The Unruly Immortals

Li Huowang, struggling with the pastries on his back, took deep breaths as he clumsily climbed up the dirt path of Henghua Mountain.

Now with only one hand, and having bought even more pastries, the climb was proving more arduous than the last time.

To prevent the pastries from getting damp with his sweat, Li Huowang deliberately carried them a bit further away from his body, which only added to the exhaustion.

Finally, at a turn in the path, Li Huowang could hold on no longer. He set the pastries down and leaned against a crooked tree, gasping for air.

Having rushed to the foot of the mountain, and then immediately up the hill, Li Huowang suddenly felt hungry.

After some thought, Li Huowang reached into the pastry box, pulled out a piece of mung bean pastry, and started to eat.

The flaky outside and soft inside soothed Li Huowang's hungry stomach. He had never eaten such pastries before, but upon tasting them, he found them unexpectedly delicious.

These pastries seemed to have been made just today—crispy and fragrant, far better than any cream cakes or chocolates he had sampled before his time travel.

As for eating Master Jingxin's pastries, Li Huowang didn't think much of it.

It wasn't his first time visiting after all, and there was no need for formalities with Master Jingxin. He was sure she wouldn't take offense.

"With so many pastries, they should be enough for Master Jingxin, right?" Li Huowang said looking at the pile of pastries, then immediately followed with a knowing smile.

"Not enough, even if double, I'm afraid it still wouldn't be enough for Master Jingxin."

Li Huowang first smiled, then paused bewildered, since when had his relationship with Master Jingxin become so close?

Reflecting on it again, although the master was greedy, lazy, and filthy, she was in fact the kindest person he had met in this world apart from his fellow disciples.

Previously, she hadn't targeted him because he was Xinsu, had even helped him drive away Master Danyang, and before he left, concerned about dangers he might face on the road, she had deliberately given him a sword.

"If it weren't for taking Bai Lingmiao and the others home, settling down in the town at the foot of the mountain wouldn't be a bad choice either. This area belongs to An Ci Nunnery, so no other powers would come to trouble me."

As he pondered all of this, Li Huowang had eaten most of the mung bean pastries. He hurriedly stopped himself.

Looking around at the lush greenery of Henghua Mountain, Li Huowang slowly let out a breath. Suddenly recalling something, he reached into his robe and pulled out a book—the translated text of the Fire Coat True Scripture.

As Li Huowang slowly flipped it open, intending to see how much he had been influenced by Master Danyang, he was shocked to find that he no longer recognized any of the characters.

This startling change made Li Huowang's heart, just half-relaxed, clench tightly. "This won't do, I must hurry!! Master Danyang's speed of possessing my body is accelerating! If this continues, I'll be completely assimilated by him!"

Li Huowang quickly stuffed the book back into his robe and picked up the pastries to continue his climb up the dirt path.

Finally, after the moon had risen high, Li Huowang returned to the gate of An Ci Nunnery.

Seeing once more the diamond-shaped couplet written by the nuns, Li Huowang instantly felt a greater sense of familiarity.

"Master Jingxin, I'm here again! Look what I've brought for you!"

The excited Li Huowang yelled as he walked towards the pitch-black An Ci Nunnery.

"No lights on inside? It seems they were too lazy to light them."

Just as he stepped into the dilapidated Bodhisattva Temple, Li Huowang suddenly felt something was amiss.

"How is it... not smelly anymore?"

Li Huowang threw the pastries down and stood still, taking several deep breaths. To his shock, he discovered the strong odor that typically permeated An Ci Nunnery had vanished without a trace!

"Something's wrong! There's big trouble!" In his disturbed state, Li Huowang couldn't care less about the rest, and he hurried towards the depths of the nunnery.

"Master Jingxin! Miaoyin!! Miaoxin!! Where are you!!"

Li Huowang's voice echoed incessantly within the nunnery, yet it elicited no response from anyone; his heart completely panicked.

Suddenly, Li Huowang heard some noise in the distance, and he hurried over, only to discover upon closer approach that it was the snorting of pigs.

When he reached the pigsty behind the latrine, the scene before him made him rigid on the spot.

A fat person as big as a small hut lay in the pigsty, surrounded by black-haired, chubby pigs like piglets suckling their mother.

However, they were not suckling; they were eating a human!

The troughs, meant for swill and feces, chomped up and down, tearing greasy flesh from the enormous fat person's body and swallowing it into their bellies, every pig's snout bloodied and gleeful in their feast.

"Get back!" Red-eyed, Li Huowang drew his sword and charged down, and without waiting for the pigs to turn around, he executed a sweeping slash that cleaved them all in half.

The other pigs, terrified by the murderous aura of Li Huowang, scattered and fled.

When Li Huowang approached the dead fatty, he cradled the head, now gnawed to half a face, and slowly knelt down; it was Master Jingxin's face.

"Aaaah!!" Li Huowang's heart-wrenching scream echoed throughout An Ci Nunnery.

Clutching Master Jingxin's face, tears from Li Huowang dropped to the ground. Master Jingxin was dead—the one person in the world who had been kind to him had taken his hope with her.

"Who is it!!" Almost in madness, Li Huowang burst from the pigsty like a gale, sword in hand, searching the nunnery for the enemy.

However, inside the nunnery, aside from finding more nun corpses, he found no one else.

Master Jingxin had been dead for some time now, whoever those people were, they had long since departed.

"Who could have killed her!!" This thought almost filled Li Huowang's entire mind, yet when he drew his sword and headed towards the temple gate, he gradually stopped.

Li Huowang, his eyes bloodshot, returned to Master Jingxin's side, took out Longsword and began to dig a grave beside her; he didn't want her to be gnawed by pigs even after death.

It took a large grave to bury Master Jingxin, and Li Huowang dug and dug for a very long time, only managing to finish by the following noon.

Just as Li Huowang was about to push Master Jingxin into the grave, he noticed something unusual; her corpse had lain an entire night without any sign of decay, nor had it attracted any flies.

Seeing all this, Li Huowang subconsciously remembered the corpses on the water surface; they, too, had not decomposed and were just as lifelike.

"Could they all have been killed by the same group of people? Do the people they kill not decay? Who are they?!"

"Something's not right! Wait!" Li Huowang suddenly realized he had overlooked something, and after pondering for a moment, he quickly rushed back to the pigsty to look at the black-haired pigs he had slain earlier.

Having spent a night and a day, those pigs he had killed also did not attract any flies or decay.

Li Huowang staggered out of the pigsty, incredulously surveying the serene surroundings devoid of any signs of struggle.

In any world, decay is an indispensable part of the cycle.

However, at this moment, it seemed as if something in the world went wrong in an instant, as if the function of decay had malfunctioned.

"Perhaps... Master Jingxin wasn't killed by someone else."

The belatedly insightful Li Huowang turned his head towards Master Jingxin, whose skin should have been decaying, festering with pus-filled boils and maggots. Yet at this moment, it had become incredibly smooth and fair.

The "decay" of this world had vanished.