Chapter 4: Black Cauldron

Seeing Xuan Yang cover Li Huowang's mouth, the others holding tinderboxes quickly rushed forward, surrounding Li Huowang with hostile gazes.

"You're not leaving, are you? Then you'll die here today! We absolutely won't let you go and inform that bald-headed guy!"

Despite his current life-or-death situation, Li Huowang remained completely unfazed. He rolled his eyes in exasperation, silently cursing the plot progression of this hallucination, then closed his eyes and began to take deep breaths.

When he opened his eyes again, he found himself strapped to a hospital bed with wide leather belts. His fellow disciples, who had surrounded him, were gone.

"Aunt Wang, I'm awake! Can you help me untie myself?" Li Huowang called into the microphone by his bedside, urgently wanting to check if the jade pendant was still in his clothes.

However, after calling for a long time with no response, Li Huowang realized that Nurse Wang was secretly watching a Mary Sue drama again during her night shift. She was always so fond of slacking off.

Li Huowang looked down at his chest, covered by the blue and white hospital gown, and desperately twisted, trying to feel for the jade pendant by pressing against his chest. But his body was tightly restrained, and he felt both a presence and an absence. After several attempts, he reluctantly gave up.

Yawning, Li Huowang could only lie on the bed, hoping that Nurse Wang would mercifully check the camera after finishing her show.

In the dead of night, even the second floor, where critical patients were kept, was eerily quiet. Li Huowang drifted off to sleep. When he awoke again, he found himself lying on the cold cavern floor.

He was still in the same spot, but the others who had tried to escape were nowhere to be seen.

"Hmph, do you NPCs really think you can deal with me?" Li Huowang pulled out the jade pendant from his pocket, lightly tossed it in his palm, then tucked it back into his robes.

Half an incense stick later, he returned to the communal sleeping area where he stayed. Lying in the hay, he patiently awaited daylight, too excited to sleep at the thought of the jade pendant's value.

Without a clock, Li Huowang didn't know how much time had passed. When he saw his fellow disciples beside him starting to wake up, he sat up as well.

"It's daylight here, so Aunt Wang should be off duty by now. Should I go back and check first? Nurse Ai is much more dedicated than she is."

Just as Li Huowang was hesitating, a flurry of hurried footsteps approached the entrance. A young Daoist acolyte, wearing a black robe and with his hair tied in a topknot, frantically scurried in from outside.

"Hurry up, everyone! Master wants everyone to gather at Huian Hall!"

This sudden news left everyone bewildered, but since it was their master's command, they had no reason to refuse.

Soon, all the disciples had gathered in the largest cavern, known as Huian Hall. The torchlight clearly illuminated the confusion on everyone's faces. Li Huowang acutely noticed something: some people were missing from the crowd. Besides Xuan Yang, several of Bald-headed Master's personal disciples were also absent.

"Oh, did they run away together?" he thought, enjoying the drama. The scene before him felt like watching a TV series.

When an ugly head emerged from the dark tunnel, all the acolytes, except Li Huowang, instinctively lowered their heads. It was their master, Danyingzi.

"Cough~!" A single cough made everyone tense up.

"Last night, during the second watch, some tried to escape, including two of this Daoist priest's personal disciples. This Daoist priest is greatly pained by this!" Though he spoke of pain, the ferocity on his face was so intense it almost solidified.

"They were caught already? Xuan Yang and those guys are truly pathetic," Li Huowang muttered, curling his lip.

"As the saying goes, without rules, nothing can be accomplished. Mistakes must be punished. These are the rules of my Xishan Donghua Sect! Follow me, everyone."

All the disciples held their breath, silently following Danyingzi forward.

Passing through various large and small caverns, and then along the bank of a swift underground river, they soon arrived at a damp cavern the size of a classroom. Li Huowang saw that all the people who had attempted to escape the previous night were now tied up tightly and piled in a corner.

Looking dejected, they immediately began to struggle agitatedly upon seeing their master, seemingly wanting to plead their case. However, the rags stuffed in their mouths prevented them from saying anything.

Danyingzi seemed uninterested in their pleas. With a single hand sign, he pointed forward. "Open!"

The smooth, eroded floor of the cavern suddenly opened into a large hole, and the escaping individuals instantly fell inside. The next moment, muffled, hysterical shouts and screams, accompanied by the sound of flesh tearing, continuously erupted from within the hole.

Facing this terrifying scene, many acolytes' legs began to tremble, and they wished they could close their eyes.

"Come closer! This is what happens to those who try to escape!" Danyingzi's words made everyone's faces turn several shades paler instantly.

No one dared to defy their master's command, so everyone pushed forward to the edge of the hole. The hole was utterly dark, pitch black. The pitch-black circular hole resembled a whirlpool, as if it would drag everyone into it.

After careful discernment, Li Huowang saw a large black cauldron within the hole, its rim pressed down by twisted talismans. Something seemed to be moving inside the cauldron, but Li Huowang couldn't make it out clearly. The only information his senses could gather was the pungent, nauseating smell of blood.

Whatever was contained within, it was certainly very dangerous.

"Things within a hallucination shouldn't be able to harm me, logically. That has never happened before." Despite his words, his heart clenched, and he prepared to retreat to the hospital at any moment.

"Whoosh—!" A swirling mass of black shadows instantly shot out from the hole, wrapped around a disciple beside Li Huowang, and abruptly pulled him back in.

Everyone was terrified by this sight, retreating one after another to the smooth walls of the cavern. If Danyingzi hadn't been standing nearby, they would have likely fled long ago. Almost everyone present now wore an expression of extreme terror, their hearts trembling as they guessed what that thing was.

However, Li Huowang was not among those speculating, for he had been standing the closest and had seen it clearly. It was a mass of black, fleshy substance with a slimy, viscous skin covered in clusters of short, constantly twitching black tentacles!

Based on this alone, Li Huowang was certain that whatever Danyingzi was cultivating in that hole was definitely not a normal earthly substance. As for what it precisely was, Li Huowang couldn't guess and didn't want to go closer to look again.

Although he knew these things were products of his own mind, Li Huowang genuinely wondered why he would conjure such entities. Li Huowang surveyed his incredibly realistic surroundings, and a terrifying thought suddenly struck him: "Could this horrifying, bizarre world be real?"

This thought instantly made Li Huowang's body tremble. He remembered the people who had died previously. If they were real and not merely his hallucinations, would he also die if that thing had dragged him in?

Li Huowang was almost overwhelmed by this suffocating dread. He took several deep breaths, then immediately began to counsel himself using the methods Dr. Li had taught him.

"These are all hallucinations; no matter how real they seem, they are just hallucinations. Li Huowang, you absolutely cannot get lost in these illusions again. You created them, what is there to fear?"

"Yang Na is still waiting for me; I cannot let her down. I can overcome all of this! I definitely can!"

Through Li Huowang's self-counseling, his emotions gradually stabilized, allowing him to calmly face everything before him.