up with joy, and he pulled forcefully, only to pull out half of the old eunuch's intestines.

Li Huowang, with a hint of impatience on his face, walked over. He reached his hand directly inside. His keen perception allowed him to quickly grasp the only moving thing in the "treasure basin."

As Li Huowang exerted force with his arm, with a "pop," he pulled the thing out directly, like pulling a radish from mud.

When he saw what was in Li Huowang's hand, the monk nearby immediately widened his eyes and recoiled several steps in fright. "What is that?!"

What Li Huowang held inverted in his hand was an infant. It was described as "a creature" because its body was actually that of a cow or sheep. Its entire body was covered in wet, short hair, and its limbs had hooves instead of fingers.

If the eunuch had simply given birth to a cow, the monk wouldn't have been so frightened. The most disturbing part was that while it had the body of a cow or sheep, its head was distinctly human.

Not only did the eunuch's belly not produce a male heir to continue his lineage, but instead, it gave birth to a grotesque human-faced ox!

"What in the world is this nonsense?!" Li Huowang exclaimed in disgust, flinging the human-faced ox in his hand forcefully against the wall.

"Thud!" The human-faced lamb hit the wall and then fell to the ground. Surprisingly, it wasn't dead; instead, it used its hooves to prop itself up and began spitting out amniotic fluid in large gulps.

Li Huowang finally got a clear look at the human-faced ox's appearance. The human-faced lamb had a face identical to the eunuch who birthed it: the same baldness, the same wrinkles, and the same ugliness.

Just as a frowning Li Huowang gripped his sword hilt, drawing the Purple Tassel Sword from its sheath, preparing to eradicate the evil, the human-faced ox opened its grotesque mouth and began to laugh heartily. Although its face was that of an old man, its voice was that of a baby's babble, an unspeakably bizarre combination.

"Hahahahaha!! The moon shall rise, the sun shall dip, well water overflows, flows through the golden gate. Morning seeks ascent, evening seeks unity, coiling dragons and blood vipers struggle to survive. Slaughter oxen and sheep, drink wine and juice, big and small, all live in joy! Eat their mother! Possess their mother! Everyone has a blast! Hahahahaha!"

After chanting these incomprehensible words, the human-faced ox's body went limp and it collapsed directly onto the ground. Its eyeballs rolled upward, and it died just like that.

Li Huowang didn't understand what had just happened. "Why is everything in Great Qi so strange?" he wondered. "And what were those incoherent things this creature was singing? Was it cursing me?"

Frowning deeply, he re-sheathed his sword. He then said to the monk beside him, who had reverted to an illusion: "Didn't I tell you? You didn't listen; you just had to try it. How did that 'good deed' turn out?"

After saying this, Li Huowang no longer waited for the contrite monk to speak. He prepared to leave the Cold Palace of Great Qi with Li Sui.

"Brother Li." Zhuge Yuan's words made Li Huowang pause.

When he looked towards Zhuge Yuan, he was shocked to find that Zhuge Yuan's expression was extremely tense, even laced with a hint of regret.

"Brother Zhuge, what's wrong?" Li Huowang asked. Zhuge Yuan's emotional state seemed off.

"I need your help with something. Please deliver a message to some of my friends in Great Qi!"

"Of course, I can," Li Huowang replied. "But Brother Zhuge, could you tell me what exactly is happening?"

Li Huowang did not believe that Zhuge Yuan was seeking out old friends for a nostalgic chat simply because he had returned to Great Qi and felt sentimental. He was not that kind of person.

Furthermore, he had never seen Zhuge Yuan lose his composure, not even when he single-handedly resisted Doumu, or when he faced the fate of his body dying and soul dissipating; he had remained perfectly calm.