Chapter 9 Sea of Fire
Chapter 9 Sea of Fire
Then she retracted her head, and behind the screen came the sounds of opening the furnace door, shoveling the charcoal in the sack, and fiddling with bottles and jars. Li Wuxiang listened quietly for a while, then slowly stood up, thrust the knife under the blanket into his lower back, and walked to the screen to look at her as she had just looked at him.
Zhao Xi was fiddling with the broken charcoal. He turned to look at him, wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, and shook off a few strands of hair in front of his face. He smiled at him and turned his face again: "You don't want to sleep?"
"I can't sleep and I'm thinking about other things." Li Wuxiang whispered as he slowly walked behind her.
He looked at her neck - slender and white, with a layer of very fine hair reflected by the light of the eternal lamp on the stone wall, exactly like the young girl in his memory.
He tried to recall the past month when the two of them had been together - there was nothing unusual about Zhao Xi's every move. Even if he asked himself to think that the body besides the one taking the next step might contain the soul of another person, he could not recall anything inconsistent.
But the smell was real. The closer he got to her, the more his keen sense of smell could smell the scent of bamboo paper on her body.
So he took another step forward, almost sticking to Zhao Xi's back. He saw Zhao Xi's body tensed up all of a sudden, and immediately wanted to turn his head, but Li Wuxiang frowned slightly, took a deep breath, hugged her from behind with his arms, and rested his face on the side of her neck.
"I was thinking, there are only two of us in the world, right?"
Zhao Xi took a step forward, trying to break free, but the alchemy furnace was in front of her, so her body only swayed, and her voice trembled: "...Li Wuxiang, what are you doing?"
"I think you smell great." Li Wuxiang quickly lowered his head, pressed his lips against the side of Zhao Xi's exposed neck, and smeared his saliva on her skin.
Zhao Xi shuddered all over, uttered a scream, and tried to turn her body to the side, so that Li Wuxiang could clearly see the place where his saliva had just wetted her skin - on the snow-white skin, a dark patch like white paper wet by water was spreading rapidly. At the same time, in the center of this dark patch, the skin that should have been taut was becoming uneven, and then collapsed downwards, just like the paper man he subdued below... She was indeed not a human!
At this time, Zhao Xi pushed his hands away with force, trying to break free immediately, but Li Wuxiang chose this position because of the alchemy furnace in front of him - although Zhao Xi was stronger than him, he was blocked by the alchemy furnace after taking only half a step forward, and almost fell on the furnace. When she wanted to turn around and push Li Wuxiang away, he had grabbed her hair with one hand and pulled out the short knife from his waist with the other hand and stabbed it into her back.
The knife was like stabbing into an extremely flexible and solid soft barrel. At first, it felt a large and soft resistance, and then it suddenly became lighter, as if it had stabbed into a hole. Li Wuxiang remembered the lesson he learned when dealing with this kind of paper puppet below. After stabbing with the knife, he did not retreat, but quickly withdrew his right hand that was holding Zhao Xi's hair, and grabbed the handle of the knife with his left hand. Zhao Xi lost his grip and immediately fled forward. Li Wuxiang took the opportunity to press the handle of the knife down hard -
He heard a sound like thick cloth being torn, and a long cut was left on Zhao Xi's entire back by the dagger. He only ran forward three or four steps before his legs became soft and light, as if something had been pulled out of him, and he fell to the ground with a thud.
Li Wuxiang immediately wanted to attack him a few more times, but Zhao Xi grabbed a half bag of charcoal slag and threw it at him. The bag came at him so fast that Li Wuxiang only had time to dodge to the side. He heard a loud bang behind him. The charcoal bag smashed through the screen and shattered the wooden table behind the screen, then fell to the ground with a thud, splashing the charcoal slag into a rainstorm, leaving countless black spots on the ground and walls in an instant.
Li Wuxiang immediately took two steps back and stopped moving forward. He exhaled softly, "You are Zhao Kui."
But he saw Zhao Xi's eyes were open, with a look of panic and helplessness on her face. It seemed that she could only move her arms at this time, and the part below the wound on her back became soft, as if the bones were pulled out. She used one hand to support herself against the wall, and used the other hand to grab her waist, as if trying to close the wound. But as her body moved, more and more things leaked out from her back——
Those were things that were entangled with dense white threads. When they leaked out of the body, they looked like fresh, steaming internal organs, but once they were exposed to the wind and fell to the ground, they quickly turned into something dry and wrinkled, folded out of yellowed bamboo paper.
She tried to stuff these things into her body, but the knife was on her back, and she was moving her body, so those things soon tangled together and formed a big ball, which made it even more impossible to put them back. When she finally moved to the wall, she grabbed these things that looked like internal organs, trembling her lips and staring at Li Wuxiang: "Why? I don't have much to eat, and I'm still making medicine for you, why..."
Li Wuxiang looked at her calmly: "You asked me to use Guangchanzi to refine myself into a human skin so that you can possess my body. Do you think you are very smart, Zhao Kui? Since you know that I am an external evil, do you know that this method is just a child's trick in my opinion? Why? Because I am tired of it."
Zhao Xi's eyes widened. The area on her right shoulder that was soaked by her saliva was collapsing. Her right arm gradually became soft and could only droop to the side of her body. As a result, the internal organs made of bamboo paper that were originally held by her right hand scattered again. She opened her mouth and looked like a person who was about to die. While breathing convulsively, she tried to grab the internal organs with her other hand, but she couldn't reach them: "I am not, I am not Zhao Kui, I am Zhao Xi... Please, save me... It was Zhao Kui who killed me and took me... I didn't mean to lie... lie..."
Li Wuxiang carefully observed her every movement and adjusted his breathing, trying to relax and tense all the muscles in his body so that he could exert force at any time. Now he had roughly figured out the thread of things - Zhao Kui originally wanted to use the children below to practice "Taiyi", but after discovering that the original owner was possessed by an external evil, he immediately made an incredible decision: kill himself, and then transfer his soul to Zhao Xi, the paper puppet, to trick himself, the external evil, into practicing Guang Chanzi.
This means that Zhao Kui believes that the "external evil" is extremely dangerous, and it even makes him willing to destroy his own body to set up a trap... But he should know that practicing Guang Chanzi will make a person's five senses sharper. Has he never thought about the current situation?
At this time, Zhao Xi stopped talking, but stood still, staring at him, as if still silently asking "why".
Li Wuxiang sneered and slowly approached him: "Zhao Kui, if I were you, I would know that I would not believe every word you say now, and I would not lie here pretending to be dead. You want my evil skin? Then I will give you two choices. Either I open the door and jump into the sea of fire outside, so that you will give up your body but get nothing, or you stand up now and we can have a good talk-"
As he spoke, he was only two steps away from the wall, and "Zhao Xi" still didn't move. As soon as the word "talk" came out of his mouth, Li Wuxiang stepped quickly, changed from pacing to rushing, and swung his arm violently, chopping off "Zhao Xi's" head with a knife, and then jumped onto the corpse and chopped it fiercely, until the puppet's body was covered with white cuts, and then he retreated two steps back.
The body still did not move. Zhao Xi's head rolled down not far away. When he saw it, it was still the same as before, but soon, it turned pale and stiff, and finally turned into a lifelike shell.
Li Wuxiang stared at the head in silence, then looked at the body on the ground, and slowly took a breath: "Zhao Kui."
"Zhao Kui?"
After two breaths, he slowly stepped forward and used his short knife to poke at the wounds on the corpse. Under the open cuts, there was a faint golden color. He squatted down, stretched out his hand to tear open the wound, brushed away the white lines in the body, and found that it was a thin net woven with very fine copper wires and buried under the body surface. It was also at this time that he suddenly noticed that the touch of the body surface of this corpse was completely different from that of the puppet he killed below.
It’s tougher…as if it were made of thin leather.
Li Wuxiang exhaled, cut off a piece with a short knife, and retreated to the overturned furnace. The charcoal fire that Zhao Xi had just started had not yet gone out, and he saw the fine lines on the surface of the "thin skin" by the light of the fire. He threw the thing into the charcoal fire, a burnt smell rose, and the thin skin quickly turned into ashes.
Li Wuxiang stood up holding the dagger, looking at the corpse on the ground, and remembered what she had just said - "It was Zhao Kui who killed me, and then... I didn't mean to lie..."
"It was Zhao Kui who killed me and made me into a puppet. I didn't mean to lie to you" - is that what you mean?
Li Wuxiang held the knife in the darkness and firelight, looked at the leather bag on the ground in silence for a while, and suddenly sneered.
"What? You want me to feel remorse and guilt towards Zhao Xi, and then leave this skin here as a souvenir? And then continue to cultivate Guang Chanzi until I really turn myself into a piece of skin?" As he spoke, he walked over and picked up Zhao Xi's light head. When he lifted it up, a ball of crumpled bamboo paper fell out of it.
Then he walked to the door and opened it. Hot air gushed in immediately. He hung the head he was holding outside: "I guess you will get out of this skin and take my house at that time - now speak to me, or I will throw you out."
On the empty head, the pair of out-of-focus black eyes stared at the floor in the room, silent. Li Wuxiang raised his hand suddenly, and the head was thrown far away, passing through a layer of fleeting light, and immediately turned into a ball of fire in mid-air.
He strode back and dragged Zhao Xi's headless body to the door, shouting, "Speak to me, Zhao Kui! Otherwise, I'll throw you out now! Throw you all out!"
But this light puppet body swayed softly with his movements, and its drooping arms were blown up by the hot wind outside the door, as if it was still thinking about the elixir that it had not finished refining today.
Li Wuxiang stared at it for a while, then slowly leaned against the stone wall beside the door and loosened his hand. The headless body fell at his feet with a plop sound, like a heavy coat falling to the ground.
Outside the door was still a world of fire. Heavy clouds of fire rolled overhead, making the sky seem solid. In the distance, countless huge trees were on fire, and everything within sight was twisted by the high temperature. Looking up, down, and to the sides of the door, all one could see was a rough, knife-cut rock wall covered with a thick layer of white ash.
The whole world seemed lifeless.
Li Wuxiang sighed, sat down facing the blazing world in the distance, patted the skin on the ground, was silent for a while, and whispered, "Well, if you are really Zhao Xi, dying in my hands is not so tragic - to stay in such a world, living in a small house, knowing that you will die alone, is a more tragic thing."
"But this is one thing, and I killed you by mistake is another. What should I do?" Li Wuxiang stood up and took a step forward. "Use my life as compensation."
But just as his body was about to lean forward, the headless skin bag behind him trembled suddenly, and then a thin net made of fine copper wire under the skin flew out with a buzzing sound and pounced on him.
A sharp pain!
As soon as the copper net was on his body, it immediately drilled into his flesh, as if it was taking root under his skin just like it had in Zhao Xi's skin. In just a moment, Li Wuxiang's upper body was red, and small blood columns splashed everywhere. After another moment, the copper net was completely buried under his skin, and it seemed to wrap around his muscles and bones, forcing him to raise his right hand and grab the stone door panel next to him with a bang.
The next moment, the severe pain in his body suddenly disappeared without a trace. Li Wuxiang only felt a tingling sensation under his skin, and then he felt a chill in his body - as if he was practicing Guang Chanzi before, and the essence in his internal organs was continuously gathering on his skin, but this time the speed was countless times faster, as if the copper net submerged under his skin was helping him practice, and was going to quickly transform him into a human skin!
At this time, Li Wuxiang finally confirmed that Zhao Kui was indeed attached to that body, but not on the skin, but on this copper net.
He immediately laughed, and used his left hand to grab the wall beside the door, and used his legs to pull his body outward: "Zhao Kui, you like to play, right?! I like it too! You want to get on top of me? Then I want you to die with me!"
He leaped out, but his left arm suddenly felt numb under the skin, and he lost control of it completely. He was originally trying to pull himself out, but now, like his right arm, he was clinging to the stone wall tightly.
The copper net under his skin was still madly absorbing the energy of his internal organs. Li Wuxiang immediately followed the method in Guang Chanzi and told his energy to flow backwards. This move actually worked. Although he could still feel the copper net growing rapidly under his skin and gradually controlling the flesh and blood of his legs, its growth rate had slowed down significantly, allowing him to exert force again and lean his body forward.
When he completely lost control of his body, he reached a dangerous balance: he was like a frozen human stone sculpture, in a posture about to fall off the cliff from the door. But his arms supporting the door, his legs kicking the door frame, and the warm wind blowing in from outside made him stay in place, swaying, as if he would continue to fall or fall backwards into the door in the next moment.
His mind began to blur, his heart was in a trance, and he could no longer adjust his internal breath. He only felt countless threads extending from the copper net and drilling into his internal organs. His limbs began to relax gradually, and he felt his muscles exerting force, slowly pulling his body backwards, as if a person was starting to push a huge stone ball that was parked on a slope. Once it started rolling, the outcome would be clear.
But at this moment, he seemed to hear a faint sigh, like Zhao Xi's voice, and like the wind passing through the alchemy furnace.
Then the warm wind that was whistling in from the door suddenly weakened for a moment, and Li Wuxiang swayed slightly and fell into the sea of fire.
Today's chapters are combined into one.
Another problem is that the content of a chapter is not determined by the number of pages. For example, some books almost want to use one line for each sentence, so a chapter can be more than ten pages long. But my book is divided into normal sections, but some are long and some are short, so the number of pages will fluctuate.
So two chapters combined into one is really at least 4,000 words. After all, I'm a newcomer publishing a book, so how could I cheat? I also want monthly tickets and recommendation tickets. I think you guys want Dabieye too, right?
(End of this chapter)