SES Chapter 217 Part 2

Nearby, Yan Hongsha was still shaken. Mu Dai asked her, “You really kicked her head?”

“I did.”

“And you didn’t apologize?”

Mu Dai was as consistent as ever, insisting on courtesy even toward the dead. Yan Hongsha hurriedly clasped her hands together, muttering “Sorry” and bowing several times.

Wan San was also uneasy. What he’d just done—had he robbed a grave?

He felt like divine punishment could strike at any moment. He quickly murmured an apology too, promising to buy some yellow spirit paper to burn another day.

After thinking for a moment, Luo Ren continued, “That Tao Wei woman—Miss Wei—was burned to death. This skull is clearly charred. I suspect her given name was Liu’er.”

Cao Yanhua jumped. “But wasn’t she buried together with her husband?”

He remembered that her husband’s surname was Tao. After marrying him, she was called Tao Wei.

“Someone secretly moved her here to be buried with him,” Luo Ren said.

He pointed to the characters on the slab. “This is just my guess. Fengzi Ridge is where that literate dog lived out his old age and died.”

“That dog came here to wait for death. But it was still human-minded. It knew it couldn’t leave its body exposed, so it dug a grave and even set up a tombstone.”

“Maybe during that process, it had other thoughts. It couldn’t fulfill its wishes while alive, and after death, it didn’t want to be alone.”

Cao Yanhua shivered. “Brother Luo, are you saying it went to the Tao couple’s grave and dug Miss Wei’s body out?”

“It’s possible,” Luo Ren nodded.

“The Tao couple’s grave didn’t look damaged on the surface. But I remember Cao Fatty fell into a pit that day. That pit was lower ground, and from below, you could dig a tunnel to the coffin. Did you notice any holes down there?”

No one had noticed. Wan San frowned. “Even if there was one, it would’ve been easy to fill back in—especially with that—”

Suddenly, something clicked. He exclaimed, “Especially with that stone statue of the literate dog! It was half-buried in the ground. When Cao Fatty and I moved it, we didn’t look closely—could that statue have been plugging the hole?”

Maybe yes, maybe no. Luo Ren didn’t want to dwell on the details and continued, “The dog was small. It could squeeze through narrow holes. Moving a whole body through the mountains would’ve been too difficult and too conspicuous. And the fire back then was intense. I suspect the Tao couple were burned beyond recognition, but the skull would’ve been easy to identify—especially side by side, just by size and weight.”

Mu Dai’s back went cold. “So it only took the skull?”

“Not only that.” Luo Ren frowned and pointed at the burial items. “Some of these might’ve been salvaged from the fire, but things like the hair and embroidered shoe—I suspect it kept them over time. If the mistress lost something, no one would think to blame the dog.”

Finally, he looked at the slab again. “This ‘Wei Dahuo’ might be the literate dog’s name. It was taken in by the Wei family and they chose the surname Wei. Dogs are kept to guard the home. Old Master Wei was a private tutor—maybe he valued propriety and elegance and named his dog Dahuo.”

That literate dog lived a long time afterward. Because of the ominous slips, it even tried to leave Fengzi Ridge. Before leaving, it filled the grave back in, flipped the tombstone over, and covered it with dirt, restoring everything to its ordinary appearance. Even if someone entered the mountains, they wouldn’t pay attention to a shallow cave like this.

Who could have known that fate would intervene, and Cao Jiefang would peel it all back out?

So that was it?

Yan Hongsha stared blankly at the skull and the burial items, then said softly, “Maybe… we should bury her again. Miss Wei had it rough enough—she kindly took in a dog, suffered while alive, and still couldn’t rest in peace after death.”

Thinking about how she had kicked the skull, even after apologizing, her heart still felt heavy.

Wan San sighed, walked over to the pit, and pushed dirt back in, sliding the hairpin and embroidered pouch inside. “When I saw Cao Jiefang pecking away, I really thought the method in your family’s manuscript worked—turns out he just found these gold hairpins and jade bracelets…”

Luo Ren’s expression changed. “Wait.”

He took out the bounty hunter device, turned it on, and aimed the scanner at the pit.

For the first time since entering the mountains, the LCD screen lit up, the beeping alert sounding continuously.

Everyone tensed instantly. Luo Ren ordered Wan San, “Take the hairpin. Take the jade bracelet too.”

Wan San’s throat went dry. He grabbed the items and, worried about interfering with the device’s sensitivity, ran far away before setting them down and returning.

The beeping continued. Chaotic outlines gradually appeared on the screen.

“Dig deeper,” Luo Ren said grimly.

Sand flew. Wan San and Cao Yanhua dug together with two military shovels. Luo Ren knelt on one knee, keeping the scanner pointed downward. The beeping grew louder and faster.

Clang.

The shovel struck something.

Wan San and Cao Yanhua exchanged a glance and set their shovels aside at the same time.

Holding their breath, they reached into the soil and carefully brushed it away, feeling like archaeologists uncovering relics.

Dark, purplish-black, elongated wooden slips appeared. Judging by their size, a string of numbers instinctively flashed through Luo Ren’s mind.

For some reason, Cao Yanhua’s nose stung and tears almost welled up. “Brother Luo… are these the ominous slips?”

There was no malevolent aura—hardly “ominous.” They were simply the wooden slips onto which Laozi had once drawn seven streams of malignant energy.

Luo Ren picked one up. It was heavy. He flicked it with his finger; it rang sharply.

Iron birch, perhaps—said to be harder than some steels and sinks immediately in water.

“Keep digging.”

One. Two. Three…

With each rise and fall of the shovels, the pit became clearer. Several wooden slips lay crisscrossed in the damp soil.

After another scoop of dirt, something gleamed. A finely carved phoenix head of golden yellow emerged from the earth, reflecting the strengthening sunlight so brightly it was almost blinding.

Cao Yanhua asked dazedly, “Why is it gold? Didn’t they say it was bronze?”

He’d never gone to a museum on purpose, but he’d seen plenty on TV—those heavy-looking bronzes with dull green-gray hues that screamed antiquity.

Wan San said, “Didn’t your grandpa’s manuscript call bronze ‘auspicious metal’? I looked it up later. Bronze was originally golden-yellow, close to 18k gold. The ones people see now have oxidized and turned green.”

Luo Ren said nothing.

He had always wondered how the seven ominous slips, sealed with the phoenix clasp, could have been opened by sheer accident.

Now he understood.

Perhaps the story went back decades, maybe nearly a century.

No one knew whether it was day or night when the literate dog named Wei Dahuo labored alone in the silent mountains, digging his own grave.

He had endless time. He carefully carved the crude words on the tombstone, resting when tired, then digging a few more shovelfuls of dirt. Beside him, neatly arranged, lay everything he planned to take underground: the embroidered pouch, the gold hairpin, the jade bracelet—and the skull.

Shovel by shovel, as the sand flew, a secret buried for many years was about to see the light of day once more.