Li Sui

1,115 words

Li Sui

“A skinned dog face? It’s smiling at me?”

Listening to Bai Lingmiao’s description, Li Huowang, now blind, sketched a gruesome picture in his mind.

He swallowed hard and called out in the direction of the earlier sound. “Mantou?”

“Woof! Woof!” The familiar bark rang out.

Li Huowang had kept Mantou for over a year now. He couldn’t mistake that sound. There was no pain or fear in it—just a hint of excitement and urgency.

Frowning, Li Huowang tilted his ear, straining to listen. He called again. “Li Sui?”

Li Sui’s voice, carrying that faint layering quality, came from the exact same direction as the bark. “Dad, I’m here.”

As she spoke, it sounded like she tried to climb in through the window, but a sudden flurry of drumbeats cut her off.

“Dad, Mom won’t let me come over.” Her voice held a note of grievance.

Hearing this, Li Huowang rubbed his temples in pain. For a moment, he had no idea what to do.

He didn’t even know what to call the thing in front of him. What exactly had Li Sui done yesterday, under the influence of the Heavenly Calamity?

“Dad… don’t you want me anymore?” Li Sui’s voice cracked with a sob, interspersed with Mantou’s low whines.

Li Huowang patted the Second Spirit’s shoulder beside him. “It’s fine. It can’t hurt me, even if I’m blind now.”

With a grim expression, he walked past her, moving toward the sound.

Even though he couldn’t see, his sense of direction was intact. He soon stopped about three meters from the source.

“Come inside and talk. Don’t just hang out the window.”

Two heavy footfalls followed. Li Huowang smelled blood. She was standing right in front of him now. It wasn’t the smell of human blood—it was dog’s blood.

He thought for a moment, then reached out his hands to feel.

The first thing he touched was a rough tongue between sharp fangs.

The tongue lapped quickly, cleaning the dried blood off the back of his hand. “Dad, your hand is bleeding.”

His fingers moved up from the tongue, tracing a furless animal face. There was little flesh; in many places, the hard bone was exposed directly.

On top of that animal skull was the bamboo hat Li Huowang had bought for Li Sui. But it was badly damaged, little more than a frame, useless for covering her face.

Leaving the animal skull, his hands moved down, inch by inch, feeling the rest of her body beneath the tattered straw raincoat.

Below the animal face was a similarly bloody dog body, but it wasn’t standing on all fours. It was hunched, like a hunchbacked person.

It felt distinctly different from the old Mantou. Something inside her was writhing, stretching the body out, making it bulge. In several places, the joints seemed dislocated, like a strong man crammed into a much smaller suit.

Li Huowang knew what that was. He had been through it himself. They were Li Sui’s tentacles.

As his hand brushed her back, a tentacle reached out from inside, wrapping gently around his finger.

In some spots, the tentacles hadn’t even managed to crawl back inside. They were just hanging out in clusters.

Her limbs were stretched long and thick, warped and twisted by the tentacles. She was now taller than Li Huowang.

Through his hands, mapping her inch by inch, a twisted, fleshy, dog-faced monstrosity covered in tentacles formed in his mind.

After a long silence, Li Huowang let out a slow breath. “What are you now? Are you Mantou, or are you Li Sui?”

“Dad, I’m Li Sui. Woof! Woof!” A gust of bloody, hot breath hit his face with the words.

“Where did you go last night? What happened?”

“Dad, I don’t know. I was just playing with Mantou, and then, I don’t know how, I fell asleep. When I woke up, I couldn’t find Mantou anymore.”

“I thought I heard you calling me, so I came as fast as I could.”

Listening to this rambling, simple explanation, Li Huowang sighed deeply. “How did this happen…”

He knew the Black Tai Sui had the ability to steal another’s body. But he had never imagined this outcome.

Was this Li Sui or Mantou? Or some combination of both? How was he supposed to treat her now?

As if sensing his low spirits, the animal face pressed against him. The hard skull nudged gently into his chest, and the rough tongue licked his chin. The tattered hat fell to the floor.

Feeling her closeness, Li Huowang wrapped his arms around her and thought for a long time.

Finally, he patted her torn raincoat. “Alright… alright. It is what it is. At least you’re not dead. I can’t ask for more.”

Maybe someone else would be terrified by a bloody, twisted monster like this.

But not Li Huowang. In this completely insane world, who was really any better off? He was probably not much better looking himself.

He turned toward Bai Lingmiao. “Miaomiao. She’s our daughter now.”

“Our… daughter? Her?”

“Yeah. Li Sui herself has no gender, but Mantou is female. So she’s our daughter now. I hope you don’t mind.”

While Bai Lingmiao hesitated, the Second Spirit walked over and gently touched Li Sui’s terrifying head.

—

The Heavenly Calamity had passed. Even though the events of that short time were enough to haunt anyone’s nightmares for nights on end, life had to move on.

After the heated discussions faded, things gradually returned to normal. Everyone went back to doing what they had to do.

“Husband! Husband! Time to get up!”

Tutor Wu, who had been napping after lunch, was shaken awake. He opened his eyes and saw his sallow-faced wife.

“What time is it?” He sat up slowly, sticking out both feet, waiting for someone to help him put on his shoes.

“It’s the seventh watch. If you sleep any longer, we’ll need to light a lantern on the road. That costs money.”

He had originally chosen to teach in Niuxin Village during the morning and afternoon. But many of the villagers were working in the fields, and even Yang Xiaohai had to cook. In the end, he was forced to change the hours to the evening.

“Mm… help me dress.” He stretched out both arms.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! I’ve got to go up on the roof and bring in the dried radishes. I don’t have time to wait on you today. Dinner’s on the table. After you eat, remember to wash the dishes and put them back in the kitchen.”

Tutor Wu glared at her. “I am a scholar! How can a scholar step foot in a kitchen!”

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Reading Guide Decoding

A Father’s Touch: Redefining Family in the Flesh

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

The Black Tai Sui’s Body-Snatching Ability: This chapter provides a visceral demonstration of a key Black Tai Sui ability: the power to “take over” another living body. This is not spirit possession in the Western sense, but a physical merging and subsumption of the host. The body is literally rearranged, with tentacles re-sculpting the flesh from the inside. This is a form of corrupt alchemical transformation, not a magical spell.

The “Heavenly Calamity” Aftermath: The chapter’s opening shows the immediate consequence of large-scale supernatural events. The “rules” have been bent; blindness, physical transformation, and the blurring of identity are not casualties, but the new normal. This reinforces the novel’s core theme that reality is a fragile, pliable thing.

The Scholar’s Pride (Scholar-Bureaucrat Culture): Tutor Wu’s scene is a microcosm of traditional Confucian social hierarchy. As a “scholar-gentry,” he belongs to the class that is supposed to wield the brush, not the knife or the mop. His wife’s blunt refusal to serve him is a small act of rebellion against these rigid societal codes. His complaint, “How can a scholar step foot in a kitchen,” is a classic historical trope that underscores the deep chasm between intellectual and manual labor.

Body Horror vs. Emotional Beat: This chapter is a masterclass in contrasting external horror with internal warmth. The detailed description of Li Sui’s form—the skinned dog face, the exposed bone, the bulging tentacles—is pure grotesque. Yet, through Li Huowang’s tactile exploration and his calm, accepting voice, the narrative reframes the monster as a lost child seeking comfort. This is the Dao-Twisted World’s unique emotional signature: finding a beating heart inside a rotting corpse.

Heavens Beyond Heaven

A term for the higher layers of cosmic reality in the Dao-Twisted World; direct exposure can cause physical possession before any mental breakdown.

Scholar-Gentry (读书人)

The educated elite class in traditional Chinese society, highly respected and exempt from manual labor; Confucian ideals held that scholars should not engage in physical work like farming or cooking.

Chapter Overview

Get ready, folks, because this chapter is a real tear-jerker wrapped in body horror. After the chaos of the Heavenly Calamity, a blind Li Huowang must confront the monstrous new form his daughter Li Sui has taken. She’s merged with Mantou the dog, creating a flesh-twisted, tentacled, dog-faced creature. But where anyone else would see a monster, Li Huowang sees his child. This is not a chapter about fighting or scheming; it’s about acceptance in a world that has twisted the very definition of family. We also get a brief, brilliantly mundane glimpse of life in Niuxin Village with the perpetually grumpy Tutor Wu, proving that even in the shadow of cosmic horror, people still have to do the dishes.

Key Plot Points

Li Huowang, now blind, uses sound and touch to identify Li Sui’s new form. The process is a slow, detailed, and deeply unsettling reveal of the creature she has become.
Li Sui explains what happened: she was playing with Mantou, fell asleep, and when she woke up, the dog was gone. She has assumed Mantou’s body, merging her tentacled form with the dog’s flesh and bones. Her dialogue is simple, literal, and emotionally direct—she’s still a child.
Li Huowang, after a long and painful pause, accepts her. He decides that she is now a girl (because Mantou was female) and declares her his and Bai Lingmiao’s daughter.
Bai Lingmiao is hesitant, but the Second Spirit acts first, reaching out to touch Li Sui’s head in a gesture of acceptance.
The chapter closes with a sharp tonal shift to Tutor Wu in Niuxin Village. He is woken from a nap by his wife and expects to be waited on hand and foot. She refuses, telling him to eat his dinner and wash his own dishes. His outraged proclamation that a “scholar” cannot step foot in a kitchen leaves him arguing with an empty room.

Reading Guide

If you were worried this was just going to be non-stop action after the Heavenly Calamity, this chapter is a beautiful, gut-wrenching reset. The translation needs to treat Li Sui’s appearance with horrific detail, but Li Huowang’s dialogue must remain soft, exhausted, and paternal. Her voice, by contrast, should be that of a child who doesn’t understand why she’s scary. The final scene with Tutor Wu is pure comic relief, but don’t play it for over-the-top slapstick. His indignation is genuine and stuffy, which makes his wife’s dismissal all the more satisfying. The contrast between these two halves of the chapter—the profound, shattering acceptance of a monster-daughter and the petty squabble over washing dishes—is the real jewel here. It tells us that life, in all its strange and mundane forms, stubbornly continues.