Chapter 1: The Monster Tavern

Li Changluo’s hands trembled as he fished out a pack of cigarettes, pulling one free and struggling for ages before finally lighting it. The cigarette tasted of nothing, but he instantly felt better. Instinctively, he wanted to offer smokes to those around him, but thought better of it. After all, he had no idea whether that thing across from him even smoked.

They were in a side chamber of an ancient tomb, a crude space containing nothing but a few battered coffins lying quietly on the ground—and a “radish” that had crawled out from one of them. At least, that’s how Li Changluo saw it.

It was long. It was pale. It had arms and legs. Just like a humanoid radish dug up from the earth. Only this one wore a vest and shorts, its belly bulging. But unlike a radish, this was a living thing—half a head taller than Li Changluo, and with a hideous, ghoulish face.

The chamber was silent and pitch-dark, save for the faint glow of Li Changluo’s cigarette and the harsh beam of his flashlight. In the electric glare, the “radish’s” face twisted ever more grotesquely, growing savage and warped.

Yet the two—man and “radish”—remained locked in a silent standoff, neither moving for a long time, their gazes complex, simply staring at one another.

Staring…

And staring…

Until, all at once, Li Changluo began to leap wildly before the “radish” like a rabbit, fierce and erratic.

He truly had started to believe the ugly creature before him was nothing but a radish. If this eerie tomb had a comment feed like a streaming video, it might look something like this:

The atmosphere is so heavy, I can hear the funeral chants through my screen.

This lad is flirting with disaster, poking the line between life and death.

That “radish” is so cute—if I stew it with ribs and the ribs burn, what if the radish runs away? Quick, need advice…

This thing looks vile. When’s “Mr. Radish” going to flatten him?

Come on, just fight already! I’ve been squatting here for over an hour—my legs are numb and the progress bar can’t take much more!

…

Silence is the cruelest weapon.

So the merciless “radish” and the equally ruthless man—doing his best impression of a rabbit—kept staring.

“Hey, Radish Bro, we’ve been at this for ages.” Li Changluo finally couldn’t keep up the act—maybe he was just tired from all the jumping. He panted, “Come on, into the bag, there’s a good boy.”

With that, he straightened his back heroically, grinning as he pulled a large burlap sack from his pants and pointed the opening toward the “radish.”

“Remember this: my proper name is Yabulu, nickname Corpse Ginseng, hailing from Arabia. Humanoid, highly poisonous, thriving in dank, foul tombs, living off decaying corpses. So quit calling me radish! Don’t I have any dignity?”

Suddenly remembering something, the Corpse Ginseng asked in a low voice, “Do rabbits eat white radish?”

“Rabbits don’t eat white radish. But rabbits do bite—ginseng.” Li Changluo didn’t wait for the creature to react. With a flourish, he flicked away his cigarette butt, eyes blazing, and shouted, “Onward!”

He charged straight at the Corpse Ginseng.

Tucked at his waist was a small fruit knife—his pride and his confidence, the very symbol of his bravado.

But the moment he reached for it, Li Changluo was stunned.

Where was his knife?

He slowed, thinking back. Originally, he’d descended into the tomb with Blackie, but Blackie had run off with a stomach ache and hadn’t returned. Li Changluo knew that rascal was probably hiding somewhere playing one of those quick-pay loot recovery games.

The worst part? Blackie, terrified of the dark, had borrowed Li Changluo’s fruit knife for protection.

…

As he ran, Li Changluo stopped, attempting a harmless smile at the Corpse Ginseng. “Why don’t we just keep staring a bit longer? That little radish look really suits you.”

He even threw the bewildered creature a flirty wink. “Perfect.”

The Corpse Ginseng wasn’t stupid—but it was starting to think Li Changluo might be.

Without a word, it swung a vine-like tendril and wrapped up Li Changluo for a thorough beating.

Li Changluo’s screams echoed through the tomb, shifting from despair, to pain, to a kind of pained delight, and finally into something almost welcoming.

The scene grew so bizarrely harmonious that the Corpse Ginseng, usually bitter and focused on the task of thrashing him, began to question its own existence—and even felt a tinge of embarrassment.

Who am I?

Where am I?

What on earth am I doing?

Slowly, it stopped.

Bruised and battered, Li Changluo seized the moment, grabbing one of the Corpse Ginseng’s tendrils and yanking it free.

The Corpse Ginseng howled in pain, snapping back to its senses. Its root-like hands shot to pull Li Changluo’s hair, while Li Changluo, undaunted, tried to snatch the leafy green tufts off the creature’s head. He couldn’t reach, so he settled for yanking at anything he could grab on its face.

Four hands, two heads—Li Changluo advanced three steps, the Corpse Ginseng retreated three. Li Changluo retreated, the creature advanced. Neither would give way.

In the flashlight’s glow, their shadows danced across the tomb walls—two “fishwives” brawling, yanking and kicking at each other.

Roots and bits of hair littered the ground.

Exhausted, man and “radish” wordlessly let go, collapsing to the dirt, panting heavily.

Li Changluo cursed Blackie’s ancestors for the hundredth time. Here he was, fighting for his life, and that bastard was hiding out playing games.

The Corpse Ginseng, too, was weary of this struggle. It realized its opponent was no ordinary man, and extraordinary foes required extraordinary measures.

Blood oozed from its wounds, and suddenly, from its body, belly, and tendrils, faces began to sprout—large and small, some smiling, some screaming, some frozen in terror, but all unmistakably dead, devoid of life.

Every face stared hungrily at Li Changluo, licking their lips with greedy tongues.

Terrified, Li Changluo scrambled back—this “radish” was about to unleash its ultimate move.

“Radish Bro—no, Corpse Ginseng Bro—we’ve been at this all night. Haven’t you had dinner? How about we order takeout and finish this after we eat?” Li Changluo grinned, picking up his phone to call Blackie.

Smack!

The Corpse Ginseng knocked the phone flying—it wasn’t falling for that trick again.

Li Changluo was always quick and clean in his actions—even when it came to begging for mercy. With a thud, he knelt on the ground, maintaining what little dignity he had, and shouted, “Spare me, Lord Corpse Ginseng!”

But just then, a knife flew toward him.

Li Changluo leapt up and caught it.

Seeing this, the Corpse Ginseng realized Li Changluo had backup and needed to end this quickly. With no time to let him recover, it raised its many-mouthed hands and charged.

It even debated: should it bite his hand first, or his mouth, since he talked too much?

But Li Changluo didn’t plan to fight back with the fruit knife. Instead, he slid it back into its plastic sheath.

Was he giving up?

Just as the Corpse Ginseng lunged in for a crushing embrace, Li Changluo flashed a devilish grin and pointed the fruit knife at it. A hair-thin needle shot from the knife, piercing the Corpse Ginseng’s heart.

It happened so fast, the creature didn’t even react—its body deflated like a punctured balloon, but what seeped out was foul black gas.

Corpse miasma.

The Corpse Ginseng lay twitching, its body shrunken, until finally a single tear of despair trickled down its face—damn it, this one doesn’t play by the rules.

Li Changluo, suppressing a laugh, grabbed its green leaves and hoisted it up.

The Corpse Ginseng groaned, “There’s just one thing I want to say before I go.”

Li Changluo’s eyes sparkled with anticipation. “Ask away.”

The Corpse Ginseng gazed meaningfully at his hand and sighed, “Turn off your PP Music app, that funeral chant is bad luck.”

Li Changluo thought it would complain about the hidden weapon, and had already prepared a cocky retort—“I, Li Changluo, do as I please, never needing to explain myself.”

But the Corpse Ginseng gave him no such satisfaction. Feeling robbed of his theatrics, Li Changluo sheepishly turned the music up to maximum.

You can insult my tactics, but not my taste.

With swift, efficient strokes, Li Changluo hacked the Corpse Ginseng into several large chunks and stuffed them into the burlap sack, as delighted as a greedy landlord collecting rent from his tenants.

At that moment, a burly, black-skinned man lumbered into the tomb, hauling up his trousers. He was so dark that, without the flashlight, all Li Changluo could see was the gleam of his white teeth and eyes.

“Li, who knew you, a supposed gentleman, could stoop so low,” the man said.

“That’s ‘well-dressed gentleman,’ please,” Li Changluo sighed, exasperated with this foreigner’s mangled idioms and pretensions of refinement.

Blackie picked up one of the Corpse Ginseng’s roots that Li Changluo had yanked off. “Is this ginseng?” he asked.

Li Changluo nodded.

Blackie managed to squeeze out a line of poetry: “A human form of rarest worth, said to grant eternal life.”

Li Changluo couldn’t help but marvel—now that was a hardcore gourmand. Faced with food, even a foreign foodie could recite ancient verse.

Blackie picked up a root, closed his eyes, and took a bite, savoring the flavor.

Dead.

How could he even eat that?

If it tastes good, is it zero calories?

Li Changluo stared in shock as Blackie foamed at the mouth, convulsed, and transformed into a hamster—a fat, human-sized hamster.

Then he went completely still.

Li Changluo nudged the chubby hamster with his foot—no reaction.

Silently, he opened the burlap sack, preparing to stuff Blackie in, wondering if he could trade him for liquor back home.

But just as he was about to act, the fat hamster sprang up nimbly, wiped the foam from his mouth with his little paw, and chirped, “Hey, I’m good now!”

Li Changluo forced a chuckle, slung the sack over his shoulder, and said, “Let’s go. We’ve wasted enough time—if we don’t hurry back, we’ll be too late.”

He absently rubbed his arm and sighed with relief.

Still there.

Suddenly, Blackie remembered something. “What about that fat guy digging the tomb hole?”

Only then did Li Changluo recall that, when they’d dropped in through the thieves’ tunnel, they’d landed right on top of a chubby tomb robber who called himself Fatty Wang and seemed to have something to say. But when Blackie followed and plopped down afterward, he’d knocked Fatty Wang out cold.

Why are all tomb robbers called Fatty Wang? Is there no honest profession for a Fatty Wang?

The two exchanged glances and, without a word, rifled through his pack.

Inside the tattered bundle, they found a Type 38 folding shovel, a Luoyang spade, a compass, glutinous rice, and a black donkey hoof…

While Li Changluo was distracted, Blackie quietly pocketed the rice and donkey hoof.

But Li Changluo wasn’t blind—he caught him red-handed and asked with disdain, “Is that really appropriate?”

Blackie just grinned sheepishly.

So, the two stripped the unconscious Fatty Wang of everything—even his ragged, holey, floral boxers.

“Is this appropriate?”

“He’s lost all hope,” Blackie replied, after thinking hard for the right phrase.

“I meant, do the boxers fit?”

“…”

Dragging the burlap sack full of “radish,” they finally left the tomb.

In the moonlit wilderness, Li Changluo climbed onto his little electric scooter, a fat hamster clutching his waist as they wobbled down the country road toward the city, the scene as surreal as could be.

But what Li Changluo hadn’t anticipated was that the cigarette butt he’d tossed in the tomb had set the place alight, flames engulfing the battered coffins, growing larger and larger.

As the fire blazed, the flames suddenly turned pitch black, as if something was emerging from within.

Li Changluo rode his scooter through the village, through the bustling city, weaving his way through the crowds. No one noticed the fat, clothes-wearing hamster clinging to his back—just as no one noticed a little scooter passing right through their bodies.

Soon, the scooter pulled up in front of a three-story vintage tavern in the city, with carved wooden windows, brass-knobbed red doors, and a battered black signboard with golden letters:

Monster Tavern.