The Taoist priest had a youthful face, but his eyes were rather aged.
He looked both old and young, which was quite bizarre.
He squinted his eyes and walked towards the wall, taking a look inside.
However.
Behind the wall, there was nothing but a patch of weeds swaying slightly on the ground.
"There was clearly a gaze just now..."
The Taoist priest showed a hint of suspicion.
After looking around, he put on a stern face toward the young Taoist priests.
"Watch the gate carefully and don't let anyone near the backyard! If anything goes wrong, you will be held responsible!"
"Yes!"
The young Taoist priests responded with trepidation.
The Taoist priest walked into the meditation room, and the door slammed shut behind him.
The young Taoists exchanged a pale glance and then carried the black body bag toward the back gate of the courtyard.
Outside the wall.
Lu Fei and Hu Zi let out a long sigh of relief.
That strange Taoist's perception was too sharp; they nearly got exposed.
Now that the Taoist had entered the meditation room, they couldn't check what was in the water jar.
However—
Creak.
The side gate of the courtyard opened.
The three young Taoist priests emerged, carrying a body bag, and headed into the mountains in a flurry of activity.
"Follow them."
Lu Fei and Hu Zi exchanged a glance, no words needed, and silently followed behind.
After walking for a while with the body bag, one of the young Taoists suddenly let go, plopped down on the ground, and began to sob.
"Another one dead. When will this life ever get better..."
"Keep your voice down! Don't let Master hear you!"
The other two looked nervously toward the direction of the Taoist temple, their faces full of anxiety. Seeing no movement from there, they also sat down, their expressions filled with worry.
"Xiao Liu, stop crying! Master said as long as we obey, we won't..."
"He is not our Master, he's a devil! Do you really believe him? Fourth Senior Brother, Fifth Senior Brother, it will be our turn one day. Why don't we run away?"
Xiao Liu, his face streaked with tears, looked at the other two.
These two young Taoists were slightly older. After exchanging a glance, they revealed a bitter and desolate smile.
"What's the use of running? Second Senior Brother didn't even make it off this mountain before he died...Not listening to him will only make us die faster..."
"Then what should we do? Staying is death, running is death...Why did we have to encounter such a devil..."
All three of them looked lost, and the one called Xiao Liu started crying again.
"Enough, enough, stop crying. What's the use of crying? We'll take it one day at a time; this might just be our fate."
"Let's go, quickly bury the body. If we're late, that devil will scold us again!"
After a few minutes, the three young Taoists sighed and picked up the body bag, continuing their journey into the mountains.
They seemed quite young, with youthful faces, not more than twenty years old at most.
When they reached a dense thicket, they stopped.
"We're here."
"Let him be next to Third Senior Brother. When they were alive, they were closest to Third Senior Brother."
The young Taoist priests dug a shallow pit with hoes, opened the body bag, and dumped the human-shaped object inside into the pit.
It could only be determined from the Taoist robe wrapped around it that it was the little Taoist priest who had sneaked into the meditation room.
The three of them buried the body, then made a small fire, burning the Taoist robe and the body bag.
Their movements were very swift; it was obvious this wasn't the first time they had done this.
The firelight reflected on their young faces, their three pairs of eyes dull and lifeless, filled with fear yet tinged with a bit of numbness.
When the flames died down, they bowed to the ground and left in silence.
Watching their figures grow distant, Lu Fei and Hu Zi emerged from behind the tree.
"Boss..."
Standing at the burial site, Hu Zi's face looked very grim.
The behavior of these Taoist priests at Lingyun Temple is too eerie and terrifying.
"Let's dig it up and take a look."
Lu Fei bowed towards the ground, then he and Hu Zi dug up some soil, revealing a body that was no longer in any recognizable shape.
The corpse was like dough with too much water, its entire body was melting, and some parts had already started to rot, resembling the texture of crumbling tofu.
"It seems those rotten bones on the mountain peak should be what the little Taoist disciples were talking about, their Second Senior Brother who couldn't escape from this mountain."
Lu Fei reburied the corpse and sighed.
"How could a person just recently dead rot to this extent?" Hu Zi felt a chill run down his spine.
Although both of them knew it was related to the thing in the water vat, neither of them knew exactly what had happened in the meditation room.
Lu Fei knitted his brows, still puzzled by certain aspects.
"Their deaths are undoubtedly because of that so-called Taisui. The Second Senior Brother died on the mountain peak, his body rotted, and was buried there on the spot."
"And Zhihao and his classmates happened to be camping there, and for some reason, they accidentally came into contact with the flesh-like entity."
"But the strange thing is, why did they die in different ways?"
One had all the water in their body sucked out, turning them into a mummy, and then they vomited a lump of flesh that looked like the flesh-like entity.
The other one, however, rotted away, skin, flesh, and bones, leaving nothing behind.
Huzi was even more puzzled.
Lufei thought for a moment, opened the lid of the rice jar, and took a look inside, and couldn't help but be startled.
"How did this thing get smaller?"
At the bottom of the rice jar, the lump of flesh that was originally palm-sized had shrunk to fist-sized, almost half its original size!
"Is it because there's not enough water in the rice jar?" Huzi stretched his neck to take a peek, rather wary of what was inside.
"The water in the rice jar hasn't noticeably decreased... what it needs is the fluid from living human bodies, that is, saliva. Without a living person to nourish it, it has shrunk," Lufei said, lost in thought.
"Is such a sinister thing really the Taisui?" Hu Zi, with goosebumps all over his body, rubbed his arms vigorously.
"Actually, Taisui itself is not something good. The notions that one should not disturb the Taisui and that being in conflict with it brings misfortune, both indicate that this thing is prone to bring disasters to people,"
said Lu Fei in a low voice.
"And some evil Taisuis are also man-eaters."
"It seems like the person consumes the Taisui, but in fact, the Taisui feeds on the body fluids inside the human, essentially consuming the person instead."
"It's a good thing we didn't eat it back then, otherwise, who knows if we would have turned into mummies or into tofu dregs!" Hu Zi, still feeling apprehensive, said, "Boss, this thing is too eerie, should we still take it?"
"Take! Why not? An evil Taisui is also a kind of evil object!" Lu Fei affirmed, "However, all these are just our speculations. Without seeing the Taisui in the water jar with our own eyes, we can't be 100% sure!"
It's easy to leave the thing in the rice jar, but if we don't thoroughly understand its origin and characteristics, there's no point in keeping it.
"Then shall we take another look at Lingyun Temple? I don't believe that weird Taoist will stay in his room forever. If we keep a watch, we'll find an opportunity," said Hu Zi.
"We'll split up into two teams."
Lu Fei had already made a plan.
"You and Xiao Hei keep an eye on the meditation room. I'll check around the rest of the temple to see if I can find more clues."
Without delay, the two returned outside Lingyun Temple.