After arranging for Shen Zhui to stay in a residence behind the City God Temple, Wang Long left.
"By borrowing divine power, one can slay a Xiantian Martial Artist. The Ancestral Hall, the true body of the Yin God, Destroying Sects and Temples... This little Heyuan County really has no shortage of secrets."
Shen Zhui shook his head and stopped thinking about it.
As the saying went, since he had come, he might as well make himself at home.
Without enough strength, thinking about it was useless. If he had sufficient strength, he would not need to worry about any of this in the first place.
"First, I'll see what's so miraculous about this book. If I can successfully borrow the temple's power, I'll be able to slash a Xiantian Martial Artist with my saber. At least then I'll have the power to protect myself."
He propped open the window to let the sunlight in, lit a stick of incense, washed his hands, and placed the book on the table.
Strangely enough, the book that had made even Shen Zhui struggle showed not the slightest tremor when placed on this old table.
Judging by the force Shen Zhui had used to weigh it in his hand, the table should have collapsed into pieces long ago.
Drawing a breath, Shen Zhui opened the book's first page.
What met his eyes was a portrait of a person. The figure was burly, holding a fan in his outer hand and a discipline staff in his inner hand, with octopus-tentacle-shaped eyes painted on his face.
At first glance, a chilling, murderous aura surged toward him. Meeting those eyes, he felt as if every secret had been seen through in an instant.
General Gan Gong!
Shen Zhui hurriedly lowered his gaze and saw rows of tiny text introducing the figure beneath the portrait.
General Gan Gong, whose given name was Gan Pengfei, was in charge of punishments. In life, he had been Earl of Heyuan's personal guard and had commanded the military discipline squad.
He had been responsible for supervising battles, punishing soldiers who violated military discipline, and executing deserters on the battlefield.
Shen Zhui continued reading downward. There was a story devoted to describing General Gan Gong's stern impartiality:
Before General Gan Gong had followed Earl of Heyuan, he had once served in another army alongside his wife's younger brother. At that time, Gan Pengfei was already the commander of the guards.
Once, his wife's younger brother was discovered drinking in the army. By law, he was to receive forty lashes.
When the matter was reported to the Commander-in-Chief, the Commander-in-Chief considered the younger brother's bravery in battle and also took Gan Pengfei's relationship with him into account. Fearing that the younger brother would not survive forty lashes, he secretly instructed the soldiers carrying out the punishment to show mercy, assigning a soldier slightly weaker than Gan Pengfei's brother-in-law to administer it.
When Gan Pengfei found out, he ignored his wife's pleas and personally went to carry out the forty lashes on his brother-in-law, beating him to death. He then ran to the Commander-in-Chief's main tent and demanded, "If the law is enforced unfairly, how can virtue be practiced?"
In other words, if even military law was not enforced fairly, how could benevolent governance be implemented?
Afterward, Gan Pengfei resigned as commander of the guards and joined Earl of Heyuan's ranks.
Shen Zhui pondered for a moment before turning to another page.
At the end of this page was a story about an incident that took place after Gan Pengfei had been enshrined as a Yin God:
Once, a farmer rescued an injured fox in the wilderness. He brought it home, nursed it back to health, and kept feeding it there.
One day, the farmer, who was no good at swimming, fell into a pond yet survived unharmed. It turned out that the fox was a monster who had cultivated to great attainment. Grateful for the farmer's kindness, it had intervened to save him.
After the fox spirit's deeds became known, it helped the farmers in the surrounding area perform many good deeds.
Then, one day, the fox suddenly fainted. The farmer joined forces with his neighbors and went into the city to seek medical treatment.
In the end, General Gan Gong possessed a person and killed the fox spirit with a single blow of his staff.
The farmer did not understand. He listed all the good deeds the fox had performed and questioned the reason.
General Gan Gong said, "Good and evil cannot cancel each other out. The fox consumed human blood and flesh before it became a spirit. Its evil deeds are piled high, and its crime deserves death."
By the time he turned to the fourth page, Shen Zhui felt mentally exhausted and could not continue. He closed the book and focused his thoughts.
After reading four pages, every story without exception had described General Gan Gong, Gan Pengfei, carrying out punishments.
Among these stories were one about killing his own kin for the sake of righteousness, one about executing a spirit that was half good and half evil, and one about cutting down a noble and powerful aristocrat.
From these stories, Shen Zhui grasped one principle by which General Gan Gong acted.
As long as someone's evil deeds reached the threshold for execution, he would never let them off.
He did not consider familial affection or blood ties, status or identity, or even how many good deeds the fox demon had performed to make amends.
As an enforcer of the law, General Gan Gong had undoubtedly achieved absolute fairness.
"But if my adoptive father made a mistake, would I be able to bring myself to act?" Shen Zhui asked himself, searching his heart.
He placed himself in Gan Pengfei's position and thought through those stories one by one.
He shook his head.
There were some parts Shen Zhui agreed with, and others he did not.
In his view, the story about the forty lashes showed signs of overcorrecting.
He was not a god, only a man. And as long as one was human, one possessed the seven emotions and six desires, as well as a heart capable of compassion.
Clearly, the forty lashes could have been carried out by someone else of equal strength. That would not have violated the law, and his wife's younger brother might not have died.
That approach had been too extreme.
Besides, some aspects of this world's laws differed from the principles Shen Zhui believed in.
Take Yang Wu's nephew, for example. It had been the same crime—murder—yet because the victim had been a slave, he had received only a one-year sentence.
If the victim had been a registered citizen, however, the killer might have been executed. How could Shen Zhui accept such a judgment?
"I became a constable to protect the people I want to protect, not for some grand righteousness or this world's so-called laws. I have my own measure for weighing good and evil. To achieve absolute justice by killing even my own family—that is not my true nature. I can't do it."
"Buzz~" The book on the table trembled faintly.
Shen Zhui found it strange. After waiting for the disturbance to disappear, he opened the book again, only to find that the first four pages seemed to have stuck together and could not be separated. It went directly to the contents of the fifth page.
A faint understanding stirred in Shen Zhui's heart.
"Looks like I won't be able to borrow General Gan Gong's divine power."
That deity's requirement was probably to reach the extreme—to achieve absolute fairness. Since Shen Zhui did not completely agree with these deeds, he could not meet the requirement.
He was not discouraged. Instead, his heart grew firmer, and his thoughts became more open and unobstructed, faintly approaching the state of mind he had possessed during Enlightenment Time.
Although he had lost the chance to borrow one deity's power, the book had allowed him to clearly see his true nature and understand what he wished to protect. That was not necessarily a bad thing.
Absolute fairness, an absolute enforcer of the law, casting aside the seven emotions and six desires like a god... Perhaps someone else who acknowledged this world's laws could wield such divine power, but it had nothing to do with him, Shen Zhui!
"No wonder they say that to use divine power, one must believe in the deity, possess a pious heart, and achieve a Clear Mind."
"If one rejects the deity's methods from the bottom of one's heart, then using that power will inevitably bring all kinds of resistance."
At this thought, Shen Zhui frowned again.
"If one must believe in a deity to use divine power, then are the Yin Gods worshiped by those clan scions who have slaughtered countless people and committed every evil under the sun all fiends and demons?"
After resting for a while, Shen Zhui felt his spirit recover slightly. Carrying this question with him, he turned to the book's fifth page.
What entered his eyes was a portrait of a slender figure, with black-and-red yin-yang eyes painted on his face. He held shackles and a cangue in one hand, while in the other he gripped a square plaque inscribed with the words: Good and evil both meet their due.
This was another deity—General Liu Gong, Liu Yu.
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