TYPnovel Chapter 274 - 275: Mushrooms by the Grave Mound
Chapter 274 - 275: Mushrooms by the Grave Mound
[Afraid of scaring her? Relax, our Heavenly Venerate could scare a ghost!]
[Exactly. What kind of crazy stuff hasn’t our Heavenly Venerate seen?]
[Judging by the way he looks, don’t tell me he actually has a ghost hanging off him.]
Su Nian frowned. Looking at the peculiar client before her, she tried to persuade him again, "It’s all right. I’m not afraid of anything. You can go ahead and lift the cloth from your face."
Seeing that the man remained unmoved, Su Nian was genuinely exasperated.
’Why does being a fortune-telling master these days also require you to learn the art of persuasion?’
’You even have to coax clients into letting you read their faces.’
[Man, when the host said she’s not afraid of anything, I felt like she had so much conviction.]
[Me too. I feel like that phrase, "I’m not afraid of anything," only truly fits our host.]
[Anyway, I’ll never reach that level in my entire life. I still get scared just thinking about that legendary scene where the host tore a ghost apart with her bare hands.]
[What are you scared of? The ghost or the host?]
[I’m scared of the whole vibe, get it? You hick.]
"If you’re really finding this difficult, you can just start by describing what you’ve experienced. That works too."
The man was silent for a long time. His hands, covered in thick gloves, unconsciously clenched and unclenched. After a while, he finally spoke, his voice hoarse.
"I’ve developed a very strange skin disease."
"A skin disease?"
Su Nian sounded skeptical, then immediately asked a more pointed question.
"If you have a skin disease, why didn’t you go to a hospital? What are you doing here? Haven’t I said it before? You have to trust science."
Hearing Su Nian’s exasperated tone, as if chiding a hopeless case, the livestream chat erupted in laughter again.
[You’re a fortune-telling master telling people to trust science. Isn’t that even more ridiculous?]
[Nah, our host is just being honest. Her brand is all about sincerity.]
[Exactly. It’s like how I’ve been watching this stream from the beginning and haven’t sent a single penny in gifts. My brand is all about companionship.]
"I know I should trust science, but this skin disease I have is just too bizarre."
Even through the mask, you could feel the man’s helplessness.
As if afraid of Su Nian’s gaze, he kept his head bowed low, even from behind the thick face covering.
It wasn’t just Su Nian who was curious; the viewers in the livestream chat also started to speculate.
[What kind of skin disease could it be? Is it really that serious?]
[I think some skin diseases really can be that bad. Some are truly disgusting.]
[But does he really need to dress like that? He looks so bulky.]
[I know, right? I get the feeling it’s not just one person in there. He looks too bulky and fat, like there are two people crammed inside.]
[Maybe he’s just naturally heavy? You can’t really tell.]
"I... It’s just... it’s really disgusting. I’m so afraid of scaring you."
The man’s tone was deep and low, and he nervously tugged at his sleeve.
Su Nian’s voice was laced with impatience. "Well, you have to give me a way to solve this. Either let me see your symptoms, or let me read your fortune from your face. You’re standing in front of me under a huge black cloak, expecting a fortune-telling master to do a reading? I have absolutely nowhere to start."
"But... but I’m truly afraid of scaring you. I mean, even I find it disgusting and don’t want to look at it."
The man in black hesitated repeatedly, but he just couldn’t bring himself to take that step.
[Ugh, I’m done. How scary can it be? It’s just a skin disease. Is all this really necessary?]
[It’s probably a bunch of red spots that have started to rot or something. Disgusting, right?]
[I get that he’s worried about scaring people, but this constant dawdling is even more annoying.]
[Just drop it, guys. Maybe he’s just trying to pull some kind of stunt for attention. You never know.]
Su Nian’s elegant eyebrows furrowed deeply, her eyes flashing with unconcealed impatience.
"Are you going to let me see what’s going on or not? Or you could just tell me about it!"
"Okay, I’ll describe it first. We’ll see if you can handle it."
The man’s voice was low and raspy as he began to tell his story.
"My name is Wang Fei, and I’m twenty-eight years old. I’m a honey collector from deep in the mountains. My business has always been booming, and everyone loves to order my honey. But since it’s the off-season right now, I’ve been taking other jobs."
"Lately, I’ve also been taking jobs to find rare and unusual goods in the mountains. Since that’s my line of work, I spend a lot of time deep in the mountains."
[Ooh, the moment I heard him mention the deep mountains, I knew this wasn’t going to be a simple story.]
[I know, right? I also think ghost stories from the countryside are the scariest.]
[It’s not just that the stories are scary. I feel like the ones from the countryside are usually real.]
After a slight pause, Wang Fei continued.
"That day, I went into the mountains just like always. I had received a big order. A client was offering a huge sum of money for me to find him a Lingzhi. But his standards were very high; it had to be a pure, wild Lingzhi. I searched the mountain several times but couldn’t find one."
"I was ready to give up at first, but the money he was offering was just too good. So, in the end, I took the job."
"I went into the mountains alone. Since I had experience, I made sure to bring enough food and water. But this time, I went in too deep—so deep that I got lost."
"Honestly, getting lost is pretty common for me. I can usually find my way back. But this time, I came across a very strange grave."
[Heard the word ’grave,’ and now I’m 100% sure he’s been cursed or something.]
[But what kind of ghost gives you a skin disease? That’s a first for me.]
[You’re not wrong. It’s a first for me, too.]
The man swallowed hard and continued.
"As someone who grew up in the mountains, I’ve seen plenty of grave mounds, so I wasn’t scared. I was just curious as to who would build a grave so high up on the mountain."
"But by then, I’d been walking for a very, very long time. I was exhausted and incredibly thirsty."
Hearing this, Su Nian suddenly cut in, "So you ate the fruit and other offerings on the grave?"
It was no wonder Su Nian asked. After all, that’s what most people would have done in his situation.
But the man before her shook his head, his wide hood swaying slightly with the movement.
His voice was low and raspy. "I’m a mountain man. We have rules in this line of work. I didn’t touch the offerings. I just saw that a lot of mushrooms were growing beside the grave."
"I’m from Yun Province, and I’ve loved eating mushrooms since I was a child. I examined them, and their color wasn’t very bright, so they probably weren’t poisonous. Just in case, I was worried they might be, so I added a lot of water and boiled them three or four times before tentatively eating just one piece. Nothing happened, and the mushroom tasted incredibly delicious."
[Um... how did the topic suddenly get so sidetracked?]
[Now I want to eat some mushrooms.]
[As someone from Yun Province living elsewhere, my mouth is watering just hearing him talk about it.]
[He’s seriously brave, daring to eat something growing next to a grave mound.]
"After eating the mushroom, my strength returned, and I quickly found my way home."
At this point, the man’s tone changed completely. Even he, the one who had experienced it firsthand, sounded full of disbelief.
"But after I got home, things went wrong. The back of my head... actually grew a face!?"