I Ate All of the Tai Sui’s Clones — Chapter 1

My name is Xuan Ya. I’m a junior celestial maid who does odd jobs in Heaven’s kitchen.

Calling me a celestial maid is generous. I’m really just the lowest-ranking kitchen hand in all of Heaven. Every day, I wash and chop vegetables, tend the fire, scrub dishes, and occasionally fetch seasonings for the Kitchen God. I’ve been at it for three hundred years, and even he still can’t remember my name.

“Hey, you! Hand me the salt!”

Yes. That’s the sort of treatment I get.

But I don’t mind. I have something more important to care about: eating.

Heaven’s kitchen is the best place in existence. Rare delicacies, immortal fruits and vegetables—there’s so much of it, you’d think it cost nothing. I’m not exactly invited to eat, but I’ve always been good at scavenging.

The Kitchen God’s cooking often leaves a few scraps behind. When the celestial maids portion out the food, a little is always left at the bottom of the trays. And after a banquet, there are always untouched pastries on the tables.

For three hundred years, I’ve lived on other people’s leftovers. I’ve eaten so much that I’ve become the plumpest celestial maid in Heaven’s kitchen.

The Kitchen God once said, “Xuan Ya, have you put on weight again?”

I replied, “With all due respect, Kitchen God, this is what good fortune looks like.”

He rolled his eyes.

But that isn’t what I want to tell you today.

Today, I want to tell you about something no one in Heaven wanted. It fell to the ground, where no one bothered to pick it up—yet I nibbled on it for three whole years.

The Tai Sui’s tendrils.

It all began three years ago.

I was sweeping out a storeroom behind the kitchen when I spotted a pile of white, finger-shaped things in the corner. They were about as thick as a finger and varied in length. Some looked like cashews; others, like enoki mushrooms. They felt soft, and carried a faint, fresh, grassy scent.

“What are these?” I asked the celestial maid tending the stove beside me.

She glanced over with obvious disgust.

“Fallen Tai Sui tendrils. Don’t touch them. They’re gross.”

“Who’s Tai Sui?”

“You don’t even know Tai Sui? The Tai Sui of Heaven—the god who governs the growth of all things. His true form is a network of fungal threads spread throughout the earth beneath Heaven. At the change of each season, he sheds tendrils like a snake shedding its skin. They fall all over the ground. No one wants them. They’re bad luck.”

I stared at the pile of white, finger-shaped things. One thought filled my mind.

Could you eat these?

I secretly took one, hid in a corner, and bit into it.

I chewed twice.

My eyes lit up.

It tasted a little like a cashew, but chewier. The flavor was delicate and faintly sweet, with a hint of lingzhi. After I swallowed, a warm current rose from my stomach, as soothing as a bowl of hot soup.

I took another bite.

Then another.

By the time I came to my senses, I’d eaten the whole tendril.

I wanted a second one, but common sense stopped me. What if it was poisonous?

So I waited a day.

Nothing happened.

I waited another day.

Still nothing.

What’s more, after eating that tendril, my hands no longer went numb with cold while I washed vegetables. I felt stronger when I tended the fire. Even when the Kitchen God scolded me, I felt as if I could answer back at full volume.

On the third day, I sneaked into the storeroom again.

The tendrils were still there. No one wanted them.

I crouched in the corner and nibbled through them, one by one.

From that day on, Tai Sui’s tendrils became my secret snack.

During the first year, I still felt guilty.

After all, Tai Sui was a god of Heaven. Eating his tendrils felt like eating the Buddha’s relics. I kept thinking that sooner or later, Heaven would punish me.

But a year passed, and nothing happened.

I also realized there was no end to Tai Sui’s tendrils. For every one that fell, another grew. They fell all over the ground, and there were always piles of them in the storeroom. The more I ate, the more seemed to grow back.

The Kitchen God said it was just “Tai Sui shedding his skin with the seasons,” a normal occurrence. The fallen tendrils had no spiritual power left. They were no different from dead human skin; no one wanted them.

I figured, dead skin or not, they tasted good.

In the second year, I began experimenting with different ways to eat the tendrils.

They were best plain: crisp and chewy, like freshly roasted cashews.

Dried, they tasted like beef jerky, growing more fragrant the longer I chewed.

Soaked in spiritual spring water for three days, they turned soft and springy, almost like jelly.

Sliced into strips and stir-fried, they were more delicious than any delicacy.

Once, I secretly dropped one into the Kitchen God’s soup. After a sip, he said, “The soup’s especially good today. Who added something?”

I stood beside him, guiltily tucking in my chin.

By the third year, I no longer felt guilty at all.

Tai Sui’s tendrils had become my lifeline.

In the morning, I ate one to wake myself up. At noon, I ate two to fill my stomach. At night, I ate one to help me sleep. When work wore me out, I ate one. When the Kitchen God scolded me, I ate one. When I was bored, I ate one.

I even started hoarding them.

In the corner of the storeroom sat a battered old porcelain jar. I washed it, cut the tendrils into pieces, seasoned them, and packed them neatly into jars. I labeled each one: “Plain,” “Five-Spice,” “Mala,” and “Pickled Chili.” Everything was beautifully organized.

The celestial maid at the stove asked, “What are you hiding?”

“Pickles,” I said.

She believed me.

After all, it wasn’t strange for a kitchen maid in Heaven to hide pickles.

But one day, after three hundred years, things began to go wrong.

First, there was my cultivation.

I was just a junior maid doing odd jobs. By rights, my cultivation should have been among the weakest in Heaven. But lately, I’d discovered I could snap the Kitchen God’s shovel in half with my bare hands.

The shovel was forged from dark iron.

The Kitchen God stared at the broken shovel in silence for a long time.

“Xuan Ya,” he said at last, “have you been secretly eating something?”

“No!”

I denied it at once.

He eyed me suspiciously but asked nothing more.

Then there were my senses.

I could hear the celestial maids whispering in the main hall ten miles away. I could smell the mustiness of ancient books that hadn’t been opened in three hundred years in the Scripture Pavilion. I could even see an old woman in a little town in the mortal world sneezing beneath the clouds.

One day, I was chopping vegetables in the kitchen when my knife moved too fast and nicked my finger.

A drop of blood fell to the floor.

The stone beneath me cracked at once.

I stared at the crack, thinking only: I’m done for. Will they make me pay for the floor?

The crack didn’t close. A white mushroom, about the size of my thumb, sprouted from it. It was perfectly round and swayed in front of me.

I poked it.

It trembled, then grew into a tendril right before my eyes.

A Tai Sui tendril.

I froze.

My blood could grow tendrils?

Panic seized me.

Not because I was afraid of dying, but because I was afraid of being found out.

There was a rule in Heaven’s kitchen: sneaking food was allowed, but sneaking Tai Sui’s tendrils was not. Not because they were especially valuable, but because—

They were bad luck.

Tai Sui was the least welcome god in Heaven.

He governed the growth of all things, yet his true form was a network of fungal threads. Something like underground fungus, invisible and untouchable, was inseparable from decay. The gods of Heaven all thought him filthy and gloomy, and said he always smelled of earth.

No one invited him to festivals.

No one even told him about meetings.

The menu in Heaven’s dining hall even stated plainly: “No mushrooms today.”

The Kitchen God once said, “No one in Heaven gives a damn about Tai Sui. He could die and no one would even notice.”

At the time, I’d felt a little sorry for him.

But this was no time to feel sorry for him.

I’d realized that after three years of eating Tai Sui’s tendrils, every cell in my body had turned into his fungal threads.

Tendrils could grow from my blood.

Mushrooms could grow from my hair.

If my tears hit the ground, a patch of white mushrooms would sprout by the next day.

I’d become a human-shaped Tai Sui.

On the fifth day, it happened.

As usual, I went to the storeroom to get some tendrils. I pushed open the door—

The storeroom was empty.

Not a single tendril remained.

It was so clean that not even a crumb was left.

I stood frozen, the jar in my hand slipping to the ground and shattering into pieces.

“That can’t be…”

I crouched and searched every corner. Then I rummaged through the cabinets.

Nothing.

Not one.

Tai Sui’s tendrils were supposed to grow back for every one that fell. For three years, there had never been a break. Why had they suddenly disappeared today?

I sprang up and ran outside.

I had barely reached the kitchen door when someone stopped me.

It was the Kitchen God.

He wore a strange expression, as if he were unsure whether to tell me something.

“Xuan Ya,” he finally said, “do you know where Tai Sui is?”

“No.”

“He’s three thousand zhang beneath the Scripture Pavilion. That’s where his true form is. His network of fungal threads covers all of Heaven.”

“Oh.”

I answered absentmindedly, thinking only about where the tendrils could have gone.

The Kitchen God looked at me. He seemed about to say something, then stopped.

“What is it?”

“Nothing.”

He turned and left.

I watched him go, thinking everyone was acting strange today.

But I didn’t dwell on it.

There was only one thing on my mind.

My cashew sticks were gone.

2

Without the tendrils, life was worse than death.

On the first day, I was so restless I couldn’t sit still. I paced back and forth in the kitchen, and everything I saw looked like a tendril.

Noodles looked like one.

Bean sprouts looked like one.

Even the Kitchen God’s beard looked like one.

On the second day, I began to lose sleep. I tossed and turned, thinking only of the tendrils’ flavor.

On the third day, I started to lose weight.