“Why bother…” Fatty Goodwin shouted.

“Get back!” the young man screamed at the top of his lungs.

The young man, agitated, kept flicking his lighter, the flame wavering dangerously close to the fuse of the dynamite. Henry Brooks was on edge, and Fatty Goodwin and the others hurriedly backed away, afraid of provoking him.

No one knew if the young man was simply too worked up, or if desperation had made him reckless, but the flame actually caught the fuse.

Watching the fuse sizzle and burn, the young man threw down the bundle of dynamite and jumped off the vehicle first.

Fatty Goodwin and the others scrambled out of the vehicle, using both hands and feet. Henry Brooks could no longer care about Grace Sutton at this point; he pried open the shattered window and tried to climb out— the lit dynamite had landed just a meter from Grace Sutton, and there were two large boxes of dynamite in the carriage. If they all went off together, there might not even be a trace of his bones left.

“Henry Brooks, I like you!” Grace Sutton shouted from behind.

Henry Brooks shuddered all over, freezing at the window. He turned to see Grace Sutton wedged in her seat, tears streaming down her face—he couldn’t tell if it was from fear or the pain of her leg being crushed by the black cauldron.

“Damn you!” Henry Brooks cursed at Grace Sutton, but even as he swore, he found himself unable to abandon her and escape through the window alone. He scrambled and rolled toward the burning dynamite, grabbed it, and hurled it toward the door.

Bang! The dynamite hit the doorframe and bounced back inside.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Henry Brooks watched as the fuse burned down to almost nothing, his heart pounding in terror. He lunged forward, grabbed the bundle of dynamite, and threw it toward the door again.

The bundle exploded violently in midair.

The powerful shockwave sent Henry Brooks flying, slamming him hard into the carriage. The pain in his back was so intense it nearly tore his nerves apart.

Seeing the terror in Grace Sutton’s eyes, Henry Brooks turned his head and saw that the dragon-head ear of the black cauldron had pierced deep into his back. Blood gushed out, soaking the cauldron. Henry Brooks’s head lolled to the side and he lost consciousness.

……

When Henry Brooks came to, his back was in excruciating pain. Through the haze, he saw Grace Sutton and Fatty Goodwin sitting with two police officers in the front seats, speaking in hushed tones. Fatty Goodwin was nervously smoking, and blood had soaked through Grace Sutton’s jeans—her left leg must have been injured by the dragon-head cauldron earlier…

Henry Brooks didn’t see anyone else, but this scene made him realize what kind of relationship Fatty Goodwin and Grace Sutton had with the police. He’d noticed their odd behavior along the way, but hadn’t thought much of it at the time.

Henry Brooks felt cold all over, completely drained of strength. The dragon-head ear of the black cauldron was still embedded in his back, as if it had drained all the blood from his body. His consciousness grew fuzzy, as though a black hole was sucking away his very soul.

This must be what dying feels like, Henry Brooks thought, feeling himself slipping away.

“Don’t talk, the ambulance will be here soon.” Grace Sutton saw Henry Brooks wake up and limped over, fighting through the pain to comfort him.

“What you said earlier—was it true?” Henry Brooks struggled to sit up, the pain threatening to tear his nerves apart. But even if he was dying, there was something he had to ask.

When he saw Grace Sutton’s gaze shift evasively behind him, Henry Brooks’s heart turned cold. He thought bitterly that risking his life to save her wasn’t worth it—he’d been used by this woman after all. He cursed, “Fuck you!” and his consciousness completely shattered.

What Henry Brooks didn’t know was that, at the very moment his mind collapsed, the dragon carving swirling around the black cauldron behind him suddenly flared with light. A dragon-shaped shadow, about a foot long, struggled out of the cauldron, and in the next instant, as if tearing through space, flashed before Grace Sutton’s eyes and vanished.

“What’s wrong, Xiao Su?” the middle-aged police officer turned around and saw Grace Sutton sitting stiffly in the aisle.

“Henry Brooks is gone.” Grace Sutton could no longer hold back the grief surging inside her. Tears streamed down as she hugged Henry Brooks’s cold body tightly in her arms…

Chapter 4 Shattered Memories

The towering Taiwei Mountains stretch for thousands of miles, spanning the northwest of Yanzhou.

On the western slopes of the Taiwei Mountains, the peaks are high and the valleys perilous, dense with vegetation and jagged rocks. The deepest parts are shrouded in perpetual mist and shadow, where rare spirit herbs grow and spirit beasts roam.

On a quiet afternoon, a young fox wandered through a tranquil forested valley, its steps silent on the stones. Its sky-blue fur was as smooth and beautiful as silk, and its two high, fluffy tails marked it as a rare variant even among the blue fox clan.

If discovered by humans, it would most likely be captured—its beautiful fur made into exquisite spirit armor, its flesh refined into spirit medicine. But at this moment, the young fox was captivated by the wonders of the world beyond the deep mountains, immersed in the mist filled with the spiritual energy of heaven and earth. It seemed that every breath of air here was fresher than that of the Nine Creek Fox Hills deep in the desert.

The young fox leapt onto a cliff as steep as a blade, and could just make out a great canyon winding deep into the western slopes of Taiwei Mountain. At the northern mouth of the canyon stood a majestic city.

The young fox, already awakened to intelligence, gazed longingly at the city at the canyon’s entrance. It had heard the elders of its clan say that this was Weijiang City, the fortress by which the Great Yan Empire controlled the northwestern slopes of the Taiwei Mountains and defended against the demon barbarians to the north.