Chapter 078 – Seventh Rank
“Worf worf worf!”
A dog’s barking rang out in the snow-covered courtyard. A half-grown black mastiff, nearly as tall as a person at the shoulder, stood chained with a thick metal collar around its neck. The other end of the chain was fastened to a large iron block.
Li Yuan glanced at the mastiff. “It’s snowing, and you’re this excited?”
The dog fixed its gaze on him, eyes bright with submission, mouth parted in what looked almost like a grin, blood-red tongue panting in shallow, raspy bursts.
This was one of Li Yuan’s finds at the black market—though hardly the kind of beast he’d originally wanted.
He had hoped for a gentle-natured creature, adept at reconnaissance, and stealthy...or something akin to a walking fortress that could both guard the home and provide backup in a fight. He’d searched for half a year, never coming across a demonic beast that met more than two of those criteria at once.
Then one day, while passing the black market unmasked, he bumped into this demonic beast which showed an unexpected fondness for him. It wasn’t stealthy, nor was it particularly docile, but it did excel at sniffing out threats and guarding territory. Besides, dogs were known for loyalty; that trait alone helped compensate for its lack of a gentle temperament.
And so he gritted his teeth and paid 400 taels of silver for it. Of that, 100 taels came from Xue Ning; the other 300 taels he’d squirreled away looting Ren’s corpse.
The common name of this demonic beast, a blackrock mastiff, hinted at its nature. It disliked roaming and preferred to defend a single place. It had a keen sense for hostility and a far sharper nose than common dogs.
Li Yuan had once taken it up into the depths of Little Ink Mountain to hunt a black bear. He deliberately woke the bear in its den, gave it half an hour’s head-start to flee, then set the mastiff on its trail. Before long, the dog tracked the bear down and dispatched it.
When he first acquired it, the blackrock mastiff was in a weakened state at 10~20, a far cry from its peak condition of 20~60. But after nursing it back to health for months at his home, it had largely recovered.
Li Yuan named it Cinder. He didn’t keep Cinder chained because it was aggressive, quite the opposite actually. The mastiff was already fully tamed and recognized both Yan Yu and Xue Ning as its mistresses, behaving obediently around them. Rather, he locked it up because they lived in the inner district. If it roamed outside unsupervised, it might very well harm someone...or be harmed itself.