Chapter 732: Hollow

The Great Hall of Yangming Temple, on Xuantai Mountain, Sizhou.

A sharp blade sliced through flesh. Li Huowang watched as the dark-skinned monk before him was cut in half, black liquid gushing out and threatening to splatter onto his face. Sensing something amiss with the black liquid, four tentacles supporting Li Huowang from behind rapidly retracted, allowing the fluid to narrowly slide past him.

"Hah..." Li Huowang, radiating a menacing aura in the Great Hall, slightly parted his lips and slowly exhaled a cloud of blood-tinged mist from deep within his throat. He had lost an arm, yet he gripped three swords simultaneously. Behind him lay a dense mass of monk corpses.

With a ferocious expression, Li Huowang glared intensely at the distant golden Buddha statue with his bloodshot eyes. The golden Buddha statue, draped with black cloth on its shoulders, sat cross-legged on the offering table, its expression neither sorrowful nor joyful. Yet, the flesh and blood offerings laid before it were truly horrifying.

Not only had this temple completely aligned itself with the Dharma Sect, but it had also established a Buddha image for the child-god, Yu'er! Even more bizarrely, their monk-soldiers were using military cultivation techniques. This place was a major problem and had to be eradicated quickly.

Li Huowang took a deep breath, raising his sword as he charged towards the great Buddha. Just as he was about to reach the offering table, his right foot pushed off an invisible point in mid-air, propelling him upwards. Immediately after, his left foot also stepped into thin air, pushing his body even higher. Alternating between his left and right feet, he propelled himself closer to the Buddha statue. Then, gritting his teeth, he raised the Purple Tassel Sword in his hand and struck towards the Buddha's head.

Just then, the gilded body of the Buddha statue suddenly cracked open. Its form was covered in spreading black fissures, and through these golden cracks, it became clear that this great golden Buddha was a living being! The colossal Buddha head glared, its eyes bulging. It suddenly grabbed Li Huowang with both hands and opened its cavernous, black mouth to bite him.

With a squelching sound, the Buddha's black teeth pierced Li Huowang's body, but they failed to crush his bones. Li Huowang pushed his feet against its lower jaw and his back against its upper jaw, forcefully preventing it from swallowing him. "You want to eat me? I'll give you your fill!" Li Huowang tilted his head and opened his mouth towards the Buddha statue. "Gaggh!"

Li Huowang's tentacles quickly retracted, and he vomited Li Sui, head and body, directly into the Buddha statue's throat. "Li Sui, eat him!" After dispatching Li Sui, Li Huowang jammed the Purple Tassel Sword against a black tooth, pulled out the Spine Sword from his back, and leapt outward. What greeted him were the Buddha statue's rapidly closing, trembling hands.

However, just then, a spinning great halberd flew in from the side, directly severing the Buddha statue's finger into two pieces. "Destroying a Buddha, are we? Good! Very good! I've long detested these bald monks!" Peng Longteng, riding a colossal horse, caught the flying great halberd. He pulled the reins and charged towards the now moving Buddha statue.

Facing the pincer attack from Li Huowang and Peng Longteng, the colossal Buddha statue, despite its immense size, was steadily pushed back. Although the situation was in his favor, and he believed Li Sui could handle it, Li Huowang still felt a pang of worry for Li Sui, who was inside the Buddha statue's belly, as there had been no reaction from within. He regretted not having gone inside with her earlier. They needed to end this quickly.

Just as Li Huowang was thinking this, he saw half a dog's face suddenly bulge out from the Buddha statue's belly. Immediately after, a faint sound from the Buddha's navel caught his attention. "Dad! Help...! He... ate my... head..." The instant he heard those words, Li Huowang's hairs stood on end. He charged forward recklessly, enduring injuries to pull out the Purple Tassel Sword and slice open the Buddha's navel.

Just as Li Huowang felt a chill watching the dismembered tentacles flow out with the blood, a skinned dog's head, dragging half an intestine, crawled out from the side. "Dad, whose hands are these?"

It was Li Sui. She was perfectly fine; the voice from earlier had not been hers. No sooner had Li Sui finished speaking than the severed tentacles rapidly blurred and vanished completely. They, along with the plea for help, were merely manifestations Li Huowang had inadvertently cultivated through his techniques.

"What?" As Li Huowang stood in stunned disbelief, the Buddha statue's palm slammed down, crushing him to the ground with a sickening crunch of breaking bones. Blood slowly seeped from between its fingers.

Half an incense stick later, a blood-soaked Li Huowang painfully bent at the waist, slowly emerging from the hall, dragging the incredibly heavy, colossal Buddha head behind him. Upon exiting the Great Hall, Li Huowang saw the monk-soldiers still fiercely resisting below. He exerted force with his right hand, pushing the Buddha head forward, then delivered a kick with his right foot. With a resounding thud, the colossal Buddha head tumbled down the green brick steps.

Witnessing their Buddha's head roll down before them, the monk-soldiers' will to fight finally shattered, bringing the brutal battle to an end.

Catching his breath, Li Huowang sat sideways on a meditation cushion, occasionally tracing figures with his fingers on the rotating mirror given to him by Xuanpin, observing the other ongoing battles. To the military strategists searching for remaining stragglers, his behavior was naturally extremely peculiar. However, Li Huowang now disdained explaining whether he was mad or not; he only cared that he knew himself to be sane.

A grimy Li Sui, exhausted, leaned against Li Huowang's back and nudged her head against him. "Dad, we're so amazing! We killed so many bad guys."

Meanwhile, Li Huowang softly sighed, withdrawing his fingers from the rotating mirror. He knew perfectly well how powerful he was; his current strength likely surpassed even Danyangzi's when he became a half-immortal. However, such power came at a price, a very steep one. As his cultivation techniques grew increasingly powerful, this ability would also subtly alter everything around him based on his thoughts. It wasn't necessarily things he actively thought about; even fleeting thoughts could be manifested by him, turning illusion into reality.

He recalled Li Sui's cry for help earlier, and the uncontrollable manifestation of Li Sui's corpse. Just a slight conjecture on his part would cause a corresponding change to appear. This was very troubling. It was even starting to affect his combat performance. If today's enemy hadn't been relatively weak, he and Li Sui might have perished there.

If anything fake before him ceased to be fake, then reality itself would cease to exist. This wasn't the first time this had happened. It was the fourth instance since he had inadvertently manifested Bai Lingmiao through his cultivation techniques last time.

Now, rather than fighting the Dharma Sect, he was battling himself.