"Doctor Zhao, it's time to apply the medicine."
Li Hai said to the old physician standing nearby, "Otherwise, Zhou Hu will be dead before long."
"Ah, understood, Hero Li."
Doctor Zhao nodded in response, then quickly took out the various medicines he had prepared beforehand and carefully applied them to Zhou Hu, who was panting heavily, his face ashen.
Once the medicine had been applied, Li Hai began the execution by a thousand cuts again, and the countless people below the platform cheered and surged forward to snatch their share once more.
And so, time slowly passed.
Li Hai's execution by a thousand cuts, which he had personally overseen, did not officially end until noon.
During that time alone, medicine was applied dozens, even hundreds of times.
By the very end, Li Hai had carved Zhou Hu into a living skeleton, wrapped around writhing internal organs and ceaselessly wailing in agony.
By the time he finally drew his last breath, Zhou Hu had endured a total of exactly 1,666 cuts.
As for why it wasn't 3,600 cuts...
Sadly, Li Hai did not have that much patience, and the human body was fragile living flesh crisscrossed with dense blood vessels, not a solid block of iron.
Especially since Li Hai had shattered Zhou Hu's foundation and knocked him down a realm, leaving him terribly weak to begin with. He was even less able to withstand such horrifying torture.
By the latter stages of the execution, Li Hai had done his best to avoid the major arteries and veins, as well as all of Zhou Hu's vital spots.
And although more than one physician was carefully tending to Zhou Hu by then, they still could not keep death at bay. In the end, he died in despair amid pain that was all but hellish.
Li Hai also tossed his skeleton to the crowd below the platform. The people who snatched at it tore it into more than a hundred pieces, leaving him with no intact remains.
Afterward, Li Hai did not linger for even a moment. With the people of Ox-Horn Town gazing at him with boundless respect, he turned and strode through the air, vanishing into the distance.
Meanwhile, Li Hai's fearsome appearance and peerless martial arts—and, above all, his astonishing feat of single-handedly wiping out thousands of wolf bandits—began spreading swiftly from Ox-Horn Town throughout the Coiling Dragon Mountain region.
Thus, the nicknames "Heaven-Killing Star," "Demon Star Descended," "Bloody Twin Whips," "Butcher Li," and "Savior Master Li," among others, were passed from the mouths of Ox-Horn Town's residents to countless ears, all without Li Hai knowing a thing about it.
In Stone Creek Town, part of Chen Family Fortress and six hundred li from Ox-Horn Town, stood an old-fashioned garden called Auspicious Garden.
Though this modest garden had stood there for decades, the locals did not know the surname or given name of its owner.
They knew only that, every night at midnight, carriages arrived with their windows on both sides completely covered by thick black cloth. Only then would the garden's tightly shut gates swing open to let them in.
The mysterious carriages did not leave until daybreak, when they hurried out of Stone Creek Town.
Almost no one knew what was inside those carriages. Only a handful of people who had spent the night drinking and were making their way home had, by chance, passed them and faintly heard what sounded like children crying inside.
Some nosy people had reported the garden to the Civilian Militia and demanded an investigation.
But in the end, everything was found to be in order. The owner of the garden, Master Zhou, simply disliked going out; there were no crimes to investigate.
So those who had been keeping an eye on the garden reluctantly gave up and stopped bothering the Civilian Militia.
But the townspeople and the militiamen had no idea that beneath the garden... lay a whole other world.
If someone could enter the garden, which covered barely half an acre, evade its many guards, and follow the winding corridors all the way to the center, they would find a well nearly ten feet wide.
If they tied a rope around themselves and climbed down to the bottom, they would find a wooden door beside the water. Behind that door lay the garden's true secret.
If someone pushed open the wooden door and went inside, they would find a dark, winding passage.
Following the passage, they would see a prison cell every few feet along either stone wall, each enclosed by crude iron bars. Five or six young children were locked in every cell.
They huddled together on a tattered straw mat, dressed in rags and staring blankly. Every one of them bore the marks of a beating, like slaves.
That's right. This was a human-trafficking den, and every one of these children had been kidnapped, swindled, stolen, or abducted.
The traffickers who had brought them here could be found at the end of this tunnel connecting all the cells, in a spacious, brightly lit cavern.
And the ringleader of these traffickers was none other than Zhou Yugen, the owner of Auspicious Garden.
The business Zhou Yugen conducted outside, mentioned by the guards at the Zhou Family mansion in Ox-Horn Town, was precisely human trafficking.
"His grandson defiles respectable women, his son's a bandit chief, and the grandfather sells people. This family really is..." Li Hai clicked his tongue. "Heh, heh, heh."
Standing beside the well at the center of Auspicious Garden, Li Hai shook his head and sneered. "They've committed every evil under the sun. They deserve to die to the last man!"
With that, his figure blurred, transforming into a pale ghostly shadow that flew down into the well.
Before long, the well echoed with the horrifying sounds of flesh being torn apart, mingled with endless, shrill screams.
That night, a dozen or so wooden stakes suddenly appeared outside Auspicious Garden, driven deep into the ground. Each one had a trembling, wailing person impaled on it, still on the brink of death.
Though the stakes had pierced their bodies from end to end, they did not die quickly. Instead, they kept crying out until daybreak, when they finally breathed their last, frightening the neighbors so badly that no one slept a wink.
That night, something extraordinary also happened at the Civilian Militia camp in Stone Creek Town.
More than two hundred frail children appeared inside the camp, along with a thick stack of banknotes, an exceptionally heavy envelope, and a clear palm print stamped into the ground, sunk to a depth no one could fathom.
Fortress Master Chen hurried over when he heard the news. Astonished and suspicious, he opened the envelope on the spot.
Inside, he found a complete set of evidence documenting Auspicious Garden's human trafficking, a register listing the children's home addresses, and a thin letter folded up.
Still stunned, Fortress Master Chen opened the letter next.
It stated in no uncertain terms that the stack of banknotes had to be spent on the children. If anyone dared to misappropriate the money or embezzle it, then the hand that had left the print in the ground would strike his forehead next time.
The letter was signed...
Li Hai.
"Li Hai..." Fortress Master Chen murmured, setting down the letter. "Just who is this man?"
"Fortress Master, the depth of that handprint has already... already been measured," the militia captain reported, hurrying up to him.
"How deep?" Fortress Master Chen asked slowly, drawing a breath.
The militia captain swallowed, his voice trembling. "I-it's... three zhang deep."
Thud!
Fortress Master Chen collapsed to the ground in fright, his face full of shock.
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