The village chief, trembling with fear, went to the county to report the case.

When the head constable came to investigate the case, the villagers had very complicated expressions.

Fear, excitement, schadenfreude...

The village chief followed the constable into Xu Tiezhu's house, then quickly ran out and, together with the two constables, leaned against a tree outside, vomiting violently.

Everyone was dismembered. Xu Tiezhu, Xu Dalang, and Xu Erlang were reduced to skeletons, and only the remaining skin on their faces could reveal who the deceased were.

It was too tragic; the constable had never seen such a horrific scene.

The coroner initially determined that the person had been dead for three days.

The graves of the village head and Master Xu were dug up at some unknown time.

The people of Xujia Village were so grief-stricken by the silver notes that they had been lying at home depressed for the past few days, so no one noticed so quickly.

Luckily it was still cold, otherwise it would have smelled terrible.

However, some people still saw something.

According to witnesses, that night, when he got up to use the outhouse, he saw many people who could fly and "fly" to the Xu family's house.

One of the men, a tall, god-like figure, was holding a child in his arms and stood silently watching outside the Xu family's courtyard!

Everyone thought this eyewitness was mentally unstable; how could someone commit murder while holding a child and watching?

Someone overheard Xu Erlang cursing Xu Tiezhu, saying that Xu Tiezhu had asked Xiao Pang for too much money, preventing him from becoming a wealthy young master, and that he was going to hire people from the underworld to kill Xu Tiezhu's entire family.

Ultimately, the county provided an explanation—

The Xu family was killed by gangsters hired by Xu Erlang because Xu Tiezhu thwarted his dream of wealth and power.

Xu Erlang was killed by a江湖人 (jianghu person, someone from the martial arts world), because Xu Erlang had taken a lot of money from Xu Li and was double-crossed.

As for why Xu Erlang, the village head, and Master Xu were also executed by slow slicing, that remains a mystery!