Chapter 125

Chapter 125

Anyone who killed often knew that murder was easy; destroying the body and erasing the evidence was the hard part.

Qin Ying did not want trouble.

So she had to find a way to make trouble come knocking on its own.

The sudden downpour hammered the courtyard, leaving the ground pocked with muddy puddles.

A drop of rain fell onto Huang Jun’s pupils before they had fully dilated, then instantly splashed apart.

The instant he flipped down from the top of the wall, all he felt was a hand, warmer than any normal person’s body temperature, clamp over his mouth and nose.

Then came a crisp crack beside his ear.

In the silent darkness, his head was twisted backward toward his spine. His foot jerked once in an unconscious spasm.

And on this rainy night, he died without ever understanding how.

Han Lie walked out from the base of the wall with the corpse in one hand. Stepping over the decorative paving tiles in the courtyard, he wrapped the body in a sheet of black cloth and carried it into the kitchen as if rolling up a carpet.

Qin Ying, wearing slippers, met him at the doorway.

Seeing a person dead, she felt neither fear nor joy. There was only a kind of calm that said-ah, the trouble was gone.

Qin Ying knew this mindset probably was not right, but she could not control it.

When Han Lie drew near and was about to speak, she raised a finger to her red lips. “Shh.”

When committing murder and arson, one should not talk, and one definitely should not smugly confess every scheme to a corpse.

What if this dead bastard got reborn?

Qin Ying was extremely cautious. Seeing her like that, Han Lie also sealed his mouth shut, his thin lips pressed into a straight line.

Qin Ying’s grandfather had been a police officer all his life. If he saw his granddaughter’s practiced manner of killing and hiding a body, he would probably be so furious he would sprint back from the Bridge of Forgetfulness.

Therefore, she did not let the corpse completely enter the house… not completely.

Come.

Qin Ying silently gestured for Han Lie to lift the body.

In front of the kitchen door, the Box connected to another world stood open.

It was noon inside. Warm orange sunlight spilled out from within the Box.

Qin Ying pointed downward with her index finger-throw it in.

Han Lie froze slightly. He glanced at the Box.

But all he saw inside was a glowing round lightbulb and a painting.

A painting made of all kinds of bright blocks of color squeezed together, dizzying just to look at.

Han Lie felt as if his head had been hit by a heavy truck.

For an instant, his soul was nearly knocked out of his body.

Even with Han Lie’s sturdy Monstrous Beast-transformed body, he still could not withstand the sudden nausea and vertigo. His ears rang incessantly.

His figure swayed, and then he heard a retching sound beside him.

The well-fed Huodou Wangcai lay on the ground and vomited up a pile of undigested dog food and duck breast chew treats.

Its muscles trembled unconsciously, its little paws twitching.

Qin Ying noticed something was wrong with them.

She lowered her head and looked into the Box. The view inside was fixed above the Divine Shrine of the Mountain God on Golden Saddle Mountain, with nothing changed.

Could it be that only she could see these things?

Before she could wonder for long, Han Lie, enduring the pain, shoved the cloth-wrapped corpse in his hand headfirst into the Box.

He did not understand the meaning behind Qin Ying’s order, but he would obey it.

Thud.

The corpse wrapped in black cloth stuck upright inside the Box like a scallion, its head… hitting the bottom of the Box.

It had a bottom?

Qin Ying was the first to be startled. She instinctively reached out to steady it, her eyes looking into the Box.

The instant her gaze fell into the Box, Han Lie felt the weight in his hand lighten.

The bottom of the Box, which had been propping up the corpse’s head, vanished.

The corpse’s ankles were still gripped in his hand, but its upper body had already sunk into the Box.

Han Lie could not help turning his head to look at the height of the Box, then recalling Huang Jun’s height.

Was this… reasonable?

Seeing that he still had not let go, Qin Ying slapped the back of his hand several times.

Only then did Han Lie come back to himself as if waking from a dream, and he loosened his fingers.

Huang Jun’s body, wrapped in black cloth, was swallowed whole by the Box.

Qin Ying leaned forward to look and saw the black-wrapped corpse crash into the World in the Box with a bang.

Huang Jun was short and thin, but when he smashed into the World in the Box, he seemed like a gigantic mountain range falling from the sky.

Across the black cloth wrapped around the corpse, dark stains slowly spread in blotches.
The corpse’s head had landed right beside the Divine Shrine of the Mountain God on Golden Saddle Mountain.

It was as tall as the white Divine Shrine, half-buried under volcanic ash.

The golden-red sunlight unique to Golden Saddle Mountain spilled over the black shroud.

Even though Qin Ying had more or less grown used to looking down into the box, she was still stunned by the strange sight of the corpse lying there like a mountain range.

She crouched down to peer inside. The inexplicable dragging sensation vanished, and only then did Han Lie and Huodou finally catch their breath. Man and dog looked at each other.

Huodou Wangcai crawled up from the ground, hiccuping.

Qin Ying stroked its back. “Can you do it?”

“If you can’t, we’ll think of another way.”

The moment Qin Ying’s fingers touched Wangcai’s spine, its skin tightened, and it nodded in a hurry.

This time, it didn’t bring up anything about getting canned meat first.

Qin Ying patted its head and fastened the dog leash she’d bought during the day onto Wangcai.

“Then go. Burn it clean. Don’t leave so much as ash behind.”

Holding one end of the leash, she lifted the little white-spotted dog, whose tail was tucked tight from nerves, into the box.

Huodou Wangcai curled up all four paws, feeling as if it had been plunged into clouds and mist, its whole body wrapped in cool dampness.

It worked up the courage to open one eye and look. The next second, it started howling in panic in midair.

Baby dog was afraid of heights!

It couldn’t even keep its hind legs clamped shut, and a little dog pee shot out.

Wangcai’s cries carried a long, long way.

Between the two Black Stone Mountain peaks, the Tribe’s Sand People dropped to their knees.

They gazed at the divine dog descending from the horizon. In the Aman Tribe, the Shaman stood with her upper body bare.

After the Hanba and the Yayu corpse in the Divine Shrine disappeared, the sun in the sky was no longer so vicious, and the earth spring once again gushed with clear, cold water.

The Shaman’s skin was covered in burn scars. She pressed her palms together, and the silver bells on her wrists rang with a crisp chime.

She unfurled the parchment scroll used by the Shaman to record great events. As she prayed to the god, she used vermilion pigment ground from spices to write upon the parchment.

In her native script, she recorded: The Heavenly God once again looks down upon the mortal world. A giant Shadowy Figure of calamity has fallen.

The Heavenly God’s mount descended from the clouds, accompanied by sweet rain.

The sweet rain… smells somewhat rank. The dog god suffers from internal heat.

…

Huodou Wangcai, still shrieking and yelping, landed between the mountains, completely unaware that its glorious act of leaking urine had been recorded.

The instant its paws touched the ground, its legs went weak, and it collapsed for a while.

Only after it recovered did it look around.

It looked at the mountains under its feet, at the earth crushed beneath its plump paws.

Then it looked up at the sky.

All it saw overhead were layered clouds burning red as fire.

It could no longer sense any familiar aura around it.

Not the annoying yet familiar human, not that tall, powerful Qilin, not those tiny bean-sized dogs, and not the little deer that ate, slept, and slept, then ate.

A thread of panic rose in Wangcai’s heart. It turned in a circle where it stood, only to discover that a rope was tied to its body.

The other end of the rope disappeared into the clouds.

It barked twice. A blurry giant shadow suddenly appeared in the sky, blocking out the sun.

The rope tied to it was gripped in the giant shadow’s hand.

Wangcai’s dog eyes flew wide open. That woman really wasn’t an ordinary human after all.

Just as it thought that, the end of the rope on its body was tugged.

From the sky came a voice like roaring thunder. “Hurry… burn…”

“Canned… meat…”

Huodou Wangcai’s ears shot straight up.

Wagging its tail, it followed the method Qin Ying had taught it and slipped free of the dog leash.

Sulfurous smoke coiled around its paws.

In the next instant, the black dog god that spanned heaven and earth stood amid blazing flames and raised its head in a long howl.

“Woof, woof, woof-”

As long as there was enough canned meat, Wangcai could do anything.

Far away, beneath Black Stone Mountain, the Shaman listened to the voice that resounded through heaven and earth.

On the parchment scroll, she wrote: The dog god answers its master, releasing a sound that shakes the soul and burns away the black calamity that fled into the mortal world.

The flames are like rosy clouds, and they too are an auspicious sign.