Looks like it was just a trick to fool people!”

After cursing, Brian Cooper calmed himself down.

He climbed out of bed, went outside to the latrine to relieve himself, and when he returned, he saw that all the doors in the laymen’s courtyard were already closed. Some rooms faintly echoed with voices and laughter, while others resounded with thunderous snores.

The mountain wind was bitterly cold, piercing straight into Brian Cooper’s bones.

Not daring to linger outside for long, he returned to his single room, wrapped himself in his quilt, and sat cross-legged on the bed.

“At this hour, most people in the laymen’s courtyard aren’t asleep yet.

Xu Hai probably won’t come to deliver medicine at this time, I need to be mindful of the impact…” Brian Cooper frowned in thought, his mind turning: “I can’t sleep anyway, might as well take a Ghost Spirit Pill and see what happens.”

Having made up his mind, he took a palm-sized pill bottle from a hidden pocket in his clothes.

The bottle felt cool to the touch, and rattled with a clattering sound when shaken.

Uncorking the bottle, Brian Cooper squinted at the opening, and by the moonlight streaming in through the window, he could just make out three grayish-white pills lying inside. A minty medicinal scent rushed into his nostrils, instantly clearing his mind.

Good stuff!

His head had been muddled, but the scent jolted him awake, and he silently praised it.

He poured a Ghost Spirit Pill into his palm. Brian Cooper hesitated for a moment, just about to swallow it, when a sudden sharp pain shot through his left wrist holding the pill, followed by a wave of icy coldness invading his forearm!

A purple-blue claw-mark-like imprint suddenly appeared at his left elbow, instantly winding around his entire forearm, converging at his wrist into an eye!

That ‘eye’ moved beneath Brian Cooper’s skin, slid into his palm, and in a flash turned into a vortex, trying to devour the Ghost Spirit Pill in Brian Cooper’s hand!

“Woof—” A dog’s bark suddenly echoed in Brian Cooper’s mind!

The vortex in his palm spun violently, but couldn’t swallow the Ghost Spirit Pill!

The chill on his arm instantly spread throughout his body, as if trying to break free from the constraints of his flesh!

He pressed close to the window lattice, the moonlight outside casting his face pale as paper.

The moonlight projected onto the wall behind him, where the shadow of a giant wolf loomed, its mouth dripping liquid, its four limbs also oozing fluid.

Those black liquids overflowed from the wall, transforming from a formless shadow into a pool of blood, threatening to engulf Brian Cooper!

Chapter 7: Dog God

“Woof!”

“Yip—squeak!”

Dog-like sounds, sometimes low and threatening, sometimes soft and pleading, alternated in Brian Cooper’s mind.

In that instant, he remembered the big wolfdog he’d raised in the countryside in his previous life.

“You can’t avoid a dog’s gaze just because you’re afraid of its size… Communicating with a dog, you must always maintain control, making it deeply aware that you have absolute dominance over it… In some cases, dogs have been found deliberately blocking children’s paths at home, or seemingly accidentally knocking them over, as well as attacking women or elderly people who feed them.

These cases show that dogs consider their status in the family higher than that of infants, children, even the mistress or the elderly.

This must be corrected in time, so it understands its true place in the family.”

…

“You are the dog’s master, the alpha in its eyes. You must not let it become your master, your alpha!”

The cases and training methods Brian Cooper had studied and personally summarized while raising that wolfdog in his previous life all flashed through his mind at this moment.

A surge of youthful courage welled up within him!

“What’s your name!”

“Shut up!”

Brian Cooper didn’t know if he shouted these two sentences in his mind or out loud in reality.

As his shout fell, he felt the icy cold that seemed to freeze his whole body suddenly lessen, and the ‘dog-headed ghost god’ in his mind now only growled threateningly.

Brian Cooper ‘saw’ this scene: a giant dog, its four legs dripping with blood and its body covered in purple-blue markings, faced him, crouching low as if about to pounce, yet hesitating.

“I promised to help you get revenge, but now is not the time!”

“How dare you threaten me, even try to snatch things from my hand!”

“Have you forgotten how I suppressed you before?!”

Brian Cooper knew this was a fleeting opportunity, and in a flash, he rebuked the dog-headed ghost god in his heart.

His will was firm, his courage fierce, and he even borrowed the power of the Celestial Life-and-Death Wheel—now completely unusable but still residing in his soul—as a means to intimidate the dog-headed ghost god!

“Yip—yip—” The dog-headed ghost god whimpered again in his mind.

Brian Cooper’s soul seemed to see the dog-headed ghost god raise its bloody left forepaw to cover its eyes, its body leaning to one side, as if unable to face him.

Even so, he dared not relax. While raising his hand to put the Ghost Spirit Pill into his mouth, he shouted inwardly: “I was going to give you this pill, but since you’re disobedient, you don’t get any!

I’ll eat it myself!”

He didn’t have time to savor the taste of the Ghost Spirit Pill, swallowing it whole.

Immediately, wisps of cold gathered at his brow, making his soul ever clearer, as if he could temporarily shake off the fatigue and exhaustion of his body, and faintly hear sounds from even farther away.