Chapter 33: Sanniang's Plan
306 Words
Back at the shop, Shen Moyan sat at his workbench, his mind in chaos.
Hu Sanniang's plan was simple: let Liu Hanyan keep pretending to be a spy, feed false information to her grandfather, and when Shen Moyan reached the seventh stroke, go down and kill the Fox Clan Patriarch in one strike.
"But there's a problem," Hu Sanniang said. "My father ate me, ate many people. The him now isn't the fox demon from two thousand years ago. He's merged with all those people's resentment. Become something else."
"What kind of something?"
"Don't know. But I can feel it—he's no longer purely demon. He has humanity, demon nature, and the resentment of the dead. Three things mixed together. Hard to handle."
Shen Moyan was silent for a moment.
"What about Zhang Shouyi? Why did he appear in my dream?"
Hu Sanniang was quiet too.
After a long time, she spoke: "I don't know. But I suspect Zhang Shouyi and the thing you dreamed about aren't the same person."
"What do you mean?"
"That dark figure in your dream had Zhang Shouyi's shape, Zhang Shouyi's voice, but no face. The real Zhang Shouyi has a face. That thing might be something else, borrowing Zhang Shouyi's form."
Shen Moyan thought about the way that dark figure covered Lu Jiuyuan's mouth—that gesture was so familiar. Like protection. Like prevention.
Was it protecting Lu Jiuyuan? Or preventing him from speaking that secret?
He didn't know.
But he knew that secret Lu Jiuyuan mentioned had to be the key.
"127 lifetimes, 127 times killed by the Taoist community. Not because I was a demon. Because I knew a secret."
What secret could make the Taoist community hunt someone for 127 lifetimes?
Shen Moyan stood up and headed for the door.
He needed to find Lu Jiuyuan.
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