SES Chapter 96 Part 2

“I… I called, but no reply. I texted her, explained the situation. She must’ve seen it—she should respond soon…”

Uncle Zhang’s words were disjointed, his hands trembling slightly. He was even more nervous than Luo Ren.

Luo Ren thought: he’s older now. He can’t handle shocks like this.

He comforted him. “Don’t worry too much. I believe Mu Dai will wake up.”

He said it with certainty. Some things—even if uncertain—you had to force yourself to believe, to will them into reality. If even you wavered, that doubt would spread to everyone else, and maybe then Mu Dai really would never wake up.

So he said again, firmly: “She will wake up.”

Uncle Zhang murmured, “Mm.”

Whether he heard or not was unclear. His gaze was unfocused, his eyes flickering with fear and doubt. Almost like he was afraid to look Luo Ren in the eye, turning his face away awkwardly.

Earlier, in the doctor’s office, he had kept pressing, “She hit her head, didn’t she? She hit her head? Could something bad happen?”

The doctor had asked him back, “What exactly do you mean by ‘bad’? Like memory loss?”

Uncle Zhang had been a little dazed then. He wasn’t even sure whether, if that happened, it would be good or bad. But when the present was acceptable, people always wanted to cling to it.

Meanwhile, Lian Shu’s piece of rouge-amber sank into the water.

As expected, the sharp hostility of the third cursed slip began to subside. The bamboo’s outline grew clearer, its script more legible. Around it, the phoenix brightened, its long tail trailing in splendid arcs.

Cao Yanhua thought the tail was lengthening, but it wasn’t. The spreading bloodlines reassembled, stroke by stroke, like an ink sketch.

Yi Wan-san reacted first: “It’s a water shadow!”

The water shadow formed on its own, no longer needing him to painstakingly trace it.

Everyone grew tense, hardly daring to breathe. The bloodlines shaped themselves in the water into a drawing—not flat, but three-dimensional, almost like a 3D projection.

Yan Hongsha, realizing Luo Ren wasn’t present, hurriedly pulled out her phone, switched to video mode, and began recording, afraid to miss any detail.

It was another vivid image. Honestly, with the rippling water, it looked almost alive.

A courtyard appeared—an old-style residence, carved railings, a cobblestone path. It resembled the illustrations tucked between chapters of a Republican-era novel.

In the courtyard stood a flourishing banana plant.

Cao Yanhua blurted, “That banana tree…”

Yes—back in Wuzhu Village, the very first water shadow had shown a burning courtyard, a woman struggling almost grotesquely in the flames. And in the corner of that yard, there had also been a lush banana tree.

Maybe… it was the same courtyard.

Through the carved lattice window, they could just make out a man and a woman, locked in a passionate embrace.

And under the outer window, in the shadows, crouched a dog.

The water-shadow held for only a few seconds before collapsing, scattering into the phoenix’s blazing tail that encircled the three cursed slips.

But for Cao Yanhua, the image lingered, etched into his retinas.

He muttered, “What does that mean?”

Yan Hongsha found it strange too. She replayed the video. “At first, we weren’t sure if that thing was a wolf or a dog. But now, I think it has to be a dog. It kept showing up near people. If it were a wolf, it wouldn’t make sense. More likely a domesticated dog.”

Yi Wan-san nodded in agreement. “And I think all these dog-related water shadows are shown in reverse order.”

Yan Hongsha blinked, not getting it. Yi Wan-san explained: “The earlier one was fire—flames that big, no one could’ve survived intact. Yet the next image is a couple being affectionate in a perfectly restored house. If these were numbered, this one should come before the fire.”

Now she understood. Yes—it felt like a flashback.

Cao Yanhua was baffled. “But if the water shadows are meant to guide us toward the next cursed slip—then what’s with the dog? We’ve never encountered a dog at all.”

And he was right. They had always assumed the water shadows tied directly to the next case. But now, the dog scenes seemed totally unrelated to the murders they had faced.

Yan Hongsha uploaded the video to their group chat and hit send.

Replies came quickly.

The first was from “Basking in Friends’ Love of the Stick”: just one word—Handsome!

No one bothered with him, feeling like his rhythm never matched the group’s.

The second reply was Luo Ren’s. Watching the video in the stairwell to avoid Uncle Zhang, he asked the same thing: “Why do the dog water shadows seem to have nothing to do with what we’ve experienced?”

Shen Gun wrote: “They must be connected. What if…”

After a pause, he typed out a line:

—“What if the dog shadows aren’t pointing to the next cursed slip at all, but to the Phoenix Knot itself?”

The Phoenix Knot?

Luo Ren slowly sat down on the steps.

It made sense. The Phoenix Knot was the ultimate weapon against the cursed slips. But still—what could they possibly do with just a few old-fashioned sketches?

At that moment, Uncle Zhang finally got a call back from Huo Zihong. Sitting in the hallway, he stammered clumsily through what had happened.

Suddenly, the ward door slammed open. A nurse rushed out, pale.

“Um… family member…”

Mu Dai—something happened? Uncle Zhang’s heart lurched. Forgetting the phone call, he rushed inside.

Mu Dai was sitting up in bed.

Yes—sitting upright, quilt tossed aside, legs folded lotus-style like she was meditating, her head bowed as she pulled out the IV needle from her hand.

Something felt wrong. Tentatively, he called, “Boss Lady…?”

Mu Dai slowly raised her head.

Her eyes shone, dark as ink, and the expression on her face was utterly unfamiliar.

But Uncle Zhang had seen it before—eight years ago. He would never forget it.

His hand trembled as he raised the phone back to his ear.

On the other end, Huo Zihong’s anxious voice: “What’s wrong? How is Mu Dai?”

Uncle Zhang heard his own muttering.

He said: “It’s happened… that thing we feared—it’s happened.”