Chapter 231

Chapter 231: The Final Dish

Li Shuang looked at the girl.

The girl said with a squinting smile: “You are smart. I think you have already seen it. Yi Lan is our person. From the start, we planned to use you. Looking back, I’m sure you noticed our little tricks early on. Li Shuang, you are unharmed now. How about we shake hands and make peace? If you are still unhappy, I will kill Yi Lan myself to amuse you, how about it?”

She looked like a child, yet a streak of pure cruelty flickered in her eyes.

Li Shuang smiled and said: “Sure.”

The girl froze for a moment.

“Aren’t you going to kill Yi Lan yourself?” Li Shuang said with a pleasant look: “Go ahead.”

The girl’s gaze flickered. Li Shuang’s answer had thrown her off.

She was about to speak when Human Skin Skeleton drawled: “The final dish has waited long enough. Everyone, serve it.”

He waved. The frost melted, and Yi Lan was freed.

Yi Lan stared at Li Shuang, still shaken. Li Shuang had not even moved; with one look, Yi Lan had been frozen into a statue. If Human Skin Skeleton had acted a little later, she would have turned to icy dust. Though she had barely kept her life, her soul felt as if thousands of ice spikes were stabbing it without end. If she did not find a way to fix it, even without Li Shuang striking again, she would still be dead in minutes.

“Senior,” Yi Lan begged as she moved to the girl’s side.

The girl turned her head away as if she had not seen her.

Yi Lan clenched her teeth, despair flashing in her eyes.

Li Shuang gave Yi Lan a cool glance and, for the moment, did nothing.

“The eighth dish, making a shining entrance,” Human Skin Skeleton said, suddenly excited.

The last dish was pushed before the four of them.

It was a huge platter, the only one of the eight dishes that had a lid.

“Now, let me announce what the eighth dish is,” Human Skin Skeleton said as he flipped the lid off.

Li Shuang looked over, curious.

But the platter under the lid was empty.

No, not quite.

After she focused, a line of bloodstains appeared on the plate.

“A pair of hands!”

“A heart!”

“A pair of eyes!”

“A body of blood!”

Human Skin Skeleton looked at the four and gave a wicked grin: “Oh, this course is going to be bloody.”

Li Shuang did not understand, but the other three went pale.

Softly, the girl said: “This final dish shows random blood words. As long as we place on the platter what the words demand, the dish is complete. After that, we can freely choose to leave or stay.”

[Place what the words demand on the platter?] Li Shuang narrowed her eyes. A pair of hands. A heart. A pair of eyes. A body of blood.

Hands and eyes were doable. With a cultivator’s skill, they could be restored. But if the hands or eyes had been trained with special secret arts, giving them up now meant letting those arts go too.

A body of blood. If someone drained their blood and took pills to make more later, they would be badly hurt but likely not die.

Only a heart was truly troublesome. Cultivators train the dantian and the sea of consciousness, so the heart might seem unimportant. But in truth, the heart links the sea of consciousness above to the dantian below. It is the source of all energy. Without a heart, some secret arts might keep you alive, but a heartless person becomes a walking corpse, forever barred from the Great Dao.

“I didn’t kill Yi Lan right away because of this,” the girl said, trying to make a deal: “Take her hands, eyes, heart, and blood for the platter, and the three of us can walk away whole.”

“Senior!” Yi Lan’s heart jumped as she looked at the girl and begged.

The girl’s face stayed icy: “Your soul is badly damaged. You would not live long anyway. Instead of dying for nothing, make yourself useful.”

Yi Lan’s face turned chalk white. She wanted to resist, but as soon as she remembered who the girl really was, all her strength vanished.

In her mind rose one cultivator after another, people she had led into Gluttony Hell and personally sent to their deaths. Their dying eyes had been resentful, disbelieving, or filled with terror.

[Is it my turn now?]

As she despaired, a sharp pain struck.

She looked down, confused.

Rou Shan had moved with his own hands. In a single instant, he chopped off both her hands and set them on the platter.

The blood words “A pair of hands” slowly faded from the bottom of the plate.

“Dig out her eyes,” the girl said without expression.

Rou Shan raised his hand and stabbed for Yi Lan’s eyes.

Yi Lan’s screams shook the hall.

Li Shuang stood off to the side, watching coldly. Yi Lan truly deserved to die. But Rou Shan and the girl were no better.

She weighed her options in silence. [Who is this girl, really? Am I sure I can keep them all here?]

While she thought, Yi Lan had already been drained of every drop of blood. The moment it touched the plate, it sank in and vanished. The words “A body of blood” faded.

Only three words remained.

“A heart.”

“Rou Shan, what are you waiting for?” the girl said.

“Yes,” he replied. His hand turned to a claw and stabbed down toward Yi Lan’s chest.

At that instant, Li Shuang’s heart gave a jolt. She slid aside.

A moment later, Rou Shan’s hand thrust out from where she had just been.

If she had not dodged, her heart would have been taken.

Li Shuang looked back.

Yi Lan, unable to bear the chain of wounds, had already lost all breath.

Another Rou Shan stood before the corpse. His figure slowly grew thin, then vanished. That Rou Shan had been a phantom. His real body had been lurking beside Li Shuang long ago, ready to strike.

“Do it,” the girl said coldly: “The Supreme Ice Spiritual Root is still new. If we dig it out now, we can transplant it. That Ice Spiritual Root is mine.”

As her words fell, the girl’s body swelled. In the blink of an eye, she became a young woman. Her aura climbed step by step and stopped at Peak Divine Transformation.