Not knowing where the blood corpses had gone, we were worried they might appear at any moment, so we didn't dare let the campfire in the courtyard go out. It wasn't until the middle of the night that Old Man Du returned from gathering herbs in the mountains.
His bamboo basket wasn't filled with medicinal herbs, but with venomous creatures like centipedes and scorpions—all of them alive. The sight nearly triggered my trypophobia, and my stomach churned. Yet, Old Man Du told us these were good things. He sat by the door alone and began to grind the medicine using a stone mortar. He grabbed handfuls of the living centipedes, scorpions, and venomous snakes, tossing them into the mortar and pounding away with vigor.
The venomous creatures were crushed together into a dark, pasty substance that gave off a foul odor. Old Man Du, however, seemed to relish it. His face was filled with a look of strange satisfaction. In his hands, those deadly creatures acted like docile pets; even as he ground them into paste, not one of them ever bit him. They seemed born to be crushed by him.
Chapter 118