Chapter 5: Soul Slayer

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The boy did not grasp the joke about “werewolves and the full moon.” Perhaps no one in this world could truly understand it anymore.

Ye Zhengliu was tending to the boy’s numerous swollen wounds. As she worked, her palm rested flat against his body, and she could sense his faint tremors—easily overlooked by others. It wasn’t fear that caused them, but pain.

Without anesthesia or laughing gas, not even a sip of strong liquor, the boy endured being cut alive with a knife in silence. He truly had ironclad bones.

To distract him, Ye Zhengliu made some small talk, briefly introducing herself and asking who he was. The boy fell silent for a moment; it was unclear whether it was due to pain or thought. After a while, he hoarsely said, “They all call me ‘Soul Slayer.’”

Curious, Ye Zhengliu asked, “And what do you call yourself?”

He said nothing, merely turned his head slightly toward Ye Zhengliu. If not for the cloth covering his eyes, they might have shared a complex, meaningful gaze.

“I’m called...” Ye Zhengliu had asked on a whim, but upon hearing his reply, her wrist trembled involuntarily, nearly slicing a major artery near his thigh.

With her composure, she shouldn’t have been so startled. Knowing the general literacy level in this world, she was prepared even if this sharp, straightforward boy answered with something like “My name’s Er Gou Dan.”

But the answer was beyond her expectations.

He didn’t say a silly phrase like “My name’s Er Gou Dan.”

He didn’t speak human words at all.

The moment he opened his mouth, he emitted a short, piercing, and eerily authentic wolf howl!

Ye Zhengliu was speechless.

Caught off guard, her hand holding the sword froze in place, stunned. As if anticipating her reaction, or perhaps showing a rare tenderness in his life, Soul Slayer repeated the wolf howl at the same pitch and tone, softly adding, “That’s what I’m called.”

This time, from start to finish, Ye Zhengliu heard it clearly.

Years of watching “Animal World” had taught her this was no code, no foreign language, and she hadn’t misunderstood.

That was simply a wolf’s howl.

Ye Zhengliu was at a loss for words.

How could she describe this complex feeling?

She had always thought “wolf” was just a metaphor, a literary device for effect.

But now it seemed it was an official identity personally certified?

What the hell kind of statement was this!

Taking a deep breath, Ye Zhengliu didn’t know what to say and awkwardly changed the subject.

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Fortunately, Soul Slayer had no objection to Ye Zhengliu’s clumsy conversational skills. He seemed accustomed to such patchy exchanges, responding well to all her topics.

Ye Zhengliu guessed this person must be very skilled at killing conversations.

A werewolf, clearly the king of awkward silences.

After a few rounds of back-and-forth, Ye Zhengliu finished treating the boy’s wounds and pieced together some of his background.

Soul Slayer’s claim to being a wolf was not unfounded—he was a feral child.

Of course, knowing this world was a mystical, unscientific one, Ye Zhengliu maintained her composure upon hearing that “a pack of she-wolves took turns teaching Soul Slayer human speech.”

Wolves speaking human language was just basic protocol. Who hadn’t heard of Little Red Riding Hood?

The she-wolves only taught him the most basic human phrases, like modern children learning a foreign language. Before encountering human society, Soul Slayer could only say a few words like “Hello” and “Have you eaten?”

Ye Zhengliu felt this was reasonable; after all, they were just wolves. Being able to speak human language at all was impressive.

Besides his wolf mothers, another person played a major role in helping Soul Slayer speak smoothly and communicate effortlessly with Ye Zhengliu.

That person was Soul Slayer’s former roommate.

“I didn’t... I killed them all,” Soul Slayer stammered, his word order a little off but still understandable.

“Ten people lived here. The one who taught me to speak was among them. Then they said the others were rivals, and suddenly they fought and died. They stole our stuff; I cut them, then they died. Then my teacher got hurt in the fight and died... In the end, only I was left.”

His “then... then” sentence structure was like a first grader’s, giving Ye Zhengliu a headache.

Still, she extracted the main point.

“So you mean your roommates fought each other, and to protect your teacher you killed them all, but your teacher later died from serious injuries?”

She cautiously asked, “You only killed once, and after that, the jailers let you live alone?”

“No.” Soul Slayer’s answer was unusually frank. “Living alone is comfortable.”

Ye Zhengliu was speechless—so you still massacred your roommates? Probably more than once!

She silently praised his honesty and decided to keep him tied up for the time being.

Just then, she finished cleaning the last wounds on Soul Slayer’s calf and went to the corner of the cell to wash her hands. Soul Slayer turned his head toward the sound.

“Let me go,” he said calmly. “I know you’re afraid I’ll kill you. But I never kill women.”

Ye Zhengliu looked at him, surprised by his unexpected sensitivity and sharpness.

Soul Slayer seemed to misunderstand her silence. He said steadily:

“The wolf pack told me, ‘That woman crawled into the whispering bushes, cut open her belly, pulled me out, and bit through my umbilical cord. She bled so much that crows and jackals circled her. She threw out her intestines to feed them—enough to feed a lamb.

The full crows flew away, but the jackals still lingered, so the woman shouted to the sky: Ancestral mountains, dense forests, earth and waters—help my child.

The wolf pack, across the ancestral mountains, through the dense forests and winding waters, heard her voice, followed it, and carried me away, licking the blood off me.’”

“Because of her, in the presence of the ancestral mountains, forests, earth, and water, I will never harm a woman.”

...

Ye Zhengliu pondered for a moment, then stepped forward and removed the black blindfold from Soul Slayer’s face.

The broad, black cloth fell away, and the first thing Ye Zhengliu saw were bright eyes shining even in the dark room.

Those eyes were fierce, cold, utterly predatory; yet also hazy, confused, curious, innocent, and bewildered.

The savage nature of an adult wolf mixed with the purity of a human boy brewed a unique, contradictory aura in Soul Slayer.

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That moment of eye contact felt to Ye Zhengliu like witnessing a wild beast wielding a sword.

Naïve innocence and unmasked killing intent clashed and conflicted, yet blended in an utterly unreasonable way, creating a memorable, unforgettable complexity.

Soul Slayer did not rush her to untie him. He stared unblinkingly at Ye Zhengliu’s face, for the first time discerning the life he shared with his mother—not through others’ words, but through his own eyes.

He whispered, “Woman?”

Ye Zhengliu corrected him, “She’s a woman.”

Soul Slayer blinked, as if understanding a little: “Then... should I call her woman too?”

“She is a woman,” Ye Zhengliu sighed. “But to you, she is more—your mother.”

“...Mother,” Soul Slayer murmured the new phrase, “Mother, mother...”

While he muttered softly, Ye Zhengliu silently loosened the ropes binding his hands and feet.

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On the first day as roommates, Ye Zhengliu and Soul Slayer each occupied a corner of the cell, leaning against opposite stone walls. Occasionally their eyes met, but they coexisted peacefully.

Soul Slayer lay on the straw, still feverish, eyes mostly closed, breathing deeply as if asleep.

He curled up like a true wild beast when injured, patiently waiting for pain and weakness to leave him.

Of the twelve hours in a day, Soul Slayer devoted most of his time to sleep. When he woke from his haze, he didn’t trouble Ye Zhengliu but struggled to the clay bowl to drink some water.

Seizing the chance while her new roommate was distracted, Ye Zhengliu delved deeply into studying her cards.

After repeated experiments, she discovered that Skill One, “The Shepherd Points to Apricot Village,” Skill Two, “I Have a Long Strategy, He May Be Whipped Slowly,” and Skill Three, “A Ten-Year Dream of Yangzhou,” could be used simultaneously.

Skills One and Two combined could last a long time—about six to seven minutes, according to her pulse calculations. Ye Zhengliu guessed these two skills were designed to complement each other.

Both could be used repeatedly; she used them twelve times in a row without feeling exhausted.

As for Skill Three, it lasted only five seconds each time. Judging by its range, it could cover the entire cell, which meant a radius of at least three meters.

Moreover, “A Ten-Year Dream of Yangzhou” could not be immediately reused after its effect wore off. Its cooldown was about fourteen to fifteen seconds.

Thinking long-term, when the effect ended and the cooldown began, Ye Zhengliu needed to move in the direction indicated by Skill One to avoid enemy attacks.

Analyzing her current combat ability, Ye Zhengliu felt her next goals were to increase her chance of one-hit kills and improve her reaction speed to the arrow of “The Shepherd Points to Apricot Village.”

Otherwise, if she faced an opponent like Ying Luanxing, and failed to kill him in the first strike, the fifteen-second gap would be enough for him to kill her twenty times over.

After nearly two hours of tinkering, Soul Slayer had finished a nap and stubbornly moved a few steps toward the stone-barred cell door.

What was he doing?

Ye Zhengliu followed his gaze, wondering. After a short while, footsteps echoed faintly down the corridor, accompanied by the dragging sound of wooden floorboards.

Two jailers she had seen earlier rounded the corner, each carrying a large food container about waist-high. Soul Slayer watched the containers intently, his nostrils twitching as he smelled the cooked rice’s aroma.

The tall jailer hadn’t forgotten his promise to Ye Zhengliu. This time, he also brought her a new set of clean bowls and chopsticks, along with fresh straw, instantly upgrading her living standards.

Dinner was mixed-grain bean rice; Soul Slayer and Ye Zhengliu each received a full bowl. The jailers gave Ye Zhengliu an extra glance, seemingly surprised by how well she had adapted.

Ye Zhengliu smiled wryly: Of course she adapted. If she had been picky, she would have died long ago.

Her first act upon arriving in this world was to pull herself out of a pile of corpses. After three years as a refugee, her first reaction upon seeing bugs was to add them to her meals.

Now, with shelter overhead and warm bean rice to eat, she chose to be optimistic about this forced gladiator life—treating it, for now, as a kind of vacation.