Bai Youwei curled her lip, disappointed.
She had been hoping the young man would pull out every single one of Hans’s nails.
“This cottage has fewer nails than the others. The werewolf may choose to attack here.” Shen Mo mused quietly. “We need to be careful too — don’t wait until sundown only to find our own nails have been stolen.”
“We already know how to protect against the werewolf. But with so many people in this village, who’s actually going to become the werewolf?” Bai Youwei turned this over in her mind.
She and Shen Mo strolled along the roadside, occasionally peering through windows to observe the people inside.
Some were preparing lunch, some were wiping down tables and chairs, some were watering plants, some were scolding children —
“You wretched thing! What did you go and plant in my garden?! You’ve ruined all my seedlings!” A mother’s voice erupted from a cottage. “Take that garbage out and burn it! Or don’t bother coming back for dinner!!!”
Several fistfuls of uprooted weeds were flung out the door, and a little girl was shoved out along with them, tripping and falling hard to the ground.
Bai Youwei recognized her — it was the little girl who had been playing with a ball by the well. She looked to be about eight or nine years old, with light brown curly hair, a pale pink dress, white socks spotted with mud at the hem, and a pair of small brown leather shoes.
The little girl raised her arm, wiped the mud from her cheek, then gathered up the weeds from the doorstep and walked silently off in another direction down the street.
Bai Youwei considered for a moment, then went over to strike up a conversation. “Hey, little one~ what were you growing in the yard? Just these plants?”
The little girl ignored her and kept walking.
Bai Youwei tried again. “Oh? Your mom told you not to talk to strangers?”
The little girl stopped. Her eyes were startlingly cold. “She’s not my mother.”
Bai Youwei froze.
She didn’t know if it was her imagination, but for just an instant, she thought she saw the little girl’s pupils… turn to slits?
Shen Mo gave her a nudge. “What is it?”
Bai Youwei snapped back to herself and looked ahead again — the little girl had already walked away.
“Something’s strange…” Bai Youwei furrowed her brow, thought for a moment, then said, “Let’s follow her and see.”
…
A child should not walk quickly, yet after only one turn, Bai Youwei and Shen Mo had already lost her.
They quickened their pace, reached an intersection, looked left and right — still no sign of the little girl.
“This way.” Shen Mo said. “There are some crumbled dirt on the ground.”
The little girl still had those weeds in her arms, which must have been shedding soil as she walked. The two followed the trail of scattered earth, and it led them all the way to the edge of the village.
The trail of crumbled dirt ended there. So did the little girl.
The far edge of the village was an open, empty small square, deathly quiet all around. On one side of the square stood a tall stone pillar, at the base of which sat a charcoal brazier trailing thin wisps of smoke and the smell of burning grass.
Bai Youwei and Shen Mo went over to look. Near the brazier, they found a scattering of grass fragments.
“Strange — why not just throw them away? Why go all the way out here to burn them?” Bai Youwei picked up a piece of grass that had fallen outside the brazier and held it under her nose. Nothing unusual — just ordinary grass.
“What are you doing?”
A childlike voice rang out, startling Bai Youwei so badly she nearly jumped — the grass slipped from her fingers.
She turned around, and there was the little girl who had vanished only moments before, now standing right in front of her and Shen Mo, staring directly at them.
Bai Youwei instinctively looked to Shen Mo.
Shen Mo’s eyes held a flicker of surprise. He too had not noticed — when exactly had this little girl appeared? How had there been not a single sound of footsteps?
“This is the execution ground. What are you doing here?” the little girl asked, her expression one of pure, wide-eyed innocence.
—