Chapter Sixty-three: Judgment as Firm as Iron

After Xu Wenshan was hauled into the county yamen, the place suddenly seemed crowded and lively. There was a formidable Taoist priest, a vacillating magistrate, a conflicted county constable, a grief-stricken registrar, the wronged and humiliated Xu Jing, and finally the nonchalant Xu Wenshan himself—enough characters to film an episode of "The Ninth-Rank Sesame Official."

Lu Wuji fixed Xu Wenshan with a cold stare. “Xu Cong, you practiced forbidden arts in private and murdered Song San. The crime has already been exposed. Why don’t you confess?”

Xu Wenshan glanced around, his gaze turning icy when it fell on the swollen-faced Xu Jing sitting on the ground. “Song San is dead? That’s a relief. But I’ve never even met him.”

“Liar!” Lu Wuji unsheathed the flying sword strapped to his back, its blade gleaming coldly, as unyielding as its master. The sword’s tip pressed against Xu Wenshan’s throat, but Xu Wenshan remained unfazed, staring back at Lu Wuji with a frosty calm.

Will you kill me? Do you dare?

You won’t.

Though he knew little about cultivators in general, after living alongside Sanfeng Daoist for several months, Xu Wenshan had learned a thing or two. In this world, Taoists were bound by strict discipline. The Immortal Alliance oversaw everything, forbidding them from treating mortals as expendable or wantonly slaughtering families and towns as in other cultivation tales.

Should a Taoist kill a mortal without cause, and the Alliance’s enforcers gathered evidence, the lightest punishment was solitary reflection or a fine in spirit stones and elixirs; the gravest was a forced drop in cultivation realm, making one start anew. Time was precious for cultivators—when their lifespan ran out before advancement, they would perish completely. Penalized with solitary reflection or a reduced realm was almost akin to a death sentence.

So, no Taoist dared risk wantonly killing mortals.

Xu Wenshan banked on this. That was why he kept his head high until now.

But that didn’t mean Taoists cherished mortal lives. They intervened in mortal affairs only if ordered by their sect, rarely bothering to exorcise demons for commoners. Last time, Sanfeng Daoist claimed to have sealed the temple spirit for ten years, yet she broke free after only two. Some called it compassion; others called it irresponsibility.

Lu Wuji glared at Xu Wenshan, wishing he could kill him with a single stroke, but his grip on the sword wavered, and he could not bring himself to strike.

Xu Wenshan was the most suspicious among all newcomers to the city this month, but labeling him an evil cultivator was only Lu Wuji’s conjecture.

He was, after all, a cultivator of over a century. Killing Xu Wenshan was a gamble—if right, there might be some gain; if wrong, it would be a blunder he’d regret forever. He could do the math.

Lu Wuji sheathed his sword. “I can’t kill you, but that doesn’t mean mortals can’t punish you. I’ll have the magistrate subject you to the rods—let’s see how long before you resort to your forbidden arts!”

He nodded to the magistrate, who immediately understood and ordered the constables to pin Xu Wenshan down and give him a hundred blows with the staff.

This was no light beating, not like in dramas where a man survives fifty or eighty strokes and then goes home for tea. Here, each staff weighed a dozen pounds, whistling through the air. An ordinary man could be crippled for life after ten strokes; the frail might die after just a few.

Two constables forced Xu Wenshan to the ground, one on each side, and started swinging. At the first blow, Xu Wenshan grunted. Though stronger than an average man, he could not use his Stone Skin Art and the pain was real.

By the tenth stroke, Xu Wenshan began to sneer.

By the twentieth, his shirt was soaked in blood.

By the thirtieth, even the constables’ hands were going numb.

Yet Xu Wenshan kept sneering coldly at everyone present. Xu Jing, meanwhile, could not take it any longer.

“Stop! Stop! I confess, I’ll confess—it was me, I did it, he had nothing to do with it…”

Xu Jing burst into tears. Her father, Xu Zhong, ground his teeth, furious at his daughter’s recklessness. How could she get involved with an evil cultivator—did she want to die?

Xu Wenshan, however, was deeply annoyed. He had planned to endure this ordeal, but now the young lady was complicating things, threatening to ruin his carefully laid plan.

Lu Wuji, seeing Xu Jing’s concern, suddenly changed tactics. He grabbed her. “So you admit you hired a killer?”

Xu Jing shook her head, tears still on her cheeks. “No, I did it alone. I killed him myself.”

Lu Wuji motioned to the constables. “Bring in the corpse.”

The magistrate and constables all blanched, but since it was the Taoist’s order, they dared not refuse. Covering their noses, they carried in the corpse on a stretcher, set it down in the hall, and quickly retreated. The moment Xu Jing saw the body, she retched violently.

With a hint of cruelty in his eyes, Lu Wuji asked, “You did this all by yourself? Are you sure?”

Xu Jing collapsed to the floor, speechless.

She couldn’t even bear to look at the corpse—how could she have killed him?

Lu Wuji said to the magistrate, “This woman is lying—she should be punished as well.”

He turned to Xu Wenshan. “You’re tough enough to take a beating, so I’ll have them beat her. You two seem to care for each other—let’s see if you can watch her die for your sake.”

The magistrate, now completely submissive to the Taoist, raised his hand to give the order when suddenly a voice called out:

“Stop!”

Everyone turned. Xu Wenshan was on the ground, raising his hand.

“Violence cannot solve this,” Xu Wenshan said, clapping the dust from his hands as he struggled to his feet. “You want to catch the real culprit. Beating us is pointless, because we are not the killers.”

Before anyone could respond, Xu Wenshan addressed the registrar. “Your nephew is dead. Don’t you want the true murderer found, to bring solace to your brother’s spirit? Imagine if you condemned the wrong person. When you die, your brother’s soul will come to you and say, ‘Brother, I waited so long—why have you not avenged me? How could you let my killer go free? My heart is full of hate…’”

“Enough!” the registrar cried, but his face betrayed that Xu Wenshan’s words had struck a chord.

Xu Wenshan turned to the Taoist. “You want to catch the killer too, don’t you? You want to slay demons, right? Solving a case requires method and reason. Your way will never catch the real culprit.”

Lu Wuji sneered. “Enough of your glib words. You are clearly an evil cultivator. For the past month only you have come from nowhere. Shaxian was peaceful until you arrived, and then chaos erupted. Such coincidence? Stop stalling. After a hundred strokes, if you die, I’ll believe you’re innocent and apologize over your corpse.”

Xu Wenshan laughed. “So if I die, it’s all for nothing? But if you really beat me to death, you’ll regret it—because I already know who the killer is.”