The Unruly Immortals

"Woof woof!"

Mantou's bark broke Li Huowang's train of thought. Just as he turned his head to look, he saw Mantou burrowing into the darkness on one side.

"Taoist, hurry up and chase! That dog just smelled what you're looking for!" Monk Huan Jue reminded with concern from aside.

"Black Taishui?" Li Huowang glanced at him and, limping, hastened to follow. Seeing this, everyone else also followed suit.

The more Mantou chased in the darkness, the more excited it became. After several circles, Li Huowang too began to feel excited; he had also caught the scent of Black Taishui!

"No mistake, Black Taishui is nearby!" This thought sent Li Huowang's heart racing.

Just as he was running faster despite his limp, suddenly Li Huowang felt a tingle on his scalp and ducked instinctively. Something wrapped in a gust of wind grazed over his head.

"Bang!" Gao Zhijian's massive Wolf Fang Club struck down hard on that thing, breaking the encirclement for Li Huowang.

As Li Huowang was just straightening up, he noticed that the thing which had ambushed him had already burrowed into the darkness.

At this moment, the others quickly closed in around Li Huowang and collectively drew various weapons, pointing them cautiously outward.

Tightly gripping the hilt of his longsword, Li Huowang asked Gao Zhijian beside him, "Did you see what that thing was just now?"

"Meat... meat hooks!" The straightforward and tall Gao Zhijian explained to Li Huowang.

"Meat hooks? Something else is coming? Can't it just quiet down for a bit?" Li Huowang looked at the darkness around them, his eyebrows tightly knit.

"Did you see anything?" Li Huowang turned to ask Monk Huan Jue, who was next to Peng Longteng.

"No, I just got distracted."

"Tap tap tap—" The sound arose from Li Huowang's left. When everyone pointed their weapons toward the sound, they found the fawn-colored Mantou stepping lightly out from there.

With its ears pinned back, it stood in place and turned in a circle, then lifted its front paws off the ground and leaped high toward Li Huowang. "Woof!"

"Taoist, the dog is asking you why you aren't following," said the Monk.

Li Huowang frowned and said to the Monk beside him, "Shut your mouth. Can you understand what a dog is saying?"

This startled everyone around, who looked at Li Huowang with unsettled nerves.

"Brother Li, please don't get sick now. If you go crazy at this time, we're all out of options," Dogwa said with a fearful expression.

Li Huowang, his eyebrows furrowed, glanced at him and then looked toward Mantou. "Why did that thing only attack me and not Mantou?"

That question would never be answered. Mantou shook its tail and wobbled its head, shifting its paws restlessly in place. Its impatient demeanor suggested that what it was searching for must be nearby.

After glancing in the direction they had come, Li Huowang decided to continue following Mantou. They were already so far in; to give up and go back now would have wasted all the hardship he had already endured.

"Let's go, everyone keep up! Don't fall behind." To avoid being ambushed, they formed a tight group, advancing step by step, cautiously following Mantou forward.

Of course, with the lesson learned from earlier, Li Huowang didn't forget to keep watching above them.

Seeing his master move, Mantou hopped and with its black nose kept sniffing along the ground.

In the hours that followed, neither the meat hook that had ambushed Li Huowang nor the bizarre lion dance appeared, creating an eerie calm.

This unnerving silence tormented them, adding to the oppressive environment that put every person on edge. Cold sweat slowly trickled down their faces.

"Hush, everyone stop! We found it!" Li Huowang said with extreme excitement as he stared at the chaotic, twisting tentacles in the darkness ahead.

Even though it was still blurred, Li Huowang was sure that it was a Black Taishui!

Black Taisui had obviously noticed the sudden appearance of the light source and tentatively stretched out a tentacle, touching the green luminescence.

"Finally found it." At this moment, Li Huowang's breathing became much lighter, as if afraid of scaring the entity away.

"Brother Li, how do we take this thing back?" Sun Baolu came over and asked in a hushed voice.

Li Huowang looked thoughtfully at the entity in the darkness; this one seemed a bit larger than the one they had encountered at Qingfeng Taoist Temple.

"Zhijian, take out the chains that bound me; we need to set up an ambush to capture it."

"When we make our move, be gentle. We must not kill it."

The chains slowly unfurled around the Black Taisui, and everyone tiptoed around it.

Seeing Li Huowang's nod, Gao Zhijian, who was holding the Wolf Fang Club, charged forward and violently smashed his weapon onto the body of Black Taisui.

With a "thud," a dozen distorted semi-transparent tentacles shot up, stabbing toward him.

As Black Taisui attacked Gao Zhijian in that instant, the others, holding the chains, leaped up and started winding them around its body.

Li Huowang, who had been ready on the sidelines, also rushed out, raising his longsword and fiercely cutting toward the base of Black Taisui's tentacles.

Frankly, to the current Li Huowang and his group, Black Taisui wasn't very formidable, at least not more so than the lion dance they faced before.

However, against the lion dance, any means could be used, but that wasn't the case with Black Taisui. It had to be captured alive, which made things difficult.

Too much force was no good, but neither was too little.

While Li Huowang and the others tried to entangle it with chains, Black Taisui attempted to free itself and attacked the others with its tentacles.

For a time, both sides were entwined in a chaotic struggle.

Li Huowang had miscalculated; the tentacles of the Black Taisui didn't disappear as he cut them but instead, more tentacles emerged from within.

At this critical moment, new noises suddenly came from their left, as something was approaching.

"Bang! Swish!" The noises were so strange that Li Huowang couldn't imagine what could produce them.

"No matter what it is, I can't delay any longer! I must use the Compassionate Heart Vegetarian Diet!"

Li Huowang took a deep breath, quickly pulled out a dagger, and started peeling the skin around his chest.

With a forceful tear of a large piece of flesh from the front, Li Huowang's white and bony rib cage was exposed to the air.

Disregarding the pain that nearly made him faint, Li Huowang threw the flap of skin forcefully and with the help of the Great Thousand Record, the blood-soaked skin rapidly enlarged, firmly wrapping around Taishui and rendering the tentacles' wriggling and twisting futile.

"Let's go!" Li Huowang, ignoring his pain, quickly signaled to the others to leave with Black Taisui.

As they moved away from the previous location, the noises gradually faded.

"Brother Li, you're injured again." Bai Lingmiao looked sympathetically at Li Huowang as his clothes were slowly stained red; she took out golden sore medicine from her waist and sprinkled it evenly over Li Huowang's chest.

The wound was stimulated by the medicine, and Li Huowang felt such intense pain that he almost wished he were dead, but when he turned his head to look at Black Taisui being dragged by Gao Zhijian, he found new strength to continue living.

A slight smile appeared on the corners of Li Huowang's mouth, and amidst the searing pain, he gradually began to laugh out loud.

This trip had not been in vain; he could finally completely isolate those illusions on the other side.

"Wang Wei, didn't you say that over there is reality? Sure, once I consume Black Taisui, if you can manage to pull me back over there, I'll believe you!"

Li Huowang sneered, talking to himself in the direction of the distant darkness.