Burning Life

A chill curled around his neck like a venomous snake coiling around his throat.

"Spare... spare me..."

Wang Lao'er froze where he stood, not daring to move. The door right within reach had become an insurmountable chasm, impossible to cross.

"Old bastard, you sure ran fast!"

Malice flashed through Li Fang's eyes as he tugged at empty air with his fingers.

The next moment, Wang Lao'er dropped to his knees. His body pitched forward stiffly, his head slamming into the door with a bang. He slowly slid down, sprawled dead before it like a limp loach, a strand of hair still wrapped around his neck.

"What kind of monster is this?!"

"Has the village chief been possessed by some evil thing?"

"Damn it, get out of here!"

The other village elders were jolted with terror. They sprang nimbly to their feet and hurried away from the grotesquely strange village chief, moving with an agility no seventy- or eighty-year-old men should possess.

"It was this old man's fault. If I had listened to that boy Wu sooner, things would never have come to this." Elder Li remained seated where he was. Setting down his cane, he beat his chest and stamped his feet, his eyes filled with tangled regret.

Wu Feng, who had been confronting Han Zhong nearby, suddenly recalled his master's description. His expression turned unreadable as he silently retreated several steps.

"Cousin-uncle, as blood relatives of the same clan, I won't let you die in pain," Li Fang said coldly and indifferently, the back of his head facing Elder Li.

"Is that so? Then should I thank you for your great mercy?" Elder Li cast aside his sorrow, suddenly looked up, and spoke earnestly.

"And..." Blood color surfaced over Elder Li's withered hands as he forcibly twisted Li Fang's turned head back around. "When this old man is speaking to you, you won't even face me. Are you looking down on this old man?"

"You... you know martial arts?!"

The village chief's face, forcibly turned back, suddenly went blank.

In his memories, this cousin-uncle knew some martial arts, but only crude, shallow techniques—enough to deal with ordinary people at most.

Yet the burst of blood and vitality from him just now was actually comparable to Han Zhong's!

Elder Li's ten twig-like fingers pressed tightly against Li Fang's skull, his eyes brimming with resolve. "Your becoming like this is ultimately half this old man's fault. This old man was too softhearted. This old man was helping a tyrant do evil!"

"To face the ancestors of the Li clan with a clear conscience, this old man will take you, this unfilial descendant, down with me to kowtow and confess our sins before our forefathers!"

Boom!

Red lines on his arms blazed like the lingering radiance of the setting sun. Elder Li's clothes crumbled into ash, and crimson lines emerged across his exhausted, decrepit body. Orange-yellow flames burst from those lines and gathered into a rainbow-like torrent.

Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle—

Grayish-white mist erupted with a roar. Li Fang's head was like a burning coal tossed into a water pit, while an icy aura blanketed the entire ancestral hall.

"Ahhh!!"

Li Fang let out a scream, but then another scream overlapped it. A second voice sounded from Li Fang's lower abdomen. Flames wrapped around the two of them, crimson fire blazing and revealing half a human face on Li Fang's belly.

It was the face of a middle-aged man, his eyes pitch-black. His flesh and skin had fused with the surrounding belly, as though he had grown directly from Li Fang's body.

The searing flames engulfed them both. Li Fang reached out and grabbed Elder Li's hands, pulling with all his strength, but the old man's arms were like red-hot iron pincers. Not only would they not budge, they were scorching hot.

The blazing heat seemed to twist even the air. The hanging curtains suddenly rolled back, and the incense on the offering table burst into flame.

"Ahhh... let go of me! Let go of me!"

Li Fang's flesh showed faint signs of fusing. He struggled violently, shattering the blue bricks beneath his feet and sending fragments flying as he screamed himself hoarse.

Elder Li remained silent. His flesh shriveled and contracted like a deflating balloon, skin clinging tightly to bone. He squeezed the last of the blood and vitality from his dried-up body, determined to drag Li Fang down to hell with this dying shell.

At the same time, Han Zhong started in alarm and twisted his feet, about to intervene, when a fist streaked past his ear like a cannonball leaving the barrel.

"Senior Brother, Junior Brother has long wished to experience your Golden Bell Shield."

Without changing expression, Wu Feng blocked Han Zhong's path.

"You had planned all of this from the beginning, hadn't you?" Han Zhong's voice remained harsh and grating. He swept his gaze around before looking at Wu Feng blandly.

"Though there were some unexpected developments, everything seems to have become a foregone conclusion. Your plan has been exposed, Senior Brother. Surrender quietly."

Several village elders had already scrambled to the door. With just one step, they could push it open and tell the villagers outside the truth. Meanwhile, Li Fang and Han Zhong had both been held up and could no longer carry out their hidden schemes.

And there was also the mysterious, powerful Chu He lurking in the shadows.

Everything seemed settled.

But...

Han Zhong suddenly smiled—a savage smile.

His white teeth looked like the blood-soaked maw of some sinister beast.

Wu Feng's expression shifted slightly, unease surging in his heart.

"You've done well, but you never should have allowed us to gather the villagers here. That was your greatest mistake!"

Han Zhong abruptly turned toward the screaming Li Fang and said impatiently, "Stop playing around. At your age, you still have that kind of fetish?"

The screams stopped abruptly.

Under Elder Li's astonished gaze, Li Fang, who had been writhing in unbearable agony a moment ago, wore a mocking grin the next, like a cat toying with a mouse.

"Cousin-uncle, I already told you I'm no longer human. Why are you still using methods meant for humans against me?" Li Fang's entire body shuddered, and his melting flesh rapidly healed. Not only that, his aged face began to grow younger bit by bit. His hair turned black, and his skin tightened.

He spat out a mass of strange hair. Those black strands, like tentacles, ignored the gradually weakening flames and climbed onto Elder Li's neck.

"Even if you twist my head off, I can still leap about full of life. My true body has long since ceased to be inside this aged shell."

Li Fang's thick, large hands pried open Elder Li's fingers one by one from around his head. "This body is merely giving off its last gleam and warmth, just like you—burning away its remaining worth."

"Pfft!"

Elder Li's eyes bulged as he spat out a mouthful of blood.

His peak aura instantly plummeted into the abyss. The surging flames of blood and vitality went out in an instant, and his entire body sank into the state of an oil-drained lamp burning its last.

His death was only a matter of time.

"I wanted to take you, this scourge, with me before dying, but now I can't do it. What a pity. If only I were a little younger, if only I hadn't suffered that injury back then..." Elder Li's clouded eyes were filled with intense unwillingness.

His consciousness was already badly blurred. He did not even notice that black strands of hair had tightly strangled his neck as he collapsed in resentment.

Li Fang fell silent as he looked at his cousin-uncle, now like nothing more than a skeleton.

"I said I wouldn't let you die in pain, and I won't."

With that, he turned to look at Wu Feng, who was fighting alone.

One evenly matched Han Zhong, one sinister and terrifying Li Fang—Wu Feng took a deep breath, steadied his wildly surging emotions, cast aside the urge to turn and flee, and revealed his resolve to face death with righteousness.

Master, I can only repay your grace of raising me in the next life.

But Li Fang merely glanced at Wu Feng before withdrawing his gaze. He turned toward the door that had already been opened, toward the figure stepping out from the crowd.

He walked forward step by step, his aura rising with every stride.

Like a blazing sun too brilliant to look upon!