The Capture of the Black Tai Sui

1,256 words

“Woof!”

Mantou’s bark cut through Li Huowang’s thoughts. He turned just in time to see the dog plunge into the darkness on one side.

“Daoist, go after it! That dog just caught the scent of what you’re looking for!” the monk hallucination urged him from beside him.

“Black Tai Sui?” Li Huowang glanced at him, then, limping, hurried after the dog. The others followed suit.

In the darkness, Mantou grew more and more excited. After a few turns, Li Huowang himself began to feel a thrill—he could smell it too, the scent of Black Tai Sui.

“No mistake, it’s nearby!” At the thought, Li Huowang’s heart pounded.

As he pushed himself to run faster despite his limp, a sudden prickling sensation crawled over his scalp. He ducked on instinct. A blast of wind carried something just past the top of his head.

WHAM! Gao Zhijian’s massive wolf-tooth club slammed into whatever it was, saving Li Huowang.

As Li Huowang straightened up, the thing that had ambushed him had already vanished into the darkness.

The others quickly closed in around him, weapons drawn and pointed outward.

Li Huowang’s body was taut, his hand gripping his sword. “Did you see what it was?” he asked Gao Zhijian.

“Flesh… flesh hook!” the simple giant answered.

“A flesh hook? Something else new? Can’t we get a single break?” Li Huowang’s brow furrowed as he scanned the surrounding dark. He turned to the monk beside Peng Longteng. “Did you see it?”

“No. I was distracted.”

Tap tap tap. The sound came from Li Huowang’s left. All weapons swung towards it in unison. It was Mantou, his coat the color of dusty earth, trotting out with little steps.

His ears flat against his head, the dog turned in a circle, then lifted his front paws and made a high leap toward Li Huowang. “Woof!”

“Daoist, the dog is asking why you aren’t following.”

Li Huowang scowled. “Shut up! You understand dogs now?”

The shout startled everyone else. They stared at him, still shaken.

“Brother Li, don’t lose it now, alright? If you lose it now, we’re done for,” Gouwa said, his voice full of fear.

Frowning, Li Huowang glanced at him, then back at Mantou. “Why did it only attack me, and not the dog?”

There was no answer to that question. Mantou wagged his tail and shook his head, pacing restlessly in place. His impatience was obvious: whatever they were tracking had to be close.

Li Huowang looked back the way they had come, then made his decision. He was going to keep following. They had come this far; turning back now would mean all that suffering was for nothing.

“Move out. Stay together. Don’t fall behind.” To avoid another ambush, they formed a tight circle, advancing step by step, slowly following Mantou forward.

Mindful of the earlier lesson, Li Huowang made sure to keep an eye on the ceiling, too.

Seeing his master on the move, Mantou hopped, pressed his black nose to the ground, and began sniffing his way along.

For a while after that, neither the flesh hook that had ambushed Li Huowang nor the strange lion dance returned. The silence was unnaturally deep.

But that silence only made the wait more agonizing. In the dim, oppressive space, everyone’s nerves were frayed. Sweat slid slowly down their faces.

“Shh. Stop. We found it.” Li Huowang’s voice was electric with excitement as he stared at the twisted, writhing mass of tentacles in the distant dark.

It was still blurry, but he was sure of it. That was a Black Tai Sui.

The Black Tai Sui had clearly noticed the light source that had appeared out of nowhere. It reached out a tentative tentacle, poking at the green glow.

“Finally.” Li Huowang’s breathing became shallow, as if afraid to spook it.

“Brother Li, how are we getting this thing back?” Sun Baolu leaned in and whispered.

Li Huowang studied the thing in the darkness. This one looked even bigger than the one from the Qingfeng Temple.

“Zhijian, get the chains they used to tie me up. We need to set a trap.”

“When we move in, go easy. Don’t kill it.”

The chains were slowly spread out around the Black Tai Sui. Everyone moved on light feet.

When Li Huowang gave the nod, Gao Zhijian, gripping his wolf-tooth club, charged in and swung with all his might, smashing it into the creature.

WHUMP. A dull, muffled sound. Dozens of translucent tentacles lashed out from the impact site, stabbing towards him.

The instant the Black Tai Sui attacked Gao Zhijian, the others sprang, throwing the chains around its mass.

Li Huowang, who had been waiting, rushed in as well. He raised his sword and hacked at the base of the tentacles.

Honestly, for Li Huowang and his group at this point, a Black Tai Sui wasn’t that strong—at least not as strong as the lion dance. But against the lion dance, they could use any means necessary. A Black Tai Sui was different. They had to take it alive. That was the problem.

Too heavy, and it dies. Too light, and it doesn’t hold.

Li Huowang’s group tried to get the chains around it, while the Black Tai Sui struggled to break free and lashed out at them with its tentacles.

For a moment, they were locked in a chaotic tangle.

Li Huowang had miscalculated. Cutting off the tentacles didn’t stop them; more just grew from inside the wound.

Just as things were reaching a critical point, a new sound came from their left. Something was approaching.

WHAM! SHING! The sound was strange, unlike anything Li Huowang could identify.

“Whatever it is, I can’t drag this out any longer! I have to use the Benevolent Mother’s Heart-Fasting!”

Taking a deep breath, Li Huowang swiftly pulled out his dagger and began to peel the skin around his chest.

With a hard yank, he tore off a large flap of skin and flesh, exposing the stark white of his ribs to the air. Ignoring the pain that nearly made him black out, he hurled it. Driven by the power of the Thousand Greats Record, that bloody piece of skin swelled instantly, wrapping itself tightly around the Black Tai Sui. Pressed in its grip, the creature’s tentacles twisted and struggled, but they couldn’t break free.

“Go!” Li Huowang, gritting his teeth against the agony, called for the others to take the Black Tai Sui and leave.

As they moved away from the spot, the strange sound gradually faded.

“Brother Li, you’re hurt again.” Bai Lingmiao’s eyes were full of pain as she watched the blood slowly stain his clothes red. She took out some wound powder from her waist and sprinkled it evenly over his bare chest.

The sting of the medicine on his wound was so intense Li Huowang wished for death. But when he turned his head and saw Gao Zhijian dragging the Black Tai Sui, he found the will to keep going.

The corners of his mouth curled up slightly. Accompanied by that searing pain, he slowly began to laugh.

This trip was worth it. Now he could finally seal off that hallucination for good.

“Wang Wei, weren’t you saying that place is real? Alright then. Once I eat this Black Tai Sui, if you’ve got the guts to pull me back there again, I’ll believe you!”

Shaking his head with a cold laugh, Li Huowang muttered to himself, his eyes fixed on the darkness beyond.

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Reading Guide Decoding

Flesh, Payment, and the Hunt for a Cure

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

Black Tai Sui (黑太岁/Black Tai Sui): In Chinese folk religion, Tai Sui (太岁) refers to the stellar deity of Jupiter, a powerful and often malevolent force that governs fortune in a given year. “Offending Tai Sui” is a common idiom for asking for trouble. The novel takes this and inverts it into a tangible, parasitic entity—a writhing mass of black flesh and tentacles that functions as an alchemical ingredient for warding off madness. Li Huowang is hunting it not for power, but as a grim medical prescription.

The Benevolent Mother’s Heart-Fasting (仁母心斋): This is one of the ritual techniques from the Thousand Greats Record (大千录), the Ao-Jing Sect’s scripture of suffering for power. Its name uses sacred-sounding Buddhist language (“Benevolent Mother,” “Heart-Fasting” or mental purification), but its execution is pure body horror: the practitioner literally tears off his own skin and flesh, which then becomes a self-propelled, supernatural binding tool. This is the novel’s core aesthetic in a nutshell—holy names and concepts describing acts of visceral self-mutilation.

Flesh Hook (肉钩子): A new predator introduced in this chapter, glimpsed only as a fast-moving silhouette. The name suggests something from a butcher’s shop repurposed into a living weapon, continuing the novel’s pattern of turning mundane, grotesque objects into animate horrors.

Chapter Overview

Forget subtle clues and creeping dread—Li Huowang has a fix on his target and he’s going after it like a man possessed (which, fair warning, he very much might be). This chapter is a straight shot of focused, tactical horror: our limping protagonist uses his demon dog as a bloodhound, tracks down the elusive Black Tai Sui, and executes a messy, high-stakes capture in the dark. But the Dao-Twisted World never gives gifts without a price. A new predator—the “flesh hook”—announces itself, and Li Huowang’s solution to the capture problem requires him to peel his own chest open and use the skin as a living net. It’s brutal, it’s visceral, and it ends with a laugh that might be triumph, or might be the sound of something inside him finally breaking.

Key Plot Points

Mantou catches the scent of the Black Tai Sui and leads the group deeper into the darkness. The monk-hallucination interprets the dog’s barks for Li Huowang, earning a harsh rebuke that sends a visible shudder through the rest of the party.
An unknown entity attacks Li Huowang from the dark—a “flesh hook” that Gao Zhijian barely deflects with his wolf-tooth club. It vanishes before anyone gets a good look.
The group advances in a tight, defensive formation, step by step, watching the ceiling for the earlier lion-dance threat. The silence between threats is nearly as oppressive as the ambushes.
They locate the Black Tai Sui: a larger specimen than the Qingfeng Temple’s, writhing with translucent tentacles in a patch of green light. The capture plan is set in motion with chains and a delicate balance of force.
The plan nearly fails. The tentacles regenerate faster than Li Huowang anticipated, and a new, dissonant sound approaches from the side—wham-shing.
Out of time and options, Li Huowang deploys the Benevolent Mother’s Heart-Fasting: a ritual from the Thousand Greats Record that turns a large patch of his own chest-skin into a living, expanding net that completely immobilizes the Black Tai Sui.
The group escapes with their prize. As Bai Lingmiao tends to his wound, Li Huowang laughs through the pain—he has the key to locking away the hallucination for good.

Reading Guide

Alright, fellow travelers, take a breath. This chapter is lean, mean, and gives us exactly what we’ve been waiting for: the hunt and capture of the Black Tai Sui. Notice how Li Huowang’s mindset has shifted—he’s not panicking, he’s calculating. Even in the middle of a chaotic battle with a regenerating blob monster, he’s scanning for new threats, adjusting plans on the fly, and making the kind of brutal, self-sacrificing call that has become his signature. The laugh at the end isn’t madness (well, not just madness); it’s the laugh of a man who has paid the price and finally gotten his hands on the cure. But with that new unknown sound—wham-shing—retreating into the dark, we’re left with the uncomfortable feeling that this world’s debt collectors don’t stay quiet for long.

The Horror of the “Safe Zone”

One of the most effective tricks in this chapter is the stretch of silence after the flesh hook’s attack. The group waits, moves slowly, and nothing happens. But the reader’s tension doesn’t drop—it curdles. This is a hallmark of the Dao-Twisted World’s horror: even the absence of threat becomes a pressure cooker. The darkness itself starts to feel like a held breath.

Why the Skin-Sacrifice Works

Li Huowang’s choice to use the Benevolent Mother’s Heart-Fasting is a masterclass in world-logic problem-solving. He can’t kill the Black Tai Sui, so he needs a method of restraint that is alive and aggressive. His own flesh, powered by the Record, is both of those things. It’s a terrible price, but it’s a smart terrible price. That’s what makes Li Huowang compelling: he doesn’t just suffer, he suffers efficiently.