SES Chapter 180 Part 2

Mu Dai sat cross-legged, reached up to smooth her hair, then straightened her clothes.

Meihua Jiuniang had once said, “Mu Dai, your clothes are your spirit. You are your clothes, and your clothes are you.”

Mu Dai missed her shifu—more than ever.

Leopard spoke. “You’re Luo’s girlfriend?”

“I checked on you. They say you’re sick—like a willful little girl. When you’re unhappy, you cry and need your Aunt Hong to protect and coax you.”

She leaned forward slightly and asked, “So why aren’t you crying now?”

Mu Dai glanced at her and said, “I’m Meihua Jiuniang’s disciple.”

Her shifu had taught her not to rely on anyone—to be Mu Dai first, and only then Meihua Jiuniang’s disciple and someone’s lover.

But this was different. Her shifu was dead. In front of Leopard, she would hold her head high as Meihua Jiuniang’s disciple. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t beg. Even unto death, she would not disgrace her shifu’s spirit.

Leopard said, “Oh, that old woman.”

Mu Dai stared at her. “How did my shifu die?”

Leopard smiled sweetly, tapped ash from her cigar, and said, “Let me think. I stabbed her… one, two, three… nine times.”

Mu Dai said nothing, but her body straightened, her back even straighter.

Leopard laughed softly, her gaze roaming Mu Dai’s face, not seeing the reaction she’d hoped for. Slightly bored, she took a deep drag and continued, “But I can make you feel a bit better—your shifu didn’t actually die by my hand. She was very skilled. In my life, I’ve never met anyone with such skill—especially a cripple.”

“I didn’t beat her. She struck viciously. She thought she’d beaten me to death. Honestly, if an ordinary person had taken those moves, they really would have died.”

Mu Dai listened quietly.

“For a while, I couldn’t get up. I heard her laughing—laughing loudly. Then, halfway through, the sound suddenly stopped.”

Back then, the laughter had been cut off abruptly. Leopard looked up and, in the night fog, saw Meihua Jiuniang’s body stand rigidly for a second or two, then collapse heavily.

A smile appeared at the corner of Mu Dai’s lips.

She didn’t look at Leopard, speaking as if to herself. “My shifu was amazing. When she was young, she traveled all over the country. Few could stand against her.”

That was true. Mu Dai was proud of her shifu. Seated in a wheelchair, relying only on movement and her arms, she had once taken down Senior Brother Zheng Mingshan, then teased him: “With skills like that, you still dare take on disciples? You’ll only ruin people.”

In recent years, Meihua Jiuniang’s health had declined. She’d been hospitalized several times, gone into surgery, and taken medicine constantly. She once sighed that even if her life wasn’t illustrious, it had at least been bold and free. The thought of lingering on a sickbed, quietly breathing her last, left her deeply unwilling.

Better to go all out—to fight one last, decisive battle, worthy of a life that had entered the underworld at a young age, full of wandering, danger, regret, and satisfaction.

Before her death, her shifu had laughed loudly. She must have felt at peace.

Mu Dai knelt upright, pressed her palms together with their base against her forehead, and bowed to the ground—the same deep bow she had performed when she first became a disciple. She still remembered Aunt Hong standing nearby with a red paper-wrapped stack of bills, saying, “Thank you, Elder Mei, for teaching our Mu Dai. She’s a foolish girl—you’ve put in a lot of effort.”

A burning tear slid down her cheek and fell to the floor.

She had once told Luo Ren that her shifu had been sick for so long that she was prepared. Only now did she realize she hadn’t been at all.

She was still young—not as clear-eyed about life and death as her shifu. Her shifu had once said that life was like a boundless ocean, each person an isolated island. The passage of life was the sea gradually swallowing each island, until everyone lay in long peace beneath the waves. Her shifu had simply sunk earlier.

Now Mu Dai understood a little. She was still an island, floating on the surface, bearing the waves and accepting the sunlight. But when she turned back, the island that had always accompanied her was slowly sinking down into the cold, dark depths.

Even knowing that one day, perhaps, they would meet again in sinking and silence, she still felt reluctant to let go, felt the surface of the sea suddenly bleak and empty.

Mu Dai sat up again and looked at Leopard.

“You took me to deal with Luo Ren, didn’t you? What do you want? To kill him?”

Leopard laughed, picked up another cigar from the tray beside her, and lit it with the burning end of the first. Wisps of smoke curled lazily; it was unclear when it would fully catch, making one inexplicably anxious.

She said, “Luo has ruined many of my plans. He’s cost me a lot of money.”

“Why not cooperate? He makes money as a mercenary. He could work for me—I can pay him just as well, even better.”

“You understand. When someone meets a capable person, first comes admiration, then the desire to make them your own. No one wants to make an enemy of someone capable. Opposing talent is painful and stupid.”

She slowly pointed at her one remaining eye. “But Luo disappointed me too much. He forced me into this.”

Mu Dai looked at her coldly. “So you’re going to kill him?”

“Kill him? Little beauty, you’re thinking too simply.”

“Killing him would just be a knife or a bullet. And me? My eye will be with me for life. When I want to vent in the future, who should I turn to? A handful of ashes underground?”

Then her tone shifted. “Do you know why I’m called Leopard?”

“Why?”

A smile touched her lips, as if reminiscing.

“I like leopards. Beautiful, with sexy lines, flawless fur. Agile hunters. Their tongues have barbs—one lick can scrape off a layer of skin. Thirty sharp teeth that can easily chew flesh and bone. At night, their eyes glow.”

“They can live in the tropics and survive in subzero snowfields. Owning a leopard as a pet was my dream.”

“But almost every animal trainer told me leopards are hard to tame. I didn’t believe them. I tried to get close.”

She slowly unbuttoned her collar. On her snow-white skin, lower down, were several vicious claw scars. Though healed, they were still deeply sunken—those wounds must once have bled to the bone.

“I was very unhappy. Extremely unhappy.”

“But it didn’t matter. I have money and countless people at my disposal. I had the leopard anesthetized. I removed its claws, its teeth, and its barbed tongue, and even surgically altered its jaw.”

“After that, it was like a big cat. It still threw tantrums, but when it opened its mouth to bite, all it left was a big puddle of drool. Sometimes it’d paw at you—soft and gentle, like a tickle.”

“When I’m happy, I put a necklace on it and a frilly hat. When I’m unhappy, I whip it and ask, ‘Do you remember those ugly scars you left on me back then?’”

“You ask how I want to deal with Luo. I don’t want to kill him. I want to pull out his claws and fangs and make him a dog at my side.”

Mu Dai forced out a few words through clenched teeth: “Luo Ren won’t.”

Leopard smiled. “Is that so?”

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “That’s because you don’t really know him yet. Luo is alive right now only because I’ve allowed him to live. He doesn’t know… what other cards I’m still holding.”