Xiao Mandong welcomed Jian Qiuyue into her house. Jian Qiuyue set the little puppy down, and Diandian immediately trotted over to sniff it before turning away with a clear look of disdain.
The little puppy tried to chase after Diandian, but Jian Qiuyue picked it up again. She teased the little dog while saying, "Fang Yuan has moved back to the educated youth point, and I don't want to share a place with other people anymore. So I went to the neighboring village and bought this puppy to keep me company. I spent one whole yuan on it, don't you think it's cute?"
Xiao Mandong stepped forward to take a look. The little puppy didn't look like a local village dog at all. It had a black back and yellow paws, looking like a German Shepherd mix, and it had a little fierce, adorable look even as a puppy, which made it very endearing.
"It's so cute, what's its name?" Xiao Mandong just reached out to touch the puppy's head when Diandian suddenly started barking wildly at her, scaring her half to death. The second Xiao Mandong pulled her hand back, Diandian immediately trotted over to her side all pleased, pressed its own head under her hand to beg for pets, and bared its teeth at the little puppy the whole time. Diandian's little trick made both of them burst into laughter.
Xiao Mandong ruffled Diandian's head hard. "Alright, alright, I'll pet you, not it." Diandian's big tail thumped the edge of the heated kang so hard that the board made loud thudding noises.
Jian Qiuyue pinched the puppy's nose until its little face wrinkled up, and the little dog showed its tiny, sharp puppy teeth. "His name is Wolf Lord, hehe, isn't that a cool name?"
Jian Qiuyue sat for a while, then yawned. "Alright, it's getting late, I should head back now."
After seeing Jian Qiuyue off, Xiao Mandong glanced at the clock, tidied up quickly, left Diandian at home, and went out alone.
Right as she rounded the corner by the gable of the house, she spotted a woman walking toward the old abandoned mansion at the foot of the hill. It was Fang Yuan? And she seemed to be holding something in her arms.
Xiao Mandong pressed herself against the wall, watching Fang Yuan glance around cautiously as she walked. Curiosity pricked at her, and she unconsciously started to follow.
Fang Yuan stopped at the Old Party Secretary Yang Liufu's deserted old mansion. After checking her surroundings carefully, she climbed over the collapsed fence beside it.
Word had it that the Old Party Secretary's father had suffered from a severe, agonizing illness years ago, and hanged himself right here to escape the pain. No one had dared to live in the mansion ever since. In recent years, rumors had spread that there were always strange sounds of benches falling over coming from the place. Adults wouldn't even let their children play anywhere near it. The mansion was located at the foot of the hill with no other houses nearby, so it had grown more and more run-down over time, with half of its walls already caved in.
Roughly ten minutes passed before Fang Yuan walked back out, and whatever she had been carrying in her arms was gone.
All of a sudden, Fang Yuan ran straight toward where Xiao Mandong was hiding. "Who's there?"
Xiao Mandong was caught off guard and bumped right into the nearby fence. The sharp jolt of pain snapped her back to her senses, and she quickly slipped into her private spatial pocket.
Fang Yuan ran to the spot and found no one there. Just then, a wild cat darted out from the bushes. "Beast, get lost!" Fang Yuan picked up a rock on the ground and threw it at the cat, which yowled and ran away.
Fang Yuan brushed the dirt off her hands before turning to leave.
Only after the sound of her footsteps had faded completely did Xiao Mandong step out of the space. Her shoulder was throbbing badly from the impact. She climbed over the fence into the old mansion, curious about what Fang Yuan had hidden in there.
She kept alert for any noise outside as she searched every corner of the rooms, but there was nowhere in the house that could hide something. However, near the collapsed root cellar, she found fresh footprints in the dust. To be honest, the sight of that root cellar made her scalp tingle with dread.
The space down below was pitch black, and joss paper for the dead was scattered all over the ground beside the opening. There was also a pile of ash nearby, looking like leftover remains from burning paper offerings. But she had come this far, she might as well go down and take a look. Afraid there might be snakes or insects down there, Xiao Mandong dusted her body with repellent powder. The root cellar didn't even have a board covering its opening.
Xiao Mandong held a flashlight, climbed down the ladder carefully, and soon reached the bottom of the cellar.
She shone the flashlight all around, but at first glance there was nothing at all. Just as she was about to step forward, she noticed a patch of dirt that looked freshly turned over.
Xiao Mandong took a shovel out of her space, dug up that patch of dirt, and found a box underneath. The lock on the box was completely covered in rust.
She stored the box straight into her space, then kept digging the rest of the ground in the root cellar, and found two more identical boxes. All the locks were so rusty they couldn't be pried open at first glance—they must have been untouched for at least a dozen years.
She still wasn't satisfied, since she hadn't found the bundle of clothes and food Fang Yuan had carried. After observing the space more closely, she spotted a barely noticeable hole hidden behind the ladder. She reached her hand in, and pulled out two wrapped bundles. When she opened them, they contained clothes, food, and a travel permit.
The name written on the permit was Yang Jinyue, the Old Party Secretary Yang Liufu's own granddaughter.
Xiao Mandong put all the items back where she found them, smoothed the dirt in the root cellar back the way it was, and climbed back out. She had been so tense earlier that she hadn't noticed the stale, musty smell down in the cellar. Now that she was out, she realized how wonderful fresh air tasted.
She took two deep breaths of the crisp, clean air, then strode toward the mountains. The weather was cold, and the mountains were covered in thick snow. Xiao Mandong walked, stopped, and rested whenever she got tired. After nearly two hours of trekking, she finally reached the deep part of the mountain.
She squatted down, shining her flashlight on the ground to look for wolf droppings. She had been thinking for a long time that she couldn't just leave Chi the Third's body abandoned somewhere to be found.
Wolves were extremely territorial animals. Where there were wolf droppings, there was a wolf pack's territory. If she left the body in an area where wolves roamed, within two days there wouldn't be even a single bone left.
She searched for a long time, and finally found a few dry lumps of wolf dung under an old pine tree. There were also fresh paw prints on the surrounding snow.
This was the perfect spot. She pulled Chi the Third's body out of her space and set it down under the pine. The body had been kept in her space where its blood had stayed fully congealed, but as soon as it was exposed to the open air, the wounds on the body started seeping blood again, and the sharp metallic scent of blood quickly spread through the air. Xiao Mandong hurried to leave, afraid the smell would draw the wolf pack right to her.
She hadn't walked far when she heard the howls of wolves rising from behind her, one after another, echoing through the woods. The sound made every hair on her body stand on end.
She turned her head around instinctively, and saw flickering green glows in the deep woods, appearing and disappearing like wandering will-o'-the-wisps. The sight made her scalp go numb, and cold sweat trickled down her spine.
She quickly turned back around. She knew you were never supposed to run when you encountered wolves, or make direct eye contact with them. She walked forward step by step slowly, but kept her ears pricked up to listen to every sound behind her, ready to slip into her space at any moment.
Xiao Mandong didn't get back home until a little after three in the morning, and she felt completely frozen through.
She took off her snow-covered, mud-stained clothes, took a quick bath in her space, then came back out and curled up on the red-hot heated kang.
She didn't sleep soundly at all. Her mind was full of those glowing green wolf eyes, the echoing howls, and the imagined scenes of the body being torn apart by the pack.
As soon as the sky turned light, she woke up. She decided there was no point in trying to sleep more. Without even washing up, she took Diandian out for a walk.
In winter in Northeast China, villagers all stayed indoors to pass the cold season, and almost no one went outside.
Xiao Mandong unconsciously walked toward Secretary Yang's old mansion with Diandian, her mind turning over the same question: why was a travel permit made out to Yang Jinyue in Fang Yuan's possession?
