Before him lay two fist-sized Red Pills with a metallic sheen, two Flesh Pills that wriggled like living creatures, and two rotten Black Pills whose stench stung the eyes.
Li Huowang nodded in satisfaction. He had put in everything he could think of. With so much material added, these would definitely kill someone without leaving the slightest trace of life.
A stick of incense had been placed beside them, representing the time remaining in the year. According to the cultivation method he had made up, one had to cultivate at the very moment of the Year-End Transition in order to absorb the Spiritual Energy bestowed by the Heavenly Dao.
Li Huowang sat cross-legged, first picking up the fist-sized Red Pill and holding it ready. He was about to die, yet he found himself surprisingly calm.
That was right. He had not prepared any backup plan at all.
Li Huowang understood that he would definitely have to eat these pills himself. If he did not, Danyangzi would never put them in his own mouth.
Though he had just put on a kindly face during the New Year's Eve dinner, speaking of ascending together, he was really only here to use Li Huowang as a test subject.
But no matter how carefully Danyangzi calculated, he had never accounted for Li Huowang not caring about his own life at all.
Li Huowang had long since taken life and death lightly. He did not belong here in the first place.
The only purpose of his life now was to watch garbage as disgusting as Danyangzi walk into the grave under his guidance.
Danyangzi was sitting opposite him now, likewise picking up a red pill first.
Under the two men's watchful gazes, the glowing tip of the incense slowly burned lower.
Just as the incense was about to burn out, Li Huowang took a deep breath, stuffed the pill in his hand into his mouth, and swallowed it whole.
But Danyangzi stopped midway through raising his own pill to his mouth, staring intently at Li Huowang's every movement.
Li Huowang, his expression somewhat feverish with excitement, seemed not to notice at all. After swallowing the remaining two pills as well, he closed his eyes, formed hand seals, and rested them on his knees.
Sweat streamed down his face. Li Huowang's seated body began to tremble, but an uncontrollable ecstasy gradually appeared on his face.
"I have so much Innate Spiritual Energy! Th-this is... So that's how it is. I understand, I understand!! I'm going to become immortal~!"
A trace of anxiety appeared in Danyangzi's eyes at those words, but he still did not take the pills immediately. Only when he saw wisps of white smoke rising from Li Huowang's head did he wolf down all three pills.
As cross-legged Danyangzi closed his eyes and began circulating the Grand and Lesser Circulation, Li Huowang slowly opened his eyes. Looking at the master before him, his smile became even broader.
When he saw white smoke rising from Danyangzi's head as well, and black things crawling along his blood vessels to cover his entire body, Li Huowang released his crossed legs. Clutching his agonizingly painful stomach, he burst into wild laughter.
"Ha ha ha! Leper Head! Leper Head!! You can't become immortal anymore! You can only become a ghost! Let's keep each other company on the Bridge of Helplessness, ha ha ha!!"
Danyangzi seemed to have heard him, but he gave no response. His eyes remained tightly shut and his teeth clenched as he sat in place, frantically circulating the Inner and Outer Grand Circulation.
"You're still cultivating? I made all that up! I copied it all from xianxia novels, ha ha ha! Ow, my stomach hurts so much, ha ha ha."
Li Huowang crawled across the ground toward Danyangzi, gazing crazily at his deathly pale face. Trembling, he raised his right hand and slapped him across the face. "Hey, are you deaf? I'm talking to you."
He backhanded him with another slap, but Danyangzi still did not react.
Trembling, Li Huowang pulled out a pill and stuffed it into his mouth. Then veins bulged all over his body, and he felt filled with strength.
"I told you to stop cultivating! Didn't you hear me?" Li Huowang drove a fist into Danyangzi's face, smashing his protruding jaw and nose inward.
Danyangzi, his mouth full of blood, suddenly opened his eyes and glared viciously at Li Huowang. With a sweep of his Daoist Robe, he sent Li Huowang flying.
"Get lost! You Inner Demons think you can stop this Daoist from becoming immortal?! I'm about to become a celestial! The Founding Ancestor is about to come receive me!"
Li Huowang, flung away and sprawled on the ground, did not get back up. He simply lay there watching him and muttered, "He's gone mad. His obsession with becoming immortal has driven him completely insane. Ow, my stomach really hurts."
One sat cross-legged while the other lay down, and time slowly passed. The pain in Li Huowang's abdomen grew more and more intense. Driven by instinct, his body curled into the shape of a shrimp.
"Hiss, why does it hurt this much? How long am I supposed to suffer? I really regret not bringing a knife to slit my throat," Li Huowang groaned, curled into a shrimp and rolling all over the floor in pain.
Under the intense agony, Li Huowang's consciousness gradually became hazy. In his daze, he saw Yang Na's face again. "Yang Na, have you come to take me away?"
Yang Na's face rapidly melted, then reassembled into the face of his attending physician. "Bed 14's consciousness is blurred. Preliminary diagnosis: food poisoning! Quickly! Bring the electric suction device over and perform gastric lavage!"
Li Huowang slowly closed his eyes, and an exceedingly faint voice slipped from his lips.
"Wash your uncle's stomach. Don't forget, you're a psychiatric hospital. Where would you even get a gastric lavage machine? Can you hallucinations at least make your logic consistent?"
After saying those final words, Li Huowang's consciousness lost all sensation of his surroundings.
He felt very comfortable now, because his stomach finally no longer hurt.
Li Huowang felt his body falling continuously downward, yet he never reached the bottom.
"Huowang, hold on! You promised me!" A hazy, urgent woman's voice exploded beside his ear.
After an unknown amount of time, Li Huowang suddenly snapped open his eyes. Supporting himself on the ground with both hands, he began vomiting violently.
A misshapen mass of flesh and blood mixed with black water and a few strands of hair, along with dumpling scraps and fragments of internal organs, poured directly from Li Huowang's mouth.
The flesh lying in the black water twitched a few times, then stopped moving.
This sudden turn of events left Li Huowang frozen. I'm still alive? How is that possible? Then if I'm alive, doesn't that mean Danyangzi—!
At that thought, cold sweat immediately poured down Li Huowang's body. He instinctively whipped his head around. Then his mouth opened wider and wider of its own accord. "Holy shit, did he become some kind of god... what?"
He saw that his bargain-bin master's body had completely mutated. Three savage gaping mouths had extended from his head, their disgusting yellow teeth entangled with one another as they stretched wide toward the ceiling.
Aside from his head, his body had also undergone tremendous changes. Feathers glued together with tar burst from his flesh like spikes.
"What the hell is this? Three Flowers Crowned, Feather Transformation and Ascension?"
The moment that thought burst from Li Huowang's mind, the three mouths opened to their widest. From within them came Danyangzi's youthful, middle-aged, and elderly voices at once. "So that's how it is. This Daoist understands, I understand!! Ha ha ha!!"
Bang!! Accompanied by a thunderous explosion, Danyangzi's entire malformed body instantly burst apart. Flesh and blood splattered throughout the Pill Refining Room.
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