The Unruly Immortals

"Ssshhhh~" A large tongue licked Li Huowang's reddened cheek, tearing off a large patch of his newly grown skin.

The severe pain, akin to being brushed with steel wool, forced Li Huowang to open his eyes again.

Li Huowang looked around blankly, realizing he was still in the dead town, though there seemed to be more collapsed houses.

It seemed that a lot had happened after he had passed out yesterday.

Now that it was broad daylight, judging by the sun's westerly position, it looked like he had been lying here for a day.

"Mmm~" Mantou kept barking around Li Huowang, looking like he wanted to approach but also afraid to do so.

Only then did Li Huowang belatedly notice the abnormality of his body.

Considering how he had been burned from the inside out by flames last night, logically, he should have been dead beyond dead.

Yet, now he was very much alive, the charred shell had peeled off, and his body was covered with a thin layer of skin.

"It seems my healing ability has increased, no, not just healing ability, this is an overall amplification."

Li Huowang looked down at his body, red and raw as if scalded, and thought.

Now, all the clothes on his body had been burned away.

Fortunately, neither the 'Great Thousand Record' nor the longsword, nor the iron torture instruments had been damaged by the flames.

He staggered to his feet, the breeze painfully caressing his body.

Naked, Li Huowang wandered around the dead town with a dog.

After several turns, he found new clothes in an old clothes shop full of cobwebs.

Passing the headless skeleton shopkeeper behind the counter, Li Huowang found a green Taoist robe to drape over himself; then he tore off a big piece of fabric to wrap up the items in his embrace.

The new tender skin was easily torn by the fabric, and spots of "peach blossoms" gradually spread on the Taoist robe.

Flesh and skin sticking together, every movement brought Li Huowang pain like a knife scrape, each shift tantamount to torture.

He found a long bench in the old clothes shop, sat down tremblingly, and quietly waited for his skin to fully heal.

Li Huowang waited in the old clothes shop filled with garments, and as time ticked by, the shop slowly darkened.

The old clothes hanging from the beams inside, set against the darkness, looked like row upon row of hanged ghosts suspended there.

Blown by a breeze from who knows where, the clothes began to sway gently, giving the entire room an extra chilling and terrifying atmosphere.

"Woof! Woof woof!!" Mantou barked at the swaying clothes, then timidly shrank beneath Li Huowang's bench.

"Shh, don't bark, there are no ghosts in this world, when people die they leave nothing behind, otherwise they would have come to claim my life long ago." Li Huowang gently stroked Mantou's head as he murmured to himself.

Mantou gradually quieted down, licking the palm of Li Huowang's hand.

When it accidentally tore open Li Huowang's skin again, it immediately stopped licking, its eyes filled with guilt as it looked at Li Huowang.

Li Huowang ignored his wounds and started to check Mantou's injuries, gently pressing on the belly where it had been kicked.

The blood at the corner of its mouth proved that Mantou was indeed injured, but from its ability to run from the mountain to the town below, the injury wasn't severe.

If Jiang Yingzi really wanted to kill a dog, it would have been a piece of cake; there was only one reason Mantou wasn't dead.

Because she had a kind heart and didn't want to kill Mantou, even though the dog had taken its enemy for its master.

"Yingzi..." In the dim old clothes shop, Li Huowang stared blankly at the clothes gently swaying before him.

At this moment, he thought of many things.

Suddenly, despite the raw soreness of his skin, he stood up.

Li Huowang walked to the headless body of the second-hand clothing store owner, picked him up in his arms, and walked outside the house.

The longsword, capable of cutting through iron as if it were mud, was once again used as a shovel to dig a hole.

A large pit was quickly formed, and after Li Huowang had arranged the head he found inside the second-hand clothing store with the headless skeleton, he reburied them in the earth.

A door plank was taken down, and Li Huowang wanted to carve some words on it, but he realized he had long forgotten how to write those words.

In the end, he simply used the tip of his sword to carve the pattern of a garment and planted it in front of the mound.

Following that, Li Huowang turned and went into another room, from which he carried out the bodies of a mother and daughter.

One by one, the skeletons were buried, and grave markers with patterns were erected.

His skin, not yet healed, was constantly rubbed raw by his clothes, and before long, it was completely broken.

Amplified by his acute sense of pain, it was almost as unbearable as a slow execution.

But not for a moment did Li Huowang pause; the greater the pain in his body, the better he felt inside.

As Li Huowang continued moving bodies, his Taoist robe gradually turned dark red again.

When Li Huowang re-entered a bungalow, he stopped in his tracks, for inside there was a bamboo cradle.

Seeing that object, he now hesitated to approach it.

"Heh heh... Compared with you, am I not a saint?" A familiar voice exploded in Li Huowang's ears like a clap of thunder.

He whipped his head around and saw his three-headed Master Danyang, who at the moment was standing on the rubble of the house opposite, looking at him.

Looking at the three faces with a sardonic smile, Li Huowang felt as if he was instantly stuck in an icy cavern.

The next second, Li Huowang moved. He ignored Master Danyang on the roof and slowly turned his head, walking toward the distant mountains.

He started with a slow walk, then a trot, and finally clenched his teeth and burst into a run, leaving a trail of blood droplets from his body.

"You explain this to me! What the hell is going on! Why is Master Danyang still here!!"

In the brightly lit cave, surrounded by the members of the Ao Jing Sect, Li Huowang, with blood running down his face, gasped for air and loudly demanded an explanation from the wall of the cave in front of him.

An elderly voice came from one of the caves. "Young friend, our business is concluded; your master has long since met Soul Scatter. We also have not seen any trace of him in you."

At that moment, Li Huowang's pupils shrank to pinpoints, and he pointed a trembling finger at a certain cave entrance.

"Then tell me what that is? What is that! Are you all blind? What nonsense about Soul Scatter! His influence over me is even greater now! He can appear at any moment! This thing has not been eradicated at all!!"

Suddenly, as if Li Huowang saw something else, he inhaled sharply, "No, that's not right! Jiang Yingzi is there too! She is right by Master Danyang's side now!"

As soon as these words were out, all the Ao Jing Sect members around were astonished, and even Li Huowang himself felt something was amiss.

Master Danyang could exist because he was cultivating immortality, but what was the deal with Jiang Yingzi? She hasn't been cultivating at all!

Li Huowang's eyes were fixed on the woman in the distance with severed hands and feet, her flesh a bloody mess, and his mind was buzzing.

At this moment, she still stared at him with intense hatred in her eyes.

"Young friend, as we said before, we would only deal with the expulsion of your master and those bizarre illusions of Xinsu. We can't be concerned with anything else."