SES Chapter 200 Part 2

Mu Dai hummed. “So?”

What exactly was he getting at?

“This book was a message from the murderous slips to her. Then she wrote ‘hide’ in it. I’m thinking—maybe that ‘hide’ is another message passed on by the slips.”

Mu Dai’s heart began to pound, and her voice dropped. “Then what message do you think it was?”

“That the seventh murderous slip has been hidden.”

Mu Dai felt the muscles in her face twitch involuntarily.

The next second, she slammed her palm on the table. “Do you really need to say that? You think I don’t know it’s hidden? If it weren’t hidden, we’d have found it already!”

She stood up, kicked the stool under her far away, and stomped upstairs on her own.

Behind her came the fortune-teller’s dissatisfied muttering. “What’s with Little Pocket lately? Getting less and less cute…”

Before going to bed, Mu Dai packed her things. There were lots of flashy clothes—kitty prints, bunny prints, elephant heads. She lifted them up, frowned.

She held one up in front of the mirror. Cute, pastel colors—paired with her deep, calm gaze. Her lips pressed together, brows slightly raised. She tugged the neckline down a bit, revealing the dagger tattoo at her collarbone—cold and distant. When she didn’t smile, every subtle movement of her body seemed to say: stay away from me.

Mu Dai dragged a chair over and sat in front of the mirror, staring at herself for a long time. She even deliberately made a cute expression.

No matter what she did, it didn’t feel the same anymore.

She gathered the clothes into her arms, buried her face in them, and hugged them for a long time, murmuring, “Little Pocket.”

It felt like saying goodbye to the past—one that would never answer back.

Then she hugged her blanket and pillow, opened the cabinet in the corner of the room, and climbed inside.

A bit of nostalgia. She used to love sleeping in cabinets.

Less than two minutes later, the cabinet door rattled open again.

It was… suffocating.

She tugged the pillow down at an angle, left the cabinet door wide open, and closed her eyes again.

This time, she finally fell asleep.

But she slept restlessly. A cabinet wasn’t a bed—it felt cramped and uncomfortable. Half-asleep, she heard movement in the room.

She opened her eyes.

Strange—thick fog had filled the room, swirling and dense, like that night back in Fog Town.

Soft rustling and whispered voices drifted continuously from within the unseen fog.

Mu Dai’s eyes widened.

Through the haze, she saw several tall, thin shadows—unnaturally elongated—hidden in the fog, giggling and murmuring.

Mu Dai knew this was a dream, probably sleep paralysis.

She struggled to move, trying to wake up. The voices came closer and farther away, sometimes seeming to speak right next to her ear. Irritated, she shouted, “Who’s there?”

The shadows immediately panicked, as if pushing each other. She heard hurried whispers repeating over and over:

—She found us.
—Hide, hide.
—She won’t find it.
—Don’t worry, she won’t find it…

The voices and shadows slowly faded into the fog, the night, and the empty room.

The next morning at breakfast, Mu Dai sat down with two massive dark circles under her eyes. The moment she sat, she glared at the fortune-teller—it was all his fault for giving her nightmares.

He was eating enthusiastically, not even sparing her a glance.

Instead, Huo Zihong looked at her. “Didn’t sleep well?”

As she spoke, she put a soft-yolk fried egg on Mu Dai’s plate. “Eat more. When we go back, you’ll be seeing your master off—there’ll be a lot to take care of. Enough to keep you busy… I heard you accepted Cao Yanhua as a junior disciple? Then it makes sense for him to go back too. Is Yi Wan San going as well?”

At the bar, Yi Wan San, who was bent over making coffee, instantly cocked an ear.

As a worker who owed thirteen thousand yuan, every time they went out and came back, explaining his absence was like a difficult labor. Before, Fat Cao had shared the burden. This time was different—Cao Yanhua had suddenly become a junior disciple, leaving legitimately.

That left only him, without even a proper excuse.

Mu Dai chewed her egg calmly. “Auntie Hong, my senior brother and I can’t handle it all alone. You know how funerals are—setting up banquets, greeting guests, handling logistics. Someone has to manage it. Luo Ren will come with me, but he’s still injured and can’t overexert himself.”

Huo Zihong sighed. “True. This kind of work—only Yi Wan San can do it. He’s quick-witted and silver-tongued.”

Really? Suddenly being praised like that, Yi Wan San felt both flattered and smug. Before the afterglow faded, hurried footsteps sounded upstairs. He looked up to see Yan Hongsha coming down, her eyes sharp as awls, locked squarely on him.

This is karma, Yi Wan San thought, wanting to slap himself twice. All my fault for meddling. Next time she’s heartbroken and wants to jump off the Great Wall, I won’t stop her.

He pushed the coffee cup over, thinking, This firecracker is about to explode.

Sure enough, Yan Hongsha’s voice was dark and explosive. “Yi Wan San? Today you updated one stroke? You used to update by characters—now it’s by brushstrokes?”

Everyone at the table turned to look. There was food and drama—no one wanted to miss it.

Yi Wan San forced calm. “Second Fire, look carefully. That’s a comma. A comma.”

Yan Hongsha wasn’t buying it anymore. “Punctuation counts now? Today you’re giving me a whole paragraph. It has to be a paragraph.”

Yi Wan San cleared his throat and decided to tell the truth.

“Second Fire, you seem pretty energetic. I figure you’ve recovered just fine, so let’s call it here.”

Yan Hongsha stared at him. “You never wrote anything at all, did you? You were just stringing me along.”

Well, obviously, he hadn’t written anything.
Yi Wan San put it more tactfully. “The point wasn’t the writing—it was helping you get through a low point. Look how lively you are now. You could pick up a blade and start a rebellion…”

Yan Hongsha stared at him. And then, suddenly, her eyes reddened.

Yi Wan San panicked and didn’t dare speak.

He heard her say, “What kind of person does that? Bullying people like this.”

With that, she stormed to the center of the bar, didn’t sit at the table, just picked a random seat, plopped down, and slammed her head onto the table, furious.

No one spoke. In the silence, Mu Dai grabbed a pancake, wrapped it with fried dough and pickled vegetables, pulled out a napkin, stood up, and sat beside Yan Hongsha.

Yan Hongsha took the pancake and wiped her eyes roughly with the napkin. Her eyes were red, like a bullied little rabbit.

Mu Dai said, “Yi Wan San, you have to write something today. Even if you’re making it up, make one up for Hongsha.”

Cao Yanhua was overjoyed—seeing Yi Wan San suffer was always a delight. “Brother San, you must write it. Not writing will hurt team unity.”

The fortune-teller loved chaos and was grinning ear to ear. Even Huo Zihong, who usually stayed out of things, said, “Yi Wan San, look how upset you made Hongsha. What’s wrong with writing one?”

Easy for you to say. Yi Wan San craned his neck in protest. “I’m not a writer! Writing needs inspiration—how can you just say write and expect it to happen?”

His voice was loud and full of energy, overpowering all objections.

Uncle Zhang snorted, drained his bowl of rice porridge, stood up to clear the dishes, and muttered, “Now you say you don’t have inspiration. Back when you were posting online, you were pretty smooth, weren’t you…”