Chapter 80: The Purge

As the axe bearer split the cellar’s stone slab with one blow, a thick reek of corpses erupted upward, like the stench of salted fish left to rot for days and then suddenly unsealed.

The bearers of the black pennants had their spiritual energy shielding them, so they fared somewhat better. The constables, by contrast, were wracked with violent vomiting, retching up green bile.

The constables collapsed in disarray, but no one had any mind for them now; everyone present was stunned by the sight within.

Ling Chi had already withdrawn to the far end of the street, yet the odor was still plainly discernible.

The onlookers and neighbors no longer cared to watch the excitement. They fled toward the distance, and news of this place would surely spread through the county town before half an incense stick had burned.

“My lord, many of the bodies have turned to bones and cannot be identified. Please take a look...”

A pennant bearer came to report, inwardly grateful he had obeyed his superior’s earlier warning; otherwise, he too would now be vomiting and unable to stand like the constables.

“Have those who know the wind arts set up a strong draft first and blow for the time it takes an incense stick to burn before proceeding. As for those who know fire arts, if anything truly cannot be identified, burn it.”

Ling Chi gave the order casually.

The pennant bearer hurried off at once.

The odor of death spread farther and farther, until it could be clearly smelled across half the southern city. More and more martial artists came, only to be startled by the wreckage hauled up from below; the cruel scene struck their chests like a hammer.

In the end, forty-two bodies were dug out of the cellar. After the coroner’s inspection, thirty-six were confirmed to be women and six were men.

The matter fermented through the county town in an instant. All the constables, along with the pennant bearers of every rank who had not gone out, arrived to help identify the bodies and maintain order.

The shop’s young attendants, husband and wife, were both dragged in and made to kneel beside Shopkeeper Zhou.

Among the crowd, whispers spread as people speculated how the crime had been committed.

Ling Chi had the couple interrogated right there on the street, and the scene drew cheers of unrestrained satisfaction.

He himself, however, walked back and forth expressionlessly. Though he seemed to be idly strolling, in truth he was following the guidance of the thunder pearl and memorizing the targets present.

Some of those targets were even down below, loudly praising the discovery. Without the pearl’s discernment, Ling Chi might have mistaken them for good people.

He marked them without showing it, and sent his divine sense over them, so that he could trail them and strike them down later.

“Sixth Senior Brother, it’s been thoroughly investigated. They lured in out-of-town refugees and embroideresses from remote districts by advertising for needlework women.”

“The victims were usually toyed with first, then thrown into the cellar to suffocate, or else... they were frightened to death by what they saw in the cellar. They have been committing these crimes for five or six years.”

Pennant bearer Li Wu reported through clenched teeth. Just thinking of the horrors below made his anger burn.

“Sixth Senior Brother, let me personally kill these beasts.”

Ling Chi flatly refused.

“If you kill them, then what am I supposed to kill? I have to vent this anger myself first. Go find something else to kill.”

He patted Li Wu on the shoulder.

Li Wu had not expected Ling Chi to make the move himself. That Shopkeeper Zhou was only at the third level of vein opening, and now he had already been crippled. As for the remaining couple, they had not even reached the body-tempering realm. And yet Sixth Young Master still intended to do it personally?

Ling Chi ignored the plea of the former registered disciple from the martial hall and had the three culprits brought over and made to kneel in a row.

His words rang out like spring thunder, carrying clearly across the county town.

“I was patrolling the streets today when I smelled corpse stench on this Zhou fellow. Curious, I followed him and found, to my shock, such a heinous massacre.”

“This Zhou fellow, together with his attendant and the attendant’s wife, has spent the last five or six years insulting and murdering women—thirty-six women and six men, forty-two in all, not counting countless other cases yet undiscovered.”

“This is a crime that angers both man and heaven, one beyond forgiveness. I, Ling Chi, on behalf of the Peacekeeping Office of Jing'an, hereby sentence Zhou Wang, Li Er, and Wang of the Li family to be cut in two at the waist, and the sentence is to be carried out at once.”

“Bring the condemned here.”

Ling Chi’s words resounded in a stream, shaking the entire county town.

The three were dragged to an open space. Zhou Wang had only one breath left; the attendant couple had already been beaten to the brink of death.

The three were tightly bound to a long bench, and Ling Chi drew his blade.

A flash of silver-white sword light, and all three were severed into six pieces. The surrounding commoners burst into thunderous cheers.

This Sixth Young Master of the Peacekeeping Office handled cases far more decisively than the county yamen. Once he caught them, he killed them on the spot—that was the only way to strike fear into those villains.

After being cut in two, a person would not die at once. The upper half of Zhou Wang struggled and fell to the ground, while the lower half on the bench kept twitching.

Zhou Wang twisted his head with effort. The intense pain had numbed him, and the contents of his belly were spilling out in a mess.

His hideous face stared fixedly at Ling Chi, wishing he could turn into a vengeful ghost and devour his flesh, sleep in his skin.

Ling Chi tilted his head and looked down at Zhou Wang on the ground.

“So what if you become a ghost? You accursed thing, I’ll send you on your way again.”

His tone was cold with mockery.

Zhou Wang and the other two died in despair. The thunder pearl fed back to him more than a hundred wisps of thunderous spiritual energy, suggesting they still had lives on their conscience elsewhere.

Ling Chi ordered the pennant bearers to burn the bodies as well. Zhou Wang’s corpse, however, he took away separately, burned it to ash with pure yang power, and then threw the remains into a roadside family’s pigsty, watching the pigs lick the ashes clean before leaving.

Still wanting to become a ghost? Dream on.

The pennant bearers and constables of Jing'an scattered the crowd, and the nearby streets began to be doused with limewater mixed with epidemic-cleansing powder.

The smell on these streets would probably not disperse for some time; houses in the northern part of the city might even rise in price.

Ling Chi paid it no mind. He took several pennant bearers and began arresting people one by one.

Some were seized on the spot in the crowd. Those people still tried to argue, but was Ling Chi the sort of man who needed to heed evidence?

Once they were sent to the dungeon of the Peacekeeping Office, everything came clean.

The standard sequence followed: conviction, decapitation, confiscation of the household.

He divided the Peacekeeping Office into several teams and even drew two groups of constables from the county yamen to work together.

More and more criminals were captured, including but not limited to fugitives guilty of murder, highway robbers, and lecherous libertines.

Those who dared resist were killed on the spot; the rest were taken back to the Peacekeeping Office to complete the procedure and then killed.

The lecherous libertines were left behind separately, reserved for Zhuo Ying to practice on. No one knew whether the few ruffians of the Xue family left in Willow Tree Town had been flayed to pieces yet.

For a time, Crane County was thoroughly cleaned out. The people on the streets all became moral exemplars; petty theft and pickpocketing vanished without a trace, let alone murder and arson.

Outside, rumors even spread that Sixth Young Master of the Peacekeeping Office possessed vast and uncanny powers, with informants throughout every corner of Crane County, and that he knew perfectly well even where the silver and coin in your own house were hidden. The tale was told with such detail that it seemed almost true.

A disabled man selling tofu in the eastern part of the county town, surnamed Liu, had hidden himself there for more than a decade—yet he had once been a notorious bandit who killed and robbed in another county, infamous for a time.

No one would ever have imagined that that plain, honest-looking crippled Liu had once committed such a major crime.

Ling Chi’s excitement had already faded. The thunder pearl’s feedback had not ceased, but most of it was only a few wisps at a time; only when it exceeded fifty wisps did it bring him any real pleasure.

At this rate, all the villains and demons in Crane County would be killed clean out. In a few days, he would have to ask Cao Huabao whether he could get him some kind of identity, so he could go out and look around.

He searched the county town for two straight days, leaving the local martial world terrified, fearing that just as they slept soundly, Ling Chi would break their doors down.

During those two days, many guilty consciences had already packed up and fled Crane County to lie low elsewhere.

When the thunder pearl no longer trembled, Ling Chi lost interest in continuing the search.

He remained in the training ground to cultivate wholeheartedly, while little Rui’er stood nearby with proper seriousness, playing along.

Yang Shu was so busy she hardly had time to touch the ground, bringing several stout servant women with her every day to prepare supplies.

The cook she had specially invited from the prefectural capital had also arrived, and for the past two days had been busy preparing all kinds of ingredients.

That day, Ling Chi was practicing his blade techniques in the training ground when Li Wu hurried over.

“Sixth Senior Brother, a survivor just reported a case. A bear demon at the edge of Crane Mountain, in the Spirit Sea realm, attacked passing merchants and bit many people to death.”

“I’ll go make a trip and bring it back for little Rui’er to roast and eat.”

Ling Chi sheathed his blade and gave a sharp whistle.