Chapter Eighty: An Unexpected Discovery

“You want to eat me?”
“No, no, I mean you no harm. Please, don’t be afraid of me.”
Seeing him like this, I hurriedly waved my hands to reassure him.
He seemed to let out a sigh of relief, lowering his head as he spoke, “I—I’m a spirit that has been cultivating on this mountain. This morning, when I went out to play, I encountered a great demon at the back of the mountain, and he wounded me.”
“A spirit?” I asked curiously. “What’s your true form?”
“Uh…” He hesitated for a moment before answering timidly, “A blood ganoderma.”
“A blood ganoderma?”
I was stunned by this answer, which was entirely beyond my expectations. Before agreeing to help Zilian search for the blood ganoderma in these mountains, I had imagined it might be an ugly, hairy brute, or perhaps a half-human, half-demon monster with a thirst for blood. But never had I expected that the true blood ganoderma would be nothing more than a child who looked about twelve or thirteen, sweet-faced and harmless.
Zilian’s old wounds had flared up, and the only medicine that could save him was, in fact, this child standing before me. To heal him would mean draining this child’s blood, cutting him into pieces, and boiling him into a medicinal broth.
This was far too cruel.
I crouched down and reached out to touch him, feeling a cold, sticky liquid seeping through his green robes and onto my hand.
“What’s wrong? What is this?”

Feeling the constant trickle of viscous liquid from his body, I asked, full of curiosity.
“I’m bleeding from my wounds.”
After a long pause, he finally answered in a weak voice.
Gurgle, gurgle… My stomach rumbled again.
“Let me help you bandage your wounds first, alright?”
I reached out, intending to help, only to be pushed over by him.
Ouch, my poor backside. I rubbed it and quickly got back to my feet, reaching out again.
“No need,” he insisted.
He seemed very frightened of me, shrinking back in alarm as I tried to remove his clothes to tend to his wounds.
“Don’t be afraid. Really, I’m not a bad person,” I reassured him with a smile. “I won’t hurt you. I just want to check your wounds and stop the bleeding. There’s nothing to fear.”
Seeing that he no longer tried to escape, I tore off a sleeve from my robe and edged closer to him. By the light of the torch, I saw his green clothes were soaked with bright red blood.
“You’re bleeding so much! Does it hurt a lot?”

I gently pulled open his collar, revealing hideous gashes clawed into his shoulder, his chest, even his neck—so many wounds, all still bleeding.
Gurgle, gurgle…
“I… I’m not going to last much longer.”
His frail voice came again, each word a struggle, his breath growing weaker and the intervals between words longer, while the blood showed no sign of stopping.
He turned his head away, speaking in a trembling voice, “Big brother, I know why you came to this mountain. You’re like all the others. You came to find the blood ganoderma.”
He paused, then continued, “Actually, I am the blood ganoderma.”
With that, he quickly lowered his head, exposing his pale, slender neck.
“So what if you’re the blood ganoderma? Right now, what matters is stopping your bleeding,” I said impatiently, working quickly to bind his wounds.
He went on, “Because I am the blood ganoderma, I have been hunted all my life. These wounds are all from mortals who chased me. Mortals want to become immortals, immortals want more power, and demons crave this spiritual energy. So I have always lived in a state of being hunted.”
His face, white as paper, was streaked with tears, his lips pale, looking more like a lost soul on the verge of reincarnation than a living child. His cracked lips parted once more as he whispered, “Before I die, big brother, eat me. If you do, you’ll gain a thousand years of cultivation.”