SES Chapter 211 Part 1

Chapter 211

This was a type of terrain commonly found in the mountains—a natural fissure. The opening was narrow, the interior wider, shaped like a jar. It wasn’t deep, less than two meters; using both hands and feet, you could climb in and out easily.

The mouth of the fissure was almost completely hidden by thick ground moss. For hikers, it rated as “light to moderate” danger—you thought you were stepping on solid ground, and suddenly, there was nothing beneath your foot, and down you went.

That said, it made a good place to take shelter from the rain. The downpour was heavy and sudden, and rainwater couldn’t seep in quickly. With the dense ground cover at the opening, most of the water simply “rolled over” the surface. Luo Ren called to Mu Dai, pulled open his raincoat, and used a branch to prop it into the soil at the fissure’s mouth, rigging up a crude canopy.

On the other side, Wan San was mocking Cao Yanhua.
“That scream of yours was terrifying. What kind of nerve is that, Fat Cao? You’ve been through plenty of storms before.”

Yan Hongsha barely held back her laughter as she helped brush the wet mud off Cao Yanhua.

Cao Yanhua rolled his eyes. “That was being caught off guard, okay? I was already dizzy from rolling down, then I opened my eyes, and there was a dog’s face right in front of me. It was dark down there—I couldn’t see clearly—and it looked like it was about to pounce. What’s wrong with yelling once?”

Luo Ren shone his flashlight and walked toward a corner, crouching in front of a stone dog statue that was half-buried in the ground.

No wonder Cao Yanhua had been scared. The dog was embedded at an angle in the mud, posed as if it were lunging. With age, its head and body were covered in thick moss and ground vines. At first glance, it looked extremely eerie. Worse still, insects kept crawling in and out of the moss, occasionally causing part of the statue to shift slightly. In the dim light, it really did look alive.

Cao Yanhua and the others gathered around, several beams of light washing over the dog and turning it a ghastly pale white.

“Brother Luo?”

“Dig it out,” Luo Ren said. “Something is going on with this statue.”

This was a burial mountain—there was no way a random dog statue would just appear here. If it were meant to guard a tomb, burial customs usually used divine beasts.

Suddenly, he thought of something. “You start digging. I’ll go take a look up top.”

He stood, lifted a corner of the rain canopy, braced himself, and sprang up to ground level with swift, practiced movements.

Digging wasn’t difficult. Because of a previous grave repair, they’d brought a small folding military shovel along. After only a few scoops, the statue loosened—it turned out the sculpture was attached to a base. Cao Yanhua and Wan San worked together to move it aside.

Just as they finished, Luo Ren climbed back down. In such a short time, he was already soaked through.
“There’s a joint grave for Tao Shangxian and Tao Wei-shi not far from here. It’s very likely that this ‘Tao Wei-shi’ is the Miss Wei from the water shadows.”

There wasn’t much information, though. The tombstone only carved the approximate burial date—“Seventh Year of Xuantong, Qing Dynasty.”

The seventh year of Xuantong—that was the very end of the Qing Dynasty, Emperor Puyi’s reign. A time of internal strife and external threats, with the country on the brink.

As he spoke, Mu Dai suddenly made a sound and crouched down, peering closely at the base. She rubbed at it hard with her hand.
“There are words on this base!”

There were indeed words—small characters carved shallowly, buried under dirt. Luo Ren glanced at the rain canopy and called for Cao Yanhua and Wan San to help lift the dog statue to the edge. Then he lowered one end of the canopy so the pooled rainwater poured down like running water, quickly washing the base clean.

They propped the base at an angle and wedged a flashlight into a suitable spot in the fissure. With the light slanting across it, shadows formed, making the carving easier to read.

Everyone could see clearly now. The first two characters were: “Righteous Dog.”

Cao Yanhua was so shocked he could barely speak.
“Th-that dog… it’s a ‘righteous dog’?”

Luo Ren smiled faintly. “Read the rest first.”

It was a short inscription, written by a scholar, concise in wording, half-classical, half-vernacular.

Translated, it said that Tao Shangxian married the daughter of Elder Wei, and the couple lived in mutual respect, hoping to grow old together. But disaster struck out of nowhere—a fire consumed their home. Both husband and wife perished in the flames. Worse still, Tao Wei-shi was already pregnant—two bodies, three lives lost.

Then the narrative shifted to the dog.

It lavishly praised the animal, saying that Tao Wei-shi had been kind-hearted and had taken in a stray dog before her marriage. The dog was unusually intelligent, loyal, and vigilant in guarding its home.

After she married into the Tao family, the dog was originally left behind at Elder Wei’s private school. But it followed her to the Tao residence and kept watch at the door day after day. Eventually, Tao Shangxian decided to keep the dog at the Tao household.

Seeing this, Yan Hongsha muttered angrily, “That’s like inviting a wolf into your house.”

Then came the calamity. The fire was so fierce that “even the four neighboring households could not help.” The Tao servants scattered and fled. Only the dog lingered at the ruins for days, pawing through the ashes until it unearthed Tao Wei-shi’s bracelet, howling mournfully over it.

The entire town was moved. People praised the dog as a once-in-an-epoch example of loyalty. It became known as the town’s “Righteous Dog.” Someone built it a kennel, children were forbidden to mistreat it, and it was fed well every day. When the Tao couple was buried, the townspeople even pooled their money to commission a stone carving, placing it by the grave so the righteous dog could “guard the spirits.”

Cao Yanhua was furious. “So it lived a good life for the rest of its days? It was the one who set the fire and killed them!”

Wan San sneered. “Isn’t this just like the Fourth Murder Slip? What people see with their own eyes can deceive them. The whole town was fooled—and for years. The Tao couple probably died with their eyes open.”

At the end, the inscription said that perhaps Heaven had been moved by the righteous dog’s devotion, because it lived far longer than ordinary dogs. People even discussed burying it beside the Tao couple after it died.

But no one expected that one day, the dog would quietly disappear. Later, hunters claimed to have seen it near the Longevity Stone deep in the mountains—though no one knew whether that was true.

It was such a strange story that it was deemed worth recording, so the townspeople later hired a stonecarver to add this account to the statue’s base.

Luo Ren noted the date of the addendum—around 1920, more than ten years after the Tao couple’s deaths.

After finishing the inscription, everyone let out a long breath—not in relief, but as if exhaling something absurd, ridiculous, incomprehensible, and yet unavoidable.

“Righteous Dog”—it truly insulted the word righteous.

Luo Ren said, “The Tao couple’s grave is just uphill. A stone statue isn’t buried deep to begin with, and later someone came to carve the addendum. After a few heavy rains—maybe even a lightning strike—it probably tipped over on its own and fell into this fissure.”

It was sheer luck. If not for Cao Yanhua’s fall, this hidden fissure might never have been discovered. Even if they’d found the Tao couple’s grave, they might not have uncovered so many clues.

Wan San remembered the Longevity Stone.
“When we were at the front desk, I picked up a county tourism pamphlet. It listed some ‘highlight’ attractions. Longevity Stone is in a branch of the Xiao Mountains, in another direction—maybe ten or twenty li from here. It’s linked with some Yellow River sites as a tourist route.”

Yan Hongsha couldn’t understand it. “It had food, shelter, and even people willing to bury it properly in town—why leave?”

Mu Dai said, “Because it had a guilty conscience. Who knows what would happen after death? On the outside, it was a dog, but inside it had a human form. If the people preparing the burial noticed something and put the pieces together, forget burial—they’d tear it apart and still not feel satisfied.”

Wan San added, “And living too long as a dog wasn’t good either. The more famous it became, the more likely someone would come to study it. Its secret would be exposed sooner or later.”

Luo Ren nodded, curling his fingers slightly as he tapped the words “Longevity Stone” on the inscription.

“We should go there. When that literate dog left Long Town, it was probably preparing for its own end. Deep down, it was human—when it died, it wanted a proper resting place.”

At last, they had a breakthrough.

It was already evening. Going to Longevity Stone now—and investigating—would be cutting it close, so they decided to return to Tong County first.

On the way back, spirits were high. Luo Ren joked that it was thanks to Hongsha’s birthday luck—and thanks to Fat Cao’s pivotal fall.

When they returned to the hotel, it was only just dark. This was the earliest they’d called it a day in quite a while. Luo Ren asked if they wanted to eat together. Cao Yanhua waved it off.
“Free time. We’re sick of seeing each other anyway.”

He and Wan San agreed to look around for a birthday gift for Yan Hongsha.