Mutated Tao

“Dear customer, here are some pomegranates and begonia cake for you. Please enjoy the meal, and call us when you need more tea.”

Li Huowang took a sip of tea and continued to listen to the storyteller.

“Saint Zhuge Yuan stood on the walls of You Capital and shook his bar mace! He glared, and the cowardly Dharma Sect members dropped like flies! All of them got scared to death!”

When they heard the story, the customers whistled and clapped. Some of the richer ones even threw some money onto the stage.

“Heh. This is interesting. To think that the storyteller would turn into a story itself.”

Upon hearing that, Li Huowang turned to his left. He saw a middle-aged man with a black mustache sitting there. “Do you know Zhuge Yuan?”

"Sure, I'm from the Qi Kingdom," the man replied, lifting his empty tea cup and calling out to a waiter, "Excuse me, waiter!"

“Coming! Please hold still!”

A long teapot spout extended from the second floor and poured down a thin stream of tea from the top. The tea fell accurately into the customer’s teacup and filled it perfectly.

“Sigh. I have nothing to do anyway. My family and relatives are all dead, and I don’t have anyone to visit. I just came here to pass the time listening to stories. Look around you. I think many of the people here are from the Qi Kingdom.”

Li Huowang looked at the customers and nodded. “Even though this guy is telling some rubbish story, it’s still undeniable that Zhuge Yuan saved the Qi Kingdom.”

"Heh, who knows if it's true? I believe the monks are embellishing the details to deceive others into giving them alms," the man remarked casually before lifting his cup and starting to drink his tea.

He almost choked on his hot tea as he coughed. His face was red from the choking.

Li Huowang ate a cake and slowly chewed on it. He savored the sweetness as he listened to the story.

The storyteller began to exaggerate his story, going as far as claiming that Zhuge Yuan carved out the heavens themselves. Li Huowang couldn’t bear it anymore and decided to leave.

“Dear sir, please come and visit again soon! The price is right, and we serve the best of the best for just twenty coins!”

When Li Huowang heard the waiter say that, he reached into his pockets and placed twenty brand-new coins on the table before leaving.

He suddenly realized that the man from the Qi Kingdom beside him had disappeared. Li Huowang hadn’t noticed the man’s departure.

Li Huowang left as he pondered. He’s probably not just someone ordinary. I wonder what kind of background he has.

He walked around the village and found that there was nothing he could do, so he decided to head back. I should just focus on cultivating.

The troubles were over, but it was still beneficial to become stronger.

Li Huowang returned to the village and entered the familiar cave at the back of the village. He closed his eyes and focused.

The more he cultivated, the more the difficulty spiked. Still, he wasn’t in a rush. He took his time, gradually pushing the primordial breath within him with his inner sight.

He didn’t know how long he was cultivating, but he saw that it was already nighttime when he opened his eyes.

Li Huowang was heading back to the Bai family estate when he walked past Puppy’s house.

Puppy held onto a bowl as he walked out. “Senior Li, where have you been? We thought you ran away somewhere again.”

“Hm? Did I leave for a long time?” Li Huowang was confused.

“Yeah. We last saw each other on the second day of the New Years. It’s now the Lantern Festival.[1]” Puppy gave Li Huowang his bowl of glutinous rice balls. It bobbed around in the sweet soup.

“What?! I’ve been cultivating for so long?” An intense drowsiness overtook his mind, lasting only a short moment before being replaced by an intense feeling of hunger.

Without any hesitation, Li Huowang ate the bowl of glutinous rice balls. He ate and drank his fill before slipping onto the ground and falling asleep.

He slept for three nights before waking up again, and he felt that the world was spinning when he did.

The others who had been taking care of him circled around. Puppy said, “Senior Li, maybe you should… bring someone to accompany you when you go and cultivate. Next time, you could easily end up accidentally starving yourself.”

“I would’ve been fine if you said nothing.” Li Huowang kicked off his blanket and drank his tea.

He only looked at everyone after he finished his drink. The people around him were Puppy, Zhao Wu, Yang Xiaohai, and Lu Xiucai.

“Where’s Xiaoman?”

“She’s with the Saintess of the White Lotus Sect. Don’t you know that?”

“Alright, fine. I understand now. You can go back now.” Li Huowang needed to think up a plan to prevent something like this from happening again.

They didn’t leave, confusing Li Huowang. “Is something wrong?”

“Something happened, but it's not anything major. Senior Li, do you remember how we accepted a group of refugees from the Qi Kingdom?”

“Yes, I still remember. What about them?”

“They are gone.”

“Gone? What do you mean?”

“They just disappeared into thin air. Thankfully, none of our people are gone.”

“Only the people from the Qi Kingdom disappeared? Since when?’

“Since the evening of the second day of the New Year.”

Li Huowang frowned. He recalled the man who had abruptly disappeared right next to him in the tea shop. “Did only the people staying in the village disappear? What about the other places?”

“We asked the peddlers, and they told us that the people of the Qi Kingdom in other places were also gone. We sent a letter to Gao Zhijian, but we have no clue if he could do anything about it.”

“How could they just disappear like that? What happened?” Li Huowang frowned and stared at the stars in the skies.

“Wait… Unless?” Li Huowang suddenly remembered something. He took the spine sword beside his bed and swung it. A single rift flew above Cowheart Village.

It was different this time. The strange liquid was gone! Li Huowang saw light from the other side of the rift!

“I knew it!” Li Huowang swung another rift and then jumped into it, propelling himself with his window.

He reached the Qi Kingdom and was shocked to find that it had been restored. The grass on the ground was already an inch long.

“Who’s there?” Li Huowang suddenly turned around to find a shocked Qi Kingdom resident chewing on the grass.

1. Also the fifteenth day of the new year. ☜