Chapter 412: Stone Shadow: Burrs

I had no idea if these hairs were stuck into my wound or had actually grown out from inside it, but either way, it made me extremely uncomfortable, with a strong, uncontrollable urge to pull them out. But whenever I tugged at the hair, the entire wound ached, a deep pain that clearly indicated the hairs went deep into the injury.

If I had fallen and a pottery shard had cut my wound while carrying these hairs in, that could also cause this condition. However, I gritted my teeth and tried to yank the hairs out, even turning the flesh inside out, but the hairs wouldn't come out. And after pulling, the depths of the wound would immediately itch, as if the hairs were growing inside.

Xiao Hua was also creeped out by my wound. I thought about what he said—how the hairs had sensed his blood and crawled onto him—and realized that these hairs might indeed be alive. If they were truly growing inside my wound, just imagining them spreading through my blood vessels and nerves, filling my entire body, made me want to chop my hand off right away.

If I died and someone opened my skull only to find my brain tangled with hair, what a grotesque scene that would be—straight out of a horror movie.

Xiao Hua told me to calm down, then pulled out his dagger, sterilized it with a small blowtorch, and made me lie down. He sat on my shoulder, stepped on my wrist, and asked, "What do you think of Xiuxiu?"

That was an out-of-the-blue question; anyone else would have been stunned for a moment, but I immediately realized he was trying to distract me. Instead, I focused all my attention on my palm. Almost at the same moment, I felt a sharp pain as the red-hot dagger tip stabbed into my wound, every ounce of agony searing into my memory.

Xiao Hua moved very fast. I could tell that no matter how bad the inside of my wound was, he wasn't affected at all. The intense pain lasted only about thirty seconds before he let go of my hand.

Blood flowed from my wound, but the hairs were gone. Xiao Hua showed me the tip of his dagger—on it was a small shard of pottery about the size of a fingernail, with something like my flesh stuck to it. Hair, pottery shard, and flesh were all tangled together.

Under the firelight, I could clearly see that the hairs had grown out of the pottery shard, actually piercing through the muscle tissue.

"Looks like it grew out from the pottery shard, but the growth seems to have stopped," he said.

"Stopped? How do you know?"

"See for yourself." He showed me the shard. "Although these muscles are wrapped around the hairs, all the strands have grown out of your body. They haven't grown inside you."

I looked—indeed, it was like hair transplantation; the thing inserted into your scalp has no root, just a fixed point. But since the hairs had clearly passed through my muscle, they must have grown out after the shard embedded in my wound.

"Could it be poisonous or something? You'd better get it all out for me first."

He didn't answer but wore a strange expression. He placed the pottery shard on the inner side of his bloodstained iron garment, set it down, and after a short while, the hairs began to squirm slightly, slowly stretching toward the heaviest bloodstains, then curling up.

I thought, what kind of hair is this? It's like a thin leech.

He looked at it, then at my wound, and said, "Strange."

"This thing is very sensitive to blood. If it weren't for this iron garment, my wound would be full of hairs by now. But if these hairs are bloodthirsty, then after entering your wound, they should have grown wildly along your blood vessels, drilling inward. Yet the hairs in your wound are all growing outward, clearly trying to escape your body."

"Escape?" I found it strange.

He took my hand, pulled it over the iron garment, and squeezed my wound. A few drops of blood dripped onto the hairs, and immediately the strands twisted and quickly retreated.

I watched, somewhat bewildered. "Huh, what's going on?" I heard him say, "Now I know why the old lady wanted me to bring you along."

Xiao Hua's expression was full of emotion. I wondered what he meant. He said, "Your name wasn't picked randomly. Your blood is special."

"Special blood?" I remembered what Old Master Liang had told me back then. "You mean I've eaten Qilin blood resin?"

"I don't know the details. Qilin blood resin is just one possibility. How this kind of blood actually forms is still a mystery," he said. "I didn't expect you to have this constitution. Were you born with it, or did it come later?"

I thought it must have come later, but before I went to the Lu King's Palace, I never paid attention to my blood. School checkups and physicals had always been normal. But who knows? Back in school, I never ran into these things.

He heated the dagger with fire and continued treating my other wounds while saying, "The old lady must know. It seems she planned everything, but why didn't she tell me?"

In my previous accounts, I had mentioned this detail too, but I wasn't sure if that old woman really sent Xiao Hua and me here because she knew about it. I couldn't be certain myself, as my blood works only sometimes—like Duan Yu's Six Pulses Divine Sword—unreliable at best.

"What exactly is Qilin blood?" I thought of Poker-face's blood and asked him. As soon as I spoke, the dagger tip cut into my foot, making me almost curl up in pain.

A moment later, he fished out another piece for me to see. "I'm not sure. I've only heard many legends. I heard someone once studied it—the mechanism behind this blood's formation is very strange, apparently different for everyone. My father said one possibility is osmosis: people who take traditional Chinese medicine for years have a faint herbal scent all over their bodies. Similarly, long-term smokers have a smoky smell that's hard to remove. If you bathe in Raid insecticide every day, you'd get the same effect."

I thought, how smelly that would be! But his method was similar to incense fumigation, used in ancient times to treat body odor. People say Yang Yuhuan had body odor and took daily herbal baths. In the Qing dynasty, there was a concubine called Fragrant Concubine, said to have grown up among flower petals and spices, so she had a strange fragrance. But Poker-face and I have no unusual smell, and I don't believe a small piece of Qilin blood resin has that much power.

"I've also heard another possibility. Have you heard of 'medicine people'?"

I shook my head. I deal in antiques; I don't know much about medicine.

He rinsed with water, wrung the blood and sweat out of his undershirt, then used it to cover my wound. "In ancient times, some alchemists kept medicine people, or 'fangren.' Most of them were madmen or slaves used to test elixirs. Since many elixirs were highly toxic, the alchemists would feed them small doses of poison daily to make their bodies gradually adapt. These people took all sorts of poisons, so their constitutions became very abnormal. Especially their blood—it was very different from ordinary people's."

I said, "My dad isn't that perverted. I grew up eating rice. Don't tell me my dad cooked with arsenic and used mercury as soy sauce."

As soon as I said that, my foot hurt again, almost making me curl up.

"Anyway, this is great news for me. I believe Grandma deliberately arranged it. If both you and that dark-faced guy have this kind of blood, then logically, you two should be separated. Their large team gets the big one, and I get a small one here. And obviously, you have a good head, which can make up for your lack of physical strength." He pressed on my foot.

"You're not exactly in top physical shape either. At best, I'd say you're good at climbing and jumping," I snapped.

"From the time Chinese tombs entered the era of complete burial systems, the primary quality for tomb raiding was agility and flexibility. We don't always run into such terrifying scenes." Then he turned back and looked at me with a strange expression.

"What's wrong?" I gritted my teeth.

He said, "Sorry, I accidentally cut your blood vessel."