Volume 4, Chapter 192 – Internal Strife

Pang Tiandao did not remain at the temple for long. After briefly explaining a few things to Li Huiran, his figure dissolved into black smoke once more and vanished.

Yet before leaving, he had made one extra motion, turning his head toward the Buddha hall. Li Huiran caught that detail. Even after Pang Tiandao had dispersed, he remained half-squinting, sometimes staring at the page in his hand, sometimes lifting his eyes toward the Buddha hall.

“His ‘All-Beings Homage Aspect’ has improved again.”

With the sound came a young woman walking out of the Buddha hall, dressed in monk’s robes with her black hair hanging loose.

Those robes ought to have been the embodiment of religious dignity. On an ordinary person, simply wearing them would lend a certain majesty. But on this woman they hung loose and slack; the front had been stretched upward by her full breasts, exposing a broad swath of snowy skin that swayed with every step.

“You’re not afraid?” Li Huiran let out a heavy breath and looked up at the loose-haired woman. “There’s no way he didn’t notice you. Back then, you ruined his plans by severing the link between Heaven and Earth. How could he possibly spare you lightly?”

“When Patrol Warden Li first arrived, that isn’t what you told this humble woman at all~” The woman’s face was stunning as well. At his words, she covered her mouth and put on a coy, innocent expression. “Could it be you were lying back then, just to tease this humble woman?”

Li Huiran could not be bothered to respond to her.

The person before him could truly be called the “Yaoyu Demon Ancestor,” an old monster who had lived for more than sixteen hundred years. For her to put on an act like this in front of him was the real teasing.

“Fine.” Seeing that this “young man” would not take the bait, the woman pressed her lips together and put away her flirtatious manner. “What other reason could there be… He simply thinks that with only a single ‘aspect-body,’ he can’t do anything to me. Rather than drag me out only for me to blast it apart and waste that aspect-body for nothing, he’d rather pretend I don’t exist and devote his time and energy to his ‘grand plan.’”

Seeing that Li Huiran still said nothing and was only silently examining the diagram, the woman grew curious and quietly edged closer.

“Hey, hey~ Could it be Patrol Warden doesn’t believe this humble woman? Ah… back then, I got to know him very early on. I know exactly what kind of person he is. To put it bluntly, he’s an idiot. Day in and day out, all he thinks about is the bigger picture and righteous causes, always busying himself with those empty illusions…”

“Hm?”

The moment she finally saw the contents of the page clearly, the woman could no longer keep talking nonsense. Just as Li Huiran had earlier, she widened her eyes and focused, a trace of shock appearing on her face.

“So that’s it… No wonder he wasted all that breath on you.”

“And the strange phenomena on the border outskirts of Xifeng Circuit and Dingbei Circuit as well. I didn’t understand before why Blood Soul Heaven was deploying forces in those places. Now I do… it was all to perfect this thing.”

Misty daylight filtered through the leaves and fell upon the thin sheet of paper in Li Huiran’s hand.

Viewed from one angle, what was drawn on it was not some bizarre object at all, merely a suit of armor that looked fairly conventional, even somewhat stiff and old-fashioned in design.

Rеad оո ΚаtReadіnɡCаfе

But this was no ordinary piece of paper. As the angle of Li Huiran’s hand shifted, the lines of the image on the page shifted as well.

With one slight turn, endless tendrils of flesh sprouted from the armor.

With another turn, the flesh wrapped around the armor and gradually compressed, actually forming the withered outline of a human body. Through the skin, one could directly see the taut ribs beneath.

Li Huiran continued studying the page in this way, watching the drawn object shift ceaselessly between armor, weapon, human body, and demon aspect. His brows drew tighter and tighter.

“Extract divine insight, infuse a new aspect.”

The woman curled her lip. “Looks like he’s finally made up his mind to abandon the path of body cultivation, and at the same time cast aside the old shell he was born with.”

Li Huiran looked up at her and asked, “Do you think this plan is feasible?”

“How would I… ha, this humble woman doesn’t know~”

For a moment, the woman almost let impatience show on her face by instinct, but in the next instant she caught herself and forced out a coquettish smile, slipping back into her seductive manner.

“This humble woman has no desire to get involved in this conflict right now~”

“Has Patrol Warden forgotten this humble woman’s promise?”

“So long as Patrol Warden is willing to help this humble woman find a secluded place where I can properly settle my clan of many years, then no matter how the disputes of this round of Void Tribulation rise and fall, I guarantee I won’t meddle in them.”

As if he would believe a word of that.

Li Huiran ignored her completely. A burst of sword-sha erupted from his hand and shredded the page, and his figure vanished from the courtyard at once.

“What a boring little man.”

The woman in monk’s robes muttered viciously, half venting her frustration by gnawing at her fingernails.

“But without help, Pang Tiandao can’t pull off something like this either.”

Reαⅾ оո КαtReaԁіngCаfе

“Blood Soul Heaven alone isn’t enough. He’d also need a true grand master of this field—Qifeng.”

“There are only a handful of people in the Thirty-Three Heavens Hall with that kind of skill.”

“Ah, looking at it that way, they’ve probably fallen into infighting again.”

…

Elsewhere, Li Huiran rose above the clouds, standing proudly in the ninth heaven like a moonwheel.

He did not care that the space there was unstable, liable at any moment to split apart and spit out Void Demons. Right there, with this thread of divided consciousness, he activated the Black Venerable Card and triggered the Divine Pool laws stored within it.

Just like the traversal he had made before, one thread of his divided consciousness crossed an immeasurable distance in an instant and appeared before the Heaven-Monitoring Hall, then strode inside without the least bit of courtesy.

“I saw Pang Tiandao go to see you.”

Before he even saw the figure seated at the head, Li Huiran first heard a childish voice from within.

After taking a few more steps, a lotus dais emerged amid the clouds and mist. Seated on it was a Daoist boy of twelve or thirteen—the Hall Master of the Heaven-Monitoring Hall, Yu Daoyong.

Yu Daoyong only looked young on the outside; in truth, he was much older than Li Huiran. At that moment, he frowned at him and said, “What exactly did you two talk about?”

He possessed a treasure artifact and had also cultivated a Divine Pool, allowing him to remotely observe all things through it.

But Pang Tiandao’s “aspect-body” was linked to his true body. Yu Daoyong did not want to alarm that thing, so he had not looked too closely.

Li Huiran said nothing. Sword-sha flared in his hand with a roar, and he actually restored the shredded page before handing it directly to Yu Daoyong to inspect.

“This is…”

Yu Daoyong took it and looked, and his expression immediately changed as well.

“The ‘demon-weapon path’ should be the prerequisite for his plan,” Li Huiran said flatly. “Blood Soul Heaven obtained his support long ago. Otherwise, an organization like Cloud Tower could not possibly have survived this long. He’s openly selling Sacred Court intelligence!”

Rеaԁ οո ΚαtRеаԁіոgСαfe

“This matter… we still need to consider carefully.” Yu Daoyong set down the page and kept shaking his head as he looked at Li Huiran. “The implications are too great… What about the others? Have you informed them?”

“The others?” Li Huiran sneered. “At this point, you’re the only one I still trust.”

Then what about Han Feng?

Yu Daoyong froze.

The neutral faction had always been coordinated chiefly by him and Han Feng. He oversaw the Heaven-Monitoring Hall, while Han Feng oversaw the Immortal Works Hall. Both were important posts, yet neither was suited to direct combat. On top of that, they had always made it plain that they did not stir up trouble, and no one had ever voiced dissatisfaction with that.

Li Huiran had managed to obtain the position of Heaven-Patrol with help from both of them. Before this, hadn’t he loved going to Han Feng to chatter and drink himself drunk…? So why had his tone suddenly changed like this?

Yu Daoyong realized that something must have changed. He performed a quick calculation on his fingers and frowned. “The Immortal Works Hall has actually been empty for ten days?”

Li Huiran merely maintained his mocking smile, watching his futile effort without saying a word.

Yu Daoyong fell silent.

At last, he realized where the problem lay.

Alas, I really could have thought of this sooner.

Tracing it to its root… was it because I didn’t want to?

“The only person I can think of who could help him with this, apart from Patriarch Zhang, who is already dead, is him,” Li Huiran said frankly. “I don’t understand what delusion you’re still clinging to.”

Yu Daoyong sighed softly. “Then there really is nothing worse than this.”

He looked up at Li Huiran. “I still want to see it with my own eyes.”

Li Huiran raised a brow and watched him jump down from the dais. A bronze mirror rose beneath him, carrying him as he sat upon it and flew out of the hall, swiftly traveling alongside Li Huiran through the misty immortal clouds.

Jade towers and pavilions flashed into view from time to time along the way. In no time at all, the two arrived at a neighboring hall and stepped straight inside.

Rеαd oո ΚatRеaԁіոgСαfе

“Brother Han?”

Yu Daoyong called out.

“Li’s here to drink with you!”

The corner of Li Huiran’s mouth twitched, but he continued to maintain his frosty expression.

No one answered Yu Daoyong’s call. The two continued deeper into the hall, and gradually both began to frown slightly. The atmosphere here felt wrong.

It was steeped in the air of decay.

Dead silent.

With a clang, Li Huiran drew the sword at his waist. A vertical slash of sword qi split out, cleaving apart the clouds and mist within the hall. The scene it revealed made Yu Daoyong close his eyes and shake his head, a trace of pain appearing on his face.

Corpses littered the ground.

They were all “Crane-Sparrow attendants” who had served in the hall. A few had already taken on human form, and they lay there alongside their companions’ demon bodies. Without exception, all of them had become dried corpses.

“With signs like these, they’ve been dead a long time.”

Li Huiran walked up to the raised platform at the front of the hall, stared at the hazy figure above it, and kicked it.

Boom!!!

The platform collapsed, and the figure toppled headfirst with a crash, landing right in front of Yu Daoyong.

But the thing was not a living being.

It was merely a lifelike mechanical dummy posed in a “Reclining Arhat” posture.