Chapter Twenty-Four: Punishment

The priest’s cold laugh held no warmth. With a flick of his left hand, three objects appeared in his grasp: a short sword flashing with icy light, a token bearing the authority of the lake bandits, and a square golden seal.

“Oh? A marshal for suppressing bandits, is he? This prince of Ning truly has a sense of humor. To ennoble a pirate as a bandit-suppressing general—does he not feel the shame of it?”

After his mocking words, he vanished in a blur and appeared before Mo Wuhen. Mo Wuhen had no time to react before the priest pressed a finger to the center of his brow. Only searing pain shot through that point; then his vision went dark, and he collapsed into unconsciousness.

The priest did not know how deeply Mo Wuhen, the Dragon King of the Dark Sea, was entangled with the local magistracy. Since ancient times, officials and outlaws had often been cut from the same cloth. With one hand he lifted the hundred-odd catties of Mo Wuhen as though he weighed nothing, and walked straight into the rear courtyard of the mansion.

The back courtyard was crowded with servants, maids, and quite a few concubines. Seeing their master being carried in by another man, they all cried out in panic. From both outside and within the courtyard, dozens of bandit guards surged forth, each with blade in hand, surrounding him in the middle.

“Your master is a Lake Dongting outlaw. The authorities will come to confiscate his house before long. You’d best grab what little you can and flee for your lives!”

The priest had no wish to make things difficult for the women, servants, and children in the inner courtyard. He raised his voice and said, “Looking at the blood aura about you, I see no lack of resentment. It seems each of you has blood on your hands. Very well, then. I can only act in heaven’s stead.”

He finished, and with a sweep of his left hand, the bandits’ swords and sabers were suddenly wrenched from their grip and sent flying into the air. The priest’s gaze sharpened as he gave a crisp shout, and the weapons became a rain of light, pinning every last one of the water bandits to the ground.

In an instant, the bandits were pierced through by blades. Each stared in terror as blood poured from their bodies, impossible to staunch. They were clearly doomed, and their screams were wretched beyond measure.

The servants, maids, and others in the courtyard saw the priest’s methods and the bandits’ miserable state, and were so frightened they nearly lost their souls. Chaos broke out at once: some ran outward, some ran deeper inside, a clamoring, disordered mess. The priest could not be bothered to care. Still carrying the unconscious Mo Wuhen, he went straight to a study.

Inside the study stood an altar to the Holy Mother of Life. The priest smiled faintly and began searching through Mo Wuhen’s papers, extracting every letter he could find. Then, with Mo Wuhen in tow, he headed to the bandits’ lair.

Unlike mountain bandits, water bandits had no fixed stronghold. Most simply made a few hidden nests on reed-choked sandbars, using them as places for secret meetings and plotting. When soldiers came, they scattered; when the troops withdrew, they gathered again. In day-to-day life they mostly lived aboard their boats. Who could tell whether they were fishermen or outlaws?

Tonight, Mo Wuhen had clearly gone home to indulge himself, so someone had to remain in the lair. The bandit strategist, Mr. Dou of the White Fan, had been ordered to stay behind and guard the nest, acting in Mo Wuhen’s stead. Dou was a scholar by training and should never have fallen into banditry. But after being disgraced for an adulterous affair and stripped of his degree, with nowhere else to turn he had taken refuge with the Prince of Ning, only to be sent here to live as an outlaw and help recruit water bandits while serving as a strategist. That night, Dou suddenly felt an inexplicable unease, as though something dire were about to happen. He did not drink with the bandits, but retired early to his room. Half asleep, he seemed to sense someone near him and instantly stirred in alarm, about to cry out, when a shadow struck him with a knife-hand blow and knocked him unconscious.

The priest stood in the clouds, one culprit in each hand. He looked back at the waterside den, which had fallen into chaos after the strategist’s disappearance. A thought moved him, and a talisman in his robes flew out on its own, rising above the bandit lair and igniting without any wind at all. The priest gave it no further glance. With thunder crashing behind him, he vanished into the night over Dongting Lake.

The next day, when the sun was already high, a Taoist came to the gate of the prefectural yamen in Yueyang. He carried two living men as though they weighed nothing. This startled the townspeople, who all gathered to watch the spectacle. The Taoist went straight to the magistrate’s office, tossed the two men casually to the ground, and began to beat the complaint drum.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

The pounding woke the magistrate from a fine dream, and no wonder he was furious. He was just about to take the bench and hear the case when the clerk came hurrying over, drenched in sweat. The magistrate found this odd. Why was the old fellow suddenly so unable to keep his composure?

“Your honor,” the clerk whispered after wiping the sweat from his brow, “the one beating the drum today is the Emperor-ordained Guardian of the Realm. He left behind a stack of letters and two ringleaders from Lake Dongting, saying that you must judge the matter with perfect fairness. Otherwise, he said he would go straight to the capital and file a memorial against you.”

Then the clerk lowered his voice even further. “And, and among those letters is one from the eldest young master.”

The magistrate panicked at once. This was no small matter. He hurriedly seized the clerk’s arm and said, “Where is the Guardian of the Realm? Take me to see him at once.” Cold sweat had already begun to break out on his forehead. To be implicated in harboring bandits was not a charge anyone could bear lightly.

“Your honor, the Guardian of the Realm is already gone. He only said that you must render a fair judgment, and if you cannot, he will go to the capital and complain before the throne,” the clerk replied.

Only then did the magistrate relax a little. Since the honored Taoist had been willing to hand over the case, he ought not to pursue the matter too deeply. He steadied himself and shouted, “Prepare the court!”

What he did not know was that several letters implicating the Prince of Ning had already been sent directly to the capital by the imperial secret police.

The priest had considered executing the two men in secret. But after thinking it over, he merely sighed. A monk should not kill too many people. In the end, it would only breed inner demons.

When he returned to the inn, he told the Zhang sisters that the culprits had already received their due punishment. The third sister let out a long sigh and said no more; the second sister still gave no reaction at all, no matter how long one waited. The priest even wondered whether he ought to examine her for a lost soul, for how could she remain so utterly unmoved by the world around her?

After several days of investigation, Mo Wuhen and Mr. Dou could not withstand the torture of the cudgel and leg-press and confessed everything they were meant to confess. Hearing it all, the magistrate was drenched in cold sweat and at last realized what a calamity had grown beneath his own governance. That very day, he returned home and nearly beat his son to death, strictly forbidding him from leaving the house. Then he immediately drafted a report to the governor of Hunan. At the same time as submitting the memorial, he also issued warrants, ordering everyone involved to be seized and brought into the city.

The priest specially took the Zhang sisters out to witness it. When the eldest Zhang sister was dragged past them in chains, sobbing bitterly, the second sister finally reacted. She rushed into the crowd and, like one possessed, clawed madly at her elder sister. The priest quickly dragged the Zhang second sister away before she could fall completely into hysteria. The two sisters watched their departing eldest sister and cried with their heads in their hands. Seeing the second sister finally break into tears, the priest could at last breathe out.

The Mo family was finished, and the Zhang eldest sister had at last paid the price for her selfishness and cruelty. Yet from that day on, the Zhang second sister and the third sister grew strangely insistent on returning to their original little village. The priest thought little of it and took the sisters back there. He believed that, in a familiar place, they would feel better. But clearly he understood far too little of a woman’s heart.

One day, while the priest was searching along the riverbank with the fox and the monkey for the flying sword by means of spiritual sense, his expression suddenly changed. He no longer had time to conceal his form. Leaping into the air, he took the fox and monkey with him and shot straight to the cottage outside.

What he saw was a courtyard full of panicked people...