The Cauldron

1,171 words

Chapter 233: The Cauldron

No one spoke as they wound their way deeper into the cave. They had been walking for a while now, and still hadn't reached the bottom. Maybe there was no bottom at all.

Fortunately, as they descended, the cave was also growing larger, no longer as oppressive as when they had first entered.

“Wait. Stop.” It was Li Huowang who spoke. He dropped to one knee, frowning as he studied the footprints on the ground.

“These aren’t a child’s footprints. They’re from a normal adult. It looks like besides Sun Baolu as a kid, someone else has been in this cave.”

“Never mind. Keep going.” Li Huowang stood up and continued down into the hole. Honestly, compared to evil spirits, he was more wary of running into people.

If someone could move freely through a cave full of monsters, it meant their strength was nothing to scoff at.

The tunnel began to curve. Sun Baolu stopped at the turn, swallowing nervously. “It was right around this bend that one of my playmates just… vanished.”

Sun Baolu’s fear began to infect everyone. They were all on high alert now.

Li Huowang put a hand on Sun Baolu’s shoulder and pulled him back, stepping around the bend first.

Sword in hand, he stood there, surveying everything ahead. But Li Huowang, fully prepared, received no attack.

“Are you sure this is the place? There’s nothing here except two dead sheep.”

“Dead sheep?” Sun Baolu and the others carefully came up behind Li Huowang, holding their fluorescent stones high to peer into the darkness.

Ahead, in the blackness, there really were only the two dead sheep. Nothing else.

Judging by their sunken faces and their bodies, covered in dust yet still intact, they must have gotten lost and starved to death in these caves.

With a crack, the two dried sheep carcasses were instantly torn in half by Li Huowang’s sword. Black, coal-like dried innards rolled out.

Li Huowang didn’t stop there. He lifted his foot and stomped on them.

He wasn’t about to leave these two corpses behind him. It was too dangerous. What if they suddenly got up and attacked him from behind?

Maybe it was overly cautious, but Li Huowang felt that in this environment, he couldn’t be too careful.

Only after thoroughly pulverizing the two sheep did he sheathe his sword and continue inward.

The cave went deeper and wider, but Li Huowang couldn’t see what was in the distant darkness. The dark here was blacker than elsewhere. The fluorescent stones in their hands could barely illuminate their immediate surroundings. Even with Li Huowang’s vision, he could only see a little further.

He hadn’t gone much further when there were more sheep corpses on the ground. This time, Li Huowang couldn’t chop them all up. There were too many, covering the ground. Dense and thick—there had to be at least eight hundred, maybe a thousand.

“One or two might be lost strays, but this many… this is deliberate. Someone drove a whole flock of sheep in here to die. Who did this?” Li Huowang stared at the sheep, thinking.

Moreover, the carcasses were intact. There were no signs of biting or consumption.

From this, he could deduce that the Black Tai Sui wasn’t nearby. Otherwise, a flesh-eating Black Tai Sui wouldn’t have left this food alone.

Li Huowang thought for a moment longer, then took the dead piece of Black Tai Sui skin from his bosom and held it out to Mantou.

“Mantou, sniff this. See if you can find this smell nearby.”

“Whine…” Mantou licked it, then hesitantly took a step forward.

Li Huowang waved his hand, and the others quickly followed. “Stay close. Don’t fall behind in this place.”

“It’s fine for a short stretch. In about half an incense stick’s time, we’ll get to the place where I ran into the Brush. That was as far as I got.” A nervous Sun Baolu reminded him from the side.

The dead sheep on the ground continued, thickly spread, stretching into the depths.

Finally, after about two tea-breaths' time, the sheep stopped. Something new appeared ahead. It was a huge bronze cauldron, as tall as a single-story building.

The great bronze ding was covered in green rust and dust. It looked like it had been there for a very long time.

“That wasn’t here when I came as a kid.” Sun Baolu’s words made Li Huowang frown.

He first looked at the cauldron, then turned to look behind him at the dense sea of dead sheep. He felt they were connected. As far as he knew, a ding was an important ritual vessel used for offering sacrifices to the gods.

Li Huowang slowly circled the great cauldron. When he saw the white jade plates set behind it, and the three sacrificial animals that had rotted down to just bones, he knew his guess was right. Someone had been holding a sacrifice here.

“Wasn’t this supposed to be a den of evil spirits? Why is there such a solemn sacrificial ritual? Could the evil spirits themselves have done this? If so, what are they worshipping?”

Li Huowang cautiously approached the great cauldron and looked inside. There was nothing but ash.

“AHH!” A woman’s scream made Li Huowang’s scalp tingle. He spun around to see a terrified Bai Lingmiao clinging desperately to the veiled Second Spirit.

“What’s wrong?! What did you see?!” Li Huowang rushed over, demanding.

“Sheep! Sheep!” Bai Lingmiao stammered, pointing into the darkness on the left. She clung even tighter to the Second Spirit.

Li Huowang warily moved in that direction, his fluorescent stone illuminating something in the darkness. More sheep corpses.

But these sheep corpses were completely different from the others. These dried-up bodies were all deformed half-human, half-sheep hybrids!

An old man lay at Li Huowang’s feet. Spiral ram’s horns pierced out from his cheeks. In his final moments, he had desperately tried to touch his own face with his two hooves, but had died in the last throes of his struggle.

Beside him was another sheep corpse. Or perhaps a human corpse. The upper half was a skinned lamb, while the lower half was a twisted, grotesque mess, with misshapen hooves and distorted knee joints pointing every which way like tangled branches.

And this was just the beginning. As the fluorescent light swept across the area, corpses far more nauseating and terrifying were everywhere. No wonder Bai Lingmiao had been so frightened.

As the light illuminated these half-human, half-sheep creatures, Li Huowang’s mind flashed back to the earlier sheep carcasses.

“No! Those weren’t sheep! Those were people! They were turned into sheep! They were all sacrificial offerings!”

Li Huowang rushed back to the cauldron, his eyes wide with shock as he stared at the rows of dead sheep.

When he realized that these sheep were all transformed humans, the whole nature of what he was seeing changed. Someone had killed over a thousand people here, just to make an offering to… something.

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Reading Guide Decoding

A Thousand Souls in Sheep’s Clothing

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

The Ding (鼎) as a Ritual Symbol: In ancient China, the ding was not just a cooking pot. It was the paramount ritual vessel, a symbol of state power and a direct conduit to the gods and ancestors. The famous "Nine Tripods" (九鼎) of the Xia dynasty were legendary symbols of imperial legitimacy. Finding a massive ding in a forbidden cave is a huge red flag—it implies a ritual of immense importance and power, but one that is twisted and forgotten, far from the grand ancestral halls it belongs in. Li Huowang's immediate mental link between the ding and a sacrifice is a good example of his growing, world-wise intuition.

The “Human Transformation” Horror: The central terror of this chapter—turning people into animals for sacrifice—has dark roots in folklore. While not common in orthodox practice, the concept of a malevolent sorcerer or deity “changing the form” of victims to debase or consume them is a recurring folk-horror motif. It’s the ultimate act of dehumanization. A person becomes a sheep, is led to slaughter among the flock, and dies thinking with a sheep’s brain, unaware of their own humanity. The visceral wrongness of the half-formed hybrids—the old man’s face pierced by horns—is what makes this horror land so hard. It suggests the transformation wasn’t quick or clean, but a slow, agonizing corruption of the flesh and soul.

Chapter Overview

Alright, folks, strap in. This chapter is a masterclass in dread-by-atmosphere. No monsters jump out from the shadows (yet). Instead, Li Huowang’s group descends into a cave that feels bottomless, a descent into the earth that is as much psychological as it is physical. The horror is slow, creeping, and built on the uncanny—a child’s nightmare location revisited by an adult who knows the world is far more dangerous than he ever imagined. Prepare for a reveal that will make you look at sheep in a whole new, deeply unsettling light.

Key Plot Points

The group continues their descent into the cave where Sun Baolu’s friend disappeared. Li Huowang spots adult footprints, a sign that someone besides a lost child has been here.
Sun Baolu’s fear is palpable; he warns them that his friend vanished around the next bend. The group is tense, but finds only two dead sheep when they turn the corner.
Li Huowang, ever cautious, destroys the sheep carcasses to prevent them from being a threat, then leads the group deeper into the widening cave.
They encounter a massive sea of dead sheep—hundreds of them. Li Huowang deduces this is not random death; someone drove the flock here to die on purpose.
The trail of corpses leads to a colossal bronze ding (a ritual cauldron), surrounded by jade plates and the bones of sacrificial animals. Sun Baolu confirms this cauldron was not here during his childhood.
The chapter climaxes with a visceral body-horror reveal: the “sheep” in the deeper, darker part of the cave are not sheep at all. They are grotesque, twisted half-human, half-sheep hybrids.
Li Huowang has a chilling epiphany: every single sheep corpse they saw was once a human being. Someone has transformed over a thousand people into sheep and slaughtered them as a sacrifice.

Reading Guide

This chapter is pure setup, but it's perfect setup. Don't expect a fight. Expect a slow, sinking dread. Pay attention to Li Huowang’s almost obsessive caution—destroying the dead sheep, checking for traps. This is a man who has learned that the world is eager to kill you if you take it for granted. The final reveal of the herd of human-sheep is the kind of body horror that this novel does best: it’s not about gore for the sake of gore, but about the systematic, ritualistic degradation of what it means to be human. The question now isn't “what monster lives here?” The question is “what kind of god accepts a sacrifice of a thousand souls?”