Beside her was a…
Jiang Lian drew in a sharp breath.
It was a tiger.
Now he knew where the earlier howl had come from. A tiger’s roar in the mountains—as the saying goes, “Wind follows the tiger, clouds follow the dragon.” Wind is the energy of vibration; when wind and tiger interact, the roar rises, and winds follow from all directions. It was indeed so.
Jiang Lian had seen tigers before, but over many years, tigers had been either confined to zoos or rendered as cartoons, making him almost forget what a real tiger looked like.
This was a somewhat aged tiger, and a large one at that. Nearly three meters long, with a tail like a steel brush that curved slightly upward at the end, measuring about a meter in length. It was a South China tiger, rarely growing to such an enormous size.
When it moved, its thick pads made no sound, but the muscles of its body surged powerfully, suggesting the mountain-shaking force hidden beneath its fur. People say a tiger’s paw strike weighs a ton, allowing it to easily kill a person with a single blow, though he didn’t know if that was true.
Due to insufficient light at night, the tiger’s eyes looked like two large ping-pong balls giving off a white glow. But those deep tiger eyes still made one afraid to meet its gaze, fearing one’s soul might be seized and one’s spirit captured.
As this woman and tiger passed by, Jiang Lian held his breath.
Not just him—Qiu Dong and the others also stood rigidly, enduring this moment. Jiang Lian noticed that Meng Qianzi’s arm and leg facing his side both had knife wounds. The blood streaks dripping down came from these wounds, but they certainly weren’t injuries from the fight: the top three were horizontal, the bottom three curved in reverse, arranged very neatly with almost identical spacing.
Meng Qianzi led the tiger, stopping not far away, freezing into two silhouettes in Jiang Lian’s eyes—one standing, one crouching.
From farther away came the sounds of beasts roaring. Occasionally, one or two extremely miserable human cries could also be heard.
After who knows how long, Jiang Lian saw Meng Qianzi lower her hand and stroke the tiger’s head.
The tiger rose, turned, and walked away. Initially, with slow, measured steps, then after a while, with a leap, it vanished into the vast darkness of night.
Only then did the people around him truly relax. Jiang Lian heard Qiu Dong murmur: “There aren’t many tigers left in our Western Hunan mountains.”
Someone nearby responded: “Yes, I heard my grandmother say that in ’49, the People’s Liberation Army eliminated bandits and tigers. In half a year, more than eighty tigers were killed across eight counties in the region. Just in the valley behind my grandmother’s village, four were killed… Now, in such deep mountains, even with Miss Meng casting such a powerful spell, there was only… this one, looking somewhat aged, without even a cub by its side.”
It was probably the last tiger in the great mountains of Western Hunan.
When the mountain beasts stirred, they gathered as a fierce wave of attack with a heaven-shattering, earth-shaking momentum. But as they dispersed, except for occasional distant beast roars, they were almost soundless.
All that had just happened seemed like a dream in the mountain forest night.
Several bonfires were lit in succession. The battlefield where life-and-death struggles had taken place moments before became a temporary campsite.
Almost every Mountain Ghost member was injured, two of them severely. Qiu Dong’s team hadn’t brought medical supplies, so they had to make do with what they had. He led those with lighter injuries to gather nearby herbs, then divided the manpower into two groups—one to care for the severely injured, the other to help Meng Qianzi bandage her wounds.
Without proper bandages, they had to tear their clothes. The sound of fabric ripping was constant. Jiang Lian couldn’t help, so he stepped aside to avoid hindering others.
Only after Qiu Dong finished bandaging Meng Qianzi did Jiang Lian approach and hand her something: “Yours.”
Meng Qianzi and Qiu Dong both looked up.
In the bright, dancing firelight, a gold-copper colored chain dangled from Jiang Lian’s fingers, the end still trembling slightly. Several thin circular pieces clinked against each other, producing a very faint bell-like sound.
Qiu Dong’s lips moved slightly, as if wanting to say something, but he held back.
Meng Qianzi responded noncommittally: “Oh, this.”
She raised her hand to take it, her fingertips inadvertently brushing his. Only after clutching the chain in her palm did she smile lightly and look up at him: “We’re even now. You can go.”
Then she instructed Qiu Dong: “Call Jinsong and ask if he’s found Kuang Meiying and Wei Biao. If so, tell him not to trouble them anymore.”