Chapter Thirty: The Pouch

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“There’s a supernatural fluctuation at three o’clock. Please proceed to investigate immediately!” The app on Wu Ming’s phone alerted him.

“What kind of nonsense task is this? Investigate the supernatural fluctuation and resolve it!” Wu Ming grumbled as he followed the coordinates on his phone, though it seemed the location kept moving.

“Hey, you silly mutt, you Grand Dog! Hurry up and search! Didn’t the Spirit Realm assign you to help me find that damned supernatural anomaly?” Wu Ming squatted down and poked the bulldog rolling on the ground.

“Woof, woof! Wu Ming, you big fool, you’d better beg this master properly!” The bulldog rolled his eyes at Wu Ming in utter disdain.

The last time, the seal on the Twelve Bronze Men had loosened, causing spiritual energy to leak from the Spirit Realm and triggering some unknown supernatural incidents. So the Spirit Realm wanted their agent, Wu Ming, to deal with them swiftly, so as not to cause unnecessary panic among ordinary people. This bulldog was the “Grand Dog” assigned by the Spirit Realm—because of his faint ability to track spiritual energy, he was sent to assist Wu Ming in investigating the supernatural fluctuations in Yangxian. Yet this dog was truly a gluttonous rascal, and Wu Ming felt he’d been completely duped. As for any supposed gluttonous beast bloodline, he’d seen none of it; the dog was just stupid, clumsy, greedy, and a nuisance who left droppings everywhere. The only thing that set him apart from other dogs was his ability to speak, but Wu Ming would rather he couldn’t, since his mouth was so insufferably annoying.

“I’ll give you a meaty bone for dinner!” Wu Ming tried to entice him.

“At least two bones, or no deal!” Grand Dog scratched his head with a hind paw, turned around, and let out a stinky fart in Wu Ming’s direction.

“Damn it!” Wu Ming reeled from the stench, his vision turning white for a moment.

“You mangy dog, stand still! I’ll slice you up for dinner tonight!” Wu Ming chased after Grand Dog, shouting, but the dog was surprisingly quick and vanished in an instant.

Wu Ming was left panting from the chase. When he saw that Grand Dog had disappeared, he decided to find a place to rest for a while and spotted a public bench nearby. He’d just sat down when he faintly heard a child’s cry for help.

Wu Ming followed the sound, parted the reeds behind the bench, and found a densely vegetated wetland. The water shimmered, the scenery was quite pleasant, but there was an unsettling chill creeping up his back.

He skirted the edge of the wetland and found a patch of flat sand—fine yellow grains by the water’s edge. If not for the surrounding lush plants, it could have passed for a beach. But a smooth stretch of sand in such a green place seemed odd. Wu Ming thought it looked as if some construction workers had dumped several truckloads of sand here and leveled it out. The child’s cry for help seemed to be coming from beneath the sand. Wu Ming felt a twinge of fear, but reasoned that in broad daylight, there couldn’t possibly be anything supernatural, and felt reassured.

“Maybe it’s a recorder or a phone buried under the sand,” he thought, reaching to dig into the sand.

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Just then, a child’s head suddenly popped out of the sand, catching Wu Ming completely off guard—he fell hard on his backside in shock.

“Damn, that scared me to death!” Wu Ming scrambled backward several steps, keeping a safe distance as he eyed the child.

“Help! Help!” The child’s head hung low, face hidden, his scalp shaven bald and tinged with blue. There was a tuft of long curly hair atop his head. Then the child’s hands emerged from the sand, reaching toward Wu Ming, while his lower body was still completely submerged, as if he were still sinking.

Seeing a child trapped in the sand, Wu Ming, a good-hearted youth of the new era, knew he had to help. He approached cautiously, first testing the sand’s firmness with his foot, then grabbed the child’s hand to pull him out. The moment he touched the hand, it was icy cold, sending a chill through him. Luckily, the peach pit he wore on his hand instantly sent a warm current through him, or he’d have been numb with cold—the shock made him shudder.

Wu Ming pulled with all his strength, but the child wouldn’t budge. There seemed to be a suction force beneath the sand, but Wu Ming’s training in the Spirit Realm’s Daoist arts wasn’t for nothing—though spiritual power was hard to use in this world, his physical strength remained. He braced his waist and gave a mighty tug, pulling the child up several inches. Now he could see that the child’s waist was bare, his entire body deathly pale with a bluish tinge, a ragged strip of cloth wrapped around his waist—he looked utterly pitiful.

Wu Ming prepared to pull again, but at that moment the child suddenly raised his head to look at Wu Ming, giving him a real fright. That was no human face—a plump, round, pale ball of a head, with a faint blue glow beneath the skin. The head had no ears or eyebrows, the eyes were pitch black with no whites, the nose tiny, the mouth lipless and filled with sharp teeth. In sheer terror, Wu Ming yanked him out and flung him away.

Could that have been a ghost? Too horrifying. Wu Ming watched the “child ghost” lying motionless on the ground. Driven by curiosity and his nervy disposition, he edged closer and poked the “child ghost” with a stick. Still no movement. After several tries, the child ghost remained unresponsive. Bravely, Wu Ming used his foot to roll the “child ghost” over. On closer inspection, its eyes were still open, but now completely white; it seemed to be dead.

“Woof, woof!” Just then, Grand Dog came bounding over.

“Wu Ming, what are you doing here? I was just about to tell you there was a spiritual fluctuation in this area—how did you end up here?” Grand Dog looked at Wu Ming in astonishment.

“Check if this is the source of the supernatural fluctuation,” Wu Ming said, pointing at the dead child.

“Huh, what’s a child doing here? Whoa, it really is a monster!” After sniffing, Grand Dog leapt back in alarm and dove into Wu Ming’s arms.

“San Jin, take a look—what kind of monster is this?” Wu Ming opened a video call with San Jin.

“Give me a second… Looks like a Sackling!” San Jin consulted some records and replied, “Yes, it’s definitely a Sackling. This creature hasn’t been seen in centuries—not even in the Spirit Realm. Sacklings resemble children, less than three feet tall, naked, their skin pale with a bluish hue. Their eyes are large and round, all black with no whites, a tiny nose, a mouth without lips, no ears, and a tuft of long curly hair on their heads. Their feet are trapped in sand or mud and can’t move. When they see people, they reach out for help, but if they’re pulled away from their original spot, they die…”

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“This time you did a pretty good job on the mission—rated A. Send me the coordinates where you found the Sackling; it’s of great research value. The Spirit Realm will send someone to collect it soon,” San Jin added.

With nothing else to do, Wu Ming squatted at the spot where the Sackling had been and started digging in the sand, convinced there had to be something underneath. But after digging a hole as deep as a person, he found nothing at all. Grand Dog, bored, yawned at the edge of the pit and asked, “Are you digging your own grave? The feng shui here isn’t great. I suggest you go dig at Golden Rooster Mountain instead!”

“To hell with you!” Wu Ming kicked at Grand Dog and missed, causing the pit to collapse a little and almost bury himself. Just then, he noticed a leaf in the sand glowing with green light.

“What’s this?” Wu Ming picked up the glowing leaf and asked Grand Dog.

“Let me smell… Yes! That’s it, I’ve smelled this before. This is a leaf from the World Tree!” Grand Dog sniffed it thoughtfully.

“That’s right!” Wu Ming remembered seeing the World Tree—what Grand Dog called the World Tree—in the secret chamber of the Daoist Gate.

“So it’s the World Tree’s leaf that caused the supernatural phenomenon?” Wu Ming looked at Grand Dog in surprise.

“Why ask me? Who am I supposed to ask?” Grand Dog turned away, ignoring Wu Ming. “Remember to give me two big meaty bones tonight!”

Soon, the Spirit Realm’s cleanup crew arrived—surprisingly, in a delivery van. About seven or eight men in bodyguard-like, sharply tailored, but outrageously pink suits stepped out. Wu Ming handed the World Tree leaf to the leader and left. After he walked away, the men in pink suits took away the Sackling’s body, and, most astonishingly, vacuumed up all the sand from the scene.