Chapter 19: The Fox Clan Patriarch
290 Words
Shen Moyan stared at Liu Hanyan, mind blank.
"Your grandfather?"
"Yes. The Fox Clan Patriarch, two thousand years of cultivation. Sealed in that well under Chenghuang Temple three hundred years ago. Been there ever since."
Liu Hanyan leaned on the counter, eyes drifting.
"He did something stupid back then. Tried to save a little fox, offended the Maoshan people. Maoshan teamed up with some other Taoist sects, set a trap, sealed him. That well was just an ordinary well before—they put a seal on it, turned it into an demon-suppressing well."
"Those bones at the bottom..."
"Some jumped themselves, some were thrown down, but most were eaten by him." Liu Hanyan's voice was calm. "My grandfather's a demon. Eating people is instinct. Trapped at the bottom, couldn't get out, so he ate whoever fell down. Ate for three hundred years. Ate forty-seven people."
Shen Moyan was silent.
He remembered Sun Yunniang's words: "The others in this well—he didn't kill them."
Right. Not killed by the magistrate's son. Killed by the fox demon.
"You're telling me this," he said slowly, "because you want me to save him?"
"Not save." Liu Hanyan looked at him. "Kill him."
Shen Moyan was stunned.
"Kill him?"
"He's my grandfather, but he's already crazy." Liu Hanyan's voice was very soft. "Trapped in that well three hundred years, ate forty-seven people—his demon nature's getting stronger, his human nature's fading. A few more years, he'll turn completely into a mindless eating machine. When that happens, even the seal won't hold him."
She looked at Shen Moyan, something strange in her eyes.
"Only the nine-stroke charm head can kill him. And the only one who can draw the nine-stroke charm head is you."
- Writer
