This place was the werewolf forest—where werewolves and deer spirits were born, grew up, and died.
“The werewolf forest wasn’t originally here. Perhaps as punishment, a hundred years ago, our ancestors woke up one day to find that they, along with the entire forest, had been trapped in this place where it is forever winter.”
The werewolves could find no way to leave. And they soon discovered that aside from the deer spirits and themselves, there were no other animals left in the forest.
The forest now held only deer spirits and werewolves. The werewolves ate the deer spirits, and the deer spirits ate the grass. The ecosystem of the werewolf forest had fallen into a dangerously fragile state. But at first, no one realized it.
Deer spirits are a species highly destructive to their environment. They eat everything except meat. Once their numbers grow too large, not a single blade of grass or tree in the area can survive. They pull grass up by the roots. They eat leaves and also tree bark. Without bark, the trees die. They once devoured an entire forest, drying up a water source and causing the deaths of countless animals.
But in the past, the werewolf forest had no deer spirits. The werewolves had no idea how terrifying they could be.
The deer spirits vastly outnumbered the werewolves. Even though the werewolves hunted them for food, it did little to slow the growth of the deer spirit population. Soon, the environmental damage caused by the deer spirits became apparent. The werewolf forest grew sparse. The grass along the riverbanks vanished completely, and even the river’s water levels dropped significantly.
Finally, one day, the werewolves chiseled through the thin layer of ice, only to find mud beneath—the riverbed. The flowing water they had always relied on was gone.
The Holy Guide at the time realized that this could not continue.
The unchecked proliferation of deer spirits would kill the entire land. The werewolves, the deer spirits—in the end, no one would survive.
The werewolves tried to communicate with the deer spirits. But although deer spirits are jing (essence spirits), they are not like Chinese yaoguais. They don’t qualify as ling creatures. The deer spirit at YCG had claimed to be a ling creature just to ask for help—it was a lie. Deer spirits are slightly smarter than ordinary animals, but not by much.
Thus, as the only advanced, communicative beings in this land, the werewolves had no way to reason with the deer spirits. Their only option was to periodically drive them to other areas.
“But deer spirits breed too quickly. Soon, that method stopped working.”
Only one path remained—the werewolves began systematically culling the deer spirits.
The method worked. After the werewolves killed several hundred deer spirits, the bare riverbanks, once stripped of all grass, began to show signs of green again.
But the relief was short-lived. The deer spirits’ reproduction rate exceeded their imagination. Soon, the deer spirit horde returned. This time, the only river in the werewolf forest dried up completely.
Their lifeline was severed.
Ye Yang listened with a heavy heart and couldn’t help asking, “So what did you do?”
“Deer spirit blood.” The Holy Guide’s tone grew somber. “We drank deer spirit blood until the dried-up river was restored.”
During that time, the werewolves killed over a thousand deer spirits. Eventually, they lost count of how many they had slaughtered—and how many they needed to slaughter. They were blinded by bloodlust. Then the blood moon rose again. Its light fell upon the piled carcasses, illuminating an unnatural movement beneath them.
At the time, Professor Lang had not yet succeeded as the Holy Guide and become the leader of the pack, but he was already a hunting captain. He stepped forward and discovered a pregnant doe. After cutting open her belly, he personally cradled a fawn that should not have been born for another half day.
The bloodlust lifted from every werewolf. They remembered their true purpose in culling the deer spirits. They wanted coexistence. They wanted to survive. They couldn’t let the deer spirits overpopulate, but neither could they annihilate them entirely.
This fawn—they could not kill it.
The rest of the deer herd had long since fled. For a while, no one knew what to do with this fawn.
Some werewolves said, “We’ve already killed so many—one more won’t make a difference.” Others argued, “What if this one is the difference? What if we have no food source in the future?”
One werewolf joked, “A fawn this young must be especially tender. Let’s just take it home and eat it.”
In truth, most werewolves thought the same. They had already stopped killing. Many deer spirits had escaped. There was nothing to worry about. They might as well just eat the little thing.
As they debated, the newborn fawn struggled to stand on Professor Lang’s palm. Its legs trembled, but it stood tall. Lang’s eyes met the fawn’s—innocent, clear as glass. He was silent for a moment, then thought: Forget it.
The fawn was taken back to the cave where the werewolves lived. At first, Lang didn’t pay it much attention. Like the others, he assumed it wouldn’t live long—what did werewolves know about raising a deer spirit’s child?
But because he had personally cut the fawn from its mother’s belly, he felt a sliver of responsibility. Every now and then, when he remembered, he would feed it a little something.
If he forgot, he forgot.
But the fawn was remarkably resilient. Against all odds, it grew up quickly under such harsh conditions. And this deer spirit—perhaps because it had been raised among werewolves—gradually learned to communicate with them, even using their language!
It raised its two front hooves and called out the werewolf word for “mother.” Professor Lang was stunned. He even forgot to correct the address.
This changed everything. No werewolf saw her as emergency rations anymore. Nearly the entire pack accepted the little deer spirit as one of their own—though they still occasionally teased her with threats of “eating you up.”
“We always just called her ‘little deer spirit.’ It wasn’t until later, in China, that she got a name: Lu Pingping.”
So the deer spirit’s name was Pingping. Ye Yang noted to himself. He was only finding this out now.
Shen Ming had been listening for quite a while and was already impatient: “What does any of this have to do with you showing up in China?”
Professor Lang replied, “Patience. We’re getting to that.”
He continued:
During that period, with no large herds of deer spirits roaming about, the werewolf pack enjoyed a peaceful existence. That was also the most harmonious time between Lang and Pingping.
Later, Lang defeated his rivals and became the new Holy Guide, taking command of the pack.
Internal competition among werewolves never ceased. Only the strongest and most ruthless could become Holy Guide. But once he assumed the role, he no longer needed to hunt or go on combat patrols. Instead, he spent most of his time teaching the pack’s young pups.
The underage wolf pups were no different from ordinary wolf cubs. Only some of them, after training, could transform into werewolves and become immortal beings.
“The Holy Guide is not only a leader, but also a prophet. The Holy Guide of the werewolf pack can communicate with the blood moon, receiving revelations and foreseeing the future.” Hearing this, Ye Yang couldn’t help but stare at Professor Lang. Lang glanced back at him.
But Lang didn’t elaborate on the revelations or prophecies—he mentioned them only in passing—before continuing with the story of the little deer spirit, Pingping.
While teaching the young wolves, Lang didn’t neglect the little deer spirit. He taught them all equally. Unexpectedly, the deer spirit was the first to evolve into a half-human, half-deer form—before any of the young wolves had succeeded.
Her two front hooves transformed into human arms covered in reddish-orange fur. Her upper body became entirely human, except for the deer ears on her head and the fur on her arms.
The werewolves had never seen anything like this. No one knew what it meant—not even the most learned Professor Lang.
As the days passed, the deer spirit continued to transform. Soon, her lower body also became human. Only the deer ears on her head remained.
“Pingping failed to assassinate me, escaped, stole the werewolf spirit core, and left the werewolf forest. It was only then that I realized she had known the way out of here all along—but had never told anyone…”
“Wait, wait, wait—” Ye Yang quickly interrupted the Holy Guide. “How did it suddenly get to that? What happened in between?” He was starting to wonder if he’d missed something.
At this, the Holy Guide lowered his eyes and let out a long sigh. “This is my fault. I am not a qualified Holy Guide. I wasn’t ruthless enough.”
During the competition for Holy Guide, Lang’s final opponent was his younger brother—the one closest to him, the one he had relied on after their parents left. Lang’s heart softened. He couldn’t kill his own brother. He only broke one of his legs.
That moment of mercy was a catastrophic mistake. His brother harbored a grudge. He spent an entire year feeding the little deer spirit a version of the truth about her origins—half true, half false—manipulating her into seeing the Holy Guide as her enemy.
The spark that ignited the assassination attempt was a song passed down through the werewolf pack for generations.
Ye Yang’s head snapped up. He had seen this scene in the dream!
Professor Lang let out another long sigh. “After we discovered that Pingping could speak, we never sang that song in front of her again. But that day, while teaching the young wolves, she accidentally overheard it.”
“None of what followed was Pingping’s fault. It was my ill-timed mercy that led to all of this. But,” Lang raised his face and closed his eyes, “I must protect the werewolf pack. I must retrieve the lost spirit core. So I went after her myself.”
Ye Yang stroked his chin. “So the so-called ‘deer spirit’s spirit core’ is actually the werewolf spirit core?”
“Deer spirit spirit core? Is that what she told you?” Lang let out a soft laugh. “How clever. She’s always been this clever. She found a way out of the forest that we couldn’t discover for hundreds of years. She hid easily among humans and learned new languages and knowledge.”
What happened next was that Lang chased Pingping out of the forest, following the trail of the spirit core to Dongzhou, China. And because Pingping hid too well to be found, he also assumed a human identity and stayed in the place where her scent was strongest.
“She’s truly remarkable.” Even now, speaking of this deer spirit who had tried to assassinate him, Professor Lang’s voice was full of admiration. “She learned to hide her deer ears long ago but kept it secret from everyone. She even taught herself how to conceal her own presence and the spirit core’s aura after arriving in China.”
Ye Yang looked at Shen Ming. Shen Ming nodded. “He’s telling the truth.”
So it turned out like this. The victim they had believed in was actually a thief who had fled after attempted murder. The pursuer they had feared—though certainly the wronged party who had lost something precious—was indeed here to capture her.
Professor Lang wasn’t bothered. He simply asked, “Anything else you want to know?”
Ye Yang was still processing. But Shen Ming asked the question that concerned him most: “What exactly are these prophetic dreams? What have you done to Ye Yang?”
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