Chapter 31

30. Tie Niansi

Qian Chaodong grinned broadly the moment someone praised the white dog in his arms.

The key was that the white dog in his arms seemed to understand Zhou Chang’s words—it slightly lifted its chin, its canine face bearing a touch of human-like pride.

Seeing the dog’s expression, Zhou Chang instantly realized: the chorus of whimpers emanating from the bone finger ring wasn’t because the puppies sensed “kin,” but because this white dog was strange!

Was the white dog turning into a gui?

“I have no children, my parents passed away long ago—I just love keeping a few dogs for company!” Qian Chaodong stroked the smooth fur along the white dog’s back, smiling at Zhou Chang, “This white dog has a golden patch on its head—a rare ‘Snow-Capped Gold’!”

I’ve got a big black dog tied up at home—it’s stupid, nothing compared to this ‘Snow-Capped Gold.’

It understands people; sometimes when you talk to it, you feel like it actually listens!

Zhou Chang nodded in agreement, echoing Qian Chaodong’s praise and complimenting the white dog a few more times.

The white dog half-closed its eyes, clearly savoring the mutual admiration from Zhou Chang and Qian Chaodong.

Not long after, the wine cellar manager from the front hall led in over a dozen people seeking treatment for madness and hysteria.

Seeing the number was sufficient, Qian Chaodong handed the white dog to a nearby attendant and instructed, “Take Bai’er home and put it right on my bed.

Don’t you dare lock it up with the big black dog in the yard!

They’ll fight—the stupid dog isn’t a match for Bai’er!”

The attendant cradled the dog like a master, nodding repeatedly before leaving.

Qian Chaodong turned back to Zhou Chang and the others, boasting again: “Don’t think my white dog’s only ten pounds—it fights the forty-pound black dog in my yard, and that black dog has never won!”

The black dog’s too stupid and clumsy—every time, it gets bitten bloody across the face, leaps around in panic, yet can’t subdue it!”

The group murmured in awe, praising Qian Chaodong’s ‘Bai’er’ even more, calling the white dog a divine dog.

Yet dogs and wolves are essentially no different.

Within their small groups, each has its own rank and status.

This status comes from their own strength, and is also closely tied to the support of the wolf king or the master.

Zhou Chang believed the white dog could defeat a forty-pound black dog only because Qian Chaodong backed it.

Otherwise, with such a vast size difference, even the dumbest black dog couldn’t be beaten by a ten-pound pup.

Qian Chaodong always called the white dog ‘Bai’er’ and referred to the black dog as ‘stupid dog’ or ‘clumsy dog.’

His radically different attitudes toward his two dogs were plain to see.

After his boasting, Qian Chaodong led Zhou Chang and the others past the outer courtyard and knocked on the two black-lacquered wooden doors in the corner.

Behind the door, the man with the ruined face from yesterday cracked it open a sliver; Qian Chaodong squeezed through first, tossed a few pieces of leftover salted meat to the two ruined-face men guarding the door, then let Zhou Chang and the others enter the inner room.

The two ruined-face men squatted on the ground, shoving the salted meat into their mouths, savoring its saltiness and aroma, unwilling to swallow.

Only when Qian Chaodong urged them to get to work did they reluctantly divide the meat, then move into the darkness to drag out caskets.

Qian Chaodong called these two ruined-face men ‘Wen San’ and ‘Wen Si.’

Their surname was Wen—presumably they should be blood relatives of the wine shop’s proprietor, the Wen family—but their miserable condition clashed utterly with the status of a Wen family member.

Zhou Chang boldly speculated that perhaps they hadn’t always been surnamed Wen.

He lay inside the casket as Wen San pushed him toward the cellar.

The coffin lid had not yet been sealed; Zhou Chang once again felt Wen San’s gaze upon him.

“Wen San, should I send a message to your family?”

Zhou Chang suddenly lifted his head slightly, his gaze meeting Wen San’s, who had leaned forward from behind the coffin to watch him.

Wen San’s face twisted into a vicious sneer—but when he heard Zhou Chang’s next words, his hostility instantly crumbled into sheer terror.

The ruined-face man glanced fearfully over his shoulder, only relaxing slightly when he saw Qian Chaodong walking at the very back of the group, far away.

Even so, he dared not peek at Zhou Chang inside the coffin again.

A faint smile appeared on Zhou Chang’s calm face.

These two ruined-face men were definitely hiding something.

Slow psychological pressure—two or three rounds should reveal their secrets.

“Boom… boom… boom…”

The cart rolled again into the wine cellar thick with the scent of fermented grain; Zhou Chang inhaled the aroma, thinking of Bai Xiue’s sudden departure, and a new question flashed in his mind—

Could it be that because I’ve been ‘treating’ here in the cellar, I’ve absorbed the aura of ‘Wen Yongsheng,’ and it has sensed traces connected to Bai Xiue?

That’s why ‘Wen Yongsheng’ went to her home, causing her to vanish without a word?

The moment he realized this, Zhou Chang frowned.

The more he thought, the more plausible it seemed.

Wen San pushed Zhou Chang’s coffin to the cellar’s bottom, and together with Wen Si, sealed him inside ‘Wen Yongsheng’s’ fermentation pit.

Outside the pit, the living spring was dark and deep, its depths unseen.

All the strange phenomena in the cellar occurred when the spring splashed water.

As Wen San and Wen Si sealed the coffin lid, Zhou Chang carefully noted their differing facial features.

Though their builds were nearly identical and their voices nearly indistinguishable, the distribution of their scarred wounds varied greatly—so long as one wasn’t terrified by their grotesque faces, distinguishing them was easy.

The sound of grain pounding on the coffin lid gradually faded.

Once the faint footsteps outside vanished, the cellar fell silent.

From the highest, farthest point, Qian Chaodong’s voice rang out again: “Start fermentation!”

The voice echoed from the pit’s top to its bottom, filling the entire cellar with blurred, hallucinatory echoes of men, women, children, and elders.

Accompanying the echoes, Zhou Chang’s corpse inside the coffin began to shrivel, while the mountain of grain drowning the coffin erupted in dense, writhing strands of delusion mycelium.

These interwoven white mycelial threads were Zhou Chang’s delusions, clinging to ‘Wen Yongsheng’s’ divine banner, purified by heaps of grain until they grew—benefiting Zhou Chang’s soul-nature immensely, strengthening his thought-threads further.

A thin, pale, translucent thread of thought slowly emerged from beneath the grain mountain as it transformed into a rice mound.

Zhou Chang’s vision could not follow the thought-thread as it writhed beyond the mound to observe the outside.

He could only use this crude method: release a small amount of thought-thread first, confirm the environment was safe, then release vast quantities to absorb the power stored in the rice mound.

After all, whether ‘Wen Laozu’ or ‘Wen Yongsheng’ would appear in the cellar remained unknown to Zhou Chang inside the coffin.

The released pale, translucent thought-threads gradually turned blood-red.

The already deep-red blood-threads slowly darkened, acquiring a dull, iron-like luster.

Zhou Chang retracted one iron-like thought-thread and drove it beneath the corpse-skin of the jian.

The instant the iron thought-thread pierced beneath the jian’s flesh, Zhou Chang felt a clear sensation—

This iron thought-thread could directly draw in the jian’s stored delusions and nourishing qi.