The Lost Tomb : Extras & Special Stories

(Extra Story: 2016 Chinese New Year Special) Chapter 7: Fish Gall

When we set off the next morning, I was both calm and tense. My body had been completely relaxed over the past six months, but this environment made me instinctively start to mobilize my nerves and want to be active again.

As we walked, Fatty flipped through the photographs he had taken of the fish last night on his phone, and kept squinting. The fish had been turned into a fillet, so this was the only evidence of its existence now. I didn't know why Fatty kept looking at it.

"Are you unhappy that you didn't get to eat the fish head, or are you sick enough to get off on a fish?" I asked him.

"You don't know shit. You have to learn to find the clues in the details." Fatty said. "Mr. Naïve, you don't know anything about production. It's a wonder that you, a young master living in the city, can even distinguish pigs from sheep."

In Fatty's eyes, I may always be a young master. I leaned over and watched him enlarge the picture and look at the fish's wound.

"What's the matter?" I hooked my arm around his shoulder. "Don't play dumb. Now, now. Tell me right now. Come on."

"You can see for yourself. Where's the bite?"

I looked at the wound and said to myself, I'm not familiar with the physiological structure of fish. How am I supposed to know where it is? I looked at it carefully and noticed that it was lower down on the stomach. I gulped and asked, "Was its dick bitten off?"

"When have you ever seen fish grow dicks? Has your family eaten fish dicks before?" Fatty retorted. "This is a very special part on carp. If you've engaged in fish production, you would know that carp have two treasures: carp stone and carp gall. The carp gall is highly toxic and can be used as medicine. But you can die if you eat too much of it."

"Where did you learn this useless bit of information?" I asked while looking at the carp's wound in the picture. "You mean to say that this was where the carp's gallbladder was?"

Fatty nodded, so I continued my line of questioning, "So it's no accident that this part of the fish was bitten? Then what can carp gall be used for?"

Fatty was silent and then snorted. "I didn't catch it, so how would I know? Ask the old man, he must know."

Lei Benchang had been walking in front of us and staring straight ahead the whole time. I knew he wasn't thinking about anything in particular, but he wasn't wandering around aimlessly. He knew exactly where he was going. At this time, nothing between heaven and earth could bother him except for me. I went up and asked him Fatty's question.

Lei Benchang glanced at the picture on the phone and frowned. "Hmmm, that is a bit interesting." The old man then told me that carp gall was important for getting rid of inflammation and improving one's eyesight. But if you ate too much, it could cause vomiting and diarrhea. In the worst cases, it could easily cause paralysis and shock, or even death. When I returned to Fatty and told him what Lei Benchang had said, Fatty responded with, "Let's assume for the time being that this bite was meant to target that specific area, and that the old man's strange fish loves eating fish gall."

We couldn't verify it at this time and could only really rely on our imaginations, but for some reason, I kept thinking that what Fatty said could be possible. Why did I have this intuition? I wasn't really sure. I just always felt that there was some basis even though I didn't know where it connected to.

We soon arrived at the spring.

The old man was very familiar with it, so he had a convenient route for us to take. Although there wasn't a path, he knew exactly where to place his feet on the loose gravel. When we finally reached the deep pool, we could tell at a glance that it was unusual.