Mutated Tao

After exiting the prison, Li Huowang went to the backyard of the magistrate's office. There, he saw Bun who was drinking from the water trough along with the horses.

Catching a whiff of the familiar scent, Bun hurriedly approached Li Huowang. It was also hungry.

Li Huowang brought Bun out on the street. Because of the incidents with the babies being stolen, everyone within Cangshui County was still very anxious. Even so, there were still quite a few people doing business on the streets.

“Chili Oil Wontons?” Li Huowang saw some types of foods that he had never eaten, and then brought Bun to another stall. “Bitter lettuce noodles?”

The waiter served up two bowls of green noodles that were marked with black dots. The noodles were lightly coated in a layer of fragrant chili oil.

After seeing Bun eating them happily, Li Huowang finally started moving his chopsticks.

The noodles were quite peculiar. Even though they didn’t have any peppercorns, eating them made his tongue go numb. He soon realized that the numbness was caused by the small hooks that were on the surface of the noodles. The noodles were made from bitter lettuce. However, its hooks and spines were surprisingly soft when he bit into them.

Just as Li Huowang was eating the noodles that were exclusive to the Liang Kingdom, two people walked into the stall. Both of them were whispering and laughing in a way that only other men would know what they were talking about.

“It’s true! You know what kind of person I am, right? How could I lie to you? Not only did the male ghosts escape from Hell, but even the female ones did too! Hehe~ The female ghosts were quite pretty too~ She had been enduring her lust for far too long and I had no choice but to help her. When I woke up the second day, I’d lost at least eight taels![1]”

Li Huowang frowned when he heard what they were talking about. The people here were very superstitious and often liked spreading rumors. All of them just believed rumors without verifying whether they were real or not. They didn’t even know whether what was happening was real.

Li Huowang continued eating his noodles while listening to the man continue talking about his ‘fortunate’ encounter.

Li Huowang quickly finished his noodles before recalling the talisman that he had used earlier. After a moment, he decided to try it again.

He once again burned the talisman and swallowed the ashes, but this time nothing happened.

Why is it so fickle? Do the talismans only work half the time? Did I draw it incorrectly?

Li Huowang read the book and tried to learn more about the talisman. This was only the second time he had used the talisman to guide him, and so he was still inexperienced with it.

“My Lord! The boss of the Wellness Hall is here to become an official!”

At that moment, one of the guards shouted, only to be quickly dragged away by Magistrate Lou. “Shh! Don’t interrupt the Lord’s work!”

I don’t think capturing the one stealing the babies will be all that hard.

Since the talismans weren’t working, he decided to do it the old-fashioned way, staking out.

Over the next couple of days, he staked out at numerous places, but nothing happened. It was as if the culprit knew that Li Huowang was here and had hidden himself away. For the next few days, none of the babies were stolen.

One day, Li Huowang was woken up from the sudden commotion. He opened the window, only to see the civilians running on the streets toward the East side of the town. Everyone was weirdly excited.

“What is happening?” Li Huowang quickly left the guest room and followed the people.

He followed them and soon realized where they were going. The people were all crowded at one of the crossroads. It was jam-packed with people! In the middle of the crossroad was the man who had disguised himself as the seamstress. At this moment, he was tied to a wooden pole.

“Start his execution!” Magistrate Lou threw the red sign onto the ground, causing everyone to burst into cheers.

When the man saw Li Huowang, Magistrate Lou stood up and vacated his seat for Li Huowang. “My Lord, you are here? It’s thanks to you that we were able to capture this vile man!”

“You are killing him now? I thought you would want to interrogate him further,” asked Li Huowang.

Magistrate Lou glared at the culprit with disgust and replied, “He’s too vile and wicked! How could we just execute him like that? We are going to torture him first before killing him!”

Just as they were talking, the executioner, who was wearing a red robe, walked up to the man. Then, he drank a cup of wine and started his work. Every time he sliced a piece of meat from the culprit, the crowd cheered.

“Why are those people giving the executioner coins?” Li Huowang pointed at some of the people in the corner.

“Those people are members of the victims’ families. They don’t want the culprit to get reincarnated, and so they want to buy some of the culprit’s flesh and bones. They will then feed that flesh to the dogs. If their grudge is big, then some of the people might even eat the flesh themselves. To be fair, this doesn’t really align with the laws of the Liang Kingdom, but whenever I think about how my daughter was about to be raped by him, I myself want to bite off a chunk of that man’s flesh! He’s too despicable!” explained Magistrate Lou.

The culprit was slowly disassembled, looking more and more horrifying. Even so, the crowd just got more and more excited. It was a surreal sight.

Every time the executioner cut off some of the culprit’s flesh and caused him to cry out in pain, everyone else cheered.

However, as more and more time passed, the culprit started glaring at everyone and cursed at them rather than crying out in pain. “Stop playing the victim! So what if I played with the girls? I’ve raped so many women but none of them were virgins! All of the women in this County are sluts! Useless! Prostitutes!”

When the crowd heard his remarks, all of them instantly became incensed, and if it wasn’t for the guards, they would’ve gone up and killed the man themselves.

“Hm? Hold up!” Li Huowang noticed something and immediately ran over.

When he approached the man, he was surprised to see that the blood that was flowing down the culprit’s body, as well as the wounds were quite similar to the pattern he saw when he used the talisman for fortune telling!

“Are you telling the truth?” questioned Li Huowang.

“I’m telling the truth! Hundreds of girls, but none of them were virgins! The women of Cangshui have all been raped by someone else!” said the culprit.

Everyone else might’ve thought that the man was just spouting lies, but Li Huowang did not. After all, the patterns shown by the fortune telling talisman were also appearing on the man’s body.

“Virgins… Hymen…” Li Huowang suddenly remembered something and ran up to Magistrate Lou. “You had mentioned that other than the women being raped and the babies being stolen, there were also some cases of thefts?”

“Yes. Did my Lord discover something?” asked Magistrate Lou.

“Quick, show me the records of what was stolen! How much did they steal, and what did they steal? I need to know!” said Li Huowang.

When he saw how adamant Li Huowang was, Magistrate Lou immediately went and compiled the data.

While it was not easy to find stolen babies, it was quite easy to obtain the list of items that had been stolen. Soon, Li Huowang was presented with the list of stolen items.

“Dang Gui… Cinnabar…” Li Huowang read through the list and frowned.

He recalled the culprit saying that none of the women here were virgins, then he recalled the man at the noodle shop talking about the female ghosts, and finally the stolen babies.

Li Huowang picked up a brush and started writing down several words on the paper.

Red pills, nectar, baby flesh and bones…

By the time he finished writing the list, Li Huowang's eyes were wide with shock.

“This recipe… It’s a pill recipe! Someone’s refining pills!”

1. roughly 0.3kg, not a lot ☜

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