Gong Cang choked up: “But I…”
“Speaking of which, Shen Yi isn’t with you?” Yan Pan asked. “You two should have been together, right?”
“Eh? Ah, we were together,” Gong Cang said. “He helped me block the Night Watchman, and I took the chance to run.”
“You left him alone with the Night Watchman?” Yan Pan said. “Then isn’t he in grave danger? How about I go back with you to check?”
Gong Cang’s eyes lit up. That flash of light was fleeting and vanished quickly, but Yan Pan was a shrewd person; she didn’t miss it. She narrowed her eyes.
Gong Cang gave a bitter smile and shrugged: “Don’t bother, Sister. It’s not necessary… If we go back now, it’ll be too late anyway. Besides, Shen Yi might be a ghost! We shouldn’t go back and risk letting a tiger back to its mountain!”
That’s a strange way to use that idiom, Yan Pan thought.
“And that Night Watchman when he saw Shen Yi just now, he froze! I think what you guys said was right, Shen Yi probably really is a ghost!” Gong Cang muttered with a pale face. “Yes, he must be a ghost… Otherwise, why would he be so close to the Night Watchman? Why did the Night Watchman have such a big reaction when he saw him? Otherwise, why… why did the Night Watchman only try to kill me and not him?”
“He must be a ghost, otherwise none of it makes sense!” Gong Cang looked up sharply again, saying urgently, “Sister, you have to be careful too! He must be in league with the Night Watchmen! Maybe Shen Yi will even help him hunt later! Sister, you must be careful! I was almost killed by him! We have to have a proper discussion when it gets light!”
“We have to find a way to deal with Shen Yi!”
A thick smile spread across Yan Pan’s face: “Is that so? You want to wait until dawn to discuss it?”
Gong Cang nodded repeatedly, smiling with an expectant yet cautious air: “Yes, yes. Sister, this is something that has to be discussed, right?”
Yan Pan looked helpless: “But you don’t have the life to wait until dawn. What should we do then?”
Gong Cang froze. She was smiling, but the words coming out of her mouth were cold and eerie.
Looking at that smiling face, a chill raced up his spine. Gong Cang instinctively took two steps back and gave a forced laugh: “Sister, what are you saying…”
Click.
A familiar sound, like something being stepped on and snapped, came from not far away.
Gong Cang flinched in fear and whipped his head around. The road was completely empty. No footsteps sounded; the surroundings remained quiet.
Still shaken, Gong Cang didn’t dare relax. He turned back and said: “Sister, I—”
The top of the courtyard wall was completely empty. Yan Pan was gone.
Gong Cang’s pupils shrank. He opened his mouth, instinctively wanting to call for Yan Pan again, but his throat could no longer produce any sound.
Horrified, Gong Cang clutched his neck. Suddenly, a wave of cold air hit him from behind. He turned to look.
The Night Watchman, Mo, was standing behind him.
Gong Cang’s breath hitched.
Squelch. The blade pierced through flesh, and blood splattered.
Thud. Gong Cang fell backward onto the ground.
Lying there dazed for a moment, he felt a faint pain in his throat and a wave of coldness. He reached out and pressed his hand against his neck; a sharp pain immediately erupted.
Gong Cang’s mind went blank. He opened his mouth, but still couldn’t speak. He raised his hand tremulously; his palm was covered in blood.
The blood moon hung in the sky.
Gong Cang finally understood what had happened. He reached out to desperately cover his throat, but countless amounts of blood still seeped through his fingers. The agonizing pain in his neck grew more intense.
It was so painful that Gong Cang couldn’t stop the bleeding; he couldn’t help but let go. He saw a hideous, massive gash across his throat, with blood pouring out incessantly. So much blood was flowing that his frantic attempts to cover it had smeared it everywhere; his chest was a mass of red, and the wound itself had been rubbed into a bloody mess by his own hands.
Gong Cang gradually found it hard to breathe. He inhaled and exhaled forcefully, his chest heaving violently. His face was pale and contorted, his pupils shrinking and trembling with fear.
He suddenly heard two tap-tap sounds. He looked up slightly. The Night Watchman, Mo, had walked to his side and was looking down at him, staring from a superior height.
He was going to die.
Gong Cang understood very clearly that he was going to die in this Hell of Tongue-Ripping. A massive wave of terror hit him, and he couldn’t help but shed two lines of tears. His mouth opened and closed as he tried his best to make any sound, but still, nothing came out.
He couldn’t even utter a word of plea.
The dark clouds in the sky gathered again, and the rain began to fall in a drizzle. The fine rain hit the wound on his neck, making Gong Cang want to scream in pain. He lay on the ground gasping, feeling it get harder and harder to take a breath.
He reached out and grabbed the Night Watchman’s ankle, looking at him imploringly. Tears flowed down, mixing with the rain. Gong Cang’s mouth opened and closed, forming words of request, silently begging him.
The Night Watchman, Mo, said nothing. He just kept his head lowered, looking at his wretched state with cold indifference.
Suddenly, a wail of mourning and crying echoed from somewhere. The crying quickly became clear, and Gong Cang froze.
The crying was coming from beneath him.
One after another, ghostly hands suddenly erupted from the ground beside him. Terrified, Gong Cang turned his head and saw those pitch-black, skin-and-bone hands.
The next second, they grabbed him.
The ghostly hands seized his body his neck, limbs, and torso covered his mouth, and dragged him into the ground.
The ground suddenly gave way, and Gong Cang fell in. As if being buried alive, after he fell into the earth, dust and soil rolled down from the surrounding ground, bit by bit burying Gong Cang deep.
Finally, accompanied by a sudden burst of joyous laughter shifting from the cries, the place returned to silence.
Wen Mo lingered for a moment in the silence of the rain. He turned and left.
He returned to the Hunting Ground.
Gong Cang was lying in the large pit of the Hunting Ground; he had been brought back by those ghostly hands.
Outside, it was merely the hunt. Returning here was the true execution of the Night Watchman.
Gong Cang was held down by the ghostly hands. Seeing the Night Watchman, Mo, Gong Cang began to struggle violently.
Wen Mo ignored him. He walked down into the Hunting Ground and rolled up his sleeves, revealing his forearms. He had beautiful arm lines, with winding blue veins on his pale skin; though he was lean, his muscles were clearly firm. Raindrops fell on them, trickling down his arms one by one.
He looked around, picked up a stone with sharp edges, and tossed it down beside Gong Cang.
Wen Mo walked over. He straddled Gong Cang, pulled out the knife from his waist, pried open the man’s mouth, and hauled out his tongue.
Gong Cang’s eyes widened in terror, and tears spilled out. He struggled even more fiercely, but it was no use.
Wen Mo flipped the knife in his hand and cleanly sliced off his tongue.
Gong Cang opened his mouth wide in agony, his face contorted like a monster’s. Wen Mo raised his hand, and several more times the blade rose and fell, stabbing into his body over and over.
His expression was numb, his pupils constricted, as he mechanically stabbed down again and again.
He watched as Gong Cang became a bloody mess under his blade, his skin and flesh flayed open. Blood splattered onto his body, but Wen Mo acted as if he didn’t notice.
He continued to stab him until Gong Cang could no longer struggle. When he was down to his last breath, only able to lie on the ground with trembling pupils watching Wen Mo, only able to weep feebly, Wen Mo put down his knife.
He picked up the sharp stone he had just found and aimed it at Gong Cang’s trembling, blood-filled eyes.
Thud!
“Gong Cang!” “Gong Cang!” “Cang!”
Shen Yi ran through half the village, shouting as he went. He was panting heavily, but saw no sign of Gong Cang, nor the Night Watchman.
The rain started falling again. Shen Yi could run no more, so he stopped. He bent over, resting his hands on his knees to catch his breath, and wiped the fine layer of sweat from his forehead.
Suddenly, he noticed something was wrong up ahead. There seemed to be something outside the village.
Shen Yi walked out. As he got closer, he froze.
It was a massive black pit, filled with countless pitch-black ghostly hands. Shen Yi was beyond shocked by the scene.
There was something else in the pit Shen Yi suddenly noticed something was off. He focused his gaze and saw it was a bloody, almost unrecognizable corpse. The person’s head had been smashed, leaving a skull that was nearly powder, and his body was covered in a mass of open wounds from a knife.
From the sheer brutality, it was clear that the person who did this felt a profound hatred for him. It must have been a blood-deep grudge.
The person was wearing a Klein blue short-sleeved shirt and black jeans the clothes Gong Cang had worn out today.
That was Gong Cang.
…
A breath caught sharply in Shen Yi’s throat. A sudden wave of suffocation washed over his heart, but his mood was somewhat delicate Shen Yi actually couldn’t feel the fear he should have, nor the shock or sadness.
It was strange; he even felt a sense of relief and satisfaction as if he wanted to let out a long sigh.
The situation was too absurd, and a sense of the surreal rose in his heart. He stood dazed before Gong Cang’s body for a moment, then suddenly heard the sound of water, as if someone were washing something.
Shen Yi turned his head. He remembered there was a small river not far away. The sound was indeed coming from that direction.
Shen Yi walked over.
There was a person by the river. A pair of boots had been placed on the bank. The person was standing in the water, bending his upper body, with his trouser legs and sleeves rolled up; his clothes were all black. He was looking down, cupping water in his hands, washing the bloodstains from his arms.
Both of his arms were covered in blood. He seemed to find the blood very filthy, as he scrubbed it with great force.
It was Wen Mo.
Wen Mo’s ears were very sharp; hearing Shen Yi’s approaching footsteps, his movements immediately paused, and he glanced back. His gaze was like a knife, like a wolf’s.
Shen Yi flinched under his gaze.
For no reason, he felt a bit at a loss. After hesitating for a moment, his gaze suddenly fell on the black windbreaker he was holding in his hand.
Shen Yi’s mind immediately made the connection and he had an idea. He quickly held up the clothes: “Um, I wanted to… return this to you…”
His voice got lower and lower as he spoke, sounding inexplicably lacking in confidence.
The rain continued to fall. Shen Yi fell silent, but his eyes were fixed on him imploringly. Coupled with the drizzling rain, those eyes were wet and glistening, looking at him like a little dog sitting in the rain about to be abandoned.
In the past, Wen Mo could never withstand this look from Jiang Yi; the man most loved using this trick to get his way with him.
He closed his eyes, let out a sigh, straightened up, and turned back toward him.
Wen Mo was covered in blood.
Wen Mo waved his hand at him and made a few gestures to show him he didn’t want that jacket anymore; he was giving it to Jiang Yi.
“I can’t take it,” Jiang Yi said quickly. “It’s fine, I’m young, a little rain won’t hurt. Look at how thin you are, you should wear more layers.”
Wen Mo made a gesture across his throat, then pointed to his heart, then spread his hands he was saying he had died long ago.
Jiang Yi fell silent.
But his eyes were still burning with light, and he opened his mouth as if to speak but hesitated. Wen Mo could tell that his Brother Yi still wanted to say something.
Wen Mo frowned, suddenly unable to quite understand him.
He had killed Gong Cang. In this Jiang Yi’s eyes, he had killed his brother; Jiang Yi ought to hate him.
Wen Mo pointed to the corpse in the Hunting Ground again and signed to Jiang Yi.
[I killed him,] Wen Mo gestured in sign language, [You will hate me anyway, stay away from me. If you don’t want the clothes, throw them away.]
After he finished signing, he lowered his body and continued washing his arms.
However, he heard Jiang Yi say: “I don’t hate you.”
Wen Mo froze and looked up.
Jiang Yi was still looking at him with wet, bright eyes.
“I don’t hate you,” he said. “Can we… talk?”