Chapter 121: Wolves Do Not Devour Maidens

Fu Nian raised his head and gazed at his mother’s corpse, his expression hovering between a smile and a sneer.

“You always told me to endure, to bow my head and yield. But what about you? You could never tolerate the circumstances of my birth! You always used forbearance as an excuse to avoid revealing the past, when in truth, you were the one most unwilling to face it. That is what I hate most…”

Fu Nian looked at the people before him, who had been frightened senseless. He pulled back his bloodstained lips and licked away the blood.

“So here is the question: I have killed even my closest kin. What about you beasts who keep looking for trouble?”

The moment Fu Nian finished speaking, the guitar’s notes rose sharply. Countless blood-red threads spread over the entire village, crisscrossing one another as they sliced every living creature into mangled fragments.

When it was over, Fu Nian staggered to his feet and began searching among the corpses for the scattered pretty toes. Whenever he found a delicate, beautiful toe, his entire body trembled with excitement. He strung them together with silver wire, then coated the nails in brilliant crimson polish. At first glance, they looked almost lovely; but the closer one looked, the more chilling and horrifying they became.

What a grotesque and perverted hobby!

From then on, Fu Nian often targeted pretty girls. After killing them, he touched nothing else, taking only their two beautiful big toes. As time passed, rumors spread throughout the region near Half-Moon Island about a girl killer.

Whenever Mu You saw Fu Nian painting the girls’ big toenails a vivid scarlet, then carefully stringing them together, his expression filled with greedy, feverish madness, he felt sickened. Eventually, Fu Nian was captured by the police and sent to this death-row amusement park. Only then did the scene begin to fade into darkness once more.

As the image changed, Mu You felt a sudden, inexplicable pain in his heart. From that moment onward, Fu Nian was forever severed from familial affection. He seemed to have gained a deeper understanding of Death Breeding. True death was not merely the extinguishing of life, but the complete loss of whatever one relied upon to remain alive—the total death of the heart, leaving one like a walking corpse.

Nono, who had lost herself.

Fu Nian, who had killed his own mother with his hands.

They were all people whose hearts had already died. To them, living was no different from dying: they drifted through the days in a daze, merely existing from one moment to the next.

The scene changed again.

This time, it showed a primeval forest. Dense woodland rose across layer upon layer of mountains, winding through rugged peaks and valleys. Sheer cliffs appeared and vanished among the trees. From afar, the terrain seemed to breathe with the spirit of dragons; the mountain ridges were smooth and richly contoured, their structure distinct and harmonious. A sea of trees rolled toward them from the distance in endless ripples, magnificent beyond words and breathtaking to behold.

Yet in this desolate wilderness, untouched by human presence, the sounds of human sobbing and struggling could be heard.

When Mu You drew closer, he saw faint traces of blood amid the mottled undergrowth. The farther the trail went, the thicker it became, until it formed a crimson smear stretching all the way to the summit of the cliff.

When Mu You saw the owner of the blood, he was so stunned that he could not utter a word.

The sight was unbearably cruel.

The blood was flowing from a young woman who had been torn apart from the waist down, leaving only her upper body. Blood gushed from her wounds at intervals, yet she clung desperately to the last of her strength, cradling the swaddled infant in her arms as she struggled toward the edge of the cliff.

Her face was filled with unwillingness and despair. But she had no choice. Everything below her abdomen had been ripped away by wild beasts. It had all been part of that man’s scheme.

After learning that she was carrying his child—and seeing that she was determined to give birth despite everything—he had arranged an outing as an excuse to lead her alone into a pack of wolves. Now she could no longer move. Even the mermaid tattoo on her back had been dyed completely red with blood. Summoning all her remaining strength, she placed the child she had just torn from her womb upon her back.

Then the howls began to close in behind her.

Desperate, she used the last scrap of strength left in her body to carry the child to the cliff’s edge. The wolves had already caught up. They quietly watched the mother and child, waiting for the young woman to die. They had plenty of time. They could afford to wait.

The young mother stared helplessly at the impossible choice before her. She regretted everything—regretted being so foolishly naïve, regretted following a wealthy heir as cruel as a wolf. She had never imagined he could sink to such an unthinkable level.

But it was too late for regrets.

She had to save this child. Even if she died, she had to make sure her baby survived.

Yet there were only two choices now: leap from the cliff or be devoured by wolves.

Either way, the answer was death.

The young mother, utterly helpless, finally made up her mind. She set the swaddled child down, then crawled alone toward the leader of the pack.

At once, the wolves retreated. Though they possessed only the beginnings of intelligence, they could tell that the dying prey before them was behaving strangely. Unable to discern her intentions, they grew tense and wary.

The young mother crawled to the wolf king’s side and laboriously propped herself up. She placed the artery in her neck beside the beast’s jaws and pleaded in an exceedingly weak voice, “Please… eat me, but spare my child. He’s only a baby…”

Then she lost consciousness completely.

The wolf king gazed at the prey beneath its feet for a long time. It nudged the young mother’s cooling body with its nose, then threw back its head and howled at the sky. After dragging her to a sheltered place, it turned, seized the swaddled infant in its jaws, and departed with the entire pack in a grand procession.

Years later, rumors began to spread throughout the region of a werewolf roaming the mountains. It moved as swiftly as the wind, was savage and bloodthirsty by nature, and often led packs of wolves to attack both people and livestock, leaving heavy casualties in its wake.

The local government eventually assembled a group of hunters and sent them into the mountains to exterminate the wolves. Only then did they discover that the werewolf of legend truly existed—and that it was a child.

From that day onward, stories of wolves raising a human child spread throughout the region. Later, it was said that the local authorities slaughtered the entire pack and sent the wolf child to the death-row amusement park. Only then did the public outrage gradually subside.