Li Huowang raised the pestle in his hand and smashed it into the pestle pot out of boredom, slowly grinding the flowing bluestone mixed with silt into powder.
Although the cave was damp and cold, and the boy was only wearing a coarse cloth. But he looked indifferent, as if he didn't care about it.
There were not only him in the cave, but also other men and women of similar age, with the same hair tied and the same coarse hemp rope.
The only difference between them and Li Huowang was that they all had obvious external defects on their bodies, including albinism and polio.
All kinds of congenital and acquired physical deformities can be found here, and the small material room cave is like a deformity museum.
These people's work is the same as Li Huowang's, which is to pound things, but the things they pound are different, there are gold and stone and medicine, but it is obvious that some people are not at ease with their work.
"Ah!" A woman's terrified scream attracted everyone's attention.
I saw a fat boy with cleft lip on the side of the cave, with a lewd smile on his face, trying to pull an albino girl into his arms.
"I'll do it once, I promise, just once, hehehe~"
Li Huowang ignored the noise, closed his eyes and continued to do his work one by one.
Listening to the increasingly miserable cry of the woman beside him, the annoyed Li Huowang cursed secretly, picked up the stone medicine jar with one hand and stood up.
"Dou" The stone hit the bone together, making a dull sound.
The fat man with cleft lip, whose head was broken and bleeding, sat on the ground in a daze, obviously stunned by the blow. After two seconds, he covered his wound with a distorted expression and howled.
The white-haired and white-skinned girl who escaped the fate of being tainted, covered her clothes and hid behind Li Huowang in fear.
"I tell you! You are done flirting, do you know what kind of master I am? Let him know about flirting, he will kill you!" The fat man with cleft lip threatened with an extremely angry expression.
"What the hell is he? He's nothing!" Li Huowang's words shocked the whole place into silence.
Other people present never thought that the man in front of him would dare to say such a thing.
Looking at the expressions of the so-called senior brothers and junior brothers in front of him, Li Huowang took a deep breath and suppressed the anger in his heart.
"What's wrong with me? Why am I angry with these things? My personality should not be so outspoken. I can't let these things affect my personality. I was not the real me just now. Calm down."
Just when Li Huowang was calming down, he heard someone calling him at the door.
"Junior Brother Li, Junior Sister Wang, Master is calling you to wait." The tall young man who called out was obviously of a different status from Li Huowang, and he was wearing a green Taoist robe.
Although the Taoist robe looked very old and the cuffs were washed white, it was much better than the tattered linen on Li Huowang's body.
This person held a horsetail whisk in one hand and looked at the juniors in front of him with a hint of arrogance in his eyes.
Seeing the young Taoist priest appear, the fat man with a bloody head immediately showed a look of gloating. "Haha! You are done teasing!! It's your turn today."
But Li Huowang completely ignored him and turned to follow a woman with a crooked mouth and drooling to the door. The woman's face was pale and looked very unhealthy.
Just after taking two steps, he found someone pulling his sleeves and holding him back. Li Huowang turned around and found that it was the albino girl he had saved.
She kept shaking her head with tears in her eyes, and her eyes were full of fear.
The indifferent Li Huowang was unmoved, threw his sleeves hard, and walked forward with big strides.
Coming out of the material room is a larger cave. There are many caves on the wall of the cave that are the same as the material room for other purposes. Looking at the bumpy appearance, the craftsmanship of the people who built this place was obviously not very good.
The whole cave is very large, with tunnels of all sizes extending in all directions, like an enlarged version of an ant hole.
Pieces of rotten peach wood were nailed to each small cave, and the names of each cave were engraved on them with great force, such as Linggong Hall, Lao Lu Hall, Qingzu Hall, and Siyu Hall.
A naturally formed cave was actually made to look like a Taoist temple.
Just as the two continued to walk forward along the cave, the crooked-mouthed woman next to them took out a black thing from her pocket and suddenly handed it to Li Huowang, saying in a silly voice: "Do you want to eat... thin candy?"
Li Huowang frowned slightly, as if he knew the other party's stupidity, and impatiently came over and stuffed it directly into his sleeve.
Seeing Li Huowang take it, she also took out another piece from her pocket and stuffed it into her mouth, and continued to say foolishly: "Master, hello... I have candy with you..."
Li Huowang didn't plan to say anything about this, and the two continued to walk. After walking for about a quarter of an hour, a tall alchemy furnace with an ancient fragrance and a black body appeared in front of him.
The furnace emitting green smoke pierced the top of the cave. The furnace was huge and looked like a small metal mountain.
Watching the furnace gradually getting bigger from far to near, Li Huowang felt depressed.
In addition to the huge five-layer furnace, there was also a back figure in front of the furnace.
From the back, he was wearing a blue Taoist robe, a hairpin and a crown, with white hair on his temples, looking very immortal.
Sitting cross-legged on the ground, he seemed to be doing the same thing as Li Huowang before, pounding the medicine rod, but the medicine rod in his hand was obviously much larger and looked like a giant pillar.
With the rise and fall, the sound of metal and stone hitting each other echoed in the cave.
"Master... Master!" The woman with a slanted mouth clumsily pinched the thumb of her left hand with her right hand, placed the four fingers of her left hand on the fingers of her right hand, put both hands on her chest and bowed to the back figure, her eyes full of respect.
As soon as she opened her mouth, the harsh crashing sound stopped.
The back figure turned around, and although Li Huowang was prepared, his pupils still shrank slightly.
The front of the Taoist priest was completely different from the back. From the back, he looked like an immortal, but from the front, he was a disgusting old man with a bald head, and a few yellow teeth in his mouth were exposed to the air.
"Are you here? Good disciple, you made me wait." With a wave of his dirty Taoist robe, the old Taoist priest flew into the air, grabbed the crooked-mouthed woman's neck with one hand and retreated.
Before the stupid woman could say the first half of the sentence, she was thrown into a half-person-high stone jar in an instant. The next moment, the master with a ferocious expression used a fist-sized stone medicine pounding rod in both hands and smashed it heavily on her head.
As the screams stopped abruptly, a sound of some kind of foot stepping into mud came from the stone jar.
This was not the end. The previous collision echoed again, and with the medicine-pounding pole raised high and then dropped heavily, every part of the woman's body suffered the same fate as her head.
With each knock, the right face of Li Huowang, who was breathing rapidly, trembled violently as if being pulled.
Meat residue and blood splattered on the face and body of the old Taoist priest, but he remained unmoved and recited something according to a certain melody with an excited expression.
"Dingchou prolongs my life, Dinghai protects my soul, Jiazi protects my body, Jiaxu protects my shape, Jiashen consolidates my life, Jiawu guards my soul, and Jiachen makes me spirit!"
When it was completely pounded into a paste, he lifted the stone that weighed several hundred kilograms with one hand, poured all the mud that he had pounded into the alchemy furnace in front of him, and then raised his hands in the air with an extremely excited expression.
"Start the furnace, and make the elixir!"
Two Taoist children with exaggerated blush walked out of the shadows, fanning the air while pouring various ingredients into the elixir furnace, including various gold and stone powders and many living and crawling things.
After a while, a strange and rich fragrance filled the air.
At this moment, the bald-headed master closed his eyes and took a deep breath, stroking his chin, and a satisfied expression appeared on his dirty and ugly face.
When he slowly opened his eyes, he put his hands behind his back and turned to look at Li Huowang. "I heard you call me a fart? Is that true?"
In an instant, the air around him seemed to solidify.
Looking at the so-called master who kills without blinking an eye, Li Huowang was unmoved. He slowly closed his eyes to calm his somewhat rapid breathing, and silently said in his heart: "You can't fool me, this is all fake, all fake."
"Speak! Are you dumb? Huh?!" The sound of the master's footsteps was getting closer and closer, and the stench of blood mixed with his body hit his nose like a wall.
The trembling Li Huowang clenched his teeth and used all his strength to open his eyes.
The cave Taoist temple that was dark and full of depression just now disappeared in an instant, and a bright, clean, and fresh air ward appeared in front of him, and his lower body was tied to the bed tightly by cloth belts.