Achieving Dao and Becoming Immortal

Before him lay two metallic, fist-sized red pills, two flesh pills that writhed like living creatures, and two black pills that were decayed and stung the eyes with their stench.

Li Huowang nodded in satisfaction. He had put everything he could think of into them. With so many ingredients loaded in, these would definitely kill a man—not a shred of life left behind.

A stick of incense was planted beside him, marking the time remaining in the year. According to the technique he had made up on the spot, he had to cultivate at the exact moment of the Year-End Transition to absorb the spiritual energy descending from the Heavenly Dao.

Li Huowang sat cross-legged, first picking up the fist-sized red pill, ready at hand. Death was imminent, and he found himself surprisingly calm.

Yes, he hadn't prepared any backup plan at all.

Li Huowang understood clearly: he had to eat these pills himself. If he didn't, Danyangzi would never put them in his mouth.

Never mind that the old man had just played the part of a kindly elder during the New Year's Eve dinner. What he called "ascending together as immortals" was really just using him as a test subject for the medicine.

But no matter how much Danyangzi calculated, he never counted on one thing: Li Huowang simply didn't care about his own life.

Li Huowang had long since grown indifferent to life and death. He never belonged here in the first place.

The only reason he was still alive now was to watch a piece of garbage like Danyangzi walk right into his grave under his own guidance.

At that moment, Danyangzi sat across from him, also picking up a red pill first.

Under both their gazes, the glowing tip of the incense slowly burned down.

Just as the incense was about to burn out, Li Huowang took a deep breath, stuffed the pill into his mouth, and swallowed it whole.

But Danyangzi, who had been about to eat his own pill, stopped his motion and fixed his full attention on Li Huowang's every move.

Li Huowang, his expression now somewhat manic, seemed not to notice. He swallowed the remaining two pills directly, then closed his eyes, placed his hands in a mudra on his knees.

Sweat streamed down his face. His seated body began to tremble, yet an uncontrollable ecstasy gradually spread across his features.

"I have so much Innate Spiritual Energy! This... this is... so that's how it is—I understand, I understand!! I'm about to become an immortal~!"

Hearing this, a flicker of urgency crossed Danyangzi's eyes, but he still didn't take the pill immediately. Only when he saw wisps of white smoke rising from the top of Li Huowang's head did he wolf down all three pills in a gulp.

As Danyangzi sat cross-legged, closed his eyes, and began circulating the Grand and Lesser Circulation, Li Huowang slowly opened his eyes. He looked at his master, his smile even wider than before.

When he saw that Danyangzi's head was also emitting white smoke like his own, and that something black was crawling through his veins to cover his entire body, Li Huowang loosened his crossed legs, clutched his violently aching stomach, and burst into wild laughter.

"Hahaha, Leper Head! Leper Head!! You're not becoming an immortal! You're becoming a ghost! We'll keep each other company on the Bridge of Helplessness, hahaha!!"

Danyangzi seemed to have heard him, but he showed no reaction. Eyes tightly shut, teeth clenched, he sat rooted in place, frantically cycling the Inner and Outer Grand Circulation technique.

"Still cultivating? I made all that up! I copied it from xianxia novels, hahaha—ah, my stomach hurts so bad, hahaha."

Li Huowang crawled on the ground, slowly inching over to Danyangzi's side. He stared with a mad grin at the man's pallid face, then raised his trembling right hand and slapped him across the cheek. "Hey, you deaf? Your elder is talking to you."

He slapped him again with the back of his hand. Danyangzi still didn't stir.

Li Huowang fumbled out a pill, stuffed it into his mouth, and immediately his veins bulged across his body as he felt a surge of power.

"I told you to stop cultivating! Didn't you hear me?" Li Huowang punched Danyangzi square in the face, caving in his underbite jaw and nose.

Blood filling his mouth, Danyangzi's eyes snapped open, glaring viciously at Li Huowang. With a sweep of his Daoist robe, he sent Li Huowang flying.

"Get lost! You inner demons dare to obstruct this Daoist's ascension?! I'm about to become an immortal! The Founding Ancestor is coming to fetch me!"

Li Huowang, knocked to the ground, didn't get up. He just lay there, staring at him, muttering to himself, "Crazy. That obsession with becoming an immortal has driven him completely mad. Ow, my stomach really hurts."

And so it went—one sitting, one lying—as time slowly passed. The pain in Li Huowang's abdomen grew more and more intense. Driven by instinct, his body curled up like a shrimp.

"Hiss, why does this hurt so much? How long do I have to suffer like this? I really regret not bringing a knife to slit my throat," Li Huowang groaned, writhing on the ground in agony.

Under the searing pain, his consciousness gradually blurred. In his daze, he saw Yang Na's face again. "Yang Na, have you come to take me?"

Yang Na's face quickly melted and reassembled into his attending doctor's. "Patient in bed 14 is losing consciousness. Preliminary diagnosis: food poisoning! Quick—bring the electric suction unit! We need to pump his stomach!"

Li Huowang slowly closed his eyes, a barely audible whisper slipping from his lips.

"Pump your grandmother's stomach. Don't you remember? This is a mental hospital. Where would you get a stomach pump? Can't you hallucinations at least be logically consistent?"

With those final words, Li Huowang's awareness lost all sensation of his surroundings.

He felt very comfortable now, because his stomach had finally stopped hurting.

Li Huowang felt his body falling endlessly, never hitting the bottom.

"Huowang, hang on—you promised me!" A vague, urgent female voice exploded in his ear.

After who knows how long, Li Huowang's eyes suddenly snapped open. Propping himself up on his hands, he began to vomit violently.

A lump of deformed flesh mixed with black fluid, some strands of hair, bits of dumpling scraps, and a few fragments of internal organs came heaving out of Li Huowang's mouth.

The flesh lying in the black water twitched a few times and then went still.

This sudden turn of events left Li Huowang frozen in place. He was still alive? How was that possible? And if he was still alive, then Danyangzi—!

At that thought, cold sweat poured down Li Huowang's back. He instinctively whipped his head around. Then his mouth fell open to its widest. "Holy crap—did he become some kind of... god?"

What he saw was his so-called master's body, now completely deformed. Three hideous mouths had sprouted from his head, full of disgusting yellow teeth, writhing and intertwining as they gaped wide at the ceiling.

And it wasn't just his head—his body had undergone a drastic transformation too. Feathers stuck together with something like pitch jutted out like spikes, forcing their way through the flesh.

"What is this? Three Flowers Crowned? Feather Transformation and Ascension?"

Just as this thought burst into Li Huowang's mind, the three mouths opened to their fullest, and from them came Danyangzi's voice in three tones—young, middle-aged, and old—all at once: "So that's how it is! This Daoist understands! I understand!! Hahaha!!"

"BANG!!" With a deafening explosion, Danyangzi's entire deformed body burst apart. Flesh and blood splattered across the entire pill refining room.