The Ning Family

Yang Jing hurried on until he was several miles away from Fenglou Village, then turned into a remote patch of woodland.

He pulled a clean set of coarse-cloth clothes from his pack and, by the moonlight, quickly changed out of his bloodstained garments.

The blood had already congealed into dark red patches in the cold wind, carrying a sickly sweet, metallic smell that made his stomach tighten.

Yang Jing bundled up the dirty clothes, found a dry pile of dead branches, and took out his Fire Starter to light them.

The flames licked at the cloth and soon flared into a blaze, burning those dark red stains, along with any traces that might expose him, to ash.

He watched the fire until the embers cooled, then buried them under soil and stamped on the spot a few times to make sure nothing looked amiss.

Only after finishing all this did he circle around once more, lean against the trunk of a large tree, and take the money pouch from inside his robe.

His fingers trembled slightly as they touched the knot at its mouth.

When he untied it and looked inside, he found a full eleven taels of silver and two small silver fragments, gleaming cold and white in the moonlight.

Yang Jing swallowed. This was the largest sum of money he had seen since transmigrating.

It truly bore out the old saying: murderers and arsonists wore belts of gold, while those who built bridges and repaired roads died without even a body left behind.

He took a deep breath and suppressed the emotions surging through him.

Then he took out three taels and the two silver fragments and tucked them into his sleeve. Carrying the remaining eight taels in the pouch, he found an old pagoda tree deep in the woods, dug a deep hole with his dagger, and buried them. He covered the spot with a thick layer of soil and placed a few stones on top as a marker.

This silver was both a potential danger and a fallback. To be safe, Yang Jing decided not to carry it with him for now.

After dealing with everything, Yang Jing did not linger. He traveled through the night to the Post Station outside the city.

The Post Station's lanterns cast a dim yellow glow into the cold night. The yawning night attendant took twenty copper coins from him and pointed him toward a guest room farther inside.

It was much like the room he had stayed in last time. He pushed open the door to find simple furnishings: a hard plank bed, a low table, a few chairs, and little else.

Yang Jing closed the door behind him, leaned against it, and slid down to sit on the floor.

Only then, when the dust had settled and he was alone in the room, did the emotions he had forcibly suppressed come surging up.

He raised his right hand and stared at it. Though he had already washed it, he kept feeling as though that warm, bloody tang still clung to his fingertips.

His composure during the killing had been like a thin layer of ice. Now it shattered abruptly, leaving only an uncontrollable rush of fear in its wake.

The muffled gasp as Feng Lei's throat was slit, the sensation of his body twitching, and the blood splashing onto his hand flashed before Yang Jing's eyes, making his heart race and his breathing quicken.

Across both his lives, this was the first time he had killed someone, the first time he had stained his hands with human blood.

It was not that he had felt no fear. Anger and grim resolve had driven him then, leaving no room for even a moment's hesitation.

But now, sitting alone in his room at the Post Station, the reality of having killed someone engulfed him like a rising tide.

Tension gripped his stomach, and unease chilled him to the bone.

He had killed someone. From now on, his hands were no longer hands that had merely held a blade and practiced martial arts.

After all, this was the first life he had ended with his own hands. The fear that followed unsettled even his breathing.

Yang Jing sat on the floor and closed his eyes for a while. He pressed his fingertips hard against the rough ground, slowly steadying himself.

In the darkness, he thought of his family, of the filth splashed over their courtyard gate, and of Heizi, whom his eldest uncle's family had raised for years before Feng Lei kicked him to death. He thought of his grandfather's, grandmother's, and mother's helplessness and stifled misery, of his father signing up to escort a grain convoy for a little silver, and of the refugees' bleached bones and the bandits' blades in this chaotic age.

Those images seared his heart like branding irons, and his earlier panic gradually faded.

When Yang Jing opened his eyes again, not a trace of hesitation remained in them.

He slowly stood, walked over to the table, and sat down. He touched his throat, then looked at his palm. The sensation of killing still lingered, but it no longer frightened him.

It turned out that ending a life with his own hands was not as unbearable as he had imagined.

He even felt a faint thrill of excitement!

The world was already in chaos. The strong devouring the weak was the natural order. If you did not swing your blade, you could only wait to be butchered.

People like Feng Lei relied on the Landlord Gentry backing them to crush the innocent and oppress ordinary folk. Who knew how much suffering he had inflicted on blameless people? Killing him had been both revenge and self-preservation.

"Better to strike first than wait for someone to kill me."

Yang Jing murmured to himself, his voice unusually clear in the empty room.

He clenched his fists until his fingertips turned white, and a glint of ruthlessness flashed in his eyes.

The next day.

After waiting in vain for Feng Lei to appear, his underlings went to his house together and found him already cold on his bed.

News of Feng Lei's murder soon spread throughout Wazi Township.

Everyone who heard the news clapped their hands in delight.

"What? Feng Lei's dead?"

"Serves him right! He should've died long ago!"

"That old saying was right after all: good is rewarded with good, and evil repaid with evil. It's not that retribution never comes, only that its time hasn't arrived. Now the King of Hell has come to collect him."

The Ning Family also sent people to investigate, but they uncovered no clues.

With Feng Lei's death, the Ning Family had lost one of its chief claws and fangs.

Wazi Township, the Ning Family estate, the study.

Ning Xuezhi, head of the Ning Family, sat in a chair. He was around fifty, with slightly graying hair and naturally puffy eyelids. His brows were tightly furrowed, and the tip of his right index finger tapped the desk from time to time.

He had been in the city celebrating a friend's birthday and enjoying a few days of leisure, but had rushed back as soon as he heard that Feng Lei had been killed.

Knock, knock, knock.

Just then, someone knocked on the study door.

Ning Xuezhi raised his head and said in a somewhat hoarse voice, "Come in."

As soon as Ning Xuezhi spoke, the Ning Family's steward pushed open the door and entered, holding a sheet of paper.

The steward approached the desk, handed the paper to Ning Xuezhi, and said respectfully, "Master, please take a look. This is the list you requested. I've just finished compiling it with the men under us."

Ning Xuezhi took the paper, spread it out on the desk, and examined it carefully.

There were more than twenty names on the sheet, each belonging to someone who had quarreled or clashed with Feng Lei.

Ning Xuezhi read through the names one by one.

He knew some of the people on the list, but not others.

Whenever he came across someone he did not know, he asked the steward standing beside him.

Even before becoming involved with the Ning Family, Feng Lei had spent his days gathering men for brawls. Now that he had the Ning Family's backing and its support in money and grain, he had recruited a band of petty thugs and run roughshod over the countryside. What village did not have a few people who hated him?

"Hmm?"

After reading sixteen or seventeen names, Ning Xuezhi's gaze fell on the next one-Yang Jing.

"Old Shi, who is this Yang Jing?" Ning Xuezhi asked with a frown.

Steward Shi glanced at the name on the list and thought for a moment. "He's the grandson of Yang Shouzhuo from Yang Family Village. He's now studying martial arts at the Sun Clan Martial Arts School in the city."

"A martial arts school disciple?" Ning Xuezhi's brows drew even tighter.