Mount Dingjun

At noon, the Zhu residence.

Today was not a rest day, yet Magistrate Zhu had left the yamen early and returned home to revel in a tender paradise.

The emperor was far away and the sky was high. Here in Qinggu County, he was the unquestioned lord, the father-official of tens of thousands of commoners!

Thinking back to those days when he had been down and out, how could he have imagined such glory and wealth today?

Especially now that his wife had become so beautiful. Her soul-hooking, water-soft gaze and her lilting, Wu-speaking voice made him unable to stop himself.

Before even the time it took to burn an incense stick, the storm within the room had already subsided.

Magistrate Zhu lay sprawled on the bed, panting heavily, his forehead covered in sweat as he muttered to himself.

"Time spares no man. Should I replace that thing one day?"

"Or have Eldest Brother pick out a good kidney for me again..."

While he pondered, his wife dressed before the mirror, arranging her disheveled hair. After applying rouge and powder, she sat before the bronze mirror and stared at herself in a daze.

After having her head replaced, she had initially been terrified. But whenever she saw that face fair as a flower and lovely as jade in the mirror, whenever she felt her husband's infatuated gaze, she sank ever deeper into it.

By now, she had long forgotten what she used to look like. Instead, she cherished this face with the utmost care.

"Master, you were right. Yu Zhensheng and his disciple have made no moves these past few days. It seems they retreated in the face of difficulty."

Magistrate Zhu puffed clouds of smoke from his pipe, his eyes narrowing as a gleam of smugness flashed through them.

The notorious fiend Yu Zhensheng had still been cowed by just a few words from him, hadn't he?

"Heh. Those Yin Opera performers look all mysterious and mystical, but they're no different from ordinary actors. Onstage, they sing of chastity and martyrdom, loyalty and filial piety, righteousness and honor. Offstage, aren't they just a pack of lowly performers?"

At those words, the magistrate's wife instinctively felt a surge of disgust, and her head swam faintly.

Just as she was about to speak, hurried footsteps suddenly sounded outside.

"Master, something terrible has happened! Someone is beating the Grievance Drum before the yamen! He's been beating it for a quarter of an hour already, and the commoners are all gathered to watch!"

Magistrate Zhu abruptly sat upright, a vicious gleam in his eyes.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

At the yamen, a figure held a drumstick and hammered fiercely upon the great drum at its entrance. The rain-like drumbeats drew countless onlookers.

"Stop beating it! The magistrate isn't in the yamen!"

"Shi Tou, the magistrate has already ruled on your case. It's written in black and white, and you still dare beat the drum? Were the boards you received last time too light?"

The constables all came forward to dissuade him, but the man beating the drum turned a deaf ear. His eyes remained locked on the drumhead as he struck with all his strength, as though he wished to vent every ounce of resentment in his heart!

With commoners watching all around, the constables could not easily use force in public. After all, Great Xuan Dynasty law stipulated that whenever someone beat the Grievance Drum, the county magistrate had to hold a public trial.

Time passed bit by bit. The magistrate showed no sign of appearing, yet the man called Shi Tou continued beating the drum. Beads of sweat as large as peas streamed down, soaking the blue bricks beneath his feet.

This was already the second time he had sounded the Grievance Drum.

The Li Family, landlords of Qinggu County, had secretly altered the loan receipt in order to seize the fertile fields his family had passed down for generations. They multiplied the interest severalfold and took away all his family's land, ancestral home, and plow oxen. His father failed to catch his breath and was literally angered to death.

Afterward, he had beaten the Grievance Drum to seek justice. Who knew that the Li Family had long since bribed the magistrate? He was given thirty heavy strokes in court, and one of his legs was left lame.

In his despair, he had planned to hang himself, only to be saved by a mysterious man.

That man wore a black robe and a theatrical Face Paint mask. He said only two sentences.

"If you want revenge, beat the drum before the yamen tomorrow at noon."

"As long as the magistrate lives, the drumbeats must not cease."

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom...

Shi Tou ignored everyone, staring fixedly at the drumhead as he kept the mysterious man's words firmly in mind.

He hated the Li Family patriarch, and he equally hated Magistrate Zhu, who was birds of a feather with him. He imagined the Grievance Drum as their two heads and pounded it like a raging storm.

Just then, the county magistrate's sedan chair finally arrived, fashionably late.

Magistrate Zhu lifted the curtain, his gaze dark as he barked, "You brazen troublemaker! Last time, I showed you special leniency because your father had just died. Yet today, you still dare disrupt the court?"

"I have official business to attend to and must oversee the affairs of an entire county. How can I be pestered by you every day?"

"Men, seize him at once!"

With Magistrate Zhu's command, the constables no longer held back. One of them raised a water-and-fire staff and smashed it viciously toward Shi Tou's arm.

A cold smile surfaced in his eyes. Last time, he had "accidentally" broken one of Shi Tou's legs. This time, he aimed for the man's elbow joint.

Cripple your hand and see how you beat the drum then!

But in the next instant, an explosive whoosh rang out. Beneath the clear daylight sky, a black bolt of lightning seemed to rip across the heavens, impossibly fast.

Pfft!

A jet-black feathered arrow pierced the constable's throat. Before blood could even spurt out, it shot through another man's chest at lightning speed.

Bzzzt!

The arrow did not lose any of its force. It buried itself deep in a pillar by the yamen, sinking three inches into the wood. Its tail trembled like wings, humming without end.

Drip, drip...

Drops of crimson blood slid down the arrow's fletching, staining the blue bricks before the yamen gate red.

"Ugh... urgh..."

The constable who had just worn a savage expression and prepared to break Shi Tou's arm now dropped to his knees. He desperately clutched at his throat, where blood sprayed like a fountain, terror filling his eyes. Yet he could produce only indistinct, hoarse sounds.

The other constable, whose heart had been pierced, simply collapsed to the ground, blood pooling everywhere.

One arrow, two eagles!

The surroundings instantly fell silent as death. After a brief moment of shock, cries of terror erupted from the crowd, and everyone scattered into chaos.

"M-Murder!"

"Run! Someone's dead!!"

"Protect the magistrate! There's an assassin!"

Yet amid the uproar, one thing remained unchanged: the drumbeats, booming like thunderclouds exploding.

Though blood had splattered across the drumhead, Shi Tou continued to beat it with all his might. At the sight of blood, his exhausted body instead burst forth with renewed strength. The drumbeats suddenly surged, shaking the very clouds.

At that very moment, a deep, bold operatic voice rang out from nearby.

"This old general may be aged, yet his courage—"

"His blood and vigor pierce the rainbow!"

Whoosh! Whoosh!

Two more bowstrings snapped like thunderbolts. The arrows tore from the strings like silk ripping apart, plunging through the eyeballs of two constables and bursting out through the backs of their skulls.

Blood and brains splattered everywhere.

"To kill a man is like cutting—grass—"

"Mounted on horseback, he roams east and west!"

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

The sounds of arrows ripping through the air merged with the drumbeats, like gongs and drums playing out a battlefield anthem.

Figure after figure fell. Cries of agony rose and fell, blood splashing everywhere, nearly dyeing the plaque bearing the words "Justice and Honor" red.

The constables, who had once bared their fangs and brandished their claws in arrogant tyranny, finally tasted the terror of being fish on the chopping block.

They tried to flee, but the arrows seemed to have grown eyes. They were not only swift as lightning, but unbelievably accurate.

Throats, glabellas, hearts...

Bloody blossoms burst one after another, and agonized wails carpeted the ground.

So wolves, too, could feel pain.

"With strength of a thousand jin in both arms, he can draw the Iron-Core Bow—"

With that operatic recitation, the arrows seemed to gain several more degrees of force. They even pierced straight through wood and stone, shooting down every constable hiding behind them!

"If speaking of battle, he can still be called..."

The operatic voice suddenly rose, its heroic spirit soaring to the clouds as it delivered the final three words.

"Old—Huang—Zhong!!"

As the final note fell, the arrows ceased as well. The constables, however, had not a single survivor left. They had become corpses scattered across the ground.

The entire yamen had been riddled with holes.

On a rooftop some distance away, Zhou Sheng stood with his feet in a figure-eight stance, raising his gaze in the pose of drawing a three-pull bow.

Snow-white hair and golden armor froze the cold heavens; apricot-yellow command flags shed their cloud-shoulder adornments.

His released arrow chased thunder at its tail; with one cry, it pierced through Mount Dingjun!