Chapter 419: Revised: Chapter 44 What is the End of Reincarnation?
"Cough, cough, cough..."
Daoist Bai Shuo coughed violently, his consciousness gradually returning to his body.
He looked around and found himself lying on a cold, damp bed. The faint candlelight illuminated the narrow space, less than ten square meters.
Though the room’s decor appeared fresh and elegant, it exuded an inexplicable oppressiveness.
Daoist Bai Shuo shivered; the piercing cold gnawed into his flesh and blood.
"Hiss."
He couldn’t help but clutch his head. His memories were unnervingly fragmented. The last thing he recalled was being at Zhi Mountain Temple, where he seemed to have encountered... raindrops?
"Why am I here? Could it be that Senior Brother Taiyi has met a grim fate?"
Aside from the raindrops, all he could remember was the dream he had while unconscious.
In the dream, he seemed trapped inside a container, with murmurs outside. Desperately, he struggled to escape, but it was all in vain.
"A dream, huh, a dream."
Daoist Bai Shuo laughed bitterly. The dream was clearer to him than his actual memories.
Out of instinct, he scratched his left arm and was horrified to discover that his skin had turned into charred, blackened scabs, as though burned.
Only one small patch of healthy skin remained on his left arm.
Some parts of his skin were tightly bound with strips of cloth, already soaked in blood, reeking of an indescribable stench of decay. The putrid odor assaulted his senses.
From the texture of the cloth, Daoist Bai Shuo could tell it had come from the bed. Did he bandage himself?
He was about to undo the cloth when his expression turned grim. His spiritual power at the Divine Separation Stage had entirely vanished, and even his Lifebound Flying Sword was nowhere to be found.
"Where am I? And why... why is my cultivation gone?"
Daoist Bai Shuo clutched his head in despair. His fingernails scratched his scalp so harshly that blood oozed out, the pain forcing some clarity of mind.
"My memories?"
He struggled to leave the bed and crouched to examine the bedding.
The fabric strips matched the bed’s pattern, yet the bed itself showed no signs of damage. Everything about this felt unspeakably eerie to Daoist Bai Shuo.
"I must have been here for some time. It’s very likely those raindrops I encountered before my memory loss are some kind of horrifying taboo."
As he slowly unwrapped the cloth around his left arm, two lines of scars came into view. The marks unmistakably looked as though he’d carved the words himself.
[Remember, there is someone behind the door]
His pupils suddenly dilated as he read the words.
Fear erupted within him, suffocating him. He clutched his chest, half-kneeling, gasping for air.
"What on earth did I go through?"
Daoist Bai Shuo glanced up at the deceptively mundane wooden door, which now seemed to lead straight to the Nine Netherworld.
Soon, he noticed another line of scarred writing on the back of his left hand: [Do not turn back once outside. Do not look at the shadowed figure if you do.]
Unable to recall any of his missing memories, Bai Shuo was left with an endless sea of pain.
He muttered to himself, slumping down onto the bed.
"At least I’m not dead. As long as I’m alive, there’s still hope. Waiting for the Heavenly Sword Sect isn’t a bad idea; I’ll eventually get out of here, eventually..."
The room was suffocatingly silent, as though time itself had stopped flowing.
Daoist Bai Shuo sat in a deranged posture, hugging his legs. His muttering was incessant, his frantic eyes darting toward the shadowy corners of the room.
"No, I can’t stay here any longer. Even if I can barely survive, I’ll succumb to deviation."
He bit down hard on the tip of his tongue, using the pain to keep himself alert. Wobbling unsteadily, he began looking for useful clues.
However, the room’s furnishings were all mundane objects of little significance.
Too normal—so normal it was terrifying.
The furniture was placed with near-mechanical precision; no drag marks were visible on the floor. Even the oil in the flickering candle seemed to have only burned for a single night.
"Ahhh!"
Daoist Bai Shuo snapped, picking up a stool and smashing it against the wall.
The stool shattered, and he grabbed one of its legs, pounding relentlessly at the floor until his palms split open, yet the ground remained unmarred.
Exhausted, Daoist Bai Shuo collapsed onto the bed and, drained of strength, fell into unconsciousness.
It was unclear how long he rested.
When he reopened his eyes, the first thing he felt was an even deeper chill in the room. His teeth chattered uncontrollably, and his limbs were stiff.
The room was the same as before; the candlelight flickered faintly, making it impossible to discern day from night.
Daoist Bai Shuo walked to the wooden table and examined the candle closely, realizing that the room’s temperature hadn’t changed—it was his body that felt increasingly cold.
For the next several days, Daoist Bai Shuo continued to destroy the room’s furnishings.
The cold felt like a death sentence, gradually freezing his blood and bones. Each time he awoke, it took longer than before.
Daoist Bai Shuo’s gaze began drifting involuntarily toward the door. The fear that once consumed him had started to fade.
"Haha, I’m not going to die pathetically in bed, am I?"
He pressed his ear to the door, listening intently, but the world outside was deathly silent.
After much hesitation, Daoist Bai Shuo finally pushed open the wooden door. A wave of warm air greeted him, and the light outside swept away the darkness.
He saw a corridor lined with candles on the walls, but nothing else.
At the end of the corridor was another wooden door, identical to the first.
As he stood in a daze, a cold finger suddenly glided across the back of his neck.
His scalp went numb. Recalling the scarred warning on his left arm, he instinctively rolled to the side, glimpsing the creature behind the door for the first time.
The figure’s body was short and stubby, its limbs unnaturally long—like a humanoid bamboo stick insect.
"A Sword Ghost?"
"Ugh."
Daoist Bai Shuo grunted as his chest was pierced clean through by the Inverted Suspension. Blood, mixed with shattered fragments of internal organs, spilled out alongside the chilling sensation of his lungs failing.
The Inverted Suspension tilted its faceless head and vanished, climbing away into the blind spots of his vision.
"Remember, there is someone behind the door."
Daoist Bai Shuo regained an eerie calm, as if he’d encountered such a situation before. Without hesitation, he flung the bloody cloth strips from his wound, hooking them onto the wooden door.
He sprinted toward the corridor’s end as quickly as he could.
When the finger brushed against his neck again—
Daoist Bai Shuo knew it was the Inverted Suspension’s signal to attack once more. He urgently retracted the cloth, causing the wooden door to creak open again.
The threat from the Inverted Suspension dissipated instantly.
Daoist Bai Shuo glanced back and saw the Inverted Suspension awkwardly twisting out of the wooden door. It did not continue its pursuit, instead tilting its head suspiciously.
Reaching the corridor’s end, he hastily opened the second wooden door.
Another identical corridor awaited him.
But this time, the number of candles had diminished significantly. Their elongated shadows writhed like serpents.
"Do not turn back once outside. Do not look at the shadowed figure if you do."
Daoist Bai Shuo muttered to himself, shutting his eyes as he pressed forward.
But within a few cautious steps, he was startled to feel a rope inside his body, snaking through the wound in his chest and wrapping around his five internal organs.
"It’s all an illusion... all an illusion..."
Daoist Bai Shuo tried to hypnotize himself, propping himself up against the wall as he stumbled forward.
With each step, he felt parts of his internal organs being pulled out. First, his intestines, then his kidneys, spleen, lungs...
He resisted the urge to open his eyes, his legs growing heavier with every step.
He felt as though he were livestock hanging in a butcher shop. After his organs were removed, the rope began to draw out his bones one by one.
Daoist Bai Shuo trembled as he fumbled for the door handle.
He stepped blindly into the third corridor.
The third corridor reeked of death, the smell far stronger than before. Unlike the prior spaces, this one was cluttered. His right foot made contact with a pile of debris on the ground.
Daoist Bai Shuo struggled to close the wooden door once more.
Rip.
The sound of tearing broke the silence. Only then did Daoist Bai Shuo realize the rope inside him was real and had snapped as the wooden door shut.
He collapsed heavily, opening his eyes to find himself surrounded by a mountain of corpses.
Every corpse was his own, and their deaths varied grotesquely.
"So that’s it... I’ve... been dying repeatedly..."
"I need to... leave something behind."
Daoist Bai Shuo’s breathing grew labored as the last threads of his life ebbed away. Searching his body, he noticed his back was hollow.
On his spine, a broken rope was still hanging.
Raising his left arm, he carved a message deeply into the unburned skin:
[Do not close your eyes. The rope will drag your organs as it moves.]
Once finished, Daoist Bai Shuo lay quietly atop the heap of corpses, awaiting his death.
The faint sound of rustling reached his ears.
On the brink of death, Daoist Bai Shuo turned his head with great effort. What he saw filled his expression with indescribable despair.
"Impossible, it’s impossible, hahaha."
"If I keep going deeper, what will I eventually become?! Aaaaaaaaah!!!"
Daoist Bai Shuo’s eyes darted wildly. A twisted smile emerged on his face—that ominous grin signaling total mental collapse. If he still possessed any cultivation, both his body and soul would be spiraling into uncontrollable deviation.
He struggled to carve another line of words but fell into an endless abyss of darkness.
......
"Cough, cough, cough."
Daoist Bai Shuo coughed violently, waking up in an enclosed room.
The furniture around him was neatly arranged. The dim candlelight flickered softly, exuding an inexplicable sense of suffocation. Breathing became difficult.
......
"Was there no warning for Bai Shuo’s strange behavior?"
"None at all. He suddenly began smashing his head against the coffin’s lid."
Daoist Ye Zhuo felt a chill run down his spine. Even though they had stopped Bai Shuo’s self-mutilation in time, his entire body had already become a grotesque mess of torn flesh and blood.
Particularly his back, where Bai Shuo had grabbed his ribs with both hands—
Almost tearing himself in two.
"What a nightmare. The taboos surrounding the Night Patrol Deity make no sense whatsoever."
Li Mo frowned as he meticulously stitched Bai Shuo’s wounds while pouring corpse wine into the Black Coffin to aid in his recovery until fully healed.
"Ye Zhuo, look—his right arm now has another message on it."
Daoist Ye Zhuo murmured, "Do not close your eyes. The rope will drag your organs as it moves."
"What the hell is going on with Bai Shuo? And who ever carved these scars? Damn it, this old Daoist is genuinely terrified at this point."
If it wouldn’t seem too heartless, Ye Zhuo was tempted to suggest that Li Mo just grant Bai Shuo release.
"The Black Coffin alone won’t suffice."
Ye Zhuo was about to continue when he noticed Li Mo pulling out a fake magical treasure shaped like intestines, instantly dispelling his lingering fears.
"Blood Soul, a fake magical treasure."
Li Mo casually tossed the Blood Soul to Ye Zhuo.
Crafting a true magical treasure required some skill, but fake magical treasures were dime a dozen. Using the Blood Soul repeatedly was simply convenient for Li Mo.
With his Tattooed Beast spirit enhancing him, most fake magical treasures had become redundant.
Moreover, Li Mo had yet to complete the Blood Flesh Spirit Pattern. Unless it were washed with Innate Essence, the Blood Soul would never advance to a true magical treasure.
Ye Zhuo pocketed the Blood Soul, nodding. "Bai Shuo remains my dearest friend and kin. No matter what, I won’t abandon him."
"Just make sure to keep an eye on the Golden Canaries following the Big Sword Shuttle. Don’t let them die from neglect."
"I’m off to cultivate my Sword Body. I’ll emerge by the time I reach the Fire Spirit Hall."