Why did Li Huowang stop before biting the Black Tai Sui?

The chapter deliberately leaves his hesitation ambiguous—it could be a moment of clarity, contamination fear, or the horror of his own actions catching up with him.

What is the Black Tai Sui’s significance in this chapter?

It is the sole prize Li Huowang dragged out of the cave; he treats it as more important than his own recovery, signaling his shift toward predatory opportunism.

What does the rooftop memory with Yang Na mean?

It is Li Huowang’s purest memory of his past life—a promise between teenage lovers—and its destruction symbolizes how the Dao-Twisted World consumes everything he once was.

The Black Tai Sui

1,275 words

“Let’s stop here for now,” Li Huowang said. “Once the wounds heal, we’ll fix everything up one piece at a time.” His words brought a wave of relief over everyone.

Chun Xiaoman, staring at Li Huowang’s bloody, mangled form, could hold it in no longer. She turned and fell to her knees, retching violently into the dirt.

But she had already emptied her stomach in the two rounds before. Now, all that came up was bile.

Bai Lingmiao’s trembling hand stroked Li Huowang’s black hair over and over. Tears filled her eyes, but the words stuck in her throat, refusing to come out.

“What are you crying for? Smile! Not a single one of us died. We got the Black Tai Sui and a prisoner on top of it. This is great news!”

“And Miao Miao, look at this face of mine—it’s pretty good, right? When you get tired of it, I can swap it out for another.” Li Huowang grinned wide, forcing his eyes and brows into a cheerful display.

He knew he looked a mess. And he hurt. He hurt so badly he wanted to die.

But he had to pretend it didn’t matter. Because if he started complaining and screaming, it wouldn’t fix anything—it would just drag everyone else down.

This was a trick he’d learned from Lü Zhuangyuan’s wife, Luo Juan. When something unavoidable happened, maybe you could try acting like you didn’t care at all, to keep the people around you from hurting.

But Li Huowang had clearly missed the point. The louder he laughed, the harder Bai Lingmiao cried.

Finally, Li Huowang grew tired—literally tired. His single eye slowly closed. “I’m going to rest for a bit. Wake me when we get there… Once I’m up, we’ll find the way back.”

The moment he finished speaking, he lost consciousness.

In the hazy half-dark, something very familiar drifted up and down through his awareness. He tried to grasp what it was, but he couldn’t.

Between sleeping and waking, his thoughts were fragmented, jagged. He kept forgetting what he had been thinking a moment before.

Suddenly, a brilliant starry sky filled his mind. In that instant, he remembered—this was the rooftop of his school. He and Yang Na had watched the sky all night. What he was seeing now was his own past memory.

“Na Na, I’m sorry. I got sick. I need to take a break from school and get treatment.” The boy held the girl close, speaking softly.

“When will you be better? Will it be long?” The girl gently swayed their interlaced fingers.

“I don’t know. But don’t worry—for you, I’ll do my best to cooperate with the treatment and get out as fast as I can.”

“I told you, we’re going to get into the same university. And after we graduate, I’ll marry you.”

The girl blushed deeply at this, but in the end, she nodded slightly. “Okay. I’ll wait for you.”

In that moment, the two of them, painfully young and innocent, drew closer, and closer, until they pressed together.

“Huowang? How are you doing?”

“Li-shixiong, are you alright?”

“Li Huowang! Stand up straight, damn it!”

“Xiao Li, do you think that side is real, or is this side real?”

Voices called out from all directions, tearing apart the one beautiful memory buried deepest in Li Huowang’s heart.

He didn’t want to go back. He wanted to stay frozen in that perfect moment forever. But that was impossible. Everything around him began to crumble, and the beautiful memory shattered into pieces.

“Ha!” Li Huowang’s eyes flew open, his body drenched in cold sweat. Bai Lingmiao was holding his head, gently leaning down to pass goat’s milk from her mouth into his.

The warm milk on his tongue helped his scattered awareness slowly coalesce. He felt like his head was a rusted machine—every thought came in jerky, halting fits.

“Where are we?” he asked, staring at the cowhide tent above him.

Seeing that he had finally woken, Bai Lingmiao let out a long sigh of relief. “This is Sun Baolu’s home. He herds sheep nearby and knows the trails. He brought us back.”

“And, Li-shixiong, you’ve been unconscious for over ten days. Good thing you woke up.”

Hearing this, Li Huowang threw off the blanket and quickly looked down at his own body.

The gaping wound he had cut into himself had mostly healed. But he still looked strange—very strange. A lot of things were out of place. At least, normal people didn’t have their belly buttons at hip level.

Still, compared to how he had looked crawling out of the cave, he was far more presentable. At least he looked human.

Most importantly, the left foot had grown back half a sole. Finally, he wouldn’t need a crutch to walk.

After checking himself, Li Huowang didn’t rest. He immediately pressed Bai Lingmiao for news on Han Fu and the Black Tai Sui.

“It’s fine. Everything’s been prepared. But we really have to thank Sun Baolu’s family. If they hadn’t shown up, there’s no way we could have hauled all that stuff here.”

“We borrowed two cowhide tents and set them up far apart. The other shidi and shixiong are watching them. Li-shixiong, please lie down. You’re hurt too badly.”

“Let’s go! First, the Black Tai Sui!”

Li Huowang, who had been waiting impatiently, didn’t want to wait a second longer. He pulled on his clothes and strode out of the tent.

As he emerged, everyone turned to look at him. The gaze of these people from Qingqiu was no longer simply curious—it carried a hint of wariness, even unease.

That was only natural. If they had seen him like this and still acted warm and hospitable, that would have been cause for worry.

He clasped his hands and bowed briefly to the others, then walked out of the tent cluster, heading toward the two lonely tents pitched far away on the grassland.

Halfway there, he ran into the Lü family troupe, who were just returning from herding sheep. Master Lü forced down his shock and stared at Li Huowang’s unrecognizable face. “Little Daoist Priest? It’s only been ten days or so, and you’re already up and about?”

“Ah, didn’t I say it before? Our Little Daoist Priest’s divine powers are unmatched! Those common evil spirits wouldn’t stand a chance against you!”

But Li Huowang, his mind heavy with worry, couldn’t be bothered with his flattery.

After confirming that Han Fu’s little head was still alive, he ducked straight into the Black Tai Sui’s tent. That thing was more important to him than anything else now.

The moment he entered, he saw it: spears had been driven through the Black Tai Sui’s tentacles, pinning it to the ground, leaving it unable to move an inch.

Li Huowang circled it, examining it carefully. When he was sure it was exactly the same kind of Black Tai Sui as the one in Qingfeng Temple, he spread his fingers and shoved his hand directly into its body. His fingers closed around a greasy chunk of tai sui and yanked it free.

As the blade of his knife traced along the edge of the chunk and slowly cut through, the crevices in the Black Tai Sui’s body let out a piercing shriek. Thick black fluid oozed out from within.

Li Huowang stared at the piece of meat in his hand. On the cut surface, some of the shreds quickly began to writhe into tiny tentacles. He slowly opened his mouth wide, raised the chunk, and brought it toward his lips.

But just as he was about to bite down, he stopped.

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Reading Guide Decoding

Aftermath: The Price of Survival and a Bite Held

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

Black Tai Sui (黑太岁) continues to serve as one of the most unsettling xianxia “resources” in the novel. In Chinese folk religion, tai sui (太岁) refers to both a celestial deity associated with years and to a mysterious subterranean or organic growth—sometimes called “flesh mushroom”—believed to have medicinal and alchemical properties. The real-world tai sui is often described as a gelatinous, fleshy mass found underground and treated with superstitious awe; this novel takes that folk-entity and grafts onto it a body-horror parasite that whispers, squirms, and regenerates. When Li Huowang cuts into it and it shrieks, the horror isn’t just visual—it’s a violation of something that was never supposed to be a resource. It’s alchemy without reverence.

Mouth-to-mouth feeding with goat’s milk is a small but significant cultural detail. In traditional Chinese caregiving—especially in rural settings—feeding an unconscious or bedridden patient by pre-chewing or warming food in the caregiver’s own mouth was a common expression of intimate devotion. Bai Lingmiao’s act here quietly mirrors the role of a wife or mother in classical domestic practice, reinforcing her position as the emotional anchor while Li Huowang drifts between life and death.

The voluntary consumption of raw parasitic flesh is a deliberate inversion of normal xianxia “elixir-taking.” In standard cultivation stories, a hero would never eat a live, screaming piece of a monster unless it had been refined into a pill. Li Huowang’s willingness to bypass the entire alchemical process and bite directly into the horror signals a man who has internalized the novel’s core rule: there is no clean way to power.

Mouth-to-mouth feeding (口哺)

A traditional Chinese caregiving practice for unconscious patients, often involving warmed or pre-chewed food passed between mouths as an expression of intimate devotion.

Chapter Overview

This chapter is a quiet, visceral interlude of aftermath, recovery, and grim determination. After the desperate escape from the cave, Li Huowang wakes from a ten-day coma to find his group alive, the Black Tai Sui secured, and his own body a patchwork horror of poorly healed scars. But rather than flinching from the cost, he leans into it with forced cheerfulness—a defense mechanism learned from watching others endure unbearable things. The chapter ends on a knife-edge of intent: Li Huowang holds a piece of the Black Tai Sui to his mouth, ready to consume it, only to stop at the last possible moment. It’s a breath held, a choice suspended, and the silence before the next storm.

Key Plot Points

Li Huowang wakes from a ten-day coma in a cowhide tent, his body riddled with poorly healed cuts and disfigurements, but functionally recovering.
Bai Lingmiao has been caring for him, passing him goat’s milk mouth-to-mouth to keep him alive; her relief at his awakening is profound but understated.
The group has moved to Sun Baolu’s home on the grasslands; the Black Tai Sui and Han Fu’s severed head are secured in separate tents under watch.
Li Huowang immediately prioritizes the Black Tai Sui, ignoring further rest to inspect it personally; his single-minded focus betrays a shift toward predatory opportunism.
He identifies the Black Tai Sui as identical to the one in Qingfeng Temple, cuts a piece loose, and nearly swallows it raw—only to stop himself at the last moment.
The narrative cuts between his painful self-examination, a brief flashback to a tender rooftop memory with Yang Na, and the cold logistical reality of his current position.

Reading Guide

This is a recovery chapter in the worst sense of the word—there’s no rest, no softness, but a careful inventory of everything that’s still broken. Li Huowang’s forced cheerfulness is one of the most uncomfortable things he’s done so far: he laughs to keep others from worrying, and it rings hollow enough to make Bai Lingmiao cry harder. Pay attention to that disconnect—he’s learning to be a leader, but he’s learning badly, applying survival logic to emotional wounds.

The rooftop memory with Yang Na is a deliberate emotional spike. After chapters of filth, pain, and parasitic horror, Li Huowang’s subconscious clings to the cleanest moment of his past life. That this memory is torn apart by voices calling him back to the Dao-Twisted World is the novel’s way of telling you that he can’t even keep his best self safe anymore.

And then there’s the ending beat: he raises the Black Tai Sui to his mouth, and stops. The chapter doesn’t tell you why. It just leaves you staring at that decision. Some readers might see it as a moment of clarity. Others might see the horror of what he’s about to do finally catching up to him. Either way—it’s a man on a very, very short leash.

Quick Q&A

Lore recap (TL;DR) drawn from this chapter's Cultural / Xianxia Notes — same text as the FAQ structured data on this page.

Why did Li Huowang stop before biting the Black Tai Sui?: The chapter deliberately leaves his hesitation ambiguous—it could be a moment of clarity, contamination fear, or the horror of his own actions catching up with him.
What is the Black Tai Sui’s significance in this chapter?: It is the sole prize Li Huowang dragged out of the cave; he treats it as more important than his own recovery, signaling his shift toward predatory opportunism.
What does the rooftop memory with Yang Na mean?: It is Li Huowang’s purest memory of his past life—a promise between teenage lovers—and its destruction symbolizes how the Dao-Twisted World consumes everything he once was.