Yang Jing hurried on without stopping, not turning into a desolate stretch of woods until he was several li away from Fenglou Village.
From his pack, he dug out a clean set of coarse cloth short clothes. By the moonlight, he quickly changed out of the garments stained with blood.
The bloodstains had long since congealed in the cold wind into a dark red, carrying a sickly sweet, fishy smell that made his stomach tighten.
Yang Jing balled up the filthy clothes, found a dry pile of dead branches, took out a tinder tube, and lit it.
The flames licked at the cloth. Soon, a blaze rose up, burning that smear of dark red—and any traces that might expose him—into ash.
He watched the fire until the embers cooled, then buried them with soil and stomped over the spot a few times to make sure nothing looked unusual.
Only after finishing all this did he circle around again, lean against the trunk of a large tree, and take out the money pouch from inside his robes.
When his fingers touched the knot at the mouth of the pouch, they trembled slightly.
He opened it and found a full eleven taels of silver inside, along with two small bits of broken silver. Under the moonlight, they shone with a cold white gleam.
Yang Jing’s throat moved. This was the largest sum of silver he had seen since transmigrating here.
It truly proved that old saying: murder and arson bring a golden belt, while building bridges and mending roads leave no corpse behind.
He took a deep breath and suppressed the emotions surging through his heart.
Then he took out three taels and the two bits of broken silver and tucked them into his sleeve. The remaining eight taels, along with the pouch, he buried beneath an old locust tree deep in the woods, digging a pit with his dagger. He covered it with a thick layer of soil and pressed a few stones on top as a marker.
This silver was a hidden danger, but also a way out. To be safe, Yang Jing did not carry it with him for the time being.
After handling all these matters, Yang Jing did not linger. He hurried through the night toward the relay station outside the city.
The lanterns of the relay station glowed dim yellow in the cold night. The night watchman yawned, accepted twenty copper coins from him, and pointed him to an inner guest room.
It was much the same as the room he had stayed in last time. When he pushed open the door, the furnishings inside were simple: only a hard plank bed, a low table, a few chairs, and other plain furniture.
Yang Jing shut the door behind him, then slid down with his back against the door until he was sitting on the floor.
Only now, when everything had settled and he was alone in the room, did the emotions he had been forcefully suppressing suddenly surge up.
He raised his hand and looked at his right hand. He had clearly washed it already, yet he still felt as if that warm, bloody stench clung to his fingertips.
The calm he had felt when killing had been like a thin layer of ice. Now it shattered all at once, leaving only uncontrollable lingering fear.
The muffled wheeze when Feng Lei’s throat had been cut open, the sensation of his body twitching, and the blood that had splashed onto his hand—all of it flashed before Yang Jing’s eyes, making his heart pound wildly and his breathing turn hurried.
Across both his lives, this was the first time he had ever killed someone with his own hands, the first time human blood had stained them.
It was not that he was unafraid. It was just that, at the time, anger and resolve had pushed him forward, leaving no room for even the slightest hesitation.
But now, sitting alone in this room at the relay station, the reality of having killed someone finally engulfed him like a tide.
Tension clenched his stomach. Unease made his whole body go cold.
He had killed someone. From now on, his hands were no longer merely hands that had held a blade and practiced fists.
After all, it was the first time he had personally ended a life. Lingering fear still filled his heart, throwing even his breathing into disorder.
Yang Jing sat on the floor, closed his eyes, and took a moment to calm himself. His fingertips dug hard into the rough ground, and he slowly steadied his emotions.
In the darkness, he thought of his family. He thought of the filth splashed on the courtyard gate. He thought of Heizi, the dog his eldest uncle’s family had raised for years, kicked to death by Feng Lei. He thought of his grandfather, grandmother, and mother’s helplessness and repression. He thought of his father signing up to join the grain-escort convoy for the sake of a little silver. He thought of the withered bones of refugees in this chaotic age, and the blades of bandits.
Those images burned into his heart like branding irons, and the panic from before gradually faded away.
When he opened his eyes again, there was no longer the slightest hesitation in Yang Jing’s gaze.
He slowly rose to his feet, walked to the table, and sat down. He raised a hand to touch his own throat, then looked at his palm. The sensation of killing was still there, but it no longer frightened him.
So it turned out that ending a life with his own hands was not as unbearable as he had imagined.
He even felt faintly excited!
This world was chaotic to begin with. The weak being prey to the strong was the norm. If you did not swing your blade, you could only wait to be slaughtered.
Feng Lei was the sort of man who, relying on landlords and local tyrants as his backing, oppressed the good and bullied the common people. Who knew how much innocent suffering his hands were stained with? Killing him was both revenge and self-preservation.
“Rather than waiting to be killed, it’s better to strike first and seize the advantage.”
Yang Jing murmured to himself, his voice especially clear in the empty room.
He clenched his fist, his fingertips turning white, and a trace of ruthlessness flashed through his eyes.
The next day.
Feng Lei’s underlings waited and waited, but he never appeared, so they went together to Feng Lei’s home and discovered Feng Lei, already cold, lying on the bed.
News of Feng Lei’s murder quickly spread through Wazi Township.
Everyone who heard the news clapped their hands in delight.
“What? Feng Lei is dead?”
“Serves him right. He should’ve died long ago!”
“As expected, it still proves that old saying: good is rewarded with good, evil with evil. It’s not that the reckoning never comes, only that its time had not arrived. Now was the time for the King of Hell to collect him.”
On the other side, the Ning family also sent people to investigate, but they found no clues.
With Feng Lei’s death, the Ning family also lost a major lackey.
Wazi Township, the Ning family estate, in the study.
Ning Xuezhi, the head of the Ning family, sat in a chair. He was around fifty, his hair slightly graying. He had naturally puffy eyelids, and his brows were tightly furrowed. From time to time, the fingertip of his right index finger tapped against the tabletop.
He had originally been in the city celebrating a friend’s birthday and taking the chance to enjoy himself for a few days. After learning that Feng Lei had been killed, he had immediately rushed back.
Knock, knock, knock.
At that moment, someone knocked on the study door.
Ning Xuezhi raised his head and said in a somewhat hoarse voice, “Come in.”
As Ning Xuezhi’s voice fell, the Ning family’s steward pushed the door open and walked in, holding a sheet of paper in his hand.
The steward walked up to the desk, handed the paper to Ning Xuezhi, and said respectfully, “Master, please take a look. This is the list you wanted. We just finished compiling it with the people below.”
Ning Xuezhi took the paper, placed it on the desk, unfolded it, and examined it carefully.
On the paper were over twenty names. Every name on it represented someone who had once had a conflict with Feng Lei.
Ning Xuezhi read through the names one by one.
Some of the people on the list he knew, while others he did not.
Whenever he encountered a name he did not recognize, he asked the steward standing beside him.
Before Feng Lei had become connected to the Ning family, he had already spent his days gathering people to brawl. Now that he had attached himself to the Ning family, with money and grain supporting him, he had gathered a gang of local hooligans under him and ran rampant through the villages. What village did not have a few people who bore him a grudge?
“Hmm?”
After reading through the names of sixteen or seventeen people, Ning Xuezhi’s gaze landed on the next name—Yang Jing.
“Old Shi, who is this Yang Jing?” Ning Xuezhi asked with a frown.
Steward Shi glanced at the name on the list lying on the desk, thought for a moment, and said, “He is the grandson of Yang Shouzhuo from Yang Family Village. At present, he has taken Sun’s Martial Hall in the city as his master and is learning martial arts there.”
“A martial hall disciple?” When Ning Xuezhi heard this, his brows immediately furrowed even more tightly.