Wu Laogou

Wu Laogou in official merch

### Other

Wu Xie's Private Notes, First Meeting, 520 Unsent Letters, Zhang Da Fo Ye (Extra), Wu Laogou's First Essay Assignment in Literacy Class, The Mystic Nine (9) Old Dog Wu, The Mystic Nine (6) Er Yuehong, The Mystic Nine (7) Banjie Li, The Mystic Nine (4) Xie-Wu Matchmaking

**Wu Laogou (吴老狗)** was a member of The Mystic Nine and Wu Xie's paternal grandfather in the novel series *Daomu Biji*. Wu Xie regularly relies on the grave robbing information Wu Laogou wrote in his journal.

Wu Laogou's age and experience were changed in the Mystic Nine drama adaptation since the drama takes place at an earlier time than the books.

## Name Origins

Wu Laogou is only a nickname, his real name has never been revealed. Laogou (老狗) means "old dog" and Wu Laogou is often translated to Old Dog Wu.

## Personality

Wu Laogou was a cheerful person who originally didn't have a gloomy bone in his body. He was a courageous man and very amiable.

Wu Laogou adored the dogs he raised and only taught three people how to train them over his lifetime. He was worried that those in the industry would use the dogs to commit sinful things. His dogs had more seniority than his sons. Wu Laogou was worried about the dogs when he passed and told his descendants that he wouldn't bless them if any of the dogs died within three months of his death.

## History

### Early Years

Wu Laogou's exact birth year is unknown.

Wu Laogou was part of a family of grave robbers, had two older brothers, and possibly other younger siblings. He came from a village of grave robbers. He ate corpse flesh as a child which allowed him to go into tombs without disturbing the dead. At a young age, he could not read but took some literary classes which enabled him to write down his experiences in his journal.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Wu Laogou was well-known in the grave-robbing circle.

#### Dark Summit Tomb

In the early 1950s, Wu Laogou, his great-grandfather, his father, and his brother attempted to rob the Dart Summit Tomb. Wu Laogou did not go into the tomb with them and instead waited at its edge. He was handed a rope that was tied to a bucket and was told to pull it up when given a signal.

An eerie rattling noise came from with the tomb and Wu Laogou's brother yelled for him to pull up the rope. But it was too late and a gunshot rang out. His father yelled for him to run, the rope gave way, and Wu Laogou ran still clutching the bucket. Once he was some distance away, he checked the bucket and found a severed hand still attached. The hand belonged to his brother, One-eye. Wu Laogou decided to go back and save his family.

When he turned around, a creature, raw, bloody, and without skin was staring directly at him. Wu Laogou speculated that it was a blood corpse. He tried to shoot at it but the pistol jammed, and started to run.

He tried to run away but tripped and fell. The blood corpse caught up and walked on top of Wu Laogou's back. But it did not try to harm him and instead left him there. Wu Laogou began to feel an itching burning sensation where the blood corpse had touched him. He thought he had been poisoned and was going to die. As he lay there, he saw that his brother's severed hand still had something in its grasp. Wu Laogou crawled over to see what it was and discovered it was a piece of silk from the Warring States Period.

Suddenly, he heard the same rattling noise that was coming from the grave earlier nearby. He did not think it was the blood corpse from before. He lifted his head to see what it was and there before him, was a gigantic unearthly face. Its eyes had no pupils nor any emotions. Wu Laogou then passed out.

Wu Xie learned of his grandfather's encounter at the Dart Summit from his grandfather's journal. The story abruptly ended when he encountered the second creature. Wu Laogou never liked to talk about the incident with anybody else including Wu Xie.

### Gaining Prestige in Changsha

After the incident at the Dart Summit Tomb, Wu Laogou lost his sense of smell. He trained dogs to be his nose and became famous for it since the dogs could be used to find tombs and traps. He quickly became wealthy and gained prestige. He knew the locations of many tombs and kept many valuable artifacts. Even Zhang Qishan's men would ask him for the location of tombs. Wu Laogou also attracted the attention of Huo Xiangu and this is when their relationship began. He was the first generation of the Wu Family in the city of Changsha.

### Deceived by Qiu Dekao

Wu Laogou and Qiu Dekao did business with each other. In 1952, Qiu Dekao made preparations to leave China and began wrapping up his business. He promised old associates a small advanced payment for valuable items. He would then sell the items in the West and pay the rest of what was owed. Qiu Dekao went to Wu Laogou to purchase his Warring States Silk volume. Wu Laogou didn't want to give up what his family had died for in the Dart Summit Tomb, but Qiu Dekao told him the proceeds would go to charity and he eventually agreed. (Wu Xie was doubtful that Wu Laogou gave up the silk volume for this reason).

Qiu Dekao deceived Wu Laogou and never gave him the remaining money. In order to avoid problems with all of the Chinese associates he scammed, Qiu Dekao reported everyone, including Wu Laogou, to the local authorities in Changsha. Because of Qiu Dekao's association with the former government, it became a serious crime. Many of the people he reported were part of the Mystic Nine. They were subsequently killed or jailed and only Wu Laogou managed to escape to the mountains. Since he was the only survivor of the incident, his reputation was destroyed. The Mystic Nine also began to decline because of the incident and caught the attention of people at the top. Wu Laogou was wanted by the Ministry of Public Security until the 1960s.

Before Wu Laogou settled in Hangzhou, he went to visit Zhang Qishan to ask him why he oversaw the purge let many members of the Mystic Nine die. From the conversation, it doesn't seem like Wu Laogou understood why Zhang Qishan allowed for the purge to happen.

According to Che Zhong, the purge of that time was because the Wang Family used the Hei Feizi to massacre many people. At some point, Wu Laogou tried to train his dogs to deal with them, but only managed to train Xiao Man Ge before he stopped because he didn't think it was the right time to confront the family behind the Hei Feizi. He was also worried that training his dogs to deal with them would threaten the Wu Family and he probably made a deal for his family's survival.

### Moving to Hangzhou

Shortly after the incident, Wu Laogou fled to Hangzhou and kept a low profile. He stopped trusting people and was afraid of others' true intentions. He relied on Xie Jiuye's protection since the other was running a clean business by this point. It took three years for him to fully move his business in Changsha to Hangzhou. He also lost much of his family's wealth.

Wu Laogou was introduced to Xie Jiuye's distant cousin, the daughter of an illustrious and well-respected family. Wu Laogou was supposed to move into her home. It was at this point that Wu Xie thought he cheated on Huo Xiangu. In the chaos of the Korean War, Wu Laogou did not inform Huo Xiangu or Wu Xie's grandmother of what was occurring. By the time Huo Xiangu arrived in Hangzhou about two years later, Wu Laogou had already married Wu Xie's grandmother and she was pregnant with their first child, Wu Yiqiong.

Later, Wu Laogou had two sons, Wu Erbai and Wu Sanxing. Wu Laogou continued keeping dogs. Wu Laogou's favorite dog, a very small Tibetan spaniel called "Three Inch Nail," was kept in his sleeve wherever he went.

### Largest Grave Robbery

In 1963, Wu Laogou and the Mystic Nine participated in the largest grave robbery in history led by Zhang Qiling. The expedition was organized by "It" who went to Zhang Qishan to find the secret to the longevity of the Zhang Family since a powerful leader was afraid of death. The Mystic Nine were rushed because of the deteriorating health of the leader and many of the experienced grave robbers were either too old to travel or were killed or jailed during the purge. As a consequence, the Mystic Nine suffered many casualties, many of its best members died, and it was greatly weakened. The disaster led to a split and Zhang Qiling's authority was severely questioned. Wu Laogou wanted to retire and didn't want to see more people die in vain for Zhang Qishan. He sided with Zhang Qiling.

### Later Years

Wu Laogou knew his sons would be involved with "It" and/or the Wang Family, so he made arrangements and hoped that by Wu Xie's time he could be free from this strange circle. Wu Laogou had hoped his second son, Wu Erbai, would be his successor and that Wu Yiqiong and Wu Sanxing could completely break away. But Wu Sanxing was too unpredictable and became the most skilled grave robber while Wu Erbai took a backup role.

Wu Laogou's first and only grandchild, Wu Xie, was born March 5, 1977. Wu Laogou picked out his name. He wanted to call him Wu Xie (吴邪), a homonym of (无邪/Wuxie) which means "innocence" in the hopes that he will be innocent and clean. Wu Laogou was very secretive about his time grave robbing and was unwilling to talk about it with his grandson.

Meanwhile, Xie Jiuye attacked these opponents directly and enacted his plan when the second generation of the Mystic Nine was organized by "It" and/or the Wang Family to go to the Zhang Family's Ancient Building in the mid-1970s. After 1979, Xie Jiuye stole the coffin of the leader and sought refuge with Wu Laogou when that organization went after him. Wu Laogou hid the coffin in the Southern Song Dynasty’s imperial tomb where it remained until Wu Sanxing and Xie Lianhuan took over the fight.

### Death

Wu Laogou died in 2002. He was at the dinner table with his family when his heart suddenly stopped. Though in *Tibetan Sea Flower*, it is more implied that his death was not sudden, that he knew he was going to die, and was surrounded by family. In both tellings, he died a natural death, but what happened afterward was very strange. He requested that he be cremated within two hours and that nobody was allowed to look into the furnace when he was being cremated. His cremation also took three times longer than normal cremations. It was to prevent his body from turning into some kind of monster because he ate corpse flesh and Wu Xie believed he was part of the Shigou Diao. An old rusty arrow was found among his ashes when he died.

Wu Laogou being cremated was first mentioned in *Tibetan Sea Flower* and continues to be mentioned into the 2021 story Ten Thousand Mountains in the Extreme Night. However, in an extra from 2009, Wu Laogou was not mentioned to be cremated and was sealed in a coffin in the Wu family ancestral hall. In the extra, Wu Laogou was buried in the Wu family ancestral hall in their ancestral village Maoshajing. Normally only the eldest son and their grandchildren were buried in the ancestral hall but, the last three generations died elsewhere (Wu Laogou's brother, father, and grandfather died in the Dart Summit Tomb) and Wu Laogou's elder brother had no descendants.

Ten years before he died, he sold all of his kennels to the government, except one which he sold to Che Zhong. Uncle Two raised the rest of Wu Laogou's dogs after he died. He gave Wushanju to his first son, Wu Yiqiong. After Wu Xie graduated from college, Wu Yiqiong split ownership in the shop with him.

## References

1. ↑ 2009 Chinese New Year Special, Chapter 5
2. ↑ Volume 1, Chapter 1
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Volume 1, Chapter 2 (Wu Xie to Jin Wantang: "My grandpa died last year."); Volume 8, Chapter 81 (NPSS' timeline places Wu Xie's and Jin Wantang's meeting in February 2003); Tibetan Sea Flower, Chapter 1 (Wu Yiqiong got the shop after Wu Laogou died. Wu Yiqiong gave it to Wu Xie who got the help of Lao Yang); Volume 2, Chapter 1 (Lao Yang went to prison around 2000). Since these sources conflict with each other, Wu Laogou's death is put in a range.
4. ↑ Palace of Doom, Chapter 7
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 Sand Sea, Chapter 205
6. ↑ Volume 8, Chapter 18
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 Volume 8, Chapter 71
8. ↑ Sand Sea, Chapter 205; The Wu Family Extras: Chess Game.
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Volume 1, Chapter 2
10. ↑ Volume 1, Chapter 1
11. ↑ 2009 Chinese New Year Extra, Chapter 7
12. ↑ Wu Xie's Private Notes, Chapter 7. In the 2009 Chinese New Year Extra, Wu Xie goes to the village where the Wu family ancestral hall is. It is on Changsha's outskirts, which may be where Wu Laogou grew up, but this is never confirmed. The village is called Maoshajing.
13. ↑ Looking for the Dead in the Sea of Lights, Chapter 28
14. ↑ Cavern of the Blood Zombies, Chapter 2, Page 21
15. ↑ Tibetan Sea Flower, Chapter 1 (Wu Xie: "In Changsha in the 1940s and 1950s, my grandfather was a very famous grave robber, also known as Master Tu by the local people.").
16. ↑ Cavern of the Blood Zombies, Chapter 1, pages 5-7
17. ↑ Cavern of the Blood Zombies, Chapter 1, pages 8-9
18. ↑ Cavern of the Blood Zombies, Chapter 1, pages 9-10
19. ↑ Cavern of the Blood Zombies, Chapter 1, pages 10-11
20. ↑ Cavern of the Blood Zombies, Chapter 1, page 11
21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Cavern of the Blood Zombies, Chapter 2, Page 22
22. ↑ Wu Xie's Private Notes, Chapter 7.
23. ↑ Deadly Desert Winds, Chapter 6 ("My father, your grandfather, liked that way of doing business too, so he and Jude Kao joined forces.").
24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 蛇沼鬼城(上), 第十章
25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 25.2 Deadly Desert Winds, Chapter 6
26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 26.2 26.3 Wu Xie's Private Notes, Chapter 7
27. ↑ Tibetan Sea Flower, Chapter 1.
28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 Zhang Da Fo Ye Extra
29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 Sand Sea, Chapter 206.
30. ↑ Sand Sea, Chapter 206 (Che Zhong: "“Now you know. Your grandfather left Brother Xiao Man for your use. After the hei feizi began changing the way they monitored, these dogs had no effect in the wild. Based on common sense, your grandfather would have started training dogs that could identify the hei feizi in a crowd, but he suddenly stopped the plan. Probably because he wasn’t sure if that was the right time to confront the family behind the hei feizi.").
31. ↑ Wu Xie's Private Notes, Chapter 9; The Mystic Nine (4) Xie-Wu Matchmaking.
32. ↑ Volume 8, Chapter 71 (The text only refers to a war. But since the incident where Wu Laogou fled to Hangzhou took place in 1952, it is likely the Korean War which lasted until 1953.).
33. ↑ Volume 8, Chapter 82 ("1963-1965— Led by Zhang Da Fo Ye, the Mystic Nine participated in the largest grave robbery in history."); Volume 8, Chapter 81 ("They finally found Zhang Qiling in the 1960s, and under his leadership, the Mystic Nine carried out the largest joint grave robbery in history.").
34. ↑ Volume 7, Chapter 34 ("If we temporarily called the behind-the-scenes entity that had forced the Mystic Nine to carry out the “largest” tomb robbery in history 'it.'"); Volume 7, Chapter 56; Volume 8, Chapter 81 ("Zhang Da Fo Ye entered politics after China’s victory in the war, and his background ensured him the position of head of a special department. At the same time, he must have discovered the Zhang family’s secret of longevity.").
35. ↑ Volume 7, Chapter 56.
36. ↑ Volume 7, Chapter 28; Volume 7, Chapter 56.
37. ↑ 37.0 37.1 37.2 37.3 37.4 Volume 8, Chapter 81.
38. ↑ 0305 Birthday Special Extra; Volume 8, Chapter 82.
39. ↑ Sand Sea, Chapter 119; Sand Sea 3, Chapter 8 (Chinese).
40. ↑ Tibetan Sea Flower, Chapter 1 (Wu Xie: "Except for some family things, my grandfather hardly mentioned anything about grave robbing.").
41. ↑ Volume 8, Chapter 82 ("After 1979—Xie Jiuye’s team had no choice but to turn to Wu Xie’s grandpa in Hangzhou, who made a crafty escape plan and hid the corpse in the Southern Song Dynasty’s imperial tomb.").
42. ↑ Volume 8, Chapter 82.
43. ↑ Palace of Doom, Chapter 22.
44. ↑ 44.0 44.1 44.2 44.3 Tibetan Sea Flower, Chapter 1
45. ↑ 45.0 45.1 45.2 Ten Thousand Mountains in the Extreme Night, Chapter 45
46. ↑ Ten Years Later, Chapter 2
47. ↑ 2009 Chinese New Year Special, Chapter 4
48. ↑ 2009 Chinese New Year Special, Chapter 1
49. ↑ 2009 Chinese New Year Special, Chapter 5
50. ↑ Sand Sea, Chapter 195