Chapter 93

Chapter 93

On Friday afternoon, outside the Cultural Center, a round-faced little chubby kid was waving his arms around as he told his friends a story.

“Last night in the middle of the night, I got up to pee and heard this pat-pat-pat sound out on the street.”

“It sounded like duck feet walking. My grandma said that’s the sound of ghosts walking.”

“I wanted to see what a ghost looked like, so I hid behind the curtains and watched.”

Kids in fifth or sixth grade were right at the age when they bragged the hardest. He recounted his experience with perfect clarity.

The little brats around him immediately burst into gasps of awe, all calling him insanely badass.

Qin Ying was a little concerned. She kept fiddling with her phone as she followed nearby and listened in.

The little chubby kid, floating from all the praise, grew even more smug. “My grandma said that when you hear that kind of ghost footstep sound, like duck feet, as long as you pinch your middle finger with your thumb, your soul won’t get snatched away.”

From the way the kid talked, it was obvious he was a local child of the Old City District. Outside the Old City District, no adult would tell children such feudal superstitious nonsense at home.

He talked in a spray of spit about how he had pinched his middle finger and hidden behind the curtains. After circling around for ages, he finally got to the point.

As it turned out, the boy had gotten up to pee in the middle of the night yesterday.

After he finished and was heading back, he heard a pat-pat-pat sound coming from the street, like duck feet walking.

But those footsteps were nothing like a duck’s slow waddle. Instead, they ran from far away to nearby at incredible speed.

When he pricked up his ears, one second the sound was still at the end of the street, and the next it had already reached the front of his house.

An adult would never have dared to stick their nose into it, but newborn calves weren’t afraid of tigers. This little brat, wearing a pair of Ultraman underpants, crouched down and hid behind the curtains on the second floor to peek.

The streetlights outside were dim and yellow, crackling and flickering from time to time.

The boy saw an animal run out of the darkness. It looked like a flaming wheel and also like a dog, with foul-smelling smoke billowing all over its body.

When he got to this part, the little guy paused, probably unable to find the words to describe that stench.

But Qin Ying, standing beside them, already knew. That smell was the sulfurous odor lingering around the boy.

Thoughtful, Qin Ying lowered her phone and was just about to butt in with a question.

Then she suddenly realized the surroundings had gone very quiet. When she looked up, she saw that several adults were all pretending to scroll on their phones as if nothing were happening, but in reality, every one of them had their ears pricked up for gossip.

Even the old doorman, who loved blasting short videos at full volume, had at some point muted the sound.

The scene had become strangely quiet. Only the boy was still talking.

Except by now, the subject had already veered off into how bravely he had gone out and fought the monster for three hundred rounds.

Just then, the old gatekeeper of the Cultural Center, wearing a security vest, gave a cough. “Actually, it might be true.”

The old man had also been one of the bored bystanders listening in.

His sudden interruption drew everyone’s attention.

The little guy in the middle of his bragging also shut up and looked over.

Since she clearly wasn’t the only idler around, Qin Ying put down the phone she had been using as a disguise and listened openly.

The old gatekeeper cleared his throat. Under everyone’s gaze, he began talking about old stories from the ancient city.

“You people pass by Caishikou every day. Have you ever noticed the drum-shaped bearing stones under the archway?”

Having lived in the Old City his whole life, the old man knew all kinds of old stories like the back of his hand.

“Never really paid attention,” answered another passerby who had brought a child to the Cultural Center.

The old man didn’t get the cooperation he wanted and looked a little dissatisfied. “If you had paid attention, you’d have noticed that the carvings on the bearing stones at the South Archway are different.”

“What do ordinary bearing stones usually have carved on them?” The old man picked up the pitch-black enamel tea mug beside him. “Bats, deer, magpies, wheat ears, and treasure vases.”

“They’re meant to symbolize blessings, prosperity, happiness, long life, and peace.”

“But the bearing stones on the south side are different. The left and right sides are carved with two dogs.”
“Do you know why?”

The old gatekeeper had already slipped into full storyteller mode. All he lacked was a wooden clapper to bang on the table.

The passerby who had spoken earlier played along. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, shook one out, and offered it over. “Why?”

The old man didn’t stand on ceremony. He took the cigarette and tucked it behind his ear, and just like that, the heckler and the straight man had formed a comedy duo on the spot.

“Because more than a hundred years ago, there was a terrible fire south of the old city.”

“The flames lit up the sky till night was bright as day. No one knows exactly how many people died, even now. All anyone knows is that charred bodies were everywhere.”

“The smell of roasted human flesh lingered around the city for three whole days.”

At this point, the topic had clearly become unsuitable for children, but the few kids gathered around only grew more interested.

The old gatekeeper occasionally showed tourists around the Cultural Center, and now he pointed toward the exhibition area. “That scorched crossbeam in the history exhibit, the one with half a human silhouette on it? That was burned onto it back then.”

Empty talk and physical evidence were two very different things.

Thinking of that evidence sitting not far away, the man who had handed out the cigarette hissed in surprise. “Then what does the fire have to do with this hellhound the kid was talking about?”

The old gatekeeper wagged a finger. “Now that is something only the older generation knows.”

“Officially, they said the fire that burned down half the city started because the yamen caught fire. But among the common folk, there’s another version.”

“More than a hundred years ago, the county magistrate was surnamed Wu. He had one particular vice-he loved dogfighting!”

Magistrate Wu of a century ago cared nothing for money or beauties. He only loved dogfighting, loved watching fighting dogs tear each other apart until one of them died.

Later, he went further and further. Every match had to end with one dog dead before Magistrate Wu was satisfied.

As it happened, he had a Cross-eyed Adviser under him who spent all day thinking of ways to cater to his tastes.

At last, the adviser heard of a household in the city that kept a guard dog. Supposedly, it had been born on the day a meteor fell. Out of a litter of eighteen pups, it was the only one that survived.

It could swallow fire and breathe smoke, and it was extraordinarily fierce.

The adviser went to their door, and sure enough, the family was raising a magnificent Black Hound as big as a young calf.

Years before, the family’s little grandson had gone missing. It was this Black Hound that had bitten the kidnapper and saved its young master. The adults of the household had decided to have the grandson acknowledge the Black Hound as his Dog Uncle-the kind who got a seat at the table for meals.

When they heard that the adviser wanted to buy their Dog Uncle and send him into the fighting pit, of course they refused. Wouldn’t that be the height of ingratitude? People would curse them behind their backs for the rest of their lives!

But the Cross-eyed Adviser was rotten to the core, and he came up with a scheme-he framed the man of the house for theft.

They locked him in a heavy cangue and threw him into prison. In just two or three days, they tormented him until he was barely breathing.

No matter how unbending the man’s spine had been, they broke it in the end. With tears in his eyes, he finally handed over the family’s dog.

The adviser was delighted and presented the dog to the county magistrate.

Then, right there on the spot, he forced a piece of red-hot charcoal down the Black Hound’s throat.

What happened after that, no one knows.

That very night, a great fire consumed the entire county yamen. Magistrate or adviser, not one of them escaped.

The raging flames spread, and half the city was reduced to ruins.

On that day, witnesses saw with their own eyes a Black Hound wreathed in black smoke, standing amid the flames and lifting its head to bark at the moon.

Afterward, the Black Hound vanished without a trace.

Many people saw it back then, and the story spread far and wide. Everyone said it was a celestial fire hound that had fallen from the heavens on the night of the star’s descent and been reborn in a mother dog’s belly.

Later, when the city was rebuilt, the authorities deliberately carved the drum stones of the southern archway-the fire position-into the shape of dogs to ward off future fires.

And that was how Yunlan City came to have its one-of-a-kind Black Hound Drum Stone.

“When I was little, there were still people who specifically worshiped Lord Dog.”

The old gatekeeper took the cigarette from behind his ear and put it between his lips. Then he finished, “And the Lord Dog people worshiped back then looked exactly like what that kid described!”