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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 4
Chapter Title: Black Cauldron
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Chapter 4: Black Cauldron
Seeing Xuanyang clap a hand over Li Huowang's mouth, the others clutching the fire striker rushed up and surrounded him with hostile stares.
"Not leaving, huh? Then you can just die here today! There's no way we're letting you run off to tip off that mangy head!"
Yet Li Huowang felt zero panic over his current life-or-death bind. He rolled his eyes in speechless exasperation, inwardly cursing the ridiculous plot twist of this hallucination, then shut his eyes and drew in a deep breath.
When he opened them again, he found himself strapped down to the hospital bed with wide leather belts. The brothers surrounding him were gone.
"Auntie Wang, I'm awake—can you loosen these?" Li Huowang shouted into the bedside microphone for the night nurse. He was desperate to check if the jade pendant was still tucked in his clothes.
No response came despite his repeated calls. Li Huowang got it: Nurse Wang was sneaking in her Mary Sue dramas again on night shift. She always slacked off like this.
He craned his neck down at his chest, swaddled in the blue-and-white hospital gown, and twisted desperately, trying to feel through pressure whether the jade pendant was there or not.
But with his body bound so tightly, he couldn't tell—now he felt it, now he didn't. After a few futile tries, he gave up in defeat.
Yawning, Li Huowang lay there on the bed, praying Nurse Wang would glance at the camera after her binge.
In the dead of night, even the second floor for critical patients was utterly still. Li Huowang dozed off into a haze. When he woke again, he was sprawled on the cold cave floor.
He was right back in position, but not a single one of those attempted escapees remained.
"Tch, as if a bunch of NPCs like you could take me down?" Li Huowang fished the jade pendant from his robe, gave it a quick toss in his palm, then tucked it away again.
Half a stick of incense later, he returned to the big communal sleeping quarters and lay atop his hay pile, patiently awaiting dawn. The thought of the pendant's worth had him too wired to sleep.
With no clock, Li Huowang lost track of time, but when the brothers beside him began stirring, he sat up as well.
"It's getting light here, so Auntie Wang's shift must be ending. Should I head back now and check? Nurse Ai's way more on the ball than her."
As Li Huowang wavered, hurried footsteps echoed from the entrance.
A Daoist boy in a black robe, hair bound atop his head, burst in looking frantic.
"Hurry up, everyone! Master's ordered all hands to Huian Hall!!"
The abrupt announcement left them all baffled, but an order from Master was no order to question.
Soon enough, every disciple packed the largest cavern of so-called Huian Hall, torchlight starkly revealing the bewilderment on every face.
Li Huowang spotted it quick: the crowd was short a few bodies. Besides Xuanyang, several of Danyangzi's personal disciples—including that mangy head—were missing too.
"Oho, they all bolted together?" He grinned like a spectator at a show; the scene felt just like bingeing a drama.
An ugly head poked from the dark tunnel. Everyone but Li Huowang instinctively bowed their heads.
It was their master, Danyangzi.
"Cough~!" The single cough set every spine rigid.
"Last night at second watch, someone tried to run—including two of this Daoist's own disciples. Breaks my heart!!"
Heartbreak on his lips, but the malice twisting his face was thick enough to touch.
"Found out already? Xuanyang and his crew really suck." Li Huowang smacked his lips.
"No rules, no order—break the rules, face the punishment. That's the Western Mountain Eastern Splendor Sect way! Follow me."
The disciples scarcely breathed as they trailed silently after Danyangzi.
Through caverns large and small, past a rushing underground river, they soon reached a damp, classroom-sized grotto.
Li Huowang saw the previous night's escapees—all of them—hogtied and heaped in the corner.
Worn and listless, they thrashed wildly at the sight of their master, desperate to speak, but the rags crammed in their mouths silenced them.
Danyangzi clearly had no interest in excuses. He flipped his hand into a Dao seal and thrust it forward. "Open!"
The scoured-smooth floor yawned into a massive pit. The bound escapees plunged straight in.
Instantly, frenzied muffled yells and screams erupted from below.
The horrific sight had many Daoist boys' legs quaking, eyes squeezing shut.
"Closer, all of you! This is what happens to runners!" Danyangzi's command blanched every face bone-white.
No one dared defy Master. Shoving and stumbling, they crowded the pit's edge.
It was pitch-black down there—inky void.
The round abyss swirled like a vortex, ready to swallow them whole.
Peering hard, Li Huowang made out a massive black cauldron inside, its rim embedded with warped talismans.
Something writhed within, but he couldn't make it out. All his senses caught was the acrid, gut-churning reek of blood wafting up.
Whatever lurked inside was without doubt deadly dangerous.
"Hallucinations shouldn't be able to hurt me, right? Never happened before."
Easy to say, but his heart raced anyway—he braced to snap back to the hospital at any second.
"Swish—!" A squirming black shadow lashed out, coiled around the brother next to Li Huowang, and yanked him down.
Panic shattered the group. They scrambled back to the slick walls. Without Danyangzi's glare pinning them, they'd have bolted.
Terror gripped nearly every face as they shuddered, minds racing to name the horror.
Not Li Huowang. Closest to the action, he'd seen it plain.
A mass of black, meat-textured sludge, its slimy skin sprouting clusters of short, quivering black tentacles!
That alone confirmed it: whatever Danyangzi kept down there wasn't natural to this world.
What exactly? Li Huowang neither knew nor cared to creep closer and confirm.
He knew it was all brain-made, yet couldn't fathom why he'd conjure something so vile.
Gazing at the hyper-real surroundings, a chilling thought struck him. "What if this horrifying, twisted world... is real?"
The idea shook Li Huowang to his core. He recalled the dead from before—if they'd been real, not delusions, then that thing's grip would've killed him too?
Suffocating dread nearly broke him. He gulped deep breaths, then recited Doctor Li's self-help mantra.
"It's all hallucinations—no matter how real, still hallucinations. Li Huowang, don't lose yourself in them again. You made this stuff—what's to fear?"
"Yang Na's waiting for me. I won't let her down. I can beat this! I will!"
His self-talk steadied him, arming him to confront the nightmare calmly.
(End of chapter)