News that Daoist Qianqiu had gone mad quickly spread throughout the village.

The villagers all said he had privately led people to dig up tombs and disturbed the gods and spirits. The bone pit containing over thirty corpses was said to be cursed.

Master Niu paid none of this any mind. He continued going door to door, rounding up people to dig. This time, however, rounding them up was noticeably harder. Many households began making excuses — either claiming serious illness or saying the person had gone missing. In the end, Master Niu only managed to take a dozen or so people up the mountain.

Without Daoist Qianqiu’s ‘guidance,’ they spent the whole day digging at random. Predictably, they came away with nothing.

Master Niu slammed the table in frustration. “What are you all standing around for? Either get that Qianqiu cured, or go find another geomancer.”

“Master Niu, in a remote backwater like this, where would we find a geomancer?” one subordinate said.

“If there’s none here, go look somewhere else.” Master Niu kicked that subordinate.

“Master Niu, the nearest place is Shuanghe Town, but Shuanghe Town borders Dagu Mountain, and the mountain is full of bandits. Who would dare go?” the subordinate said urgently.

These men weren’t truly afraid of bandits — the problem was that traveling to another town meant paying for the boat, the carriage, the food, and the lodging. Master Niu didn’t give them a single coin, yet expected them to go find someone. Where exactly were they supposed to find the money for that?

Still, the subordinate dared not disobey Master Niu’s wishes, and could only withdraw reluctantly.

Just as Master Niu was fretting over the matter of finding a geomancer, another terrifying incident occurred in the village.

The men who had gone to dig in the bone pit that day — all of them began breaking out in dense red rashes on their skin.

Another day passed, and more and more villagers were developing the rash. No one knew what disease it was. The village’s only folk doctor looked at the cases and was at a complete loss.

Not only that, but every night as dusk fell, villagers would see ghostly green will-o’-the-wisps drifting through the village. Some households’ front doors would be pounded with a hollow, rhythmic banging sound. When people opened the door, there were bloody footprints outside, bloody handprints on the door — and all the prints showed only one side.

“This is a plague, a curse.” An elder of the village finally stood up and spoke.

Over the years, Jiuyang Village had seen people go up the mountain to dig tombs constantly. These people never found anything of great value, but they had disturbed countless small, ordinary graves of common folk. The spirits of these desecrated graves were now wandering restlessly, forced to come to the very people who had dug them up.

Most critically, the bone pit that had been dug recently — the people buried there must have been plague victims. In order to prevent their disease from spreading, they had been buried on the mountain. Though many years had passed, the virus would not die. When the people opened that pit, the virus was carried back out by them, and was now rapidly spreading through the village.

The people of the village knew the terror of plague. During the wartime chaos, many villages had suffered devastating casualties from disease, and most of the villagers had escaped from those living hells.

The number of villagers breaking out in rashes continued to climb. For a time, dark clouds seemed to hang over Jiuyang Village. Households with the sick were in chaos; households without were living in dread.

And right at this moment, Master Niu brought his men around again, going door to door to conscript able-bodied workers to dig for him.

The villagers had all been frightened into submission by him. They cursed him under their breath but didn’t dare resist.

Just as everyone was caught between two impulses, Master Niu’s men got into a confrontation with Old Li.

People heard the commotion outside and poured out of their homes to see what was happening.

There was Old Li, limping along with one bad leg, supported by his granddaughter, pointing directly at Master Niu’s face and shouting: “There are no tombs in this mountain at all! If you hadn’t forced everyone to keep digging, how would this plague virus have been unearthed? How would the mountain spirit have been disturbed? These evil souls are seeking revenge — pounding on doors every night — and once tainted, there is no escape. If this digging continues, this village will be destroyed by you!”

Master Niu was both startled and furious. He had never imagined anyone in the village would dare confront him face-to-face.

“You old wretch — do you know who you’re talking to?”

Master Niu lifted his leg to kick Old Li’s broken limb. But the moment his foot rose, something struck him hard on the knee, and he let out a howl of pain.

The onlooking villagers saw Master Niu screaming in agony but couldn’t see what had injured him from the shadows.

Xiao Jin saw this and immediately cried out in a shrill voice: “It’s the gods and spirits! The gods and spirits are punishing him!”

Everyone heard this and immediately took it as the truth.

“Nonsense! There are no such things as gods and spirits — I refuse to believe it.” Master Niu pointed at the villagers in front of him. “I’m telling you all — get up that mountain and keep digging. Every household must send one person. Even if you lose an arm or a leg, you crawl up there and dig. And if you don’t dig up the treasure, you’re all dead…”

The word ‘dead’ had barely left his lips when Master Niu’s mouth took a blow — it knocked out two of his front teeth in one strike.

Yan Qing glanced at Shi Ting beside her. In his right hand he held a few small pebbles, which he was lightly rolling between his fingers, producing a soft, faint sound.

“Who — who the hell is playing tricks behind my back?” Master Niu opened his mouth and spat out a mouthful of blood along with two large white teeth.

His subordinates, seeing this, also looked around warily.

“Everyone, look!” Old Li raised his voice. “Niu Yishi has provoked the wrath of gods, committed outrage against heaven and reason, and is now receiving divine punishment!”

Niu Yishi was Master Niu’s real name. Out of fear of him, people had never dared call it aloud.

“What are you all standing there for? Grab this old wretch and throw him into the mountains to feed the wolves!” Master Niu shouted.

When Master Niu’s men rushed forward, several more pebbles came flying from nowhere, landing precisely on their faces.

“Something’s wrong here.” Master Niu and his subordinates stared in bewildered astonishment. Where were these things flying from out of thin air? These villagers couldn’t possibly have such skill.

“Listen to me, everyone!” Old Li held up a wooden stick in his hand and cried out. “We are already infected with the plague — we probably don’t have many days left. But Niu Yishi and his father are still perfectly fine — and we have all been brought to this state because of them.”

He looked toward a man standing not far away. “Old Fan — my son and daughter-in-law both fell to their deaths while digging on that mountain. Your two sons also died up there when the slope collapsed. And Old Xu’s youngest, and Old Qi’s grandchildren and their spouses…” Old Li continued, his voice growing more agitated, his lips trembling up and down. “And all the big and small living people in this village who’ve lost arms or broken legs.”

“We all came here as refugees from every direction. Jiuyang Village may be poor, but it was a quiet, peaceful little village. It is because of people like Niu Yishi and his father that every family has been ruined and the people live in misery. Neighbors, the actions of the Niu father and son have incurred the wrath of both heaven and the people. If we do not resist now, there is only death before us.”

Shi Ting listened to these words and suddenly gave the young man standing in front of him a shove. Under the force of momentum, the young man stumbled forward and fell directly on top of Master Niu — though it was not of his own volition, in the eyes of everyone watching, it looked like a courageous, decisive lunge.

This young man had unwittingly become the first to step forward. When he looked up and realized he had just knocked down Master Niu, every instinct told him to flee. But then he thought of his father’s terrible death, of his own mortal illness — what did he have left to risk?

So he swung his fist and drove it straight into Master Niu’s nose.

At that, the other villagers grabbed whatever tools were closest and rushed forward in a swarm.

Master Niu, who had long grown accustomed to swaggering around with a few thugs at his side and being obeyed without question, had come to believe he could take on a hundred men alone. Now faced with a hundred-plus villagers surging at him all at once, this was a force unlike anything he had ever encountered.

Master Niu didn’t even have time to cry out before he was surrounded. Then came an onslaught of clubs and stones against his body. His few henchmen fared no better — encircled by dozens of people on all sides, all they could do was scream.

“What are you doing? This is outright rebellion!” The village chief arrived with two men upon hearing the news, hands on hips, putting on the air of his authority. “All of you stop at once! You mob of troublemakers!”

The village chief assumed these people would obey him as always. But what he had not anticipated was that when the crowd heard that voice — the one they had gnashed their teeth against for years — heads turned one by one.

On the faces of these people, the village chief saw contempt, and murderous rage. In that instant, these villagers who had always been loyal to him seemed to transform into vengeful demons.

The moment he realized something was terribly wrong, the villagers who hadn’t gotten a chance to join in beating Master Niu immediately grabbed their tools and converged on the village chief.

Shi Ting pulled Yan Qing back to the edge of the crowd and watched this uprising in silence. This was the fury that the villagers of Jiuyang Village had been accumulating for years — a rage that had long since swelled to bursting, with nowhere to vent. Now someone had opened the floodgate for them, and years of pent-up hatred came gushing out with a force that outstripped even cannons.

After some time, the frenzied villagers gradually stopped their violent actions. Master Niu and his men had already collapsed to the ground, motionless — long since dead.

Shi Ting was an officer of the law, yet he had made no move to intervene in what had unfolded before him. Because in this place beyond the reach of the law, some matters simply could not be resolved by legal means.

He was not one for meeting violence with violence — but sometimes, it was undeniably the best method available. Adapting to circumstances, nothing more.

After killing the tyrants who had oppressed them for so many years, the villagers felt an enormous release — yet for a moment they also felt somewhat lost.

“What does it matter anyway — we’re all going to die. None of it matters.” Someone shouted out loud.

Even so — who truly wanted to die?

At that moment, Yan Qing suddenly stepped forward and spoke. “Everyone, please do not despair. I know a little medicine and am willing to treat all of you. Whether I can cure it or not, it is worth trying.”