The Unruly Immortals

When he heard Li Huowang's question, their response left Li Huowang frozen in place as if struck by lightning.

"Brother Li, what are you talking about two monks? There's clearly not a single monk in our cart formation. Come help! Their crossbows are incredibly formidable."

"Not a single monk? All the monks were my illusion? How is that possible? At the very least, one must be real!"

"No, that's absolutely impossible!" Li Huowang glared at the panting child Yang with a fierce look.

"When we were transporting the ashes earlier, we clearly met a monk on the road, and that monk accompanied me the whole way! Are you daring to say you didn't see him!?"

The anxious child Yang crawled on the ground, fearfully peering through the spokes of the cart wheels at the enemies outside. Hearing the question, he turned back to look at Brother Li standing there with his odd behavior.

"Brother, there really wasn't one. When we were sending off the ashes, there was no monk at your side."

"Impossible! The monk chatted with me for such a long time along the way. If he was fake, would I be talking to thin air? Are you blind? Not even the slightest reaction?"

The child Yang now burst into tears, speaking with utter grievance, "But Brother Li, you often talk to people who aren't there when you're alone. How would I know when you're actually talking to someone real or not?"

This statement made Li Huowang stagger suddenly. "I often talk to myself... What is real... and what is false?"

He began scanning the faces of everyone around, corners of his mouth cracking into an extremely bitter dry laugh.

Bai Lingmiao, the scamp, Sun Baolu, Chun Xiaoman, child Yang, Gao Zhijian, Top Scholar Lv, Lv Elevated Man, Scholar Lv, and so on, all of their faces flashed before Li Huowang's eyes.

"Or is it that some of them are also fake? Is this world even real? Why does it feel so fake, or is it that reality on the other side is what's real? Is this side the fake one?"

The monk lifted Li Huowang up from the ground and continued to persuade earnestly, "I'm right, aren't I? That's why you're Peng Zhi, given to wild fantasies. Anything could happen to you and it wouldn't be out of the ordinary."

"If you think he's real, then why don't you try touching him? Where's that hallucinatory monk? Let's go! I'll follow you and touch him too!"

Li Huowang, with his head buzzing, extended his finger to the right, and the monk, angry, hauled him in that direction.

The monk in the distance looked exactly the same as the monk next to Li Huowang, with no discrepancies whatsoever.

"Taoist, are you alright?"

As he approached with concern, Li Huowang's right hand stretched out effortlessly through his body.

He was right, this monk was just like Master Danyang and Jiang Yingzi, all figments of his imagination.

"So that means..." A look of extreme pain appeared on Li Huowang's face.

"How's it going? Did you go through? See? I am real, what I'm saying is real! You're Peng Zhi! You're not Li Huowang, we must join forces to—"

The monk's words were abruptly cut off as he slowly lowered his head, his eyes slightly widened in shock looking at his own abdomen, where a longsword had been thrust into it.

"Why?" The monk felt an incredible shock, questioning Li Huowang who was so close by, bewildered.

His voice quivered as he spoke, "He is obviously a fake, aren't my words reasonable? After helping you so much along the way, how could you now raise your hand to kill me?"

Li Huowang, with teeth clenched, plunged the sword he held in one hand deeper into the monk's belly.

"What you have said isn't wrong at all, and he is indeed a fake, but... I am not Peng Zhi, I am Li Huowang!"

"On what basis, huh? On what basis do you believe you are definitely Li Huowang? You clearly believed it just a moment ago!!"

Hearing this, Li Huowang's expression twisted grotesquely as he pushed the monk backward with both hands on the sword.

"I don't need any basis, I don't need a reason to be Li Huowang! I don't need any logic, even if all the evidence proves I am Peng Zhi, I am Li Huowang!"

Quickly taking three steps forward, Li Huowang gripped the sword tightly with both hands and pinned the monk against the carriage.

Blood, red and fresh, streamed down from the torn robes of the weakening monk, who looked up at the Li Huowang standing before him and asked with difficulty, "Have you never thought... what if you're wrong? What if what I said... is true?"

Li Huowang took a deep breath and screamed at the monk with all his might, hysterically yelling, "What does it matter if what you said is true! What does it matter if you are Peng Jiao!"

"I don't care! I am Li Huowang! I'm the one they care about as Li Huowang! No one else better even think about taking it away!!"

At these words, the monk finally let his head drop. Watching the dying man, Li Huowang's face twitched slightly as he shakily kept repeating, "I am Li Huowang, I am Li Huowang, I am Li Huowang..."

With each shout, the intent to kill in his heart grew stronger, and the image of the birthday cake flashed through his mind.

"If the Li Huowang that Yang Na and the others care about truly exists! Then all I need to do is find him and kill him! Once he's dead, Li Huowang's identity will be mine!"

Witnessing this scene, Master Danyang's three faces showed nothing but disdainful scorn.

"Hey... why are you acting like such a lunatic, huh? I was deceiving him perfectly well, why didn't you follow the plan? Why did you suddenly go and strike him? It's truly bothersome; it was so much fun just a moment ago."

The dead monk suddenly spoke up, and his round head quickly morphed a few times into a square one, with the features and wrinkles on his face swiftly transforming into two vortexes hanging on that square head.

Faced with this sudden change in the person before him, Li Huowang was taken aback at first, then ecstatically thrilled before erupting with intense fury.

"I knew it! I guessed it, you are a swindler! You're the fake—no, that's not it! You're not a swindler! You are Oblivion Path! You are the Second Tile!"

The moment he saw that mahjong-tile face, Li Huowang instantly realized that this was the individual Sister Superior had warned him to be highly vigilant of—the Oblivion Path!

"Ah, so annoying! You'd already fallen for it, so why did you suddenly attack me? You act without any sense of reason, lunatic just as a lunatic would!"

The face of the Second Tile rapidly changed, transforming into that of a beautiful and seductive woman who, with a charming smile, swiftly planted her feet on the ground and flipped onto the roof of the carriage.

Just as she landed on the top of the carriage, the assault from the people outside ceased the moment they saw her.

When Li Huowang stepped on the wheel hub and made it atop the carriage's roof, the Second Tile had already leapt out of the carriage's perimeter and joined the others outside.

Seeing that neither the performers of Nuoxi nor the bandits attacked the Second Tile, Li Huowang was no longer in the dark about the situation—it was clear that these people were all brought here by the Second Tile! All that nonsense about slaying the Three Corpses was nothing but lies concocted by the Oblivion Path!