Chapter 5
Chapter 5
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 2
Chapter Title: Grandpa's Abnormalities
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Chen Shi had also noticed Grandpa's odd behavior. There was a foul stench on his body, and he seemed to love sniffing the scent of incense just like the scholar ghost at the village entrance.
Moreover, these past few days, he hadn't seen Grandpa eat a single meal. He'd only caught Grandpa secretly munching on candles, one after another, like they were radishes!
He even suspected that those mysteriously dead chickens and ducks had probably been secretly bitten to death and drained of blood by Grandpa!
But to Chen Shi, no matter what Grandpa had turned into, he was still his closest kin.
"Blackie Pot, take him to drink his medicine," Grandpa said flatly.
Outside the Chen family courtyard, a big black dog wagged its tail obediently, clamped its jaws on Chen Shi's sleeve, and tugged him home.
From behind, that massive human head drifted over.
The ancient tree at the village center stirred without wind. One branch lashed out like a whip, striking the giant head with a sharp crack and sending it flying.
A pungent medicinal aroma wafted through the air. Chen Shi finished downing a whole basin of medicine and sat in the drug vat, his belly bloated and drummed up.
This basin of medicine was his dinner.
A fire burned beneath the vat, and the big black dog sat in front of it. Though just a dog, it had a kind and gentle face. When the flames died down, it picked up a piece of firewood in its mouth and shoved it into the fire.
Bubbles gurgled up in the vat. Chen Shi scalded his teeth and grimaced, yelling, "Blackie Pot, stop adding wood! Any more and I'll be cooked!"
Blackie Pot was the big black dog's name.
As the name implied, whenever grandpa and grandson got into trouble, the dog often took the blame.
Blackie Pot had been picked up by Grandpa and raised on household scraps. It understood human speech, was highly intelligent, and had a kind heart. Hearing this, it thoughtfully tossed a few more sticks under the vat.
The black dog blinked, seemingly eager to see if Chen Shi could really be boiled through.
Chen Shi yelled about the heat for a while, then gradually fell silent.
He seemed to have grown accustomed to the temperature.
The boy sat comfortably in the vat, leaning against the rim, and reached back to touch the long scar on the back of his head.
He had little memory of the wound on the back of his skull.
He remembered few things—his parents, whether he'd ever studied before, or how someone had once pried open his skull.
When he awoke back then, his head throbbed like it would split. Darkness surrounded him, cold and absolute. Strange, heavy, ancient voices echoed from the void, as if from beyond the heavens, guiding him.
He followed the voices, walking who-knew-how-long until he spotted a sliver of light.
As he stepped into the light, the darkness receded like the tide, and everything gradually brightened.
Once his eyes adjusted, he realized he was sitting in a large drug vat, bubbling with heat and reeking of medicine. Beside it stood a tall, burly white-haired elder, with a black dog adding firewood at his feet.
Seeing him awake, the white-haired elder hugged him tightly in excitement.
Later, Chen Shi learned this man was his Grandpa. He'd been in a coma for a long time, and Grandpa had never abandoned him, using all sorts of spiritual herbs to treat and sustain his life.
Chen Shi remembered nothing before age nine, only starting to form memories upon waking. Strictly speaking, he was just a two-year-old child.
"So, someone dug out my Divine Embryo, and that's why I turned out like this."
Chen Shi recalled the conversation he'd overheard between the Purple-Clothed Woman and the others. In his mind, he thought, "I'm not a natural waste. I can cultivate too. I can become a favored child of the gods, a heaven's proud son! Li Xiaoding, son of Assistant Magistrate Li of Water Buffalo County... what grudge do we have!"
A surge of fury rose in his chest. For the past two years, he'd been inseparable from the drug vat, boiling in it daily for a stretch. The herbs changed often—nameless ingredients, even venomous snakes and scorpions!
Chen Shi knew he was ill but had never known exactly what ailed him!
Now he understood. All the suffering these years stemmed from this—from that noble young master Li Xiaoding!
"But..."
Chen Shi was puzzled. "My scalp has already healed. So why does Grandpa still make me soak in the vat every day?"
Just then, the air temperature dropped again. Even the flames under the vat shrank, shifting from clear yellow to eerie green.
Grandpa had entered the room.
Chen Shi sneaked a glance. Grandpa stood in the shadowed corner by the wall, his face indistinct. Chen Shi couldn't tell what he was doing. But he always felt Grandpa staring at him—sometimes with tender eyes, other times brimming with killing intent.
That killing intent reminded Chen Shi of a gravely wounded leopard he'd once encountered.
He'd approached to bandage its wounds, but the leopard's gaze filled him with chills—the primal killing aura of a beast facing death!
After a moment, Grandpa left. The flames roared back to life, and the air warmed again.
Chen Shi quietly exhaled in relief.
The black dog let out a long breath too, considerately adding more wood—though its jaws trembled as it carried the sticks. Clearly, the dog had sensed Grandpa's killing intent as well.
Both boy and dog realized Grandpa was still Grandpa, but no longer the same Grandpa as before.
The old Grandpa had smelled human.
This one did not.
The medicinal broth in the vat gradually cleared. Chen Shi felt strange currents seep from it, burrowing into his skin like tiny insects—through pores, under flesh, into muscles, organs, bones. An indescribable discomfort.
Though immersed in water, he felt as if engulfed in roaring flames, his entire body scorched and refined from inside out!
Chen Shi had long grown used to the pain, but his body still trembled faintly.
When the medicinal power ebbed and the broth turned clear as water, Chen Shi finally climbed out.
On the left side of his chest, a cyan claw mark stood out—five fingers splayed, like an invisible ghostly hand gripping his heart. After the vat's water-fire tempering, the cyan ghostly hand had faded considerably.
The mark had been there as long as Chen Shi could remember, never fully vanishing.
The cyan ghostly hand was peculiar: it faded after a medicinal soak but grew vivid again over time.
Chen Shi dressed and stepped into the courtyard.
From the next room came Grandpa's voice: "...Ah Tang, when are you coming back... I know you're busy. No matter how busy, you have to come home, right... I'm old, won't last much longer. Little Ten's still young, needs looking after. Take him to the city... I know life in the city is tough, but he's your son. Whether you acknowledge him or not, he's still your son..."
Chen Shi stood silently in the courtyard, unmoving.
Grandpa was a cultivator too. Chen Shi didn't know his realm, only that they'd never encountered danger on mountain trips with him.
Grandpa was probably in the room now, using a Thousand-Li Sound Transmission Talisman to contact Chen Shi's father, Chen Tang.
Chen Shi had never met his father, Chen Tang.
Not once.
Perhaps before his Divine Embryo was taken, but since waking, Father had never returned.
He'd never met his mother either.
Not once.
Chen Shi cleared his stray thoughts and silently circulated the Three Lights Righteous Qi Art. Starlight dotted the sky, falling steadily to nourish his body and bolster his true qi.
But soon, the true qi dispersed, leaving none behind.
He persisted, cultivating on his own.
Late into the night, he finished and returned to bed.
Soon, Grandpa wandered in like a sleepwalker, soundlessly approaching the bedside and standing motionless. His shadow fell over Chen Shi's face.
His form leaned forward, then back, silent all the while.
That bone-chilling killing intent permeated the tiny room once more.
Silent.
Oppressive.
After an unknown stretch, the room's window creaked open on its own without wind. Grandpa floated straight out through it.
"Hungry..."
Mumbling like sleep-talk, he leaped up and vanished from the courtyard.
Blackie Pot's head jerked up alertly, glanced around, then buried back down to sleep.
In the room, Chen Shi quietly opened his eyes and sighed inwardly in relief.
"Grandpa must be sick. He doesn't really want to kill me." He thought to himself.
Then, a wrenching pain stabbed his chest. His body curled like a cooked shrimp, skin flushing red, veins bulging!
He clamped down on the quilt, trembling wordlessly, unable to breathe. Soon, sweat beaded his skin like soybeans!
Chen Shi shuddered uncontrollably. Looking down, the cyan ghost claw was clenched around his heart, squeezing tighter!
His heart clenched—this wasn't the first time.
Every few days, this agony struck. He'd fainted from it before, dreaming in blackout of countless massive, towering, terrifying shadows encircling him, reaching out with pitch-black, scaled palms.
In the past, Grandpa had always saved him from death's door. But now, Grandpa was gone!
Chen Shi struggled up. His legs buckled, and he tumbled from the bed, strengthless from pain.
Gritting his teeth fiercely, he staggered to his feet, treading the Yu Steps in the Big Dipper pattern. Thumbs and pinkies pinched together on both hands, right thumb piercing left palm. In the cramped hovel, he paced the astral steps, silently reciting the Three Lights Righteous Qi Art.
"Heaven at its birth reveres the divine alone. Evils swarm unseen, true gods absent, ghosts alone plague man! Behold heaven's way, uphold heaven's acts. Cultivate stellar righteous qi, refine the sacred embryonic true body!"
He circulated the art. Starlight like fireflies in the night streamed through the open window, landing on his skin, seeping into flesh and blood.
As the Three Lights Righteous Qi Art turned, the pain eased, becoming bearable.
Chen Shi pressed on. The pain diminished further; the ghost hand's cyan knuckles relaxed, no longer crushing his heart.
"What's with this ghost claw on my chest? Why is it haunting my body?"
After a long while, the agony faded. Chen Shi gazed out warily. Moonlight silvered the courtyard, shadows mottled.
"The Three Lights Righteous Qi Art suppresses the pain. If it could draw in sunlight and moonlight to forge sun-moon righteous qi, maybe the heart-gripping torment would end. Too bad I can't ever summon the sun or moon light."
Suddenly, a bold thought struck the boy, spawning new doubts: "The sun is clearly the twin eyes of the one true god beyond the heavens. The moon, its vertical eye. So why speak of sunrises, sunsets, moon phases waxing and waning? How strange. Could it be—could it be..."
A daring idea flashed in his mind: "Could there be other suns and moons? Does the Three Lights Righteous Qi actually draw from different moonlight and sunlight?"
He poked his head out the window, peering curiously at the moon beyond—radiant, mysterious.
The vertical eye of the true god beyond.
"But if such suns and moons exist, why can't we see them in the sky?"
Brimming with curiosity, Chen Shi lay back, mind wandering with fancies.
In the sky, the divine eye like a moon oversaw all beings.
Above the woods, the inflated human head was struck by a beam of cold light and plummeted heavily into the mountain.
Soon, a tall figure arrived and began devouring the flesh and blood.
"Delicious, delicious! Evil tastes even better than man!"