1: Chapter 1 The Two-legged Sheep 1: Chapter 1 The Two-legged Sheep Jing Country, Ping Shui Prefecture, White Cloud Alley.
A yellow pedicab stopped at the entrance of White Cloud Alley, and the driver carefully woke the sleeping passenger inside.
“Sir, White Cloud Alley, we’ve arrived.”
Yun Asi was awakened by the driver, glanced at the alley, handed over a piece of small change, then, carrying his leather suitcase, got off the cab.
White Cloud Alley was very quiet.
On both sides of the alley, there were no wall coatings, the interlocking patterns between the green bricks were clearly exposed.
It was already evening by now, with the sky faintly darkening, so diligent working ladies in cheongsams had started their shift.
Dressed in cheongsams and wearing their precious jewelry, they leaned against the brick walls, showing off their plump and fair legs, waiting for clients to pick.
“Brother Si, you’re ho?”
“Brother Si, co visit my place, we’ve got a new radio, can listen to programs, quite interesting.” The wall-leaning lady took a drag of her cigarette, teasing Ah Si.
While they were chatting, blood dripped from Yun Asi’s suitcase.
Without changing his expression, he took out a handkerchief, wiped off the bloodstain, slightly bent his waist, waved his hand, politely rejected the ladies’ invitations while greeting them, and continued deeper into the alley.
146 White Cloud Alley,
Ho at last.
Yun Asi entered the house, took off his overcoat, wiped his face with a towel, and cleaned his hands and neck.
His wife, Zheng Lingzi, was arranging his suitcase at this ti.
Inside the suitcase, apart from a change of clothes and a few paper docunt bags, so unopened soap and bath towels from the hotel, there also lay conspicuously a bloodied lamb.
The lamb was not big, at most half a ter from head to tail, its belly split open, the innards already removed, the bloodstains on the flesh not yet dry.
The lamb itself was not unusual, but what was peculiar was that the lamb’s eyes were covered with a black cloth, its mouth sewn up tightly with dense stitches,
and on its four hooves were infant-sized black tiger-head shoes.
Zheng Lingzi drooled over the lamb but did not touch it.
Each business trip, Yun Asi would bring back a lamb, and its taste was indeed delicious, but to handle the lamb, it must be done by Ah Si himself.
There was one ti, Zheng Lingzi wanted to wash and cook the lamb herself; rely reaching out had earned her a slap from Yun Asi.
Thus, even if Zheng Lingzi craved the lamb, she could only hold back; she cleared out the bloody clothes and docunt bags.
Soaking the clothes in water, she took out the docunts, discarding the bags.
During the cleanup, Zheng Lingzi finally heard Yun Asi, who had finished washing up, say: “Ah Ling, I’m going to cook the lamb.”
She had been looking forward to this for a long ti, but in order not to seem greedy, she deliberately responded calmly, “Mm, add more scallions.”
“Alright.”
Yun Asi carried the lamb to the bedroom door then suddenly turned to ask: “By the way, Lingzi, since marrying , you often eat the lamb I bring back, right?”
“Mm.”
“How many have you eaten?”
“Twelve, why?”
“No…
nothing, sounds good, very good.”
Yun Asi finally brought the lamb to the kitchen.
Finding that they were out of vinegar, he put on his overcoat again and went to “Li’s Grocery Store” across the alley to fetch so.
anwhile, Zheng Lingzi, in front of the dressing mirror, started to pity her own figure.
“If I knew Ah Si was coming back today, I wouldn’t have agreed to eat braised lion’s head with the girls yesterday, my waist is going to thicken again.”
…
After fetching the vinegar, Yun Asi returned ho to start preparing the lamb.
First, he untied the black cloth covering the lamb’s eyes.
The lamb’s eyes were distinctive, horizontal pupils, wide left and right, flat top and bottom, staring into the eyes of a lamb could easily cause dizziness and nausea.
But the lamb on the cutting board at the mont was not like that.
If Zheng Lingzi were in the kitchen, with her perception, she could tell she had gained a few ounces just by her own sight, she would definitely notice that there was sothing strange about the lamb’s eyes.
“The eyes are quite beautiful indeed.”
After admiring them, Yun Asi used chopsticks to prick out the lamb’s eyeballs, flattened them with a cleaver, and threw them into the pot.
Then, he took off the tiger-head shoes on the lamb’s hooves.
After chopping off the hooves one by one, Yun Asi cut the threads sewing the lamb’s mouth.
The lamb’s mouth was forcefully sewn shut, taut inside; once the thread was cut, it “plopped” open on its own.
After pulling out the teeth, Yun Asi went about butchering the lamb with decisive cuts.
For a ti, the kitchen echoed with the sound of chopping.
Yun Asi often dealt with lamb and was very adept with his hands; within half an hour, the whole lamb turned into evenly sized pieces of at, neatly arranged into a clay pot to cook.
After preparing a dipping sauce with vinegar, sesa oil, and sesa paste, he sat on the couch to read the newspaper.
As the aroma of the lamb grew stronger, Zheng Lingzi drooled, Yun Asi put away the paper, entered the kitchen, prepared a bowl of herbal soup, and then served the clay pot.
The lamb was boiled in plain water, dipped in the sauce for its original flavor.
The color of the herbal soup was clear, with a slight orange tint, similar to the orange soda sold in restaurants.
“We often eat lamb, but this is your first ti making this soup.”
“Drink up, I learned it during my business trip in Mingjiang Prefecture, it’s refreshing and heat-relieving.”
Yun Asi said with a smile.
Zheng Lingzi was skeptical but tried a small sip and found the taste was really nice, fresh with a touch of sweetness, the texture very smooth.
She ate the lamb and drank the soup at the sa ti.
During this, she didn’t urge Yun Asi to eat lamb because Ah Si didn’t eat lamb; he said he naturally couldn’t stand the mutton sll.
But what she didn’t know was that Ah Si actually loved eating lamb,
only Ah Si didn’t eat the kind of lamb she was eating.
An entire lamb took a whole hour to eat, leaving Zheng Lingzi burping with fullness.
She gently patted her slightly rounded belly, quipped: “Ah Si, it’s all your fault.
When I go to work tomorrow, colleagues will definitely tease asking if I’m pregnant.”
“Hehe.”
Yun Asi looked at the tableful of lamb bones and the empty soup bowl, then with great interest, said: “Ah Ling, I heard so curious anecdotes on my business trip in Mingjiang Prefecture, want to hear?”
“What kind of tales?
Let’s hear them?” Zheng Lingzi, having eaten her fill, was in quite a good mood.
Yun Asi said, “In our tis, there is a martial arts world, and this world is vast.
Our Ping Shui Prefecture is in it, as is Mingjiang Prefecture, and even every State in Jing Country is in it.
There are many factions in the martial arts world, and everyone in each faction has their own special abilities.
So of these people say they’ve learned their abilities from Gods, while others say they’ve learned them from Evil Ghosts.
Those who learned their abilities from Gods are called Divine People, and those who learned their abilities from Evil Ghosts are called Ghosts.
The interesting tale I’m about to tell is about a Ghost.
The faction this Ghost belongs to is called—actors!”
Zheng Lingzi usually loved to watch plays; whenever Yun Asi was on a business trip, she often arranged with her girlfriends to go watch plays.
Being short on money, what they watched were naturally not grand performances, but just plays in small tea houses and small theaters.
She loved plays, and upon hearing “actors,” she beca even more interested and asked, “Are these actors the ones who perform in plays?”
“Much more skillful than ordinary actors.”
Yun Asi said, “Actors entrancing souls, seizing people’s souls, has never been just a rumor.
They are disciples of the Evil Ghost path; their ability to enthrall souls is top-notch among all the factions in Ping Shui Prefecture.
Hence when they commit murder, it’s often straightforward.
They need only to perform a scene from a Ghost Play, and they can hook the soul out of a living body, then take it to a deserted place and use special thods to kill the soul.
Once a person’s soul is dead, even if the body remains intact, it’s nothing more than an empty shell, a walking corpse.”
Zheng Lingzi got goosebumps all over her body and said, “Ah Si, when I often go to watch plays, I wouldn’t have had my soul hooked away, would I?”
“If you don’t have enemies and don’t wander in the martial arts world, who would bother to hook you?”
Yun Asi paused, then went on to say, “However, for actors, hooking a soul is easy but killing a soul is not.
Because the art of killing a soul can easily give them away, and once it’s traced by a knowledgeable and powerful person, they can follow the trail and find the actor who killed the soul.
The only way actors can kill a soul without drawing attention is by ‘raising sheep.'”
Sheep?
Upon hearing this word, Zheng Lingzi’s body shuddered for no reason.
Pretending to act coquettishly, she said, “Oh dear, Ah Si, are you trying to scare after I just ate sheep?”
Yun Asi ignored her and continued on his own, “The soul that is to be killed is drawn into the body of a sheep using soul-drawing techniques, and then the sheep is raised for seven days.
Over those seven days, the sheep’s body fuses with the person’s soul.”
Zheng Lingzi, thinking about the sheep ntioned in Ah Si’s words, comparing it to the sheep she had eaten, suddenly…
“Ugh!”
She rushed into the toilet, wanting to vomit violently, but nothing ca out.
Yun Asi, like a soul-reaping ghost, his cold voice pierced Zheng Lingzi’s ears like a knife.
“The well-raised sheep, slaughtered, while the soul has not yet left the body!
From then on, the soul is thoroughly dead.
Even a highly skilled person whose knowledge of the way is as high as the heavens will never be able to trace the fate of this lost soul.”
Zheng Lingzi understood now, she was never Yun Asi’s wife but rather the cleaner for Ah Si after his murders.
“Urgh, urgh!”
Zheng Lingzi tried hard to gag herself, wanting to curse, to flee, but what she wanted most was to vomit out the sheep she had eaten.
But she found her fingers couldn’t reach her mouth, and looking down she discovered that, unbeknownst to her, her fingers had turned into hooves!
“Ah?”
Zheng Lingzi quickly looked in the mirror and saw that many white hairs had sprouted on her face, her pupils had changed from round to elongated,
She cried, cried in utter despair, “Yun Asi…
h…
you…
h…
life!”
Whenever she tried to say sothing more complex, her tongue seed to knot, and as the breath reached her mouth, it only ca out as a sheep’s bleat.
She was turning into a sheep, and the reason for this was because she drank the bowl of herb soup made by Yun Asi that looked like fizzy orange soda.
She had drunk this soup for the first ti today, and it would also be the last ti.
“The efficiency of the soup made by a vet is indeed good.”
Yun Asi held his wife’s head and gently kissed it, saying, “Lingzi, I truly didn’t want you to die,
but this ti the person I killed is Zhou Xuan, the Young Master of Zhou Family’s Troupe!
Zhou Family has Divine People, I was afraid they would find , so to be completely sure, I had to make you suffer…”
The night was already very deep, Yun Asi carried his suitcase, walking out of his ho.
The young lady who made a living by the walls in the alley greeted him warmly as usual: “Ah Si, heading out again?”
“Yes, business matters.
I need to go on a trip.”
Yun Asi politely bowed, and after greeting her, he called a rickshaw at the entrance of the alley.
“Take to Taiping Road.” Yun Asi got into the rickshaw.
Upon arriving at Taiping Road,
Yun Asi stood in front of “Jialin Western Pastry Shop.”
The pastry shop had an awning installed for when it rained.
Passengers waiting for the tram would stand under it.
Yun Asi opened his suitcase, took out a half-ter-tall sheep, and just as the tram was about 10 ters away from him, he threw the sheep onto the tracks.
The roaring tram rolled heavily over the sheep, like stepping on a white peach, the flesh crushed, juice splattering everywhere.
The tram tracks on Taiping Road pass through busy districts; it’s a common occurrence for the tram to hit and kill people, so who would pay attention to a sheep being crushed?
Yun Asi made a trip to the hotel, and when he erged, he had tossed away his suitcase.
He wore a brand-new long robe, a brand-new hat, and had a—brand-new face.
Actors are not only adept at soul-snatching but also skilled in changing faces,
but what they are best at,
is naturally acting.
Aside from being Yun Asi in life, he also had another face, another identity.
“Rickshaw.”
“Sir, where to?”
“To Zhou Family’s Troupe.” Yun Asi got on the rickshaw and slept.
This ti he truly slept very soundly.
Zhou Xuan’s soul had been dealt with cleanly, even Ah Li, who devoured the soul, had been cleanly dealt with.
This major task, deed completely accomplished,
behind the scenes, the faction would generously reward, while on the surface, he still remained a senior mber of Zhou Family’s Troupe.
The salary was good, and the respect was still there…
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