SES Chapter 123 Part 2

But it got worse. From wrong prescriptions to deliberate distortions of symptoms, exaggerations, and even fabrications.

“It felt like something had taken control of me. I knew what I was doing, but I couldn’t stop it. That’s when my wife started saying I’d changed—that my temper was violent, that I wasn’t myself anymore.”

For Luo Ren, who had only ever encountered Murder Slip hosts after they were dead or incoherent, this was the first time he heard one describe the experience firsthand.

He thought of his uncle, Luo Wenmiao, and that desperate line: ‘Luo Ren, don’t make me kill someone.’

Ding Guohua must have fought even harder. He was a doctor—someone who cared about his patients. To know you were delivering despair instead of hope must have been unbearable.

And Nantian County back then was poor. A county hospital’s diagnosis was often final—few had the money or resolve to seek another opinion in a bigger city.

He remembered that woman, too—surname Xiang, Xiang Silan. She had an STD, knew nothing about HIV. When he first told her, she even asked, “What medicine do I take for it?”

When she finally realized it was incurable, she went mad.

Rumor had it she dripped her blood into a neighbor’s cooking pot, screaming, “Why should I be the only one to die? If I go, everyone goes with me!”

When Ding Guohua mentioned her, Luo Ren glanced nervously at Mu Dai. She smiled faintly, as if to say, I’m fine.

Ding Guohua coughed, pulling the conversation back.

“After I lost my foot, the control disappeared. Just like that.”

“But I felt… I wasn’t fit to be a doctor anymore. I dreaded seeing patients I might have misdiagnosed, dreaded anyone coming to me. I didn’t like people. I didn’t like visitors.”

He glanced down, shifting his fake left foot. “Sometimes when I see this, I feel like it’s heaven’s punishment—for my sins.”

He looked at Luo Ren. “You said your uncle was like me. I still can’t understand… what was happening to us back then?”

Luo Ren couldn’t lay out the whole truth about the Murder Slips. After a pause, he said vaguely, “It’s a kind of sickness. Uncontrollable. Twists your words and actions. My uncle couldn’t hold out—he killed himself.”

“And then he lost a foot after death?”

“Yes. No explanation. Maybe it really is heaven’s punishment, like you said.”

By the time they left Ding Guohua’s place, it was midnight. A message came through the group chat—Yan Hongsand had taken over Cao Yanhua’s hospital shift.

Cao Yanhua, bored from a whole day of guarding the ward, was now wide awake after his shift, itching for excitement.

—Want to sneak up to Tengma Carving Terrace? I swear there’s a heartbeat there. If we’re lucky, we might see the red high heels.

Nobody replied, and he didn’t post again. Yan Hongsand wouldn’t go along. Most likely, Cao Yanhua had gone off pestering Wan San on his own.

Luo Ren glanced at Mu Dai. He couldn’t help worrying. After all this time, this was probably the first time she had heard news of her mother.

So her mother’s name was Xiang Silan. And she had never actually been HIV positive. Which meant—she might still be alive.

Her current name, Mu Dai, had been given to her by Huo Zihong. Before that, she had no idea if Xiang Silan had named her. She remembered faintly that many people simply called her “Nannan.”

Nannan. A common, homely nickname, but warm on the tongue.

Under the streetlight, their shadows stretched long. Mu Dai kicked a pebble down the street. “After hearing all that from Ding Guohua, do you have any leads?”

Luo Ren countered, “Do you?”

Mu Dai said, “I thought of something.”

She stopped walking and ticked points off on her fingers. “Zhang Guanghua drowned, pushed into the water by my Aunt Hong. After the Murder Slip left him, it went to Liu Shuhai.

“Liu Shuhai died sick in a Jinan motel. Then the Slip went to your uncle, Luo Wenmiao. After he killed himself, it went to Ping Ting.

“So we concluded the Slip only leaves when the host dies. That’s how we managed to force the first one out of Ping Ting.”

Luo Ren already knew where she was heading.

“But maybe we trapped ourselves in that assumption,” Mu Dai said. “We assumed the Slip leaves only after death.

“What if it can choose freely?”

“My mother—Xiang Silan—was a much better host than Ding Guohua.”

Even before the Slip possessed her, she already carried such malice: Why should I die alone? If I go, everyone goes with me.

The first Slip—Zhang Guanghua, Liu Shuhai, Luo Wenmiao—had chosen at random. Those men were, at heart, decent. Luo Wenmiao had even resisted.

The second, an old clam—impossible to understand, but cunning in its own way. The Slip feared water, yet it picked a host who could move through water freely.

The third, the woman who crafted the Rain-Banish doll—her bond with the Slip came from desperation. She wanted revenge. Without it, she wouldn’t have survived.

The fourth abandoned Ding Guohua, choosing instead someone who fit its taste better: Xiang Silan.

The Slip wasn’t a mindless artifact. It thought. It experimented. It schemed. Building a web so vast they hadn’t even glimpsed the edges.

She asked Luo Ren, “Do you think, someday, someone will willingly seek possession by the Slip? Someone who wants to work with it?”

Luo Ren nodded. “I have no illusions about human nature. I think it’s inevitable.”

Mu Dai grew thoughtful. “Then we need to be careful.”

“We’ve always been careful.”

“No, I mean—if one Slip gained enough power, and found someone who not only accepted it but even helped it strategize—don’t you think it would try to reclaim the others?”

Luo Ren’s heart skipped a beat.

So far, they’d seen no signs of that. But the shaman had warned them—the Slips might be able to communicate with each other.

And the other three? The ones sealed by their own blood in Phoenix Buckles? They were sitting in nothing more than a water-filled fish tank, in an ordinary house in Lijiang. The door was locked, yes—but not well. A single kick would break it open.