A crescent moon appeared in the night sky, a slight white mist was floating on the streets, and in the government prison with two lanterns hanging, moonlight poured in through the small window.
Snap, snap…
The whip flew in the air and lashed down fiercely. The jailer who was carrying out the execution wiped the blood off his face and washed it in the bucket beside him. The prisoners were sent in in the first half of the night and were required to be interrogated overnight. However, usually when they were sent in, they would be tortured first to intimidate them.
moment.
The prison door was opened, and a figure with a slender knife on his waist led several constables in and waved his hand.
"Wake him up!"
"yes!"
The jailer quickly ordered his men to pour the water in the bucket onto the prisoner. His tattered Taoist robe was stained with blood. Taoist Yangming was breathing foul air and slowly woke up. He didn't even have the strength to beg for mercy.
His lips just kept murmuring: "... I don't dare... I don't dare..."
Black Dog Blood broke his magic and went all the way to the government prison. The experienced constables did not give him the chance to use his magic power. They simply gagged his mouth open with a cloth, tied his fingers, and put his whole body on the rack, followed by a severe torture.
At this point, even if he found a chance to escape using his magic power, his body was almost crippled and he couldn't make it out of the city.
Zuo Zhengyang took off his weapon and handed it to his deputy, looked at the Taoist on the rack, and stepped forward.
"I have never seen any magic before. Can this Taoist priest show me some?"
On the rack, the Taoist priest, with disheveled hair and dripping water stains, raised his face slightly, then shook his head slightly and lowered it again.
"... I... I don't dare anymore, please spare my life, Chief Constable..."
"Let you go?!" Zuo Zhengyang looked at him with his hands behind his back, narrowing his eyes: "If I let you go, wouldn't that bring danger to the Zhou and Zhang families, as well as this detective's life in the future?"
Taoist Yangming shook his head repeatedly, blood in the corner of his mouth, and spoke with difficulty: "No... If I can save my life, I will never stay in Hegu County in the future... I beg the chief constable to show mercy... Please show mercy."
"It's really embarrassing for monks."
The chief constable's words echoed in the torture room. After a pause, Zuo Zhengyang looked at him and spoke again: "Fortunately, no one was killed in this incident. It's a big deal, but it's also a small matter. If you want to get out, you need to answer whatever this constable asks. What do you think, Taoist priest?"
Taoist Yangming stared at him in a daze, opened his bloody mouth and laughed, nodding his head repeatedly.
"Whatever the adults ask, I will answer."
"Okay, since the Taoist priest is so straightforward, I will definitely not break my promise."
Zuo Zhengyang waved his hand and asked someone to take the confession sheet and stand beside him before he spoke.
"How much silver did you receive from Zhang Dongming for doing things for him?"
"One hundred and seventy taels."
"What are you doing?"
"Your Excellency... I need to ask for a miraculous medicine to cure the illness of Mr. Zhang's son, Zhang Liancheng."
"Where is the elixir? Why are you persecuting the daughter of Zhou Zhen from the Zhou Mansion? The two families had an engagement, why are they killing each other?"
"The elixir is under Zhou Rong's boudoir. It is a trace of earth spirit that gave birth to human Ganoderma. Mr. Zhang knows the relationship between the two families. His son was injured because of the fox charm. He was too embarrassed to come to his house, so he had to let me perform the ritual. He didn't know that Zhou Rong was injured by me."
Zuo Zhengyang nodded.
"Even if what you said is true, why did you do something to hurt others? With your magical power as a cultivator, you can easily take it out."
He paused for a moment, and before the Taoist on the stand could answer, Zuo Zhengyang suddenly spoke up, his voice as loud as thunder: "It's obvious that you still want to do something dirty to Zhou Rong!!!"
Taoist Yangming was stunned for a moment. He had been tortured before and was covered with wounds. The pain from the tearing wounds made it impossible for him to concentrate. His thoughts were suddenly disrupted by the loud shout and he subconsciously shook his head to argue.
"Sir, I have done nothing dirty. I just wanted to kill Zhang Liancheng because of the elixir..."
When the words reached this point, everyone in the prison looked at the Taoist and uttered a long and meaningful “Oh!”
Taoist Yangming then realized that he had been tricked. He slumped on the rack, not daring to look at the captain of the police standing opposite him.
Zuo Zhengyang stretched out his hand and lifted his chin, staring at a pattern surrounded by five fires on the Taoist's chest.
"Stealing treasures and harming people... It seems that the Taoist priest has concealed a lot of things. Then I will ask you again, is it you who did the case of Chen Yuanwai in Fushui County?"
The Taoist on the rack didn't dare to speak carelessly for fear of being trapped again, and he kept shaking his head.
"No... I didn't... No"
"It seems that the Taoist priest still needs help to recall it carefully." Zuo Zhengyang took a half step back, and the interrogator from the prison came over, dipped his hands in salt water, and was about to torture him.
Zuo Zhengyang wiped the blood off his fingertips, took his weapon, turned around and left the cell, waving his hand: "I will keep my promise and release him, but I will cut off his tendons and tongue to prevent him from harming others again."
Just as the deputy bowed, Taoist Yangming's shrill scream suddenly rang out from the cell, and the jailer holding the whip was stunned.
"I haven't started fighting yet, what are you yelling about?!"
Outside, Zuo Zhengyang, who had not walked far, also stopped and looked inside. On the rack, the Taoist priest was struggling desperately with no idea where he got the strength from. His eyes were wide open, staring at the dome of the cell and letting out a heart-wrenching scream.
"Ahhh... sir, save me."
Zuo Zhengyang rushed into the cell and shouted, "Put him down!"
However, the Taoist's voice was mixed in with his roar, and in an instant, there was a crackling sound of bones and a loud bang.
A bloody mist exploded in the cell.
Zuo Zhengyang waved his hand to disperse the blood mist. After a while, he could see clearly. On the rack opposite, only the Taoist's arms were left hanging there.
He glanced around and saw the ground and the wooden pillars of the fence were covered with broken flesh and remnants of Taoist robes.
There was silence for a moment.
"Clean this place up and report it truthfully."
When I walked outside, the bright colors were already dim. I took a breath, thought about what happened before, and frowned.
"It seems like something terrible happened... He was silenced."
The white fog on the street gradually dissipated, the sky became brighter and rose to the clouds, and the city, which had been silent all night, gradually became noisy. Residents living near Zhang's house got up early to buy vegetables and fetch water, and gathered by the well to chat about family matters.
"Oh, something strange happened last night. Something was calling in the night."
"Did you hear that, too?"
"… Didn't you hear it? It was like thunder. I was sleeping in bed and I was so scared that I fell to the ground."
"It seems to have come from Zhang's house."
"At his home, his son seemed to be ill a few months ago. From what people said, he was bewitched by a fox spirit, and he even asked a master to perform a ritual on him."
"... Wait, my house is close. I seemed to see a group of detectives entering Zhang's house last night. They seemed to have arrested a Taoist priest..."
"No, why do I see a scholar walking with a constable?"
"What does the scholar look like?"
"It's too dark to see clearly..."
Amid the gossip of the people, on the other side of the city, the sun shone through the door plaque with the words "Zhou Mansion" inscribed on it. The morning light swept away the gloom of the night. A servant heard the master talking with a scholar named Lu Liangsheng in the study, and they laughed heartily from time to time. Probably he understood that the strange things in the mansion had been eliminated, so he quickly ran away and told the news to everyone in the mansion.
In the side yard, a Taoist priest, his body wrapped in bandages, was listening to the servants and maids' laughter and chatter while leisurely basking in the sun.
The sunlight poured in from the window lattice, the light dust fluttered, shining through the portrait of the beauty on the wall and spreading throughout the room.
"Hehe..."
Under the bed, Taoist Toad slowly crawled out, dragging a gourd taller than himself. He opened his toad mouth and hummed a few times. Then he stood up, holding the gourd with one webbed foot and putting one hand on his waist. The humming turned into laughter.
“Hahahaha… hehehe ahhahaha…”
The toad looked at the gourd.
"... the elixir made by thousands of people... hehe hahahaha... not only can it restore my magic power and transform me into a human... but it can also repair the injuries of the demon pill..."
The frog's webbed feet were bent and clenched, and the toad looked up at the high window frame, looking at the bright dust in the sunlight.
“… I… will soon be back to my peak and invincible!”
…
at the same time.
On the long street outside the mansion, Zuo Zhengyang was riding on horseback.