Confucius Did Not Speak of Strange Powers and Spirits What Is a Yellow Weasel Worth How Many Divisions Does a Yellow Weasel Have

What the hell? That didn't kill it?

Seriously?!

Ye Cheng had put every ounce of strength he had into that punch, but... the effect was less than impressive. He hadn't even managed to knock the other person down with one blow. What came next was going to hurt.

"Hm?"

Ye Cheng was about to throw a couple more punches when he realized the person in front of him looked... kind of familiar?

He moved the fist blocking his view and took another look... Huh?

Why did that face look so much like someone he knew?

Not sure. Better take another look...

Ye Cheng raised his fist again, blocking the view in front of him, then... lowered it. Wow... the face still overlapped almost perfectly with that familiar person's. How strange.

Why could that be?

Hard to say. Surely the terrifying man-eating monster standing before him couldn't actually be that person, right?

Ye Cheng: "..."

Silently, Ye Cheng withdrew his fist and hid it behind his back. A broad, toothy grin spread across his face as he put on the same ingratiating smile as Mr. Tom.

Hehe... I didn't mean it. Can you forgive me?

Ye Cheng blinked, acting as if nothing had happened and conveniently ignoring the fresh black eye on Du Wanyi's face.

"Huh? Ma'am, what are you doing here? What a coincidence!" Ye Cheng said, putting on a look of sudden realization as he stared at Du Wanyi in shock.

Du Wanyi said nothing. She simply took out her phone, opened the front-facing camera, and then... saw the black eye on her face in the screen.

Cold sweat poured down Ye Cheng's back.

"This camera isn't accurate, ma'am. It's some kind of evil magic. Luckily, I know a little about how to deal with that sort of thing... Here, give me your phone. I'll help you get rid of the spell!"

Ye Cheng wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, speaking with a perfectly straight face.

Did Du Wanyi believe him?

She did. She handed him the phone and watched him fiddle with it.

Beautify filter, skin smoothing, face slimming, puppy-bottle effect... this one, this one, and this one. Add them all! Turn everything on!

After Ye Cheng's "magic" treatment, he cranked every setting to the max.

"Here, ma'am. Look. Doesn't it seem much more normal now?"

Du Wanyi craned her neck to look, with Ye Cheng peering over beside her. Then... the phone screen showed two alien creatures with rubber-dropper heads, their eyes blinking away.

Well... you had to admit, after Ye Cheng's handiwork, there wasn't the slightest trace of the black eye he'd just given her.

"Are you sure this is normal?" Du Wanyi asked uncertainly as she looked at the two dropper-headed aliens on the screen.

Ye Cheng nodded without the slightest hint of embarrassment. "Guaranteed!"

He had been about to offer further proof that he was absolutely right when he suddenly spotted a huge yellow fat dog walking over across the ground... shit-yellow, and enormous.

Da Huang?

Ye Cheng: "???"

No, wait. Why are you here?

He looked first at Da Huang, then at the ma'am standing beside him, still staring at her black eye on the phone screen. In an instant, it felt as though an electric current had shot through Ye Cheng's brain.

His smooth brain finally developed some wrinkles... and in that moment, everything suddenly made sense!

Why? Why, even after fleeing all the way to the northwest, had he still been found? Why, after hiding inside a military district, had he been dragged away on his very first day at work...?

Damn it, Mengde, you bastard!!!

Wait... wasn’t he originally one himself?

Ye Cheng: “...”

You damned man!

That sentence had about as much impact as someone telling Ye Cheng, “Your mother’s gone...” Absolutely no impact whatsoever.

Every day, he did nothing but say things that weren’t even true...

Ye Cheng: “...”

As luck would have it, Da Huang happened to walk over just then, a chunk of freshly cut tiger meat dangling from his mouth. He entered the phone’s field of view.

And then... another utterly horrifying “rubber-bulb dropper” appeared on the phone screen.

The three faces differed only in their hairstyles. Apart from that... there was no visible difference whatsoever. They were all rubber-bulb droppers.

“You’re sure this is normal too?” Du Wanyi asked, casting Ye Cheng a sidelong glance.

Cold sweat the size of beans appeared on Ye Cheng’s forehead. “Absolutely!”

“Little Chengcheng, do I look like an idiot to you?” Du Wanyi asked calmly. Then she turned off the phone, slipped it into her pocket, and put it away.

“Very good, Little Chengcheng. Just now, I witnessed the fruits of your nearly twenty years of training. In a moment, you’re going to experience the fruits of my nearly forty years of training.”

As she spoke, Du Wanyi began warming up, loosening her joints. It was obvious that a hard battle was about to begin... a very, very hard battle.

Ye Cheng: “...”

Ye Cheng suddenly felt liberated—not because he had figured anything out, but because he had run out of options. At present, he hadn’t found a single person whose stats could stand up to Madam’s. Anyone who appeared was completely crushed in every aspect.

It was a joke... She had infiltrated a military district in the middle of the night, brought nothing but a dog, charged straight in without even a map, kidnapped someone, and successfully escaped in the end.

How ridiculous was that?

Even if Superman were fully fed, he’d only last a couple of moves against Madam... Even Ultraman would start flashing his red warning light after taking one punch.

“All right, warm-up complete. Little Chengcheng, do you have any last words? If not, I’m starting.” Du Wanyi twisted her neck from side to side, producing a series of crisp cracks.

Ye Cheng: “...”

“Um... Madam, do I really have to die?” Ye Cheng asked after a moment of silence. Forget forty years of training—even twenty years was more than he could handle!

After personally witnessing Madam tear steel rebar apart with her bare hands, Ye Cheng knew that the gap between humans was even greater than the gap between humans and dogs.

Good grief, what the hell are you, Madam? Do you even look human anymore?!

“Oh? So those are your last words? Interesting. All right, it’s time to send you on your way. Take a deep breath—it’ll be over quickly!” Du Wanyi clenched both fists and began bouncing around in place with the footwork of a champion boxer.

Powerful music rang out through the cavern...

“In 1974, she entered her first Southeast Asian kickboxing tournament and won the championship. In 1980...”

“Bang! Bang!”

“Ahhhhhhh!”

Ye Cheng’s screams echoed through the cave.

Special thanks to Mr. Tom for the action and facial-expression coaching.

...

Longguo, Western Theater Command.

“What do you mean, a yellow weasel spirit has gained sentience?”

Su Weiguo's eyes went wide as he stared in disbelief at the report and footage the two soldiers had handed him.

"You're telling me a yellow weasel spirit came to life, then broke into the military district to snatch someone?"

"Is that what you're saying?"

The two soldiers nodded. "Yes. The yellow weasel spirit came to life. Political Commissar, it's real. We've never seen anything so terrifying. Even the local herdsmen's stories about yetis and Bigfoot aren't this scary..."

Back in the last century, all sorts of stories about snow monsters circulated through remote regions. They were said to move with incredible speed through the frozen wilderness, their fur changing with the seasons.

In winter, their coats would turn white, blending perfectly into the ice and snow. In summer, once the snow had melted, their fur would turn black, and they would only emerge after nightfall.

There were records of many attacks on people, but they were all passed around by word of mouth. No one could ever produce any actual evidence.

Now that technology had advanced and camera resolution had become clearer and clearer, so-called eyewitnesses had become fewer and fewer...

Besides, the incidents kept happening near a military district. Before, when they occurred more often, people could simply turn a blind eye and let it slide.

But now we'd arrived, and you still dared pull this kind of stunt? Looks like you haven't had enough 7.62 or 5.56!

I don't care where you're from. Take it up with my mortar!

"All right, I understand," Su Weiguo said, rubbing his aching head. "You two go write up a new report. And don't mention anything about a yellow weasel spirit. Don't forget where you are. Watch what you say and do, and make sure it honors the uniform you're wearing. It's late. Go get some rest."

He waved the two young soldiers away.

They had done exactly what he had asked: they saw something and reported it honestly. He had specifically told them to do that. Yet now he was scolding them for it...

That made him the bad guy no matter how he looked at it.

He understood the reasoning, but... a yellow weasel spirit coming to life? Wasn't that just too absurd?

Even a staunch materialist like Su Weiguo was beginning to waver.

Though he had not seen it in person, the footage from the security cameras suggested that the possibility of some supernatural creature was not exactly small...

As for it being some kind of advanced robot, that was even less likely. If robots that capable truly existed, they would already have been deployed on a massive scale. Even if they could achieve only one-tenth of what this thing had done tonight, ordinary soldiers would be no match for them.

Soldiers required enormous investments of manpower and resources to train. Robots did not. As long as there were enough materials, you could field a million troops in an instant!

But...

"How is that possible?" Su Weiguo stared at the report, then looked again at the surveillance footage of the creature slipping inside.

A shadow...

No. A ghostly figure was more like it.

Other than a pair of eerie green eyes, nothing else could be seen.

"Could it really be a yellow weasel spirit that came to life?"

Su Weiguo fell silent for a long while before finally murmuring the words, uncertain even as he said them...

A few minutes later:

"That fucking yellow weasel spirit kidnapped my brother-in-law! I'll fucking—@#￥%..."

Unlike Su Weiguo, who was still half-convinced and half-doubtful, Tang Jianjun flew into a rage the moment he heard the report. His teeth clenched, his eyes wide with fury.

His brother-in-law had been captured, and before that, his brother-in-law had saved his younger brother's son...

Whether out of public duty or personal obligation, he should immediately send people out to keep searching, at any cost.

To put it plainly, the military district was under his jurisdiction, and his young nephew had gotten into trouble on his turf. In the end, Ye Cheng had come in and cleaned up the mess for him. He owed Ye Cheng an enormous debt of gratitude.

A debt had to be repaid, especially when it was owed to his own brother-in-law.

To be honest, Tang Jianjun had never particularly liked Ye Cheng. He had even harbored some prejudice against him. Ye Cheng was too fair and clean-cut, like some pretty boy living off a woman.

He seemed utterly at odds with the Tang family's values, and Tang Jianjun had instinctively rejected him...

But after this incident, every trace of that prejudice vanished. Ye Cheng now seemed larger than life in his eyes... His brother-in-law had some real damn guts!

"Fuck that yellow weasel spirit's ancestors!"

"So what if that yellow weasel spirit thinks it's a big deal? Old Su, get every one of those Zhengyi people over here, as fast as possible. Anyone who can't make it within a day can forget about ever opening their doors again. Let them collect fucking incense offerings then!"

Tang Jianjun slammed his fist onto the desk again. The several-hundred-pound solid-wood table shuddered...

That very night, every prominent Zhengyi sect within the Dragon Kingdom received a mysterious phone call from the far northwest...

A red landline phone.

...