Chapter 320
Chapter 320
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 320
>Chapter Title: Divination Signs
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Chapter 320: Divination Signs
emerging from the prison, Li Huowang arrived at the backyard of the Cangshui County yamen. As soon as he got there, he saw Mantou sticking his head into the horse trough, fighting the horse for water.
Smelling the familiar scent, Mantou turned his head and looked at him innocently. He was hungry.
Li Huowang led Mantou out onto the street. Though the infant thefts had thrown the entire Cangshui County into panic, there were still people doing business on the streets.
“Red oil wontons?” Li Huowang eyed the unfamiliar food and led Mantou to the second stall. “Thorn noodles?”
Two bowls of wide noodles, green with tiny black flecks, were served up, topped generously with a fragrant chili sauce.
Seeing Mantou eating with relish, Li Huowang then took chopsticks from the bamboo basket and started eating.
These wide noodles were quite peculiar—numbing in the mouth, yet without any Sichuan peppercorns. The numbness came from the tiny thorns in the noodles scraping against his tongue.
The green color came from dyeing with thorns, and even more remarkably, the thorns softened quickly once in the mouth.
As Li Huowang ate this specialty from Daliang, two men walked in beside him. They spoke in hushed tones, laced with that knowing chuckle men shared.
“It’s absolutely true. What kind of man do you take your brother for? Would I lie to you? Ghosts come out of Ghost Gate Pass—male ones and female ones! That female ghost was drop-dead gorgeous, heh heh heh~”
“That female ghost was pent up too, heh heh heh~. How could your brother just ignore her? By the second day when I got out of bed, I was eight taels lighter!”
Hearing this, Li Huowang couldn’t help but frown. The people of this world lived in confusion and died in confusion, clinging to these rumors without knowing what was really happening around them.
As the man boasted about his exploits, Li Huowang kept his head down and ate his noodles.
After hurriedly finishing his noodles, Li Huowang thought that since the talisman divination had worked last time, he’d try the same trick again.
He lit the divined talisman and swallowed the ashes once more. But this time, unlike before, it had no effect.
“Why does this talisman work sometimes and not others? Did I draw it wrong?” Li Huowang stared at the talisman manual in his hand, pondering carefully.
Since it was only his second time using it, Li Huowang was clearly still very unfamiliar with the process.
“Sir, the owner of Shuxin Hall has come to report to the authorities too!”
The bailiff’s shout was cut short as County Magistrate Lou yanked him away. “Don’t disturb Sir while he’s performing the ritual!”
“I refuse to believe it’s this hard to catch whatever’s stealing the infants!” With divination failing, Li Huowang resorted to the crude method of staking out.
But after staking out for several days straight, it was as if they knew he was coming—the bizarre infant thefts in Cangshui County just stopped.
In a hazy daze, Li Huowang, sleeping in the guest room, was woken by voices outside. Pushing open the window, he saw throngs of people streaming eastward along the street, every face flushed with excitement.
“What’s this...” Curious, Li Huowang left the room and followed.
It didn’t take long following the crowd for Li Huowang to figure out where they were headed. They had packed the crossroads so tightly no water could leak through, and at the center of the crossroads was an embroiderer tied to a wooden post.
“Execute!” County Magistrate Lou, looking righteous and stern, tossed the red chit. Cheers erupted immediately.
Spotting Li Huowang approaching, the imperious County Magistrate Lou sat up straight and yielded his seat.
“Sir, you’re here? We caught this thief thanks to you!”
“They’re going to behead him? This fast? Wasn’t it supposed to be execution after the autumn assizes?”
County Magistrate Lou glared at the embroiderer, looking as if he wanted to devour him. “This man’s crimes are heinous! How could we just behead him? To avenge the people of Cangshui County, he deserves death by a thousand cuts!”
At that moment, a burly man in a red vest stepped forward. He took a bowl of yellow wine, tossed it back, then raised his slicing knife and got to work.
With every strip of flesh peeled from the embroiderer’s body, cheers rose from the crowd.
“What’s with those people stuffing copper coins into the bailiff’s arms?” Li Huowang pointed toward the corner.
“Oh, those are the victims’ families. To ensure this thief’s soul never rests, they plan to buy his flesh and bones to feed to dogs. If the hatred runs deep enough, some even eat their enemy’s flesh and drink their blood.”
“Sigh, by rights, this violates Daliang law, but thinking of how this thief nearly defiled my darling daughter—forget them, I want to lunge over and bite a chunk myself! He’s utterly hateful!”
The embroiderer’s body was gradually dismembered, turning grotesquely horrific. Yet men, women, and children alike showed no fear—instead, their excitement grew, cheers echoing nonstop. The scene was utterly bizarre.
With every slice, accompanied by the crowd’s cheers, the embroiderer let out heart-wrenching screams.
As he screamed, his eyes turned venomous toward the onlookers. He stopped screaming and started cursing instead, louder with every surge of pain.
“Putting on airs! So what if I fool around? I’ve fooled around plenty of times—none of them were virgins! The women here are all sluts! All broken shoes!! All whores!!”
His words ignited the crowd’s fury, curses flying. If not for the bailiffs holding them back, they’d have rushed up and killed him on the spot.
“Hm? Hold on!” Li Huowang seemed to spot something and hurried down.
When he reached the embroiderer, he was shocked to see that the bloody knife marks on his body barely formed the exact hexagram he’d divined from the human bone before! “You’re telling the truth?”
“I’d be a turtle’s bastard son if I lied! Over a hundred women, not one bled! The women of Cangshui have all been defiled long ago!”
It sounded like dying spite, but seeing the hexagram on his body, Li Huowang didn’t think so.
“Virgin blood... virgin blood.” Realizing something, Li Huowang rushed to County Magistrate Lou. “You said before that besides women being violated and infants stolen, other things were stolen too?”
“Yes, what about it? Has Sir found something?”
“Gather everything that’s been stolen! How many, what exactly—I need to know it all!”
Hearing Li Huowang’s firm tone, County Magistrate Lou hurried off to comply.
Stolen infants were hard to track, but stolen goods were easy to inventory.
Soon, Li Huowang held a list of everything stolen.
“Danggui... Cinnabar...” The more Li Huowang read, the tighter his brows furrowed.
Linking it to the embroiderer’s talk of no virgin blood, the other man’s soul-stealing ghost woman, and the missing children...
Li Huowang finally picked up a brush and wrote three names on the paper: Red Pill, Fivefold Sweet Dew, and Bone Rot.
Staring at everything recorded, Li Huowang’s eyes widened more and more.
“This drug property... this ratio—it’s a pill formula! Someone’s using these to refine pills!!”
(End of chapter)