Chapter 185 — Mad Dog
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 3 of 7
In the dark night, the Wild Wolf Daoist's faintly glimmering eyes flickered, and he slowly removed the cloth from his face, revealing his strange features. In a low voice he said: "Uh, I'm really all right... but you've been busy another whole day—you must be the one worn out?"
Zhou Yixuan stopped too, glanced around, and saw a dead log lying on its side nearby. He hurried over, plopped himself down on it, and stretched in a great lazy yawn of relief from the bottom of his heart. Then he shot Xiao Wan a look and said: "Yes, she's the busy one, she's the merciful one—so she gave her own grandfather's rations away to others to eat, and now even your grandfather goes hungry."
Xiao Wan blushed, came over, and stood behind Zhou Yixuan. She reached out both hands and gently pounded his shoulders. "Grandfather, we're still not so bad off. But look at those people—if they don't eat something soon, they truly won't have the strength to walk on, and I fear they'll die where they stand."
The Wild Wolf Daoist looked about and said: "You two sit here a while. I'll go into the woods and see if I can catch some game, just to stave off hunger for now."
Xiao Wan smiled at the Wild Wolf Daoist: "All right, thank you for the trouble, Daoist."
The Wild Wolf Daoist grinned broadly. Zhou Yixuan suddenly gave a sniff and sneered: "What are you grinning for?
And grinning's one thing, but why do I, this old man, find your grin so utterly lecherous? Don't tell me you've got some wicked thought brewing in that head of yours?"
The Wild Wolf Daoist started in fright and hastily wiped the grin from his face. He glanced at Xiao Wan, and seeing her looking at him with a trace of apology, his eyes lit up at once—where was there the slightest anger left in him? He acted as though Zhou Yixuan did not exist at all, utterly ignoring him, and said to Xiao Wan: "Then wait for me to come back." With that, he strode quickly into the forest.
Zhou Yixuan grumbled a few cross words under his breath, and Xiao Wan chided gently from behind him: "Grandfather, that Wild Dog Daoist has been with us so long now—why do you still never give him a kind look? And besides, he's taken care of us all along this road, and he's not a bad man!"
Zhou Yixuan snorted: "And what do you know of bad men and good? He follows us only because he wants to..."
"Grandfather!" Xiao Wan cried, cutting him off. Zhou Yixuan stammered a few complaints and said no more.
Whish, whish came sounds from the forest, followed by a flurry of flapping. After a good while, quick footsteps approached, and the Wild Wolf Daoist, his face alight with joy, came running out of the woods carrying a wild bird. In the days since that great calamity of the beast-demons, all living things had been laid waste; even in the mountains and wilds, these beasts and birds were scarcer than in former days. Today the Wild Wolf Daoist had been lucky indeed—he had actually caught a bird that had slipped the net!
The Wild Wolf Daoist ran back to the clearing, elated, and called out loudly: "Look what I've caught..." Suddenly his voice broke off—upon the open ground where they had been, there was not a single soul. Zhou Yixuan and Xiao Wan had both vanished.
"Plop." The wild bird fell from the Wild Wolf Daoist's hand to the ground.
The night wind was cold, and the chill seemed in an instant to seep into the very marrow of his bones. The Wild Wolf Daoist's body began, somehow, faintly to tremble. He walked forward step by step; upon that dead log lying on the ground there were even the marks where Zhou Yixuan had just sat.
"They've gone, gone..." The Wild Wolf Daoist's mind was in utter chaos, and upon that dog's face his expression shifted and changed, a look of vast terror and grief. At this moment the wild dog stood dumb as a wooden cock, but a moment later his body suddenly