Abnormal Immortal Record of Spooky Daoist

Seeing Xuan Yang cover Li Huowang's mouth, the others holding the fire case quickly rushed up, surrounding Li Huowang in the middle with malicious looks in their eyes.

"Not leaving, huh? Then you'll die here today! We absolutely can't let you go and tip off that leper!"

Confronted with his life-or-death situation, Li Huowang didn't panic in the slightest. After rolling his eyes in silent protest, he cursed the direction this illusion's plot was taking and closed his eyes to take a deep breath.

When he opened his eyes again, he found himself strapped to a hospital bed with wide belts, and the fellow disciples who had surrounded him had disappeared.

"Auntie Wang, I'm awake, can you help me loosen these?" Li Huowang called out to the night-shift nurse through the microphone by his bed, eager to check if the jade pendant was still inside his clothes.

However, after shouting for a while with no response, Li Huowang realized that Nurse Wang was secretly binge-watching a Mary Sue drama during her night shift again. She always liked to slack off.

Li Huowang looked down at his chest, wrapped in the blue and white hospital gown, twisting his body desperately, trying to feel through the pressure whether the jade pendant was there or not.

But now that his body was tightly bound, he could neither confirm nor deny its presence and gave up after several attempts.

Yawning, Li Huowang could only lie on the bed, praying that after Nurse Wang finished her show, she would be compassionate enough to check the camera.

In the deep silence of the night, even the second floor which housed critically ill patients was extremely quiet, and Li Huowang drifted off to sleep. When he woke up again, he found himself lying on the cold, cavernous ground.

He was still in the same spot, but those who had tried to escape had all disappeared.

"Tch, you bunch of NPCs also want to take me on?" Li Huowang took out the jade pendant from his bosom, gently flipped it in his palm, and then stuffed it back into his chest.

Half a joss stick's time later, he returned to the large communal sleeping area he lived in, lying in a pile of hay, patiently waiting for daylight. The thought of the jade pendant's value made it impossible for him to fall asleep with excitement.

Without a clock, Li Huowang had no idea how much time had passed. When he saw his fellow disciples stirring awake, he also sat up.

"It's dawn over here, so Auntie Wang should be off her shift, right? Maybe I should head back now? Nurse Ai is way more dedicated than her."

Just as Li Huowang was hesitating, a flurry of hurried footsteps came from the doorway.

A Taoist Boy dressed in a black Taoist robe, his hair bundled on top of his head, rushed in frantically.

"Hurry up! Master has ordered everyone to assemble at Hui'an Hall!"

This sudden news confused everyone, but since Master had summoned them, they had no reason to refuse.

Soon, in Hui'an Hall, the largest cave, all the disciples had arrived. The light from the torches clearly illuminated everyone's puzzled faces.

Li Huowang keenly noticed that some people were missing from the crowd, including not only Xuan Yang, but also several personal disciples of the leper Master.

"Oh, so they ran off together?" He thought to himself eagerly, feeling like he was following a drama.

When an ugly head emerged from the dark tunnel, all the Taoist Boys, except for Li Huowang, subconsciously bowed their heads.

It was their Master, Master Danyang.

"Cough~!" A cough made everyone tense up.

"Last night, at the second watch, some tried to flee. Among them were two of Taoist Master's personal disciples. My heart aches at this!"

Though he spoke of heartache, the ferocity on his face was so intense it was nearly tangible.

"Caught already? Xuan Yang and his guys are really lame," Li Huowang muttered, curling his lips.

"There can be no ordering of things without rules, and mistakes must be punished. This is the rule of our West Mountain Donghua Sect! Follow me."

All the disciples, too frightened to even breathe heavily, silently followed behind Master Danyang as they moved on.

Passing through caverns of various sizes and across a turbulent underground river, they quickly arrived at a moist cavern the size of a classroom.

Li Huowang saw that the people who had fled last night were now all tied up without exception, piled in the corner of the wall.

Seeing their Master, their expressions wilted, and they desperately struggled, seemingly wanting to say something, but the rags stuffed in their mouths left them unable to speak at all.

Master Danyang seemed to have no interest in hearing their excuses either. He flipped his hand inward, forming a Taoist Seal and pointing forward. "Open!"

The smooth ground of the cavern suddenly opened up into a large hole, and the escapees fell into it in an instant.

The next moment, hysterical muffled shouts and screams accompanied by the sounds of flesh tearing rose incessantly from the hole.

Facing this terrifying scene, many a Taoist Boy's legs started to tremble, their eyes almost forcibly shut.

"Get closer! This is the consequence of their escape!" Master Danyang's words bleached everyone's faces by several shades.

No one dared defy the Master's command, and they all shoved their way to the edge of the hole.

The hole was very dark, pitch-dark.

The pitch-black cylindrical cave was like a vortex, as if wanting to trap everyone inside.

After a careful look, Li Huowang noticed a large black cauldron inside the hole, its rim weighed down by some distorted talismans.

It seemed as though something was moving inside the cauldron, but Li Huowang couldn't make it out clearly; all he could detect with his senses was the nauseating, pungent smell of blood from inside.

Whatever was inside, it was certain it was extremely dangerous.

"Huan Jue's creatures shouldn't really be able to hurt me," he thought, "this has never happened before."

Though he said this, his heart was on edge, ready to retreat back to the hospital at any moment.

"Swoosh!" A writhing shadow suddenly emerged from the hole, wrapped around a fellow disciple next to Li Huowang, and quickly retracted.

Everyone was terrified by the scene, retreating back to the smooth walls of the cavern; if Master Danyang hadn't been watching them, they likely would have already fled.

Nearly everyone present wore expressions of extreme panic at this moment, trembling with speculation about what that thing was.

But these speculators didn't include Li Huowang because he was standing closest and saw it clearly.

It was a mass of flesh-like black material with slimy, sticky skin covered in bunches of short, constantly trembling black tentacles!

Just from this, Li Huowang could confirm that what Master Danyang was raising in this hole was certainly not a creature of this world.

As for what it actually was, Li Huowang couldn't guess, nor did he want to go back for another look.

Even though he knew these were all creations of his brain, Li Huowang truly wondered why he would fabricate such things?

Looking around at everything that seemed incredibly real, Li Huowang suddenly had a terrible suspicion. "Could this horrifying, bizarre world actually be real?"

This speculation immediately made Li Huowang shudder; he thought about those who had died before – if they were all real and not just his illusions, would he die too if that thing grabbed him?

Li Huowang felt almost crushed by the suffocating fear. He took several deep breaths, promptly starting self-guidance as Dr. Li had taught him.

"These are all illusions, however real they seem, they are just illusions. Li Huowang, you must not lose yourself to these illusions again; you created them, what's there to be afraid of?"

"Yang Na is still waiting for me; I can't let her down. I can overcome all this! I definitely can!"

After Li Huowang's self-encouragement, his emotions gradually stabilized, and he was prepared to face everything before him with composure.