"Keep digging."

Li Xu commanded.

The men moved forward again and dug deeper.

After repeating this process several times, they worked until noon.

"We’ve hit something! We’ve found something!" a villager suddenly cried out in alarm.

Beneath the shovel, a section of something deathly pale was revealed, covered in fibrous roots like a human hand.

Terrified, everyone retreated once more.

Li Xu walked forward and gestured for them not to panic.

The poisonous gas had already dissipated. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

It was safe now.

He picked up a shovel, first draining the surrounding water to one side, then had the others build a mud barrier to hold back the river.

Then, he cleared the soil around the object, bit by bit.

Finally, the legendary, eerie marvel—the Yabulu—revealed its complete form to everyone present.

It was an enormous plant root, over a meter tall, shaped uncannily like a curled-up infant.

Its "body" was grayish-white, its surface a tangled web of roots resembling blood vessels.

Its "head" even had two faint indentations, like eyes.

And in its "embrace," it tightly "held" the skeleton of an animal, the flesh long rotted away to leave only stark white bones.

Judging from the shape of the skull, it was the skeleton of a large dog.

The dog’s bones were tightly entwined and encased by the Yabulu’s countless fine rootlets.

Some roots had even pierced the cracks in the bones, fusing the two into one.

Scattered around the Yabulu were the skeletons of many other animals: goats, wild hares, and even some unidentifiable birds.

One could only imagine how many creatures had wandered into this place over the years, only to become "nutrients" for its growth.

Staring at the strange and shocking scene before them, all the villagers were too stunned to speak.

Ye Mushen, however, recalled an ancient legend. He pointed at the enormous Corpse Ginseng and cried out:

"Yabulu... Allah be praised, this... this is the man-eating Yabulu of legend!"

Here, the Yabulu was the Corpse Ginseng, a creature equated with demons.

Many villagers had heard the legends passed down by word of mouth.

Terrified, they backed away a few more steps.

But soon, Ye Mushen’s expression turned joyful. "The Yabulu is a Divine Medicine! It can cure many illnesses..."

He looked at Li Xu, his eyes filled with gratitude.

"Divine Physician from the East, thank you so much. By unearthing this, you’ve not only saved many lives but also provided us with a precious medicinal ingredient."

Li Xu smiled politely, then spoke frankly, "Ye Mushen, my friends, I won’t hide it from you. The reason I traveled thousands of miles to this esteemed place was that I heard there was a Yabulu here. I didn’t expect to be so lucky as to find it this quickly."

"I have a patient who can only possibly be cured with this Yabulu as the main ingredient. Therefore, I need to take a part of it."

The moment he finished speaking, Ye Mushen waved his hand magnanimously and said generously:

"My friend from the East, what are you saying? You discovered the Yabulu yourself and led us all, braving danger, to dig it up. It’s safe to say that it belongs entirely to you. Take as much as you want. Even if you take it all, the people of Donggan Village will not have a single word of complaint."

"That’s right, Ye Mushen is right."

"If it weren’t for you, we would’ve all still been in the dark."

"Divine Physician, you’ve saved so many people in our village. Taking this little thing is nothing."

The surrounding villagers all chimed in in agreement.

They were simple and kind, and they understood the importance of repaying a favor.

In their eyes, Li Xu was sent by Allah to save them.

He was a "Divine Physician" who healed the sick and saved the dying.

Never mind taking the somewhat sinister Yabulu—they would willingly give Li Xu the best cattle and sheep in the village.

Li Xu breathed a sigh of relief.

He knew his actions the day before had won him the friendship and trust of this village.

He didn’t stand on ceremony any longer and nodded. "Alright, then thank you, everyone. If any of you feel unwell, please don’t hesitate to come to me for treatment."

...

But the matter was not over. The Yabulu had been exposed, but it still needed to be completely excavated from the deep pit.

The men continued their efforts.

They carefully looped ropes around the base of the Yabulu, and then, working together, they slowly pulled it upward, bit by bit, from the mud it had been buried in for so many years.

Just as the Yabulu was pulled from the earth, exposing more details of its root system, Li Xu, who had been observing intently from the edge of the pit, suddenly noticed something was wrong.

Around the roots of the Yabulu, amidst the scattered and long-decayed animal skeletons, were some equally rotten pieces of black wood.

This wood was likely broken branches washed downstream from the Suerhan River during floods over the years and buried here in the silt.

That in itself wasn’t strange.

The crucial thing was that growing on the rotten black wood and animal bones were some extremely strange, wrinkled fungi.

The fungi were irregularly shaped clumps, dark black in color, with an uneven surface covered in complex, convoluted patterns like the folds of a human brain.

They emitted an incredibly rich and indescribable aroma, a special scent mixing the smell of rot with a strange medicinal fragrance.

The moment Li Xu saw these fungi, his heart began to pound wildly.

A name he himself found hard to believe surfaced in his mind.

Heedless of anything else, he leaped directly from the edge of the pit, jumping down into the stinking depths.

He crouched down and carefully plucked a small piece of the black fungus from a rotten bone, placing it in his palm to examine it closely.

As he saw the unique patterns clearly and smelled the rich, strange aroma, a look of sheer ecstasy spread across Li Xu’s face.

’That’s it.’

’It has to be!’

This... this was definitely the supreme treasure of legend, more precious than gold, the subject of the saying "Huang Qin is never fake, but Ah Wei is never real"—it was Ah Wei.

He never imagined that his search for the Yabulu would yield such an astonishing and pleasant surprise.

Most importantly, his intelligence reports hadn’t mentioned this.

It was a complete and unexpected windfall.

After confirming it was Ah Wei, more information about it flooded Li Xu’s mind.

Since ancient times, all sorts of mysterious legends have been told about "Ah Wei."

The first, and most widely circulated, was also the most sinister.

Legend has it that in ancient times, the daughters of wealthy families who were frail and sickly would often consume large quantities of expensive tonics like Ginseng and Lingzhi mushrooms throughout their lives.

Therefore, after their deaths, the pure "medicinal qi" within their bodies would not dissipate but would instead congeal and grow into a rare, black, gelatinous substance within their organs.

This substance came to be known as "Ah Wei," and because its form resembled a Lingzhi mushroom, it was also called "Ah Wei Lingzhi."