SES Chapter 81 Part 2

That must have been Old Man Yan.

Then, a well. Old Man Yan, clutching the woman’s hair, a knife at her throat.

But in the next drawing, he hadn’t thrown her in.

Instead, he tied a rope around her feet and lowered her headfirst, slowly.

The final sketch was messy, like even the savage hadn’t known how to depict it. A cross-section of the well: the top sealed shut, the woman dangling upside down inside, not touching the bottom, swinging like a pendulum.

Wan San turned away, stomach churning.

As for Old Man Yan—if he was dead, so be it. Better dead.

Luo Ren brought Mu Dai and Yan Hongsha back to the mountain hollow where they had been staying.

At least there was some comfort—they hadn’t seen any bodies along the way.

Still, it was absurd. The three strongest fighters in the group were now together, while the ones missing were the half-baked weaklings.

Luo Ren regretted bringing Cao Yanhua and Wan San at all, but he didn’t say it aloud. This wasn’t the time to discourage people.

As long as no bodies turned up, there was hope. Maybe, like Mu Dai, they’d just suddenly reappear.

Night fell, and they had to spend another night in the stone house. Luo Ren lit the stove, moved the wooden planks into the kitchen for Mu Dai and Yan Hongsha to rest on, and took watch himself.

The fire burned all night, its glow and warmth steadying their hearts.

In the middle of the night, Mu Dai got up and tugged at him. “You’ve been traveling at night, then standing guard, going days without sleep. Rest for a while—I’ll take the second half.”

Luo Ren refused. She leaned close to his ear and whispered, “You need to stay well. Hongsha and I are counting on you to get us out of here.”

So he didn’t argue. He lay down on the planks, every bone and muscle sighing with relief. His eyelids were impossibly heavy. He really was exhausted—only sheer will had kept him going. The moment he let go, his body gave out.

He clasped Mu Dai’s hand and tried to say, “If anything happens, you should—”

But before he could finish, he was asleep.

The room was quiet, only the crackling fire breaking the silence. When the flames died down, Mu Dai carefully added logs one by one, terrified of waking him.

When she wasn’t tending the fire, she sat beside him, chin propped in her hand, watching his face.

When you love someone, you could stare for a lifetime and never tire of it. No one else, no matter how beautiful, could compare—they were just smoke in the corner of your eye, gone with a breath.

She wondered—when she was asleep, did Luo Ren look at her the same way?

Luo Ren slept deeply, dreamless. It felt like he had only just closed his eyes, but when he opened them again, the sky was bright.

Mu Dai leaned over him. “You’re awake?”

Luo Ren smiled, glancing over to see that Yan Hongsha wasn’t in the room.

“She’s outside,” Mu Dai explained. “She barely slept all night, kept tossing and turning.”

Luo Ren said nothing. He didn’t pity Old Man Yan, but he did feel for Yan Hongsha. First she lost Yan Jiuxiao, now very likely her grandfather too. She was only a young woman, enduring blow after blow.

“You’re both girls,” he said. “Try to comfort her when you can.”

Mu Dai went out to find Yan Hongsha. She had just been talking with Luo Ren—if they rationed the food carefully, they could last a day or two. For now, they wouldn’t leave the mountain. The top priority was finding the others.

“As long as we find Cao Yanhua and Wan San,” Hongsha said.

Mu Dai froze.

Hongsha sighed. “I don’t think my grandfather’s getting out of here.”

She was so calm it worried Mu Dai. “Hongsha, are you alright?”

“I thought about it all night,” Hongsha said blankly. “What if he really is dead? But strangely, I realized I wasn’t that sad. Maybe… maybe even I feel he got what he deserved.”

She went on: “If you kill, you pay with your life. It doesn’t matter if it’s been ten or twenty years—retribution always comes.”

Mu Dai didn’t know how to comfort her.

Just then, footsteps sounded. Luo Ren walked out.

“Where should we start looking today?” Hongsha asked him.

It was a tough question. The forest was vast, with countless hiding spots. Even with a hundred more people, they couldn’t search it all.

After some thought, Luo Ren said, “Let’s check the treasure well first.”

For Mu Dai and Yan Hongsha, finding their way back there was tricky—Old Man Yan had led the way before.

Luckily, the area was remote, rarely traveled. Some traces from that day remained, faint but there, and combined with their hazy memories, they managed to stumble back on course.

Thinking of Cao Yanhua and Wan San, Mu Dai recalled yesterday and blushed with shame. “There were so many of us, and we still got scattered by a swarm of wasps.”

“Don’t underestimate wasps,” Luo Ren said. “Forget our ragtag crew—even back then, some of my toughest brothers got wrecked by those little monsters. Screaming for their mothers and everything.”

Yan Hongsha asked curiously, “Was it hornets again?”

“No. Black ants,” Luo Ren replied.

Mu Dai said offhandedly, “Ants are scary too? Not as bad as hornets, though—at least they can’t fly.”

Luo Ren shook his head. “Not if there are enough of them. They cover the ground in a carpet, swarming and rustling, chewing as they go. Sometimes they cross a tree, and in seconds, the bark is stripped clean. If an unlucky animal happens to be in their path, the next thing you see is just a skeleton…”

Yan Hongsha shuddered. “So how did you guys get away?”

“By running for our lives,” Luo Ren said. “Normally, everyone acts like a hero, staring down knives without even blinking, but that time? They were bawling for their moms and dads, running faster than anyone. Aoki turned back, emptied a whole magazine—pa-pa-pa…”

He suddenly stopped talking.

Mu Dai, intrigued, pressed him, “And then?”

Luo Ren bent down on one knee, his eyes fixed on the ground. Mu Dai followed his gaze, and her heart gave a jolt.

Blood. On fallen leaves and branches. Since it hadn’t rained overnight, the stain was still there, dark and sharp.

They traced the blood trail, a thin red line weaving forward. At the end of it…

Was the treasure well Yan Hongsha had dug open that day?

Yan Hongsha stood frozen, her temples pounding, then let out a piercing scream and bolted toward it. Mu Dai reacted quickly, grabbing her back.

“Don’t let her come over!” Luo Ren barked, striding toward the well himself.

By then, the fire had gone out, and daylight had broken.

Inside the cave, Cao Yanhua was sprawled on the ground, barely hanging on. He cracked open his eyes and whispered, “Brother Sansan?”

Yi Wansan also stirred, eyes blinking open.

Cao Yanhua mouthed at him, Still sleeping?

Yi Wansan fixed him with a look of stubborn determination and mouthed back, Still sleeping!