Why did the waiter hang himself?

He was terrified that the ghost would steal his "life-root," making his body incomplete and preventing his soul from reincarnating. He chose to die "whole" to escape an eternal torment as a restless ghost.

Death

1,091 words

Chapter 274: Death

“It’s… it’s smaller.” The waiter’s trembling voice plunged the entire room into an eerie atmosphere.

Overcome with panic, he didn’t bother to fasten his trousers. He dropped to his knees, kowtowing frantically in every direction.

“Grandpa Ghost! I swear I didn’t want to say it! He forced me to! If you’ve got a grievance, take it up with him! Please don’t steal my life-root!”

“If you take my manhood away, you’ll get reincarnated! But me? I’ll be stuck as a lonely, restless spirit forever!”

His words made Gao Zhijian clap his hands over his own crotch in terror. Li Huowang also instinctively looked down.

“Could it be—this so-called ‘shrink-stealing ghost’ has already arrived?” His face grim, Li Huowang swept his gaze around the room once more.

With his current sharpened senses, if something in this room was watching him, he was certain he would feel it.

But he didn’t feel any gaze. That meant one of two things: either the ghost was deliberately not looking at him, or it didn’t even have eyes.

“An invisible fiend? Like Layue Shiba?” Facing this unknown threat, Li Huowang didn’t dare be careless.

In this godforsaken place, he didn’t believe a calamity that plagued an entire county could only accomplish a slow, creeping theft.

Without anyone in the room noticing, Li Huowang’s colored, intangible form had silently shifted away from his invisible, physical body. His right hand was already gripping the sword hilt behind his back.

The atmosphere in the room grew unbearably oppressive. Just as Li Huowang focused all his attention on the empty space around him—

The waiter, still prostrate on the floor, suddenly stood up and bolted for the door beside him.

“Can this thing possess people?!”

Li Huowang instinctively thrust his sword toward the waiter’s back. But with a clang, Gao Zhijian raised the stone slab on his chest and blocked the blade.

In that split second, the waiter had already fled out the door.

Li Huowang’s murderous glare instantly shifted from the waiter to Gao Zhijian.

“Is this one that stubborn? Has it already taken over Gao Zhijian’s body?”

Holding the stone slab, Gao Zhijian saw the murderous look in Li Huowang’s eyes and started frantically waving his hands. “I… I am… it’s me. I-I-I… I am Zhijian.”

But Li Huowang didn’t trust him yet. He stared at the man’s simple, honest face. “You say you are? Deeds, not hearts. Gao Zhijian would never block my sword! Who are you really?”

“Li… Li-shixiong, that man wasn’t… wasn’t p-possessed by any fiend!”

“If he wasn’t possessed, why did he just run?”

Seeing the clarity in Gao Zhijian’s eyes, Li Huowang thought quickly and pointed outside with his sword. “Fine. If you’re really Gao Zhijian, then toss that Heavenly Scripture aside. You go first. Find that waiter.”

His sudden flight was incredibly suspicious. Possessed or not, Li Huowang had to get to the bottom of this.

After Gao Zhijian dropped everything he carried onto the floor, he walked out under Li Huowang’s watchful escort to find the waiter who had fled.

Finding him was simple. The man had just pissed himself in terror. They just had to follow the trail of urine.

The trail wasn’t long. It twisted and turned through the inn before finally leading to the kitchen rafters. There, hanging without his trousers, was the waiter.

A rough hemp rope was looped around his neck. His body swayed slightly with a faint creaking sound.

The half a gourd of winter melon lying crooked on the floor suggested he had done it himself.

Strangled to death, his tongue lolled out grotesquely. His face was a ghastly purple. His eyes, wide and terrifying, stared straight at Li Huowang.

“He… he-he…” Gao Zhijian pointed at the swinging waiter, his face full of shock. He couldn’t find the words.

A man who was perfectly fine just a moment ago had suddenly hanged himself. It was too abrupt.

Li Huowang studied the terror and despair in the waiter’s eyes, and his hands that were still clenched. He turned to look at Gao Zhijian.

“You were right. He wasn’t controlled by a fiend. That kid was so afraid of an eternity of suffering after death, he decided to reincarnate himself while he still could.”

It wasn’t the ghost that had killed him. It was his own fear.

Sword in hand, Li Huowang slowly paced around the kitchen, searching for the so-called ghost.

He had encountered many fiends before, but never one so intangible. It had already claimed a life without even showing its face.

Li Huowang’s gaze dropped, staring at the waiter’s groin. It was noticeably small.

“Taoist, what do we do now? You don’t even know where it is! You’re done for this time!” The monk looked panicked, as if he were genuinely anxious for Li Huowang.

Li Huowang glanced at him, his voice low. “Don’t panic. Since it spreads through speech, it’s only targeting me and Gao Zhijian for now. Everyone else is safe. And with a body like mine, it’ll take a while for it to shrink me to death. As for Gao Zhijian… he’ll be fine.”

“Li… Li-Li-shixiong, wh-what do we do?”

Even the usually slow Gao Zhijian was starting to panic. He pulled open his trousers and nervously reached down, terrified that the thing would slip back inside his belly without warning.

Standing still, Li Huowang looked around the room. The kitchen, which should have been perfectly normal, now seemed terrifying in his eyes. The peppers, the cleaver, the chopping block, the firewood—behind every object, danger seemed to lurk.

Li Huowang pulled open his own trousers and looked. He breathed a quiet sigh of relief. No change for now.

It seemed this “shrink-stealing” wasn’t an instant process, but gradual. He still had time to think of a way out.

“Don’t panic. As long as we find out where this thing came from and figure out its weakness, we can break this!”

Li Huowang sheathed his sword and turned back toward the inn.

“Gao Zhijian, keep watch at the inn! Tell everyone to stay put and not wander off. Don’t tell anyone about this. I’m going to find a way to root out whatever’s hiding!”

“Taoist, where are you going?” asked the monk, his body half-stuck in the wall, confused.

“Now that I know the people of Pi County are also victims, they’re on our side. There’s no point in hiding things anymore. To deal with this thing, I’m going to need the Pi County Magistrate to help me!”

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Reading Guide Decoding

The Ghost You Can't See

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

This chapter is a masterclass in “folk-horror logic.” The core of the horror is built around the Chinese folk belief in the shrink-stealing ghost (缩阳鬼), a malicious entity said to cause a man’s penis to retract into his body, often as a form of punishment or a precursor to death. In traditional Chinese medicine and folk religion, the penis (often called the “life-root” or 命根子, ming gen zi) is seen as a vital source of yang energy and a direct link to one’s vitality and lineage. The terror, therefore, is not just physical mutilation—it’s a threat to one’s humanity and place in the ancestral line.

The waiter’s final decision to hang himself is also steeped in this logic. In Chinese folk belief, a person who dies with their body “incomplete” (e.g., missing a limb or having a severed life-root) cannot properly reincarnate, becoming a hungry ghost. By taking his own life before the ghost steals his manhood, the waiter makes a desperate, tragic gamble: “If I die now, my soul is still whole. I can still go to the underworld and wait for my turn to be reborn. I won’t be trapped here forever.” It’s a chilling demonstration of how these supernatural rules shape human behavior in the most extreme ways.

The "deeds, not hearts" (论迹不论心) logic Li Huowang uses to question Gao Zhijian is a classic philosophical principle in Chinese martial and moral discourse. It asserts that a person's true nature is revealed by their actions, not their private thoughts. It’s a practical, survival-oriented tool for this world, and also a dark mirror: if your actions are monstrous, it doesn’t matter how kind your heart is.

Chapter Overview

In this chapter, the horror is no longer a monster you can fight—it’s a rule. Li Huowang and Gao Zhijian find themselves trapped inside an inn where a grotesque, invisible phenomenon is slowly stealing men’s manhoods. The waiter, paralyzed with fear, spills the secret and then, driven by the terror of being trapped in an eternal cycle of suffering, hangs himself in the kitchen. Li Huowang must now face a threat he cannot see, cannot stab, and cannot even prove exists. It’s a slow-burn psychological siege, and the only way out is to stop hunting ghosts and start hunting knowledge.

Key Plot Points

Panicked by the invisible threat, the waiter buckles under pressure and blurts out the existence of the “shrink-stealing ghost,” immediately begging for mercy from the unseen entity.
Gao Zhijian instinctively blocks Li Huowang’s sword as the waiter bolts for the door, creating a moment of tense distrust between the two before Gao proves his identity.
The waiter hangs himself in the kitchen; his corpse, with a grotesque, protruding tongue and a purple face, becomes a silent witness to the horror. His choice reveals that fear itself was the true killer.
Li Huowang observes that the waiter’s genitals are indeed smaller, confirming the phenomenon is real but gradual, leaving him a sliver of time for a countermeasure.
Instead of panicking, Li Huowang makes a tactical decision: since the curse spreads through speech, only he and Gao Zhijian are targets for now. He instructs Gao to hold the inn and protect the others.
Abandoning the hunt for an invisible monster, Li Huowang decides to shift his strategy: he will go directly to the source of the town’s record—the County Magistrate—to gather intel and organize a collective defense.

Reading Guide

Alright, new Daoist cultivators, take a deep breath. This chapter is nasty. It’s not the flesh-stitching horror of the Flesh Buddha or the visceral gore of the Thousand Greats Record. This is a slow, psychological horror. It’s the feeling of a nightmare you can’t wake up from because you can’t even see the monster. Li Huowang’s reaction here is perfect—he doesn't scream, he doesn't freeze. He immediately tests his invisibility, checks his own body, and then goes straight into detective mode. He treats this like a puzzle, and it’s that cold, methodical brain that keeps him alive.

Pay attention to the “rules” being established. The curse spreads through speech. It only seems to affect the man who speaks the truth. This means Li Huowang can’t just brute-force this with a sword. He needs a different kind of weapon. His decision to go to the County Magistrate is brilliant—it’s a rare moment where he chooses the system as his tool, using the town's own government as a source of information and legitimacy. The horror isn't in the monster; it's in the town's collective, silent terror. Get ready for a different kind of war.

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 the waiter hang himself?: He was terrified that the ghost would steal his "life-root," making his body incomplete and preventing his soul from reincarnating. He chose to die "whole" to escape an eternal torment as a restless ghost.