The Night Watcher of Great Jing - Chapter 46

Once Zhao Li confirmed the location, Lu Jianxing cupped his hands around his mouth and imitated several birdcalls with uncanny accuracy.

In the blink of an eye, more than a dozen large men in assorted clothing appeared within the previously deserted alley.

Without a sound, they formed an encirclement and closed in on the pickling workshop at the far end.

Zhao Li drew her saber and advanced with them.

Shen Yan initially wanted to stop her. After considering it, he said nothing and silently took position behind her instead.

Lu Jianxing led two men carrying a battering ram. He mouthed a countdown, and the instant he reached one, they drove the ram into the door.

The workshop’s door bar was poor quality. It immediately snapped in two.

Several strong young men stood inside the pickling workshop. A few sheep had been tethered in one corner, and the courtyard wall was covered in rank-smelling sheep’s blood.

When the door burst open, the men showed no fear.

They stared for a moment, then swiftly drew weapons from every corner and charged.

The attackers met the Jingning Guard in a violent clash.

One lanky man, tall and thin as a stalk of hemp, seemed to decide that Zhao Li’s small stature and girlish appearance made her an easy target. He rushed directly at her.

Zhao Li breathed out quietly and met him.

Compared with the satisfying ease of dropping someone with a single gunshot in her previous life, she had little experience in close combat with cold steel. She was extremely cautious.

At first, the lanky man paid Zhao Li no attention.

Only when she blocked his saber and the force rebounding through its blade jolted his arms did he realize something was wrong.

As Zhao Li’s injuries healed, she had begun practicing martial arts with Shen Yan every morning. She had only just begun learning Three Moon-Eclipsing Kills, but that was enough for an opponent like this.

She stepped forward and knocked his weapon aside.

Following the momentum, she closed the distance. Her long saber moved like a talon and drove upward at a vicious angle beneath his despairing gaze.

It split the soft flesh under his jaw, pierced the roof of his mouth, and entered his brain.

The blade churned the soft tissue inside his skull into pulp.

The lanky man managed only two wet rattles before toppling sideways, a broad pool of blood spreading beneath him.

The soft, resistant sensation of steel passing through flesh traveled faithfully up the bright blade and into Zhao Li’s hand.

She frowned in discomfort, planted a foot on the corpse, and pulled her saber free.

Shen Yan had remained at her side throughout. When he saw how readily she adjusted and flicked the blood and murky fluid from her blade, a trace of a smile entered his eyes.

Zhao Li, however, was frustrated.

She finally understood why Shen Yan had called this saber art vicious.

She had intended to leave the man alive, but her body had followed the technique on its own.

By the time Zhao Li finished her opponent, those fighting the Jingning Guard had fallen as well.

Some had been killed, and others captured.

Lu Jianxing and his men brought four prisoners over while the remaining agents scattered to search for the children.

The apparent leader had tangled hair over his face and a saber scar across it. His wolfish eyes glared viciously at everyone.

“Dog officials!”

He raised his head to spit, but Lu Jianxing reacted quickly and forced his face into the ground. The saliva he had not yet released went back down his own throat.

Even with his scarred face pressed into the mud, the man kept shouting.

“Dog officials! Court lackeys! You’ll all die miserable deaths!”

Combined with his ragged clothes and indignant expression, anyone ignorant of the truth might have thought he was the victim of terrible persecution.

Zhao Li could not resist. She stepped forward and slapped him across the face with her scabbard.

“Where are the children?”

“I’ll never tell you! I’m not afraid of death, you running dog! Torture me if you have the guts. If I cry out once, I’m a son of a bitch!”

Zhao Li had learned something new.

Were traffickers in this world righteous heroes resisting tyranny?

She sneered and looked at the other captives.

“Are all of you equally unyielding?”

They did not answer, merely laughing coldly.

“Good. Such backbone.”

Zhao Li was considering how to deal with them when a Jingning Guard agent approached.

“We found the children.”

The abducted children had all been imprisoned in the rear courtyard.

There were around a dozen of them, gagged and locked inside empty vats once used for pickling vegetables.

They seemed to have been drugged. Every child was groggy and barely conscious.

Zhao Li smelled blood as she drew closer, and her heart lurched.

Only half the children remained whole and uninjured. They had likely been abducted recently, before their captors had time to begin.

The rest were in far worse condition.

Most were missing limbs. Some had lost hands, others legs. Some had both hands and feet cut off.

Rice bran had been stuffed into their mouths. Filthy, blood-soaked bandages were tied around the severed limbs.

They had been forced to relieve themselves inside the vats and were covered in foul waste.

Any child who survived this ordeal would be controlled by those men and sent into the streets to beg.

Even the Jingning Guard, accustomed to wicked men and vicious crimes, stared dumbfounded at the horrific sight.

A large communal sleeping platform had been built in a side room of the rear courtyard. Several ragged quilts lay scattered across it, and a few stinking shoes littered the floor.

The children were temporarily laid on the platform to await physicians.

Zhao Li had just put down the child in her arms when a Jingning Guard agent reported finding a hidden chamber in another room.

Shen Yan was also carrying a child.

He exchanged a glance with Zhao Li, set the child down, and went with her to investigate.

The instant Zhao Li entered the other room, the fragrance of sandalwood filled her nose.

Unlike the filthy, reeking courtyard, this room had been kept unusually clean.

It was practically spotless.

It resembled a Buddhist worship hall, but the shrine held only a blank, nameless spirit tablet.

The advance searchers had moved the altar table aside.

Palm-sized bluestone bricks had been lifted from beneath it, revealing a pitch-black opening.

The hole was barely wide enough for one person to pass and breathed thin threads of cold air.

One agent had already taken a candle and led one of the courtyard’s sheep down to test the way.

As Zhao Li examined the room, she turned and saw Shen Yan frowning at a white-jade lotus candleholder before the shrine.

She did not understand what made it noteworthy.

After searching the original owner’s memories for a long time, she recalled something related—the White Lotus Sect.

This secret religious society had always been treated as a demonic heresy. Whenever discovered, it was exterminated without mercy.

Yet in this backward age, cults and heterodox sects found fertile soil and ample room to grow in the remote countryside. No matter how often they were banned, they never disappeared.

Against the backdrop of the spiritual resurgence, nothing was more repulsive than a cult built around illicit worship.

Under certain circumstances, the destruction caused by such cult fanatics could even exceed that of a supernatural anomaly.

“Lord Shen, is this the White Lotus Sect?”

Her brows drew together like his.

If cults like this were not checked in time and allowed to spread like weeds, they would inevitably create a catastrophe.

Zhao Li had dealt with their kind before. She knew all too well what harm these madmen could inflict upon ordinary people.

Shen Yan had reached the same conclusion. His frown deepened.

A sheep bleated from the opening.

The Jingning Guard agent who had gone down emerged, leading the animal.

There seemed to be no danger below, yet his face was ashen.

“Lord Shen, Hundred-Household Commander Zhao… down there…”