I personally feel that that incident was the first time the higher-ups started to pay attention to the Changsha Old Nine Gates, and it marked the beginning of their efforts to abolish them [npfans note: original text as is]. So after that, Grandpa kept a low profile and rarely went out. That’s why I was so surprised when someone suddenly asked me about my Grandpa.

Dog King Dog Fifth Master—the most interesting thing, of course, was the dogs my Grandpa raised. My Grandpa was obsessed with dogs and kept quite a few. He had a deep understanding of dogs, but at the same time, he also ate dog meat, and enjoyed it the most, which was very strange.

My Grandpa’s favorite dog was called Three-Inch Nail, a very small Tibetan ?. This kind of dog never grows big, only a few hundred grams. My Grandpa always carried it around in his sleeve.

My Grandpa said this breed was the most alert of all dogs, extremely distrustful of strangers, and it was very hard to gain its trust. If someone wanted to harm its owner, the dog would definitely warn its master from inside the sleeve.

After the incident, my Grandpa no longer trusted people. The fickleness of the world left him disheartened, so he always carried this dog with him. But after moving to Hangzhou, life was much more peaceful, without all the drama of old Changsha. However, Grandpa once told me something that made me see this dog in a new light.

My Grandpa was not afraid of ghosts or gods, only of the human heart, but even he had exceptions. Once, he went to Nanning in Guangxi and stayed at a guesthouse. That night, when he went to the bathroom (back then, guesthouses all had shared toilets), he noticed something odd about one part of the bathroom. It seemed to have been modified, with wooden planks nailed all around. He had an upset stomach, and while he was sitting there, bored, he peeked through the gaps between the planks and saw that behind them was an iron door.

He thought for a moment and realized that the owner had partitioned off part of the corridor, creating a space of about one or two square meters to make a bathroom. The door was originally at the end of the corridor.

He found it strange—didn’t this mean there was one less room? Why would the owner do this?

The wooden planks were flexible, and the nails were rotten. He pried open the planks and looked inside, discovering that the iron door behind was rusted beyond recognition. Oddly, there were traces of ingot-shaped candles on the door, and the doorframe was welded shut.

The iron door was the barred type, with a wooden door inside. Everyone should be familiar with this kind of door—it was the earliest kind of security door. Grandpa reached in and gave it a push, discovering that the wooden door inside wasn’t locked and could be opened.

He thought it was odd. My Grandpa was so bold that he couldn’t possibly be scared in a place like this. He simply pushed hard, trying to open the wooden door wide.

But as he pushed the door open to a certain point, it suddenly hit something and wouldn’t budge. My Grandpa pushed a few more times and felt something was off. It didn’t feel like the door was stuck on something—it felt like a person was blocking it.

He gasped, immediately closed the wooden door, and turned to leave at once. Behind him, he heard the sound of the wooden door being pried open by something.

Back in his room, he felt the whole thing was strange, but after waiting a while and hearing nothing else, he didn’t want to think about it further. He’d encountered too many strange things—maybe the owner just had a peeping habit.

In the middle of the night, he suddenly felt uncomfortable all over and smelled a very strange odor. Half-awake, he opened his eyes and saw, right at his bedside, a person of incredible height. This person’s head was unusually long, and with the height of the head added, he was definitely over two meters tall, but as thin as a stick. He wasn’t wearing any clothes, and his skin, under the moonlight streaming through the window, seemed almost transparent.

The strangest thing was, his Three-Inch Nail was lying on his chest, calmly staring down the two-meter-tall monster. Not only was it not barking, it wasn’t afraid at all.

After that, Grandpa drifted back to sleep, and when he woke up, everything was fine. But when he recalled what happened that night, he broke out in a cold sweat.

After leaving Nanning, he remained obsessed with this incident. What exactly was that thing? And the way Three-Inch Nail acted that night also puzzled him.

Grandpa told me that later, when he asked around, others told him that what he saw resembled a person with a deformity, and that Tibetan ? was a Buddhist temple dog, a dog at the feet of the Bodhisattva, usually kept in temples. That night, maybe Three-Inch Nail lying on your chest was meant to protect your life.

After that, my Grandpa saw Three-Inch Nail in a new light, and it became the most favored among his dozen or so dogs [npfans note: original text as is]. That dog was indeed a bit mystical. Three days after my Grandpa passed away, the dog disappeared and was never seen again. No one knows if it was stolen and eaten during the chaos, or what happened.

Blackback Old Miller (with Blackback Old Miller portrait illustration)

Speaking of Blackback Old Miller, there’s a story here. It’s said that sometimes, when tomb robbers are in a tomb, nothing seems amiss, but as they exit the tunnel, they suddenly feel someone put a hand on their shoulder, and no matter what, they can’t shake it off. That’s how “Blackback Old Miller” got his name—there’s a black handprint on his shoulder, said to be from being “tapped.”

When this happens, you’re supposed to close your eyes, turn around, and blow a breath to blow away the hand on your shoulder. The harder you blow, the higher your chances of success. After blowing, you mustn’t look back again, or you’ll see something unpleasant.