"Guards! Give him another forty strokes! This criminal has a hard mouth. The witnesses and evidence are right here, yet he still dares to argue. Looks like you won't learn your lesson until you're staring death in the face!"
After the magistrate spoke, two constables stepped behind Ye Chen. It looked as if they meant to beat him the same way as before, but just then, a loud shout came from outside the Government Office.
"Hold it!" The deep, powerful voice pierced through layer upon layer of walls and rang through the Government Office. Everyone heard it, but no one saw who had spoken. The magistrate and constables all looked curiously toward the entrance, and the constables forgot about the beating.
"Please wait, Your Honor. Might you hear this poor Daoist out?" Not long after the voice rang out, a middle-aged man dressed as a Daoist walked through the entrance of the Government Office.
Ye Chen turned around too, wanting to see who had stopped the constables from beating him. But when he looked, he realized he didn't recognize the man at all.
"Daoist, we're in the middle of questioning a criminal. If you have no connection to this case, please leave for now. Could whatever you have to say wait until the case is over?"
The magistrate assumed the Daoist had come to cause trouble. He had only refrained from having the constables drag him away out of courtesy. But the Daoist acted as if he hadn't heard the magistrate at all and walked straight into the main hall of the Government Office.
He sniffed the air. Though the stench was still overwhelming, he seemed completely unaffected.
"Your Honor, I was passing by and meant to continue on my way. But I smelled a strong Demonic Aura in a