I Ate All of the Tai Sui’s Clones — Chapter 2
Edward Quan ·
The Kitchen God said I was “finally starting to look like a celestial maid.” I glared at him.
On the fourth day, I began hallucinating.
I crouched outside the storeroom, staring at an empty corner. In a daze, I saw a tendril waving at me.
I reached for it—
And grabbed thin air.
On the fifth day, I decided to go to the Scripture Pavilion.
Not to look for Tai Sui.
I just wanted to see whether any tendrils had fallen beneath the floor.
The Scripture Pavilion stood at the northernmost edge of Heaven, where no one went year-round. The building was old, its staircase crooked and its bookshelves thick with dust.
I searched the place but found nothing.
I was about to leave when I stepped on something.
It was soft.
I looked down—
A tendril.
White and tender, exactly like the ones I’d been eating for three years.
I crouched, tears nearly spilling from my eyes.
I reached to pick it up—
The tendril moved.
I thought I was imagining things.
Then it moved again.
Like a snake, it slipped back through a crack in the floor.
It was so fast that it vanished in an instant.
I lay flat and pressed my face to the floor, peering into the crack.
I couldn’t see anything.
But I could feel it—
Something was moving beneath the floor.
A great many somethings.
Entangled, tightly packed, like a net.
My fingers began to tremble.
Not from fear.
From excitement.
The tendrils were down there!
So many of them!
I grabbed the vegetable knife from the stove and prepared to pry up the floor.
The tip had barely entered the crack when a voice came from behind me.
“What are you doing?”
It was low and deep, like an echo rising from somewhere far below the earth.
My whole body went stiff.
Slowly, I turned around.
Someone stood in the doorway of the Scripture Pavilion.
He was tall and slender, wearing a gray-white robe. His long hair fell to his waist. His face was so pale it was almost translucent, with fine lines visible beneath his skin.
His eyes were a pale gray, with vertical pupils—like a snake’s, or perhaps—
A mushroom’s.
Standing there, backlit, he seemed to have grown straight out of the ground.
My mind raced through three possible answers before settling on one.
This was Tai Sui.
The Tai Sui of Heaven.
The god who governed the growth of all things.
The one whose tendrils I’d been chewing on for three years.
His gaze fell on the knife in my hand, then shifted to the crack in the floor.
“Were you trying to pry up the floor?” he asked.
His voice was still low and deep, utterly expressionless, as if he were simply stating a fact.
I hid the knife behind my back.
“No! I was just… cleaning the floor!”
“You clean the floor with a knife?”
“It’s… for scraping off dust!”
He looked at me without a word.
His pale-gray eyes were fixed on me, his pupils perfectly still.
Under his gaze, my scalp prickled. I instinctively took a step back.
My heel caught the hem of my skirt. I stumbled and nearly fell.
He reached out to catch me.
His hand was cold, as if he’d just taken it out of an ice cellar. His fingers were long and slender, his skin thin enough to show the fine fungal threads beneath.
“Your hand is freezing,” I said.
“Mm.”
“Are you Tai Sui?”
“Mm.”
“Why have you come looking for me?”
He didn’t answer.
He lowered his eyes. His gaze moved from my face to my hands, then down to my feet, and finally stopped at—
My stomach.
I instinctively wrapped my arms around it.
“What are you staring at?”
“You ate my clones.”
My mind went blank.
“My… what clones?”
“The tendrils you ate. They were my clones.”
“...You’re lying! The Kitchen God said they were just dead skin!”
“The Kitchen God doesn’t understand.”
He raised a hand. A thread of white light appeared at his fingertip.
It fell to the ground, and a tendril grew at once.
It was exactly like the ones I’d been eating for three years.
He bent down, picked it up, and held it out to me.
“Eat.”
He stooped, picked up the tendril, and offered it to me.
“Go on. Eat.”
“...What?”
“Don’t you like eating them?”
I stared at the tendril in his hand and swallowed.
I hadn’t eaten for three days.
I was starving.
But—
“Is it poisonous?” I asked.
“No.”
“Then why are you giving it to me?”
“Because you’re hungry.”
I stared at him for three seconds.
Then I took the tendril and bit into it.
It tasted just the same as before: crisp and sweet, with the faint aroma of lingzhi.
I gobbled it up in three bites and licked my fingertips, still wanting more.
When I looked up, he was still standing there, silently watching me.
The pupils in his pale-gray eyes contracted slightly.
“Was it good?” he asked.
“Good.”
“Mm.”
He turned and left.
His silhouette gradually disappeared behind the doorway of the Scripture Pavilion.
I stayed where I was, stunned for a long time.
Then I looked down at the crack in the floor. Another tendril had grown out of it, pale and tender, waving at me.
I crouched and plucked it.
This time, I didn’t eat it.
I tucked it into my sleeve and thought: Maybe he isn’t as scary as the Kitchen God says.
I thought Tai Sui had only come to identify the “thief who’d been stealing his food,” then leave.
I was wrong.
After I left the Scripture Pavilion, I headed straight back to the kitchen. Halfway there, I sensed someone behind me.
I turned around—
Tai Sui stood three steps away.
The gray-white robe, the long loose hair, those pale-gray eyes. He looked exactly as he had in the Scripture Pavilion.
“Why are you following me?” I asked.
“I’m not following you.”
“Then why are you walking behind me?”
“We’re going the same way.”
“Where do you live?”
“Underground.”
“I live in the kitchen. How is that the same way?”
He didn’t answer.
I kept walking.
He kept following.
I walked faster.
He sped up, too.
I ran.
He ran after me.
I stopped and glared at him.
“What do you want from me?”
He looked at me without changing expression.
“You smell like me.”
“What smell?”
“Fungus.”
I lowered my head and sniffed my sleeve. He was right—there was a faint grassy scent, just like the tendrils.
“You’ve eaten my clones for three years. Your body is now bound to me,” he said.
“What does ‘bound’ mean?”
“You are my new clone.”
“...What?”
“My clones have merged with your body. Your blood, flesh, and spiritual energy are all my fungal threads. Wherever you are, I’m there.”
He paused, then added, “So I have to follow you.”
My head began buzzing again.
“Wait.” I held up a hand to stop him. “You mean I ate your tendrils until I turned into one of your clones?”
“Mm.”
“So I’m you now?”
“No. You’re my vessel.”
“Your vessel?!”
“My fungal threads need a host. You ate my clones, so now you’re my new host.”
I took a deep breath.
Then another.
“Can I return it?”
“No. You’ve digested it.”
I stared at him. He stared back.
His expression was as calm as if he’d just said, “The weather is nice today.”
I took a third deep breath, then turned and walked away.
“Don’t follow me!”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because you might grow mushrooms at any moment.”
I stopped and looked down at my hand.
Sure enough, a fine layer of white fuzz had appeared on my palm.
I brushed it away.
It fell off.
Then grew back.
I was silent for three seconds.
“Fine. Follow me, then,” I said.
Tai Sui followed me back to the kitchen.
The moment the Kitchen God saw him, the shovel in his hand dropped and landed on his foot.
“T-Tai Sui?”
The Kitchen God’s face went white.
Tai Sui paid him no attention. He stood in the kitchen doorway, looking around. At last, his gaze fell on the row of jars in the corner.
Their labels read:
“Plain.”
“Five-Spice.”
“Mala.”
“Pickled Chili.”
He walked over, picked up the jar labeled “Plain,” opened it, and leaned down to smell it.