SES Chapter 168 Part 2

Cao Yanhua didn’t react in time. The driver, Luo Ren, couldn’t help but curve his lips slightly.

Cao exploded. “Little Master, how can you call it Spicy Stir-Fried Chicken? You shout that at it all day, it’ll get psychological trauma!”

Mu Dai snorted. “A chicken is for eating. It escaped that fate, so it’s bound to get arrogant and restless. A name like that reminds it of its duty as a chicken.”

“I don’t like it.”

Mu Dai glanced at him through the rearview mirror. Of course you don’t. Open your mouth and I already know what you’re planning to say. You wouldn’t ask someone else unless you had already picked a name.

Sure enough, Cao Yanhua changed direction.

“Little Master, didn’t you say that when I meet Great Master Meihua Jiuniang, I can’t lie? She’ll definitely know I used to be a thief. So I have to show her I truly repented…”

“To forever remember the dark path I took back in Jiefangbei, and to urge myself to learn from the past, I’ve decided to name it… Cao Jiefang.”

Mu Dai rolled her eyes.

She was just about to roast him when the phone rang.

Not hers. Coincidentally, both Cao Yanhua’s and Luo Ren’s phones rang at the same time.

Luo Ren answered him calmly and briefly. “Mm. Okay. Got it.”

Cao Yanhua was completely different—loud, fast, and angry: “What insurance? No! Not buying! Not buying! Not buying!”

After hanging up, he was still annoyed. “No idea which membership I signed up for that leaked my info. Do consumers have zero privacy these days?”

He started tapping on his phone. “Let me check what mountain chickens eat… do we need to buy a nest for our Jiefang…”

Insurance?

Why did those two words suddenly sound so familiar?

Mu Dai suddenly remembered something. She jolted upright and turned around.

“Insurance?”

“Yeah.”

Cao Yanhua was scrolling casually.

“Was it a woman who called?”

“Yeah.”

“Was it Atlantic Life Insurance?”

“Didn’t hear which ocean. They’re all scammers anyway…”

Mu Dai was furious. She poked Cao Yanhua hard in the forehead, knocking him back against the seat.

“Then just live happily ever after with your Cao Jiefang!”

Cao Yanhua was completely confused. “What did I do?!”

Mu Dai was about to explain when the car slowed and pulled over.

Luo Ren lowered his head, staring at his phone, brows tightly knit.

Mu Dai asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Aoki sent a photo. Someone spotted Leopard’s subordinate in a water town in Zhejiang.”

He handed Mu Dai the phone.

The picture showed an ordinary man in a white tank top and khaki shorts, sitting cross-legged on a stone bridge, grinning widely and flashing a “yeah” hand sign.

He didn’t look fierce. He didn’t look ruthless.

Blended into the crowd, he looked like an unremarkable tourist.

But the scariest people were often exactly like that—the kind you’d never feel the need to guard against.

Cao Yanhua didn’t know who Aoki or Leopard were, but if there was drama, he wasn’t about to miss it. He squeezed his head over. “What? Let me see! Let me see!”

Mu Dai pressed a palm to his forehead and pushed him back. “Move aside.”

“Don’t! I see something wrong. I really see something wrong!”

While Mu Dai hesitated, he reached out and snatched the phone.

Then he leaned back smugly, crossed his legs, and slowly zoomed in. “What’s so special? This guy looks like he sells potatoes and he’s someone’s subordinate? Huh…?”

Mu Dai snapped, “Give it back.”

Cao tried to dodge, but Mu Dai’s arm shot out with a light joint-lock. Before he even understood what happened, the phone was no longer in his hand.

He froze.

A moment later, realization dawned on his face.

“No—wait, Little Master, Brother Luo… let me see it again. I think… I really have seen him somewhere.”

He didn’t sound like he was joking.

Luo Ren and Mu Dai exchanged a look and signaled to give it back.

Cao Yanhua lowered his head, zooming in on the photo again and again until the pixels blurred.

Then he looked up.

“Brother Luo, do you remember… one time you came to Uncle Zheng’s restaurant to find me, and you mentioned the huge seabed painting in Wuzhu Village? And said the fortune-teller saw the same kind of painting somewhere else?”

Luo Ren’s heart tightened.

Yes.

There was such a place.

In Zhejiang.

An ancient town.

A blue stone bridge.

Three stepping stones with carved patterns.

They were even more complete than the seabed painting in Wuzhu Village.

He remembered telling Cao Yanhua back then that it was a local custom—to carve crimes into the bridge stones and let people step on them, so such evils would never happen again. Some even depicted adultery and immoral acts, and people stepped on those the most.

“Brother Luo, zoom in on that photo. Look at the stone slab under that guy’s butt. The lines on the one next to it… they look exactly like the photo you showed me back then…”

Zhejiang.
Ancient town.
The deadly bamboo slips.
Leopard’s subordinate…

Luo Ren felt dazed.

It was as if something were hidden inside a thick fog right in front of him—still impossible to see clearly, but slowly revealing a terrifying outline.