SES Chapter 93 Part 2

Luo Ren woke up very late.

He couldn’t say whether it was the climate not suiting him, or if he simply treated this place like a safe rear base—once he lay down, he was out cold, like a horse turned loose to graze.

Out of habit, he first went to the room where the murderous slips were kept. Inside the fish tank, the third slip had grown even more indistinct. If the first two looked like sharp, forceful brushstrokes, this one looked as though ink had bled and dispersed into clear water.

Luo Ren frowned.

He counted the days. Today, he should be getting a call from Zha Ma.

When he went downstairs, Pingting was tapping the surface of the water with a little bamboo stick, scattering the fish in every direction. Hearing him come down, she looked up and said, “Sister went upstairs.”

Luo Ren was baffled. He glanced toward the second floor.

Uncle Zheng had just carried breakfast into the hall. He told Luo Ren, “Mu Dai was here.”

So it was Little Pocket. Luo Ren smiled and casually asked, “Where is she now?”

Uncle Zheng said, “She’s more dependable than you—already worrying about Phoenix Tower. She went to buy wallpaper for it.”

Luo Ren was surprised. “She knows how to do that?”

“Can’t she just copy the sample? Besides, Miss Lian explained it all clearly to her.”

Hold on—why was another person involved now?

Uncle Zheng had guessed Luo Ren would ask more, so he explained on his own: “Since you don’t like Miss Lian, I didn’t want her helping out either, to avoid any entanglements. The samples are with Miss Lian, so Mu Dai probably went to pick them up.”

Luo Ren frowned slightly, just about to say something, when his phone rang.

It was Zha Ma.

While he spoke on the phone, Uncle Zheng walked over to the fish pond and called out to Pingting: “Come on, up you get. Uncle and Brother Xiaodao both have things to do later. I’ll send you to the bar to help out—you’d better behave yourself, understand?”

Pingting listlessly muttered, “Okay,” then added, “Sister went upstairs.”

Uncle Zheng said, “Your Sister Mu Dai is busy now. She’ll go upstairs another time.”

Pingting’s eyes widened. She put her finger to her lips and whispered, “Shh…”

She remembered that day when Uncle Zheng went out to buy breakfast, she had been catching little fish in the water with Lian Shu. She got carried away playing, and when she looked up, Lian Shu was gone.

Then she spotted Lian Shu upstairs, moving quietly toward the far end.

Tilting her head back, she called out, “Sister went upstairs!”

Lian Shu turned, looking down at her, and raised a finger to her lips as if to say, “Shh…”

Lian Shu was warm and enthusiastic as she showed Mu Dai the samples, jotting down color codes on sticky notes and giving her the supplier’s address.

It was pretty far, and Uncle Zheng wanted a large order. Mu Dai wondered if even a single taxi could hold it all.

Just as she was thinking that, Lian Shu said, “How about I go with you?”

She explained, “Back when I was renovating my own shop, I bought from that supplier. After a few rounds of business, we became friends. If I go with you, he’ll give you a fairer price—you know, the friends’ rate. And he can deliver it with his own truck, so you won’t need a taxi.”

It made sense. Mu Dai smiled, finding Lian Shu quite nice. “Won’t that interfere with your shop’s business?”

“No problem. I just need to grab a few things—wait for me a second.”

Meanwhile, Zha Ma was filling Luo Ren in on the situation from the past two days.

For the most part, things were the same as before: people still came from distant villages to gawk at the wild man, though fewer than before. The county hadn’t yet sent people to haul the body away—probably another couple of days. But it had rained again, which was troublesome. They were worried the rain would damage the corpse, so they had to cover it with tarps.

Trivial, day-to-day stuff—all about that mountain hollow.

Just before hanging up, he suddenly remembered something.

“This time, quite a few villages we’d never dealt with before also came. I heard a strange story—another wild man, but from over twenty years ago.”

In Luo Ren’s mind, it was like sparks snapping and crackling, his throat going dry, his back straightening.

His instinct told him this was the truth he had been searching for.

“They said there was a village up in the mountains, around the same area where you went. But that village was Han Chinese.”

“Supposedly, more than twenty years ago, a woman from the village was gathering herbs in the mountains when a wild man raped her. Her husband went mad with rage, gathered hunters from ten villages, and lay in wait in the mountains for days. Finally, they trapped the wild man and shot him dead.”

“They said that wild man was even bigger than the one we caught this time…”

Luo Ren asked, “And then?”

And then? Zha Ma wasn’t so sure.

“I heard that after a few years, the village moved out. Han Chinese aren’t like us natives—they usually have relatives back in their hometowns. Maybe they went to join them. After all, life in the mountains is tough…”

When the call ended, Luo Ren’s temples were pounding.

More than twenty years ago…

The timing matched. If he was right, the woman who had been raped was the one they saw in the mountains, and the wild man who was shot to death back then was the female wild man’s father.

When Mu Dai entered the cave and saw the drawings on the ceiling, she said the young female wild man had once had a little playmate. That was why she guessed there was another wild man in those mountains.

But if the wild man was killed not long after, unless the woman had given birth to twins, she should have only ever had the one daughter.

Luo Ren suddenly felt a jolt.

At that time, the woman had already been married. Could it be… she already had her own child?

Then the young wild girl’s playmate might not have been another wild man at all.