Meng Huaize descended from Chuanki Mountain, and by the time he reached the village, it was already midnight. The bright moon hung high in the sky, and the surroundings were eerily quiet. Occasionally, the distant sound of barking dogs could be heard, adding an unsettling restlessness to the night.
Meng Huaize’s home was set apart from the other houses in the village, located at the far eastern edge. His courtyard stood alone, with farmland on one side and open wilderness on the other, making the place feel especially quiet at night.
Meng Huaize’s clothes were disheveled, and they were stained with blood. Afraid of running into anyone, he hurried home like a thief, slipping through the door. Once inside, he lit a lamp. The candlelight dispelled the darkness, and the room brightened. Only then did he breathe a sigh of relief, carefully removing the herb basket from his back.
The wolf cub lay inside, motionless with its eyes closed, as if asleep. Meng Huaize called softly a couple of times, but there was no response. He shook the basket gently, but still, there was no movement. Panic surged in his chest—had it died?
With that thought, Meng Huaize forgot his fear and quickly reached into the basket, wanting to check the wolf cub’s condition.
His fingers touched the soft, warm belly of the cub, feeling the steady rise and fall of its breathing. Meng Huaize finally relaxed and gently lifted the cub out of the basket.
Under the light, Meng Huaize finally had a moment to closely examine the wolf cub in his hands, and he couldn’t help but feel a bit amused.
If he hadn’t already seen its adult form or known that it was a spirit who wanted to kill him for swallowing its inner core, it would have been hard for him to imagine that this little, fluffy creature could be anything dangerous.
Without wasting any time, he freed one hand and pulled a clean, thin blanket from a nearby shelf. After folding it twice, he spread it on the table and placed the wolf cub on top. He then turned to fetch some medicinal herbs from the shelf.
The wolf cub had many injuries. Several wounds on its back were so deep that bone was visible, and the fur around them was matted with dark, clotted blood. The cub lay motionless, eyes closed, allowing Meng Huaize to tend to it.
Meng Huaize handled it with extreme care, afraid of causing pain, and more so of angering the spirit. He held his breath, not even daring to exhale too loudly.
He went outside to fetch a basin of water and wet a cloth, intending to clean the blood and dirt from the cub’s wounds. Just as the damp cloth touched its fur, the wolf cub suddenly opened its eyes. They were clear, with no trace of sleepiness.
Startled, Meng Huaize quickly explained, “Uh… there’s a lot of dried blood around the wounds. I’m just trying to clean you up a bit.”
Wu Yue glanced at his back before closing his eyes again, lazily lying back down without saying a word.
After waiting for a moment and seeing no further protest, Meng Huaize cautiously continued his task.
Once the dirt was cleaned, the medicine applied, and the wounds bandaged, Meng Huaize finally let out the breath he had been holding. He was drenched in sweat.
“It’s all done,” he said quietly to Wu Yue.
Wu Yue let out a faint grunt, acknowledging it.
Meng Huaize stood there for a while longer, but when Wu Yue remained silent, he gathered his things and left the room. Before leaving, he thoughtfully blew out the lamp to avoid disturbing the spirit’s sleep.
He went to the courtyard and used cold water to quickly wash his face. Instead of returning to the house, he sat by the well and stared up at the moon, reflecting on his life.
After the bizarre events of the day, sitting in the courtyard under the moonlight, Meng Huaize felt a strange sense of detachment, as though everything had taken place a lifetime ago. He couldn’t fathom how he had gotten himself into this absurd situation, nor did he have any idea how to get out of it. The more he thought, the more hopeless it all seemed, and he felt a deep sadness well up inside him. He almost wanted to howl at the moon in despair.
Meng Huaize opened his mouth but didn’t howl. Instead, he yawned.
He had been terrified and exhausted all day, and now that he was briefly away from the wolf cub, he felt a slight relaxation of his nerves. The fatigue began to overwhelm him, and his eyelids drooped uncontrollably.
Compared to sharing a room with that spirit, Meng Huaize would rather spend the night in the courtyard, cold wind and all.
A quarter of an hour later, his head bumped against the edge of the well, and he woke up, dazed and rubbing his head. The cold wind hit him, and he sneezed several times in a row.
In the end, after much hesitation, Meng Huaize quietly made his way back to the room in the dark.
The wolf cub was still lying in the same spot on the table, a small lump in the darkness. Meng Huaize glanced over at it furtively, then tiptoed back to his own bed.
Moonlight spilled in through the window, casting a faint glow inside the room. Meng Huaize lay on his bed, staring at the bed canopy, his hand resting on his stomach as he worried. What exactly is that inner core inside me? How am I supposed to get it out?
Before he could even begin to puzzle it out, his eyelids grew heavy, and the swirling thoughts in his mind slowly gave way to peaceful darkness.
He didn’t know how long he had been asleep when something nudged him awake.
Still feeling incredibly tired, Meng Huaize instinctively reached out to hold down whatever was bothering him, wanting to stop it so he could go back to sleep. However, the thing under his hand felt like something alive, and after only a moment of being still, it wriggled free and began moving again, squirming up from where it had been nestled against his chest. Soft fur brushed against his neck, sending an irritating tickle up his skin.
Grudgingly, Meng Huaize opened his eyes. It was still dark, and the sky had yet to brighten. Not fully awake, he felt something warm licking the corner of his mouth and rubbing against his face.
Meng Huaize instinctively grabbed the thing that was squirming around his neck, and only after he had caught it did he fully wake up with a yelp. He jumped up and tossed the bundle from his body onto the ground with a swift, forceful motion.
After a dull thud, a pitiful whimper echoed from the floor, followed by two glowing golden eyes appearing in the darkness.
Meng Huaize was so frightened he leapt out of bed, barefoot, and hurriedly lit the lamp with shaking hands.
As the light flickered to life, the thing he had thrown to the ground was illuminated—it was the wolf cub that had been sleeping on the table earlier.
Pressing his back tightly against the edge of the table, Meng Huaize kept a wide distance between himself and the cub, eyeing it warily as his voice trembled, “What are you trying to do?”
The wolf cub, barely woken up—or rather, rudely thrown awake—looked even more confused than he did.
Wu Yue glanced around, quickly realizing the situation. His eyes narrowed dangerously. “Did you just throw me?”
Meng Huaize stammered in fear, “Y-You were the one who climbed into my bed first! What were you trying to do?”
Wu Yue squinted and glanced at the bed, his mind starting to form a theory.
“Come here.”
Meng Huaize didn’t dare move. “W-What for?”
“Take off these bandages,” Wu Yue ordered.
“Why?”
“Just do it,” Wu Yue snapped, his patience running thin. “Why do you ask so many questions?”
Terrified by Wu Yue’s sudden anger, Meng Huaize couldn’t help but tremble. “You won’t kill me?”
Wu Yue sighed internally, wondering why humans were such pitiful creatures.
After receiving Wu Yue’s assurance that he wouldn’t be killed, Meng Huaize cautiously walked over, knelt in front of him, and began unwrapping the bandages.
Meng Huaize had expected the wolf cub’s injuries to be worse after the earlier rough treatment, but to his surprise, most of the wounds had already healed significantly.
Having practiced medicine for years, Meng Huaize had never seen anything like it. His hands stopped shaking, and his voice steadied as he exclaimed in shock, “How… how is this possible?”
The sky hadn’t even brightened yet, and it had been no more than two hours since he had bandaged the cub.
Wu Yue thought to himself that not only were humans useless, they were also ignorant.
He scoffed, “This is nothing. If you hadn’t stolen my inner core, these little injuries wouldn’t have mattered at all.”
“I didn’t steal it!” Meng Huaize protested, bewildered by the wolf’s insistence on accusing him. Who’s the real victim here? he thought. “I was forced to swallow it…”
Wu Yue didn’t understand why this human kept fixating on such irrelevant details.
“Either way, your human medicine is of little use to me. I only need my inner core to restore my power,” Wu Yue said, looking pointedly at Meng Huaize. “But it’s inside you now.”
Meng Huaize felt a pang of anxiety. “S-So what are you going to do?”
A short while later, Meng Huaize found himself lying stiffly on his bed, one arm awkwardly extended outward. Resting on that arm was a fluffy wolf cub, whose head was comfortably nestled against it.
Not daring to move, Meng Huaize asked, “Are you sure this will work?”
“Shut up,” the wolf cub grumbled, “Just sleep.”
Wu Yue seemed quite content, but Meng Huaize was enduring a torturous ordeal. He couldn’t sleep, nor could he move. All he could do was lie there with his eyes wide open, staring at the bed canopy, waiting for dawn.
Not long after, the wolf cub, who had been soundly asleep on Meng Huaize’s arm, started to stir. Its small paws scrabbled against Meng Huaize’s inner clothes as it tried to burrow further into his chest. Before it could get too far, the cub dropped its head on Meng Huaize’s chest and fell back into a deep sleep.
A few moments later, the cub seemed to remember some unfinished business and began wriggling again. It repeated the cycle of sleeping and crawling for a while, until it finally managed to sprawl across Meng Huaize’s chest. Its limbs were spread out, and its head rested under Meng Huaize’s chin, where it slept soundly.
Meng Huaize found it difficult to breathe with the weight pressing on his chest. He clenched his fists in frustration, resisting the urge to throw the restless wolf cub off him.
But this little spirit didn’t seem satisfied even after making it to his chest. After a short time, it began moving again. The cub’s front paws wrapped around Meng Huaize’s neck, and its head rubbed against his face, its cool, damp nose grazing his lips as if it were searching for food.
At this point, Meng Huaize couldn’t take it anymore. Summoning the courage, he grabbed the wolf cub’s tail, lifted it off his face, and gently moved it back to his chest.
Before he could pull his hand away, Wu Yue groggily opened his eyes. Meng Huaize froze, not daring to even breathe.
Wu Yue glanced at him but didn’t argue, changing his position and going back to sleep.
It took Meng Huaize a long while to finally exhale the breath he had been holding.
For the next half an hour, Meng Huaize peeled the wolf cub off his face four or five times. Eventually, too exhausted to continue and fearful of provoking the spirit, he gave up and let the little wolf do as it pleased.
By the time dawn approached, Meng Huaize had somehow fallen asleep, hugging the wolf cub tightly.