Chapter 115: Antibodies

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Qi Yan did not dare waste a single second. In the most concise language possible, he poured out everything he had seen, heard, and experienced.

Uncle Yan listened to his torrent of words, delivered so rapidly that it seemed to have no punctuation, and for a moment could not process it.

“Slow down, slow down… Can you slow down a little? What did you just say? A demon?”

“I didn’t say it. Xuanxuan came to that conclusion. She’s still searching for Hao Dalong alone, and she sent me back to find you and make a decision as quickly as possible. What exactly is the situation now? Should I make full preparations and then go back in?”

Ding Lingzi, propped against the headboard, had recovered considerably by then. Although she still did not fully understand what was happening, merely hearing Qi Yan’s account was enough for her to realize how serious the matter was.

“You two should go. I’m fine now. Don’t worry about me…”

Qi Yan looked back at Uncle Yan, waiting for his instructions. But Uncle Yan merely frowned and fell into deep thought.

He had never expected that something so far more evil than an ordinary ghost spirit would exist in Jinyan Village. And not only that—it was one of the more unusual kinds of demons, a flower demon.

If that was truly the case, then it was no wonder the creature had been able to abduct Hao Dalong without a sound and evade the senses and investigations of everyone there. Even Uncle Yan had never personally encountered a plant demon before. He had only heard of such things.

“Wait a moment… If it really is a flower demon capable of moving about, then we’ll have to be more careful. This thing isn’t merely dangerous. I’ve never encountered one myself. But no matter how anxious Xuanxuan was, she shouldn’t have charged in alone. And now look at us—we’ve somehow ended up scattering one by one.”

Qi Yan impatiently urged him on. “Things have already come to this. None of us could have predicted it, so there’s no point going over the same thing again and again. Whatever happens, we can’t simply leave the two of them there, can we? That monster has all sorts of abilities, and it’s extremely cunning. I’ve already told you everything I know.”

If Hao Dalong had merely gotten lost on the mountain or suffered some kind of accident, they could have asked the villagers to help search for him. With a human life at stake, the villagers would hardly have stood by and done nothing.

But now, it seemed that would not work. The existence of a monster in the mountains had been confirmed. Sending ordinary people who knew nothing about the situation after it would not only be useless—few of them might return safely.

“Before you came back, the innkeeper helped us find a way to deal with the strange plant growing from Little Ding’s body.”

That surprised Qi Yan. “No wonder she recovered so quickly. Was it some kind of witchcraft?”

Uncle Yan waved his hand. “No, no. I had already run out of ideas, but… Do you remember that wild vegetable none of us dared eat this afternoon? It smelled rotten, and tasted even worse. But guess what? We mashed it up and applied it to her back, and she’s gradually getting better.”

“It hasn’t solved the problem completely, but at the very least, it has suppressed the growth of those roots beneath her flesh and eased Little Ding’s pain. The innkeeper said that few outsiders can get used to this wild vegetable, called juan sprouts, but it’s a local specialty here. Nearly every household eats it as an everyday dish. And now you’ve brought back news that the thing causing all this is a flower demon…”

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He stopped there, and Qi Yan immediately understood.

“You mean that spicy, bitter wild vegetable? Applying it externally can suppress this strange illness?”

Uncle Yan nodded and pointed to a plate of thick green paste on the bedside table. It gave off a strange, pungent odor that ordinary people would find almost impossible to tolerate.

Qi Yan suddenly understood. “So this really is a case of one thing countering another. That flower demon is so formidable—it can use its fragrance to induce hallucinations, evade your senses through some special means, and even launch those savage physical attacks. It isn’t afraid of your lifebound talisman tube, yet it’s actually afraid of an ugly little wild vegetable.”

“That should be right. At the very least, judging from Little Ding’s condition, this wild vegetable can indeed suppress the flower demon’s parasitic seeds. As for whether it can actually injure the demon itself, we have no way of knowing. In any case, if we’re going back, we must bring as much of it as possible. This is the only known weapon we have.”

As he spoke, Uncle Yan turned to Ding Lingzi. “Little Ding, how are you feeling now?”

Her breathing was steady, and the flush had faded from her body.

“I’m really fine. I can’t feel any pain in my back anymore. The longer the paste stays on, the more effective it should be. Go on…”

It was six minutes past two in the morning. Uncle Yan hurriedly packed up his large bag of specialized equipment, then asked the innkeeper to come over and look after Ding Lingzi temporarily while he went out. He also paid her and bought up all the juan sprouts remaining in the inn.

The wild vegetable was ordinarily served as a local delicacy alongside liquor, after all, and it was not easy to preserve. The inn’s kitchen had only about one plastic bagful left.

Although the innkeeper knew where the vegetable grew most abundantly, Uncle Yan and Qi Yan were strangers to the area, and at this hour it was impossible to go gathering more. Even so, Uncle Yan asked anyway.

The innkeeper replied casually, “Keep following the mountain slope. There’s a sunken patch of grass where the juan sprouts grow thickest.”

They would take whatever they could get. This was an emergency within an emergency, and if they did not act quickly, there was no telling how the situation might develop.

They had barely managed to ease the crisis surrounding Ding Lingzi when danger began closing in around Xuanxuan. What worried them most was Hao Dalong. Whether he was alive or dead still hung in the balance.

After Uncle Yan strode out of the inn, his expression was grim to the extreme, so dark it seemed water might drip from it.

What was this supposed to be? The five of them had come to find the Yin Tablet and its bearer. Now, never mind their original objective—even whether their entire group of five could make it safely back before dawn had become uncertain.

A species rarer than giant pandas had somehow crossed their path. “A disastrous beginning” did not even begin to describe it. Their journey had become a complete roller coaster.

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The two of them hurried once more toward the old village entrance. Along the way, Qi Yan suggested, “If even you can’t deal with that monster, then I’ll remove the seal on the Yin Tablet again. Xuanxuan said the talisman tube would lose its effect once it was removed, but you can always make another one afterward.”

“Don’t rush. Your Yin Tablet is our final trump card. If the danger truly reaches that point, it won’t be too late to unseal it then. For now, we need to find Xuanxuan and Dalong. The flower demon you described may not show itself, but if it dares cling to us and refuse to let go, we’ll first see whether these wild vegetables can serve as weapons against it.”

Uncle Yan hugged the bag of juan sprouts tightly in his arms. Earlier, everyone had refused to touch the stuff with even a single pair of chopsticks. Now he handled it so carefully that he did not want to lose even one leaf.

This reminded Qi Yan of another question.

“Wait… Uncle Yan, don’t you think something about this is strange? If a man-eating demon is lurking near this village, how have the local villagers lived here for so long without incident? Why did it appear as soon as we arrived?”

“Could it be because of this foul-smelling vegetable? Don’t the villagers eat it in every household? They’ve even made it into a local specialty and a regular part of their meals. Ding Lingzi grew that disgusting thing from her body, and none of you could do anything about it. Yet the moment you applied this stuff, the effect was obvious…”

Uncle Yan had already considered that possibility.

“After you came back and told me the true identity of the evil presence, I had pretty much figured it out.

“This wild vegetable is most likely the natural bane of that demon. The villagers have escaped its attacks because they eat plenty of it in their daily lives, as if they had been vaccinated against a virus. We outsiders can’t stomach the stuff, so when it finally discovered several pieces of ‘fresh meat,’ of course it came rushing out, drooling with greed.

“However, judging from what the innkeeper and her husband said, they only knew that people returning from the mountains would sometimes come down with this ‘strange illness.’ They probably never realized that a demon was secretly responsible.

“Now that I think about it, if Little Ding hadn’t suddenly fallen ill, we would never have discovered that this wild vegetable had such a remarkable use. Didn’t you just say that one thing counters another? There’s another saying too: wherever venomous snakes are found, an antidote can be found within seven steps. Since the flower demon has lived in this place for so long, something capable of resisting it would naturally have grown around its lair over the years. There’s sound reasoning behind that.”

Qi Yan let out an astonished exclamation.

“Oh… There really is a saying like that. So, if we analyze things according to that principle, the places where juan sprouts grow most abundantly are probably not far from the flower demon’s lair. And there’s a very good chance Hao Dalong is somewhere nearby too. No wonder you specifically asked where these weeds grew on the mountain.”

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