Mutated Tao

Li Huowang quivered as he looked at the “six people” in the distance. In his eyes, they were currently undergoing some huge changes.

Their bodies were the same, but their facial organs had changed, becoming completely distorted and elongated as they rearranged themselves to look like fleshy mahjong tiles.

“Stop! We will help you get rid of Dan Yangzi now!” shouted one of the Elders.

When Li Huowang heard those words, he smiled even on the verge of collapse. However, this smile was just an instinctive response; his heart didn’t feel any sense of joy. Even though he should have been happy now, the excruciating pain that was tormenting him made him incapable of experiencing any sense of joy.

All his strength was focused on resisting his strong urge to die.

At that moment, still confused, Li Huowang saw the Elder whose head resembled Three Bamboos speak.

“Xuan Yang, keep your legs crossed! Then, place your hands on your dantian, and guard your heart!”

Hearing this, Li Huowang tried his best to follow the instructions while the blood symbols around him started to sway along.

At the same time, Li Huowang saw the six Elders approach him, and sit down in a circle around him, about three feet away.

As the six people started to speak, unexpectedly, they did not recite some cryptic commands or strange incantations. Instead, they started asking rhetorical questions, their voice reverberating heavily.

“What does it mean to be sitting in oblivion?”

“Abandoning the body, deposing intelligence, detaching from the form, and transcending knowledge; this is what it means to be sitting in oblivion!”

As they conversed, their clothes started to billow in the wind as they floated into the air. At the same time, the colors around them began to distort.

“No!” A voice with an unknown origin rang out, occupying their hearts, and turning everything around them dim and colorless.

“No!” The six Elders responded simultaneously, their voices magnified immensely.

At the same time, the cracked skies began to be covered by some form of dark clouds.

Li Huowang’s merged senses gradually returned to normal, yet something felt a little different than before.

“With sitting comes movement. With forgetting comes remembrance. Without sitting, one ceases to do labor. Without forgetting, one’s mind becomes calm. When labor continues, the spirit is tranquil. When thoughts do not cease, the heart finds peace!”

As the six Elders continued chanting, Li Huowang felt something and looked up. At that moment, he saw Dan Yangzi hidden amongst the black clouds.

This time around, Dan Yangzi had a different appearance from before. There was an umbilical cord-like translucent object extending from his abdomen and connecting him to Li Huowang’s body.

All three of Dan Yangzi’s heads turned toward Li Huowang; his six eyes held extreme hatred within them. “Evil disciple! Once again finding others to deal with your Master? Hmph! Do you think you can hide? Master has already attained Immortality!”

“Immortal… Immortal… Hehe…” Li Huowang was on the verge of collapse as he looked at those sickening tentacles connected to Dan Yangzi’s body.

After a moment, Li Huowang took a deep breath and shouted toward Dan Yangzi, “Someone like you can also become an Immortal? Based on what? Does this place even have any justice!”

“Hmph! You are no better than me when it comes to the number of people we have killed! So who are you to say that?!” roared Dan Yangzi.

At that moment, Dan Yangzi’s childlike head on his right shook slightly. He was holding a fleshy bronze sword with three tentacles, using that grotesque body to dash toward the six Elders below; he almost looked like an eagle diving down from the black clouds.

However, the six Elders completely ignored Dan Yangzi, pointing their hands toward Li Huowang. “Three flowers blooming is an illusion. Clouds under the feet are not real. One must eventually wake up from a dream, and all things are bound to return to dust.”

As soon as those words rang out, Dan Yangzi, who was in the air, seemed like he was struck by a large mountain as he directly fell down while leaving behind an afterimage.

Then, Li Huowang who was bathed in flames, felt something abnormal within his stomach; it was as though something was stirring within him.

He had a feeling that it was very painful, but he could not feel anything.

All his attention was focused on the “umbilical cord” that linked him to Dan Yangzi; it was slowly becoming thicker and more corporeal. He had a feeling that he could even grab it with his own hands. In the end, he decided to reach out, and found that he really could touch it. And since even his own hands were on fire, that “umbilical cord” started to burn with a crisp sound.

“Im… impossible! I’m an Immortal now! Who dares to stop me?!” Dan Yangzi shouted as he struggled to stand up against the force pressing him to the ground.

Meanwhile, the six Elders sighed, and continued their chanting. “Form is adhered to, while the mind is lost. Reasons emerge and emotions cease. The Dao transcends color and taste. True nature is separated from desire. Perceive the subtleties and have faith. Listen without confusion, if someone sits in oblivion…”

Amidst their sometimes loud and sometimes soft chanting, Li Huowang found that everything around him was suddenly in the wrong positions. Originally, he had just been sitting cross-legged in the center of the group of Elders, but he was now suspended in mid-air sideways.

This change was not limited to just him; everyone was the same. Some of them even had half their bodies in the air, with the other half being in the ground.

However, compared to them, the changes that happened to Dan Yangzi were much greater. As the chanting continued, his entire body began to melt. Soon, his celestial belt fell weakly to the ground and was stained by the earthly mud.

“In the ultimate path, there is silence without existence. The divine uses are without form, and so is the heart and the body. From the source…”

As the chanting continued on and on, Li Huowang saw a trail of white smoke float out from the mahjong-patterned heads of each of the six Elders before intertwining and forming a rope that burrowed deep into the ground.

“This… impossible! I am an Immortal…!” These were Dan Yangzi’s final words.

After this last sentence, Dan Yangzi collapsed completely; everything about him turned into puffs of black clouds that floated into the skies. Before long, those black clouds had dissipated completely.

At almost the same time, Li Huowang began to vomit. With a belch, a mass of tentacles that had half a face entangled with it was expelled out.

The half-face that was entangled with the mass of tentacles belonged to Dan Yagnzi; currently, it had turned pale and emitted an extremely foul stench. It was clearly lifeless.

As he looked at the half-face in front of him, Li Huowang looked as though he was in a dream.

As the half-face gradually started to turn into ashes, Li Huowang picked it up with trembling hands.

Dan Yangzi was gone. At this moment, the ‘thing’ that had always been scheming to assimilate with himself was gone.

However, Li Huowang did not feel the slightest bit of happiness. Rather, he felt empty inside his heart. At the same time, the intense physical and mental pain prevented him from thinking about other more complex emotions.

On the other hand, the six Elders around Li Huowang all looked at one another, and then once again pointed their fingers toward Li Huowang again. As they did, the hook-shaped blood symbols around him slowly faded before returning to the ground.

The dark clouds in the skies had dissipated, and with this, the extremely far and high Ba-Hui once again became like the sun that illuminated them all.

At that moment, Li Huowang froze in place, ignoring everything around him. He did not want to know what the six Elders were up to.

At this point, it was already hard for him to resist the urge to seek death.

Li Huowang did not know when he fainted; the last thing he saw was the charred remains of Dan Yangzi.

Chacha and Char's Thoughts

This better be the last time we see Dan Yangzi

Also fleshy mahjong tiles as faces?!

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