SES Chapter 213 Part 1

Chapter 213

So many years had passed, yet when Old Ding No. 9 thought back on what happened back then, he still shuddered with fear.

“I don’t know what it was,” he said, swallowing hard, glancing uneasily at the tightly shut window as if afraid something strange might smash through it the next second. “It didn’t look like a dog. It was more like… a person. No, no, no, definitely not a person. It must’ve been a dog that turned into a spirit…”

He lowered his voice, trying to justify himself. “People say that animals that live for hundreds of years, their bones and organs slowly start changing toward human form. Once even the outside looks human, that’s when they’ve cultivated into a spirit…”

The more he talked, the further off track he went. Luo Ren’s face darkened. “Get to the point. What happened next?”

Old Ding chuckled nervously. “B-brother, think about it. We were scared out of our minds. How could we think of anything else? And we were afraid someone might see us, and we wouldn’t be able to explain it. So we hurriedly cleaned things up and buried it. Just… just under the tree where Comrade Zhang carved those words back then…”

Under that tree?

So only a few hours earlier, they had been that close to the grave of the literate dog?

It felt like they were starting to grasp something, yet at the same time, everything seemed even harder to make sense of.

Old Ding thought he had explained everything clearly and was just about to breathe a sigh of relief when he noticed Luo Ren staring at him like a drill bit. His heart lurched again.

He had never told anyone about this. Over the years, it wasn’t that he lay awake every night, but every year or two, the memory would resurface.

And the more he thought about it, the more frightened he became. If it were a spirit, that was terrifying. If it were actually human, that would be even worse. And what if that strange thing had a nest deep in the mountains, with descendants waiting to take revenge? That was why, later on, when he led people into the mountains, no matter how much tourists asked, he refused to go deeper. Either he said there were wild beasts and it wasn’t safe, or that his legs were bad and he couldn’t walk far.

He never imagined that after more than twenty years, someone would suddenly bring it up again. Could it be that—

A ridiculous thought flashed through his mind. His scalp went numb. He shrieked and shrank back. “You… you didn’t cultivate into humans too, did you?”

His whole body trembled, and his knees went weak. He didn’t even know what he was muttering, though a few phrases stood out.

“Every grievance has its debtor. If you want revenge, go find that Zhang fellow…”

“I really didn’t do anything. Eating dog meat was his idea. I just helped…”

It took Luo Ren a long moment to react. He couldn’t help but laugh. Cao Yanhua said irritably, “Old man, read a few more books when you’ve got time. Do we look like spirits to you?”

So… they weren’t?

That was good, that was good. Old Ding forced an awkward smile and slowly calmed down.

You couldn’t really blame him. He was old, barely literate, and had spent years guarding the deep mountains. Strange stories had taken root in his mind far deeper than anything scientific.

Some people just couldn’t handle being scared. Push them too hard, and they’d lose their wits. Luo Ren thought for a moment and softened his tone. “Sir, think carefully. When this happened, or before or after, was there anything that seemed off?”

Off? What counted as off? Old Ding stared blankly, almost cross-eyed.

Luo Ren patiently explained, “Something that seemed strange, but you couldn’t explain why.”

Old Ding frowned, racking his memory. Just when they were about to give up hope, he hesitated and said, “There was one thing… I don’t know if it counts.”

“When we buried the dog, its body had these long marks, one after another. It was like someone had slapped duct tape all over it and then ripped it off, leaving no fur behind. But I can’t remember whether it was already like that when we found it, or if it turned that way after it died…”

Luo Ren’s heart raced. “How many? How many of those marks?”

“Five or six… maybe six or seven? Some of them crossed over each other. I just glanced at it. I didn’t count carefully.”

Back in the car, no one felt like leaving right away. Seeing an opportunity, the villagers selling things gathered around again in small groups. Cao Yanhua leaned out the window and spoke to one of them. The man ran off and soon returned, one hand holding a bag of washed apples, the other a bag of corn just roasted in the stove.

Roasted corn smelled incredible. Even though it was hot to hold, Mu Dai puffed as she peeled back the husk and took a bite. Her lips, the corners of her mouth, her cheeks, and even the tip of her nose were all smudged black.

But she wasn’t much worse off than the others.

Eating while talking seemed to be a long-standing habit. No matter how dangerous the situation, it could still serve as dinner conversation.

Phoenix Ridge consisted of three mountain peaks, connected end to end. Since it was unlikely for all three peaks to be the same height, the overall layout resembled a massive, staggered phoenix clasp.

This terrain had been carefully chosen.

After leaving Long Town, the literate dog chose Phoenix Ridge as a secluded place to spend its final years.

Here, by chance, it unsealed a previous cycle of the malevolent slips.

Based on Old Ding’s final description of the strange long marks on the dog’s body, Luo Ren believed that all seven malevolent slips had once been attached to the literate dog at the same time.

Cao Yanhua stared wide-eyed. “Seven? Brother Luo, even one attaching itself is terrifying. With seven, wouldn’t it just ascend to heaven?”

Wan San thought for a moment. “My view matches Luo Ren’s. Don’t forget, when a malevolent slip first attaches to a person, the process is very slow.”

If you treated the slips like people, then even the most vicious demon, sealed for hundreds of years, trapped for hundreds of years, starving for hundreds of years, wouldn’t immediately wreak havoc the moment it broke free.

They would be stiff and sluggish, unaccustomed to freedom, starving, half-blind, weak in the limbs, barely able to move. They would need time to recover, to absorb nourishment.

The literate dog was the perfect nourishment. In other words, anyone capable of unsealing the malevolent slips was destined to become their sustenance and their karma.

No one knew how many winters and summers they spent grinding against each other on the desolate Phoenix Ridge. Whether in rain-soaked dawns and dusks or snow-covered days and nights, while the outside world bustled with noise, here the invisible malevolent slips clung to the literate dog like blood-sucking leeches, growing from barren to full, from stiff and sluggish to flexible and agile.

Then, it was time to leave the mountains.

So why was a literate dog carrying seven malevolent slips killed by two nobodies like Zhang Guanghua and Old Ding?

Luo Ren said, “It’s not that they were able to kill it. It’s that the slips wanted this outcome.”

Leaving the mountains meant starting a new layout. To enter the human world from the deep wilderness, they needed a flexible, inconspicuous vessel.

Once the job was done, they discarded the dog, transferred themselves, hitched a ride, and began a new round of toying with the human world.

Yan Hongsand suddenly thought of something. “Then… if they all targeted Zhang Guanghua, why did they spare Old Ding?”

Luo Ren had finished eating. He pulled out a wet wipe and wiped his face and hands. Just as he finished one and reached for another, Mu Dai suddenly tilted her face up toward him.

Naturally, without thinking, he wiped her face for her. Her skin was incredibly nice. The moisture from the wipe lingered, leaving a faint sheen, so smooth it seemed you could pinch it and it would burst.

On the other side, Cao Yanhua offered his opinion. “Maybe it has something to do with Old Ding being a local of Phoenix Ridge? The malevolent slips probably hate that place.”

Wan San nodded. “That makes sense. Old Ding rarely leaves, but Zhang Guanghua was clearly an outsider. Using Zhang as the first stop would make the later dispersal easier.”

And so, by accident or by some unseen force, this round of malevolent slips truly began with Zhang Guanghua. No one knew where he unknowingly “unloaded” them. Maybe it was another overcrowded tourist site, maybe a bustling market, maybe just a casual brush past someone.

One slip was deeply attached to him. The other six quietly, gradually departed, like thick ink dissolving into a vast lake.

Each traveled a long path. The initial “fusion” with a host may not have gone smoothly. Their “connections” with one another may not have been timely. There were repetitions, deviations, some returning early, some veering off course. But it didn’t matter. These were acceptable fluctuations.

Day by day, the positions gradually took shape, aligning with the handle of the great ladle in the sky. Then one day, faint light from seven stars flickered over the heart of the continent.

Perhaps the legendary bronze phoenix clasp and the original wooden slips Laozi used to guide the seven strands of baleful energy were scattered somewhere within Phoenix Ridge.

But across three massive mountain peaks, finding such small objects would be harder than finding a living dog.