CH 4

Seeing Xuan Yang covering Li Huowang’s mouth, the others with the torch quickly rushed up and surrounded Li Huowang in the middle.

“Don’t you want to leave? Then you can die here today! We absolutely can’t let you go and give information to that dirty master!”

Regarding his current situation, Li Huowang didn’t panic at all. After rolling his white eyes silently, he cursed the plot direction of the illusion in his heart, then closed his eyes and began to take a deep breath.

When he opened his eyes again, he found himself tied to the hospital bed with a wide belt, and the senior brothers and junior brothers who surrounded him had disappeared.

“Aunt Wang, I’m awake, can you help me loosen my belt?” 

Li Huowang shouted to the night nurse into the microphone beside the bed, eager to see if the jade pendant was in his clothes now.

However, after shouting for a long time, there was no response. Li Huowang understood that Nurse Wang was secretly chasing Marisu TV dramas while on night shift again. She always likes to be lazy.

Li Huowang looked down at his chest wrapped in his sick suit and twisted desperately, trying to sense whether there was a jade pendant on his chest through squeezing.

However, his body is now tightly bound, and he cannot feel whether the jade pendant is in his clothes. After several attempts, he reluctantly gave up.

After yawning, Li Huowang could only lie in bed, praying that Nurse Wang could check the camera in the ward after watching the TV series.

In the middle of the night, even the second floor where the critically ill patients are confined is very quiet, and Li Huowang sleeps in a daze. 

When he woke up again, he found himself lying on the cold karst cave ground.He’s still in that position, but the guys who tried to escape have disappeared.

“Haha, you NPCs also want to deal with me?” 

Li Huowang took out the jade pendant from his arms, gently flipped it in his palm, and then stuffed it back into his arms.

After half an hour, he returned to his place of residence and lay patiently waiting for dawn in the haystack. At the thought of the value of the jade pendant, he was so excited that he couldn’t sleep at all.

Without a clock, Li Huowang didn’t know how long it took. When he saw the senior brothers on both sides starting to wake up, he also sat up.

“It’s daybreak here, and Aunt Wang is also changing shifts, right? Why don’t I go back and take a look now? Nurse Ai is much more dedicated than her.”

Just as Li Huowang was hesitating, there was a rush of footsteps at the door.

A Taoist boy wearing a black Taoist robe and his hair tied up panicked and entered from outside.

“Hurry up, everyone! Master asked everyone to gather at Hui’an Hall!”

The sudden news puzzled everyone, but since the master had asked them to go, they had no reason to refuse.

Soon, in the largest karst cave in the Hui’an Hall, all the disciples arrived, and the light of the torch clearly illuminated the doubts on all faces.

Li Huowang keenly noticed that there were a few fewer people in the crowd. Apart from Xuan Yang, there were also a few inner disciples from his master.

“Ouch, did they run away together?” He thought as he watched the excitement, and the scene before him made him feel like watching a TV series.

When an ugly head poked out of the dark tunnel, everyone except Li Huowang subconsciously lowered their heads.

That’s their master, Dan Yang Tzu.

（Notes：丹Dan阳Yang子Tzu，丹in Chinese, it means red or pill，阳see the notes in the previous chapter.In Chinese, Tzu refers to a person’s honorific title. Usually, the name preceding Tzu is not their real name. In most cases, only people with noble morality and profound knowledge can use Tzu as a title.）

“Ahem……”

A cough made everyone nervous.

“At four o’clock last night, some people wanted to escape, including my two inner disciples. My mood was very uncomfortable!”

What he said was uncomfortable, but the anger on his face was very strong.

“Have they been discovered? These guys like Xuan Yang are too unprofessional,” Li Huowang thought to himself.

“There can’t be no rules here. If you make mistakes, you will be punished. This is the rule of Xishan Donghua Sect! Follow me!”

All the disciples dared not breathe and walked silently behind Dan Yang Tzu.

Through large and small karst caves, and through a turbulent underground river, they quickly arrived at a wet karst cave the size of a classroom.

Li Huowang saw that the people who had escaped last night had all been tied up and piled up in a corner.

They originally had a dull expression, but when they saw their master, they immediately struggled excitedly, as if to say something, but the rags in their mouths made them unable to say anything.

Dan Yang Tzu didn’t want to hear their excuses. He turned his hand over in front of him, made a Tao spell seal, pointed forward and said,

“Open!”

The smooth ground of the cave suddenly opened a large hole, and the people who were tied up immediately fell into the hole.

The next moment, the hysterical scream in the cave continued to ring.

Faced with this horrific scene, many Taoist children have already begun to shiver in their legs and close their eyes.

“Get closer! This is the end of running away!” Dan Yang Tzu’s words made everyone’s faces white with fear.

No one dared to disobey the master’s order, and everyone pushed and pushed to the hole.

The hole was very dark, very dark, pitch black.The dark hole was like a whirlpool, as if to suck everyone in.

After carefully observing, Li Huowang saw a large black tripod inside the cave, with some twisted runes on the edge of the tripod.

There seemed to be something moving inside the tripod, but Li Huowang couldn’t see clearly. The only information he could receive with his organs was the pungent and disgusting smell of blood inside.

No matter what’s inside, it’s definitely very dangerous.

“The things in the illusion should not hurt me. That kind of thing has never happened before.”

Despite this thought, his heart was suspended and he was ready to return to the hospital at any time.

A circle of wriggling black shadows suddenly emerged from the hole, wrapping around a junior fellow apprentice beside Li Huowang, and suddenly shrank back.

Everyone was frightened by this scene and retreated to the smooth wall of the cave. If Dan Yang Tzu hadn’t been watching, they would have run out long ago.The expressions of almost everyone present at this moment became very frightened, speculating fearfully about what that thing had just been.

However, Li Huowang was not among those who were speculating, as he had just stood closest, so he could see clearly.

It was a mass of black material with a fleshy texture, and there were many short, trembling black tentacles on the smooth, sticky skin!

Li Huowang can be sure that the things raised by Dan Yang Tzu in this cave are definitely not normal things that exist in the world.

As for what it was, Li Huowang couldn’t guess and didn’t want to go over and see it again.

Although he knows that these things are illusions in his brain, Li Huowang doesn’t understand why he invented such things?

Li Huowang looked at everything around him that was very real, and suddenly he had a terrible guess in his heart: “Does this strange world really exist?”

This conjecture instantly made Li Huowang’s body tremble, and he thought of those who had died before. 

If those people were real rather than his hallucinations, would he also die if he was caught by that thing?

Li Huowang was almost overwhelmed by fear, so he took a few deep breaths and conducted self enlightenment in the way Dr. Li taught him.

“These are all illusions, even if they are real, they are illusions. Li Huowang, you must not lose yourself in these illusions anymore. They were all created by you, what are you afraid of!? Yang Na is still waiting for me, and I cannot disappoint her. I can overcome all this! I can!”

After Li Huowang’s self enlightenment, his emotions gradually stabilized, and he was able to face everything calmly in front of him.