Chapter 36 Kill the Dog

When we turned around, we found a dark mass crouching in front of us. I felt my heart jolt, but then I quickly realized that it was Ping Lian. Did he find this place by following our scent?

But wasn’t this disloyal dog unwilling to come in with us? Why did he appear again now?

“Are you hungry?” Fatty asked. “Shit, you’re not afraid to die if you’re hungry?”

I looked at Ping Lian. I didn’t know why, but I suddenly felt that he didn’t look right, especially because he just continued to squat there and look at us.

I couldn’t tell what exactly was wrong since this dog wasn’t affectionate with us in the first place—we weren’t familiar enough with him, after all—but he was putting us in a very awkward position. His location meant that the people on the hillside could easily see him, so I waved to him and tried to get him to come a few more steps in our direction.

But Ping Lian remained motionless and just continued to look at us like a statue.

I wanted to take a look at the hillside, but Fatty held me down. If the dog had been seen, then the attention on the hillside would surely be focused here and we’d be discovered as soon as we stuck our heads out. Fatty started trying to shoo Ping Lian away.

“Go play by yourself! Go and play by yourself!” Fatty hissed.

But Ping Lian still remained motionless.

“It’s over. Is this dog stupid?” Fatty asked.

I felt that something wasn’t quite right, but at this time, my heart was anxious and my mind was buzzing. So, I took out a piece of dehydrated chicken from my pocket—Ping Lian was close to me before because he really liked chicken—and swayed it back and forth in front of the dog’s eyes. Sure enough, Ping Lian’s eyes tracked the movement.

Damn it, you still want food after all! Why are you acting so stoic, you stupid dog?! As I cursed in my heart, I located the shadow of a tree in the distance. The sun was so bright right now that the people on the hillside shouldn’t be able to see if anything was in the shadow. I turned to Fatty and said, “When I throw the chicken over there, the dog will run into the tree’s shadow. It’ll only take him about thirty seconds to eat the piece of chicken, so when he moves, we need to quickly follow and run into the shadow as well.”

Fatty nodded. I took a deep breath, aimed at the shadow of the tree, and then handed the chicken to Poker-Face, “You do it.”

But before Poker-Face could grab it, Ping Lian rushed over and aggressively went for the chicken.

Ping Lian was normally very well-behaved, so none of us had been expecting it. But Poker-Face caught Ping Lian’s neck in mid-air and slammed him to the ground.

Ping Lian was a big dog, but he seemed more like a weightless butterfly the instant Poker-Face caught him.

Ping Lian struggled desperately, but his vocal cords were gripped in such a way that he couldn’t make any sound. Poker-Face glanced at me. I knew that the dog would die as soon as he exerted any force, so I shook my head. Fatty went up and held the dog’s hind legs down. The dog immediately recognized the absolute power gap and stopped moving.

But at this time, I heard the sound of an engine coming up from behind us. I sighed in my heart as two vehicles rushed out of the grass on both sides of our hiding place and completely surrounded us.

We had been discovered.

The people who had been on the hillside jumped out of the vehicles one right after another. They were all Mongolians who were tanned, very strong, and appeared to be well-trained at first sight. The person I didn’t want to save also jumped out of one of the vehicles. He wore an expensive ethnic jacket of the Mongolian aristocrats that had a satin belt wrapped around it. This belt was about three or four meters long and had a knife, a fire striker, a snuffbox, and other accessories hanging from it⁽¹⁾. Even though he was wearing jeans, his shoes were high-quality Mongolian satin boots. And to top it all off, he wore a Mongolian felt hat that looked very strange.

The man was so tall that he looked like a tower when he got out of the vehicle. The reason why I had been able to recognize him at a glance was because he looked like Bateer⁽²⁾. Fatty seemed to think the same thing and let out an exclamation.

I couldn’t hide, so I took a deep breath and looked at him with a smile.

The other party looked at me with a serious expression on his face. When he got out of the vehicle, he inhaled some snuff, and said to the people around him, “Kill the dog.” His voice sounded very dull and was tinged with an extremely heavy local accent.

The people on the side immediately came towards us, and I saw that one of them pulled out a shotgun—these people were armed to the teeth. He went up to Fatty and said in blunt Chinese, “Hold it down. I’ll take it out with one shot so it won’t feel any pain. It will return to Tengri.”

I immediately got up and stood in front of the man, “Wait a minute. I borrowed this dog. Uncle Jiang, it’s not your style to kill someone’s dog as soon as you show up.”

The man was surprised when he heard me call him uncle. He hadn’t seen me for a long time and obviously didn’t recognize me anymore. As he looked me up and down, I also gave him a quick once-over.

My Uncle Three’s rival, called Jiang Siwang, should’ve been past sixty by now, but he obviously took good care of himself since he looked to be in his early forties. Before I turned eighteen, he and my Uncle Three directly competed against each other in the business. When they first started out, one was in the north and one was in the south, so their nicknames were South Wu and North Jiang. But when Jiang Siwang came to the south to visit my uncle, he was immediately pressured by Uncle Three.

He was of Mongolian-Chinese descent and should be regarded as a noble in Mongolia. He was always very ambitious, but Uncle Three obviously didn’t care about that. After competing with Uncle Three a few times, he found it difficult to go south, so he simply went back to Inner Mongolia’s border area. As a result, I hadn’t seen him since I was eighteen.

I remembered him so well because he used to give me a lot of money at New Year’s.

He had a bit of a special past and his personality was a little suffocating, which was why I felt that it was unlucky to meet him now. The tomb we were going to was very dangerous, after all, and this person was extremely unsuitable for it. Moreover, the future we were facing was so dangerous that even I couldn’t figure it out.

He immediately recognized me once he got a good look at my face. I was certain that facial features like mine were something that were deeply embedded in his memory.

“I’ve heard of you. Are you Wu Sanxing’s son?”

“I’m his nephew.”

“Yes, people like him shouldn’t have any offspring.” Jiang Siwang looked at me and then looked at the dog. “There can be no animals in the Sea of Black Lights. If these things come in, something happens to them. You have to kill it. If you don’t do it now, you’ll have to eventually.”

I looked at Ping Lian—the Wu family couldn’t kill a dog for this kind of reason—and said, “No, this dog isn’t mine. I can’t dispose of it.”

“The dogs we brought have all been killed,” he said.

“Then they followed the wrong person,” I shot back.

Jiang Siwang looked at Ping Lian, exchanged glances with the people around him, and then said, “Fine, it’s your choice. Just don’t let it near our tents.”

I felt like there was some hidden meaning in their eyes, so I looked at Ping Lian again. His eyes were moving back and forth, almost like he was listening to us.

<Chapter 35><Table of Contents><Chapter 37>

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TN Notes:

(1) A fire striker is a piece of carbon steel from which sparks are struck by the sharp edge of flint, chert or similar rock. It’s a specific tool used in making a fire. A snuffbox is a decorative box used to hold snuff (a scented, powdered tobacco that you sniff or inhale).

(2) Mengke Bateer, commonly referred to simply as Bateer in China, is a Chinese-Inner Mongolian former professional basketball player. Wiki link here.

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I’ve got a doctors appointment tomorrow after work, so there probably won’t be an update. Also, Anna put the New Year’s Specials and extras into a pdf doc if you want to download it (it’s in the Misc Extras Tab). I was wondering if you all wanted me to add them to the main book pdfs as well? Like put the first New Year’s Special after Vol 8, the Sand Sea extras after Sand Sea Part IV in the pdf, etc. It’s probably important to note that we’ve skipped quite a few extras while trying to get the main stuff out for you so the pdfs would eventually be updated after we get a batch of them done…some time (I’ve been putting a “last updated” note next to the pdf/epub links to help you guys out). Just let me know what you all prefer.