Chapter 997 - Change

“Don’t come any closer! Stay back!”

He stood beneath the torrential rain, his gaze fixed on the scene unfolding inside. His thoughts were in complete disarray.

Yang Na looked at the seemingly possessed Li Huowang with a pained expression. She turned toward Dr. Yi outside the door and shouted, “Dr. Yi! Since you’re fully conscious, help us! Huowang can’t hold off all these Simings from Fu Shengtian alone!”

“I... I...” Yi Donglai’s breathing quickened and turned more erratic. He clenched his teeth and slapped his forehead uncontrollably.

He even wanted to grab a mirror to check if he looked younger. He wanted to see if his previous experiences were real or just hallucinations.

For the first time, he understood why his patients acted the way they did.

Suddenly, Li Huowang burst from the debris with his military knife in hand, still streaked in dust and blood. He lunged forward, viciously kicking another clay statue to his left.

The impact toppled the statue, making it crash against a nearby column along with Li Huowang.

Creak!

The wood splintered as the half-rotten column began to bend and distort.

Crack!

Another sound quickly followed as the column snapped. The moss-covered tiles began to fall from above, increasing in number.

“Get out! The temple is collapsing! You’ll both be buried inside if you don’t get out!” Yi Donglai warned urgently. Noticing the temple shake, he momentarily put aside his confusion.

Yang Na’s heart skipped a beat. She grabbed Li Huowang’s arm and tried to pull him outside.

Li Huowang had no desire to remain in such a predicament, but he was stuck. His left foot was trapped within the chest of a clay statue, and he couldn’t pull it free no matter how hard he tried.

As the tiles continued to fall and the temple tilted further, he shoved Yang Na toward the exit without hesitation.

The next moment, a disturbing gulp from above chilled him to the very bone.

His body trembled uncontrollably, though he wasn’t the one shaking. The white tassels from the Lion Dance Palace were vibrating. They vibrated harder and harder until they dissolved into streams of blood that dripped down his frame. With the tassels gone, Jiang Xiangshou also started to separate from his body.

Unable to escape, he sensed something and looked up sharply. There was an oppressive, hollowed, and inverted black mountain. It filled his entire field of vision.

Something was roaring and thrashing within while the exuded Heavenly Dao caused Li Huowang’s figure to erode.

The inverted black mountain pressed down with unyielding pressure. He suddenly understood that this wasn’t a mountain at all. It was a tooth. Something was trying to devour him.

If just a tooth was so large, how enormous must the Siming of Fu Shengtian be? And what power did it hold?

Li Huowang figured it out, but it was already too late. The tooth descended, and he could only watch as the abyss behind it pulled him into the darkness.

He didn’t die. He began seeing fragmented memories in a state between dream and reality. Some were snippets from his childhood, or maybe just memories.

In his dimly lit home, his mother, Sun Xiaoqin, was cheerfully carrying a cake toward him. He remembered this scene from his tenth birthday. He’d spent the entire day playing games, and it had been one of the happiest days of his life.

Out of nowhere, the darkness crept in from the left. The scene lit up once more for a fleeting moment. The cake frosting had splattered onto the floor, and the ribbon that had once adorned the cake box now dangled from the ceiling fan.

The ribbon was wrapped around Sun Xiaoqin’s elongated tongue, dragging her body along. The image stopped here, just before Li Huowang.

The image froze in Li Huowang’s mind as well. From that point on, his mother was absent from his memories.

His health deteriorated, becoming sickly and frail as though deprived of his mother’s presence. His complexion worsened, and he even seemed shorter.

This was only the beginning. All his cherished memories gradually gave way to scenes of despair.

He saw his father spiral into alcoholism, picking him up and beating him mercilessly. Eventually, his father drank himself to death on the sofa.

Li Huowang felt his heart darken. His personality changed, and resentment consumed him.

No! This isn’t right! It shouldn’t be like this!

Horrified, Li Huowang struggled desperately in the darkness. He didn’t know what was going on, but he could feel that something was seriously wrong.

He saw himself pulling out one of Yang Na’s fingernails and biting off her fingers one by one. He screamed in fury.

No! These aren’t my memories! They’re not mine!

Li Huowang opened his skull in the darkness, reaching in and yanking something out.

Those depressing memories disappeared, but his old memories didn’t return. Only a blank, empty space remained.

I need to get out of here! I will get out of here!

Li Huowang gathered the last of his Dragon Qi into his hand and plunged it into the darkness. The rain outside mixed with flashes of lightning, which burst inside.

A rough hand and a delicate hand reached inside, grabbing his clothes and yanking him out of the temple ruins.

The cold rain continued to pour and splashed on his face.

Li Huowang was in pain, but he ignored his injuries and grabbed Yang Na’s hands to inspect them closely.

His pupils constricted sharply when he saw her right index finger was indeed severed at the root.

Yang Na shook her head. “It’s okay. I don’t blame you. I know you couldn’t control yourself back then. Let’s leave this place quickly. It’s too dangerous.”