Dragon Vein Storyteller

Chapter 10 Evil Tai Sui

"What is Tai Sui?" the little chick asked first. Although he dared not touch the thing, curiosity never stopped creeping into his mind, regardless of the situation.

Baldy Liao chimed in: "Flesh Ganoderma. Ancient books say that eating it can prolong life. Flesh Ganoderma is the ten-thousand-year-old toad, the Tai Sui of Changbai Mountain. Consuming it can make one light-body and ageless."

"Then let's hurry up..." The little chick's eyes lit up, and it reached out to break off the piece of Tai Sui.

Before he could finish speaking, I kicked him directly.

The kick landed squarely on his shoulder, sending him tumbling to the ground. The little chick got up, glaring at me with a wronged expression.

"You fucking want to eat everything." I pulled my foot back, my voice as cold as an anvil in the dead of winter. "You almost went crazy just from smelling something outside the city, and now you want to stuff it in your mouth? Do you have a death wish?"

The little chick pouted, not daring to argue back, and sat down again, rubbing his sore shoulder. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him secretly put his hand behind his back and wipe it on the hem of his clothes... The fingertips of the hand he had just stretched out had a drop of liquid seeping from the Tai Sui, but he didn't dare let me see it.

I stared at the wriggling piece of Tai Sui, remaining silent for a long while before finally speaking.

"There are two kinds of Tai Sui." I lowered my voice. "One kind grows out of the soil on its own, imbued with the essence of heaven and earth, and is clean and pure. It does have the effect of prolonging life. The kind that the cripple saw in his early years is this kind."

Feng the Cripple nodded but didn't reply.

I pointed to the rusty iron hook on the ground, then glanced at the burly man in the distance with bulges under his skin, my voice growing even colder:

"There's another kind, which doesn't grow on its own. It specializes in growing up from under piles of corpses, feeding on the juices of rotting flesh. It grows by eating carrion, and it's called the Yin-Sucking Tai Sui. Taking a bite of it won't just shorten your lifespan."

I paused, glancing at the people still lying on the ground gnawing on the rare fungus in the distance. The sounds of their chewing echoed within the empty city gate, like countless maggots crawling in and out of rotting flesh.

"When a person catches a cold, phlegm builds up in their lungs, and what they cough up is a yellowish-white clump. That's the filth inside the body, the result of illness, evil, and impurity." I looked at the still slightly wriggling Tai Sui at my feet and rubbed my foot around the ground next to it. As I stepped on it, the ground sank slightly, and black sap seeped out, sticking to the top of my shoe. "Even the earth gets sick. Too much resentment, death, and impurity accumulate underground. These evil toxins have nowhere to go, so they ferment and rot in the soil, turning into a puddle of pus."

"This Tai Sui... is the phlegm coughed up by the earth."

No one spoke. Even the cripple Feng had a sullen face, took off his pipe, and forgot to smoke it.

"My family's ancestral book mentions Tai Sui. When the earth's veins are diseased, foul air rises and gathers to form a kind of fungus. It's white, soft, and resembles raw meat. At first, it tastes sweet, but after a while, one becomes infected by evil influences." I pointed around, and the torchlight illuminated the ground, revealing Tai Sui everywhere. They were of all sizes and heights, some piled together like clumps of moldy cotton, others scattered sparsely like white pustules embroidered on black cloth. Looking deeper, I wondered how many more were hidden in the darkness; the area illuminated by the torchlight was merely the tip of the iceberg.

"Other places where *Tai Sui* grows, it's at most one or two patches, like mushrooms growing in a crack in a rock—that's just a minor ailment of the earth's veins, nothing to worry about. But look at this..." My voice grew colder and colder, "What does such a large patch of phlegm mean?"

No one can answer that question. But everyone knows what the answer is.

This land is seriously ill.

"To produce so much phlegm in such a large underground palace..." Feng the Cripple suddenly spoke, his voice extremely low, as if talking to himself, or as if asking me, "This illness is probably deep-seated."

Everyone fell silent. The torches crackled and popped, sparks leaping upwards and merging into the bottomless darkness above.

I lowered my head again, staring at the piece of Tai Sui. Under the torchlight, it continued to wriggle slowly, its surface contracting and expanding, like a lump vomited from the depths of the earth. The firelight pierced through its translucent texture, illuminating the faint shadows within... those shadows were long and intertwined, like countless tiny maggots huddled together.

I suddenly remembered the passage about Tai Sui in the ancestral book; only one sentence in the book was a genuine warning…

If you see this, leave immediately; do not touch or eat it.

There should have been another sentence, but that page was torn out, leaving only half a jagged tattered page. Who tore it? Why?

I didn't have time to think about it deeply. Suddenly, the scene I had just witnessed flashed through my mind... the white bulge under the skin below the burly man's collarbone, moving around inside the flesh.

It absorbs the yin energy of the Grand Duke Jupiter. It grows by eating carrion. It's not just a matter of shortening one's lifespan.

A chill ran down my spine.

What you ingested wasn't a supplement at all. It was like planting the root of an underground disease deep within a living person's body.

I took out the slightly warm jade pendant from my pocket and held it in my hand. The light from the jade pendant shone through my fingers, a hazy blue, and faced the cold light of the Tai Sui's surface from afar, as if they were sizing each other up.

"Get up." I pulled the chick up from the ground, my voice stern. "Whether it's phlegm, pus, or a fleshy Ganoderma, it's none of our business. Follow that group, but stay away. Anyone who gets greedy... bite their tongue."

This time, the little chick didn't ask any more questions, but just nodded vigorously, its little face unusually serious.

I called for everyone to stand up. We pulled up three torches and held them at the front. The ground was still sticky, and with each step we took, we felt something responding to our weight. Darkness pressed in from all sides, compressing the torchlight into five trembling stars.

The group of people who had been eating the Tai Sui had already gotten up and were staggering towards the depths of the city gate. Some of them were still chewing on pieces of white meat that they hadn't swallowed, with thick, transparent juice hanging from the corners of their mouths. In the torchlight, the juice glistened and stretched into thin threads, dripping onto the stone path leading deeper into the city.

As I passed by that burly man, I glanced at him again.

His gait had changed. It wasn't from fatigue or injury; it was from his bones. His shoulders were twisted backward at an unnatural angle, as if something was pushing his joints from within, taking each step for him. He was completely unaware of it, his face still bearing that blank, satisfied expression, a trace of saliva still clinging to the corner of his mouth.

I turned my head away and quickened my pace.

From mass graves to the Tower of Infant Spirits, from earth dragons to the Tai Sui (a mythical creature), everything is like a chess piece on a board, pushing us step by step toward some unseen place.

The giant fungus underfoot was still wriggling, the people behind him were still chewing, and the darkness ahead still awaited.

And we can only move forward step by step.