Chapter 184
Chapter 184
“Taisui?!”
“What? Taisui? The legendary Taisui?!”
Cries of disbelief rang down from above. Shen Qingzhu was the most excited of them all.
“Wait there! I’m coming down right now!”
Jiang Yunsui answered obediently and squatted beside the Taisui, poking its flesh with one finger.
It really did jiggle like meat when she prodded it.
The lingzhi growing beside the Taisui was also a treasure. Its color was brighter than ordinary lingzhi, and Jiang Yunsui suspected its medicinal potency was several times greater as well.
After all, it had grown beside Taisui.
Shen Qingzhu and the others no longer cared about the Bamboo Bear. Everyone with lightness skills leaped down from above.
“Hey, wait!” Nanshu called. “I want to go down and look too! Don’t leave me behind!”
The moment he finished, someone kicked him in the bottom.
“Aaaaah!”
Nanmo jumped after him and caught him by the belt before landing. Nanmo touched down in a dashing pose. Nanshu was not so fortunate. He landed facedown.
“Nanmo! You again!”
Nanshu rubbed his aching nose and glared resentfully at Nanmo.
Ji Yi brought Ji Yan’an down.
The Bamboo Bear became fierce and wary at the sight of so many newcomers. It might eat plants, but it still had a temper!
Just as it rose to fight, Ji Yan’an opened a pouch and tossed over an apple.
They had brought the apples from Mobei. Most of them belonged to Jiang Yunsui, who had packed plenty of food for the journey.
Only nine apples remained.
The Bamboo Bear caught the object. The feel was familiar. So was the smell…
It promptly sat back down and resumed crunching away.
Shen Qingzhu’s mouth twitched.
“No wonder Bamboo Bears are growing rarer.”
With such a carefree nature, it was even easier to coax than Jiang Yunsui.
Shen Qingzhu reached Jiang Yunsui’s side and carefully inspected the strange mass. Delight immediately spread across his face.
“It really is Taisui! And this one is growing in symbiosis with lingzhi.”
Song Jin stroked his chin. “So the legendary Taisui truly exists. What does it do?”
The others gathered around, some standing and some crouching, until they formed a ring around the Taisui and stared.
Shen Qingzhu drew a small knife and began collecting a sample.
“Taisui cannot be used as medicine directly. It requires special preparation first. You have all heard it called flesh lingzhi. Since it is such a mysterious thing, it is often surrounded by exaggerated tales, such as granting immortality or bringing the dead back to life and regrowing flesh over bare bones.”
“The immortality is false, and so is bringing the dead back to life. But Taisui does possess a unique medicinal property. Once properly prepared, it becomes the main ingredient in the Nine Lives Pill.”
“The Nine Lives Pill!”
Nanshu’s mouth fell open. “The legendary pill that can save someone even if they have only one breath left?! They also say it can grant a person nine lives. Is that true?”
The others looked equally curious.
Shen Qingzhu rolled his eyes. “The Nine Lives Pill’s real name is the Life-Saving Pill!”
“Where would nine lives come from? The person who first developed it gave it an overly plain name. Someone else thought that sounded vulgar, so they renamed it the Nine Lives Pill to make it seem grander. Then they exaggerated its effects to drive up the price.”
“Those very tales caused a war five hundred years ago. Northern Yue possessed the last Nine Lives Pill, so several other nations went to war to seize it. Northern Yue was destroyed as a result.”
“For a single pill to cause a war on that scale, the Nine Lives Pill must truly have remarkable effects,” Ji Yan’an said.
Shen Qingzhu nodded. “It does. The pill can preserve the last spark of life in someone at death’s door, and it can keep that spark alive for an entire month. If the patient can be healed during that month, they will survive without any side effects.”
By that measure, the Nine Lives Pill was indeed miraculous.
Jiang Yunsui listened with utmost seriousness, nodding from time to time.
Then Shen Qingzhu abruptly changed course. “Unfortunately, the method for preparing Taisui has been lost.”
Everyone fell silent.
“Tch.”
Their excitement was doused with cold water. They rolled their eyes and clicked their tongues.
“So after all that,” Fat Chef said, “you’re telling us this Nine-whatever Pill can’t actually be made?”
Shen Qingzhu rubbed his nose. “If it could still be made, the Nine Lives Pill would not have been lost.”
“The knowledge vanished for two reasons. First, Taisui is exceedingly rare. It is the sort of special medicine found only in legends. In all my years of practicing medicine, I have never heard of anyone possessing it. Second, no one knows how to prepare it anymore.”
“The pill formula itself survives. While going through my master’s collection, I happened to find it in an ancient text. I had read about the war that destroyed Northern Yue, so I committed the formula to memory.”
“That still doesn’t help,” Nanshu complained. “The Taisui is right in front of us, but we can’t prepare it or make the pill. That feels even worse than never finding it.”
“I’ll take it back and study it,” Shen Qingzhu said.
Jiang Yunsui’s eyes sparkled. She thrust one hand into the air. “Me, me! I know how!”
Every head snapped toward her.
“You do?!”
Could there really be another twist?
Jiang Yunsui bobbed her little head happily.
“I do! First, you have to soak ingredients in medicinal wine. You need lingzhi, dendrobium, ginseng, tiger bone, snake…”
She counted off a long list of medicines on her fingers.
“You soak them in strong liquor for seven times seven, forty-nine days. Then the Taisui has to go moonbathing. At midnight, you spray the medicinal wine evenly over it, every night for another forty-nine days.”
“After that, the Taisui will separate out a lump of dirty flesh. The clear Taisui flesh is safe to eat. The dirty part is poisonous, so you must not eat it.”
Everyone stared blankly at Jiang Yunsui.
Shen Qingzhu hurriedly wrote down every word.
“H-how do you know the process so clearly?”
Was the method not supposed to be lost? Even Shen Qingzhu did not know it. Where had a child only a few years old learned such a thing?
Jiang Yunsui blinked. “I’ve done it before.”
Grandpa Ginseng had found a Taisui and taken her along to prepare its flesh. That was why Little Mushroom remembered the process so clearly.
Even if she forgot a detail, it was recorded in the Inherited Memories Grandpa Ginseng had given her.
Everyone stood stupefied for a moment. Then Nanshu suddenly let out an excited howl and swept Jiang Yunsui into his arms.
“Little Ancestor, you truly are our Little Ancestor!”
Shen Qingzhu muttered to himself, “We’ll try it as soon as we return. I happen to have all the medicines Little Yunsui listed.”
“Good heavens, Jiang Yunsui,” Song Jin said. “You really are Heaven’s favorite daughter!”
“Roar!”
Everyone jumped.
What in the world was that noise?
They turned and found the Bamboo Bear crouching behind them, calmly munching an apple.
Nanshu looked at the apple pouch lying off to the side, his expression on the verge of tears.
“There are only two left.”