Slaughter
Wei Cong grabbed Li Dacheng's hand and, with lightning speed, pressed the dagger hidden in his sleeve against Li's vital point.
"The authorities are arresting people; we request Lord Li's cooperation."
The officials immediately subdued the trembling merchant, while the soldiers, realizing what was happening, surrounded him with spears.
"Lord Li, you have caught me red-handed. Even if I accidentally killed you, the court would not punish me."
"Who are you? Aren't you afraid that once you're here, you won't be able to leave? Besides, I'm just hosting a banquet for others. You have no evidence, so how can you arrest me for no reason?"
Li Dacheng, having long held a high position, had neglected his training. Now, suddenly caught off guard, he broke out in a cold sweat. However, knowing the enormity of his crime, he remained tight-lipped.
“I will find the evidence, Lord Li. You might as well worry about yourself.”
Wei Cong's tone was calm. "I made all the necessary arrangements before I came. If I die, you will not be able to escape the crime of murdering an official of the court."
Li Dacheng first gave a signal, instructing his trusted aide to destroy the evidence. The man, who had originally gone to get the wine, saw that Li Dacheng was being restrained and quickly ran to Li Dacheng's room.
Wei Cong frowned. "Stop that person."
Some officials tried to stop them, but were blocked by soldiers with spears, and they were unable to stop them.
Seeing that Wei Cong was distracted, Li Dacheng carefully leaned back, keeping the dagger away from his neck.
"Don't move." Wei Cong had never practiced martial arts, but his hand holding the dagger was very steady.
"Sir, you're a civil official, aren't you?" Li Dacheng laughed when he saw how wary he was. "You civil officials have always looked down on us martial artists, and you still do. You dare to come here and threaten me with just a few lackeys? Who gave you the guts?"
Wei Cong felt uneasy, but when he saw Liu Bian sneak back into the crowd, he immediately breathed a sigh of relief.
Judging from his expression, he must have gotten what he wanted.
"Didn't you say I had no evidence, sir? Now I think I have found it. Please come to my office, sir, so I can properly discuss your crimes."
He had barely finished speaking when his trusted aide, who had gone into the room to look for something, rushed back in a panic, "M-M-Sir, the thing is gone..."
"Ha, do you think you can convict me just because you have evidence?" Li Dacheng sneered. "You wouldn't dare kill me now, would you? Because once you have evidence, you'll have to go to court. You intellectuals love this kind of thing. Today I'll teach you a lesson."
Having said that, he wasn't afraid of the dagger in Wei Cong's hand. He let the blade slice across his neck, leaving a bloody mark, and then snatched the dagger away with a flick of his wrist.
"However, you are right in some ways. I dare not kill you now, but I have plenty of ways to keep you silent."
Wei Cong's hands were grabbed by Li Dacheng, and the officers below looked on anxiously, "Sir!"
"Your men probably wouldn't dare harm those merchants, right? Because they'd have to be taken back for interrogation..."
"The person who got the item must have slipped into my room during the chaos. So this person must be mixed in with these people."
Li Dacheng tightly gripped Wei Cong's hand and easily dislocated his arm. Wei Cong's hand fell limply to his side. He struggled a few times, but Li Dacheng held him down so he couldn't move.
"You think that once you find evidence, I'll obediently surrender? Ha, how naive of you."
“Li Dacheng, if you confess your crimes and submit to the law now, I will consider that you have shown remorse and give you a lighter punishment.”
"How can you reduce the punishment? Instead of exterminating nine generations, you'll exterminate three generations?" Li Dacheng sneered. "Since I did this, I knew the consequences. It's either you or me who dies."
"These salt smugglers are all here now. If I kill them all, what can you do to me?"
"So what if your men stole the evidence? Once they're dead, I can burn them all, and nothing will be left." Li Dacheng laughed wildly. "Men, all these people today, except for the merchants, are smugglers of salt. Kill all those who resist arrest."
Wei Cong's eyes were bloodshot. "Li Dacheng, if you want to kill them, you might as well kill me first. I am the prefect of Tongzhou. These people are just unarmed civilians. I can pretend that today's events never happened, but you can't touch them today."
"Tongzhou?" Li Dacheng said disdainfully, "I don't even know how many prefects of Tongzhou I've killed. You're the one who's blind and insists on running into me."
“Kill them, kill them one by one in front of this prefect,” Li Dacheng sneered. “I won’t touch the officials you brought today, but if anyone says a word against me in the future, don’t blame me for being impolite.”
"And you, Prefect, do you know why we failed today?"
"I truly didn't expect you to sneak into the victory celebration and even dare to hold me hostage with a dagger. But if you had been bolder, you could have stabbed me to death, and I might not have been able to do anything about it. Your mistake was in putting on such a high-sounding act in public..."
Wei Cong could no longer hear what Li Dacheng was saying; his vision was stained red with blood, and all he could hear were the people begging for mercy...
"My lord, please, save me..."
"Sir, I have elderly parents and young children to support..."
"grown ups......"
Wei Cong didn't know who the adult they were asking for help from was.
Is it him?
Could it be him?
The faces of those people, young and old, who had been beaming with joy at the banquet, now overlapped with their tearful expressions.
Their faces, contorted with fear, slowly lost their vitality.
Liu Bian shouted in the crowd that the items were with him and that people should stop killing, but no one paid him any attention.
The officials were shocked by the scene before them and wanted to fight back, but they were surrounded by more than a dozen soldiers with spears.
When the government investigates a case, it has to go through a trial process, so those salt smugglers don't dare to really resist arrest.
They originally thought that at worst they would return empty-handed, but they never expected that these ordinary people would suffer. Although they were originally salt smugglers, they did not deserve to be punished like this.
What right did Li Dacheng have to decide their lives? He was only trying to prevent the matter from being leaked.
Li Dacheng stood at the head of the table, grinning maliciously at them. These people would all die; it didn't matter who had the evidence.
“You can’t kill them, Li Dacheng. Aren’t you born of parents? They are human beings too!” Wei Cong heard his own voice, which was already choked with sobs.
"Li Dacheng, you beast!"
Wei Cong said a lot more, sometimes pleading, sometimes cursing. For the first time, he realized that he was not very good at cursing.
They couldn't find a single dirty, vicious word to curse the beast in human skin before them.
But Li Dacheng remained unmoved.
He spoke in a sinister, venomous voice, "Your Excellency, these men died for you. They were just ordinary people before, but with the arrival of officials like you, things changed. They were salt smugglers, and it was because of your arrival..."
"My lord, a total of one hundred and three people have all been brought to justice," reported Li Dacheng's adjutant.
"Bring me to justice? You are the commander of the garrison. When did it become your business to crack down on smuggled salt? Li Dacheng, if you don't kill me today, I will definitely kill you one day."
Wei Cong's words were filled with anguish; the physical pain was nothing compared to the agony in his heart, as if a thousand needles were piercing it, causing a dense, agonizing pain.
He is still alive, he still feels pain, but what about the civilians who were killed?
Li Dacheng released Wei Cong's hand. "Prefect, you'd better watch yourself. You want to kill me, and I want to kill you too. Do you think I'll give you a second chance?"
He left laughing heartily.
"My lord!" The officers immediately surrounded them.
The soldiers had already piled up the corpses of the salt smugglers, poured tung oil over them, and the flames scorched the flesh, producing a pungent, almost nauseating smell.
Wei Cong vomited a few times, searching for Liu Bian's body amidst the sea of corpses and flames, but he couldn't find it. He wondered if Liu Bian had regretted his decision to help him before he died.
He only knew that he had made a mistake, a terrible mistake, and that the price of this mistake was too high: 103 people died.
He should have killed Li Dacheng from the beginning, that beast.
"Sir, you should go back first."
Wei Cong's limp hands, scalded by the fire, were now raw and bleeding, completely devoid of the elegance he once displayed when holding the pen.
"Sir, stop looking. Your hand will be ruined if you keep doing this."
The officials looked at each other in bewilderment, and finally the leader decided to knock Wei Cong unconscious and take him back first.
When Wei Cong woke up again, he thought he had just had a nightmare, until the excruciating pain in his hand came.
He burst into tears and cried for a long time, hugging his knees.
He had never cried since he was a child. He didn't cry when his father died, nor did he cry when his mother died.
Wei Cong was overwhelmed with guilt, and waves of pain washed over him. He felt dizzy and disoriented, and despite the bright sunshine, he couldn't see a glimmer of light.
If he weren't the prefect, he could have recklessly gone to the thieves' den to capture the leader.
If things go wrong, only he will die.
But he was the prefect, and his wrong decision killed 103 people under his jurisdiction who should not have died there.
"Sir, someone has reported a case to the yamen." Zhang Shuqi's voice came from outside the door.
Wei Cong gritted his teeth, wiped away his tears, and put his official robes back on. "Okay, I'll be right out."
＊
"Wei Cong, do you think the deaths of those 103 people were your fault?"
Gu Yu noticed his pain and asked him earnestly.
"If it weren't for me, they wouldn't have died."
Wei Cong numbly admitted his mistakes; guilt and pain had overwhelmed him. If he hadn't numbed himself, he wouldn't have been able to continue processing official documents and handling business.
His arm has been reattached, but his fingers are covered in wounds and haven't been properly bandaged.
Gu Yu glanced at him, worried that his hand might be ruined.
She asked the jailer to buy some wound medicine and gauze.
"And then what? Later, Xu Yunliang and Li Dacheng framed you, and you just gave up on yourself and confessed your crimes?"
Wei Cong did not answer his question, but said to himself, "Later I went to Liu Bian's house in person. His family lived in Yanchi, Hedong. His father and mother were in their early forties, but their hair was completely white, and they looked like they were about to die."
"His younger sister is thirteen years old, named Xiaohua. She is as thin as an eight-year-old child. When I saw them, I couldn't tell them that Liu Bian was dead."
"There are so many people, whose names I don't even know, but they all died because of me... because of me..."
Gu Yu waved her hand in front of Wei Cong, trying to bring him back to his senses.
She knew he was in too much pain. His recounting of what happened in Tongzhou was like reopening a wound that hadn't fully healed; beneath the scar lay blood, festering and oozing pus.
"You don't want to live anymore, do you?"
Gu Yu looked at him quietly; his eyes were numb and devoid of any light.
She wasn't just asking him; she was also asking about Tang Qingning, who had been cut off from food and water at Yunxian Pavilion and was being hung up and beaten.
The world is a treacherous place, with wicked people in power; this world is truly a living hell...
So, Tang Qingning, do you have a death wish?
Wei Cong didn't speak; he had lost the courage to answer, so he silently closed his eyes.
He doesn't open his eyes, so he can't see the darkness before him; he doesn't answer, so don't ask him about anything in the world, good or bad.
Tang Qingning did the same thing. She closed her eyes, letting hunger and a chaotic consciousness envelop her. The high fever gave her an excuse to escape.
She was too weak to make a choice, so her parents and brother, who had died unjustly, had no reason to blame her.
She was in so much pain, so tired, so hungry. She didn't want to live in this corrupt world anymore...
But Yu Zhu made the choice for her; she survived, and Tang Qingning survived.
In the dimly lit prison cell, Gu Yu reached out and touched Wei Cong's slightly trembling eyes...
What clear and bright eyes they had! There was always a kind of brilliance in their eyes that she didn't understand, like light, a faint glow in the darkness.
“I remember telling you that your eyes resemble those of an old friend of mine. She was as pure and unyielding as you, which is why she met such a tragic end.” She smiled faintly.
The light in Yu Zhu's eyes never went out until her death, and she didn't want the light in Wei Cong's eyes to disappear as well.
Wei Cong's eyelashes trembled incessantly, but he did not open them.
He heard her say,
“I’ve made the choice for you: you must live, and live well.”
Tang Qingning, someone made the choice for you, so you should live well.
He was powerless, weak, and suffering, yet his struggles were fruitless. But someone wanted to share the consequences of all this with him.
Gu Yu took the things the jailer had bought, carefully applied medicine to the wound on his hand, and then bandaged it with clean gauze.
She always had a smile on her face, as if all her suffering was insignificant.
Wei Cong thought that she should never encounter such a thing, after all, she was born with everything that the world envies.
But he was never jealous of her, because even though she had everything, she never looked down on those people who were struggling just to survive.
Before Gu Yu left, Wei Cong said one last thing, "Miss Gu, Xu Ziliu knows everything, but I still went to jail. I think he chose Xu Yunliang over me and his younger brother."
He stopped calling that man "teacher." After so many people had died, Xu Ziliu still chose to show favoritism; he was unworthy to be his teacher.
Gu Yu only realized how late it was when she left the cell. She had been listening to Wei Cong's story for so long that she hadn't noticed the passage of time at all.
"Madam!" Xu Qiu was holding a gray squirrel fur cloak. When he saw her come out, he draped it over her shoulders.
"Let's go back to the manor and have something to eat first. We can talk about it later."
"Have you been waiting long?" Gu Yu reached out and touched his cheek; it was ice-cold.
It seems he stood outside waiting for her, and didn't go in to disturb her conversation with Wei Cong.
Xu Qiu grabbed her hand, smiled, and rubbed it against her, letting the warmth of her palm transfer to himself. "It wasn't long, but it was windy outside."
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