Chapter 11- Lotus Above, Snake Below

“Grandpa? What’s soup?” Tian was throwing up big clods of clay-heavy dirt as he dug his ‘soup pot.’

What’s soup?

“You keep saying we are making Tian soup, but I don’t know what soup is.”

Good question- you take liquid, usually water or water with flavors dissolved in it, and mix it with other food. Usually by heating it and cooking the flavors together, but not always.

“So… I’m turning into a liquid?”

That would be one way to do it, but I wouldn’t take it too literally. And by literally, I mean, it’s a figure of speech. You do need to get your whole body, and I do mean whole body, covered.

“Covered by…”

Whatever you make your soup into.

“Which should be made from the snakes and lotuses?”

Yep.

“And you…”

Nope. Up to you. Figure something out.

Tian snorted, but kept digging.

“Can you tell me about the adder venom? Why is it called “Three poisons seven deaths?”

Mostly because it sounds scary as Hell, and forensic pathology isn’t really a thing here.

“Grandpa…”

Alright, alright. Basically this snake venom really is damned nasty. It’s blood poison, in that it stops wounds from healing and kills off a load of blood cells at the same time. What’s really brutal, though, are the cyanotoxin and nerve toxin elements. Basically it fries your nervous system while sending you into organ failure. Imagine drowning while feeling like all your organs are exploding and your blood is on fire.

Tian could, in fact, imagine it. He had experienced that in the past. He shuddered. Kept digging. Shuddered again. “You mentioned the snake’s gallbladder?”

Grab one and cut it open- I’ll show you. Start from just above the tip of the tail and start peeling the skin off.

A few messy minutes later- Yes, you have your finger on it now. That tiny thing. It has a few uses. Properly prepared, it helps improve vision and correct minor vision ailments. It helps clear out coughs by making it easier to spit out mucus. But what we are really interested in are the last two effects- its impact on male vigor, and its ability to clear meridians.

“Male vigor? What does vigor mean?”

Tian, when you were in the womb, something very bad happened to you. I don’t know if it was from the moment of conception or later, but you were born sterile. Unable to have children of your own. You would probably never develop normally even if you survived long enough to hit puberty due to glandular problems and… other stuff. It’s a mess down there, Tian. On the off chance you lived to adulthood, the Heavens assuredly did not want you to breed. So anything we can do to help you rebuild all that is a very, very good thing.

Related to that- you know the situation with your meridians. Normally they aren’t something that can be regrown, but if your body was in a special state, who knows what might be possible? So the gallbladders are useful, if you want to use them in your soup.

“And the lotuses? What makes them special?”

Oh a lot of things.

There were digging noises, and not much else. The dirt was heavy, and progress was slow.

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“Could you explain more?”