Outside the main gate of the City Guard.
Several hundred people had packed the broad street outside the gate so tightly that not even water could pass through.
A man was tied up tight as a drum, his face battered and bruised as he knelt before the City Guard's main gate. Beside him lay a corpse—a woman of around twenty, who appeared to have died only recently.
Around them stood a mixed crowd of all sorts. There was a middle-aged man in lavish brocade robes, surrounded by a cluster of guards and Martial Masters, as well as a burly, fearsome-looking man with a saber at his waist and a scar across his face.
The few Yamen Runners guarding the City Guard's entrance were all somewhat frightened.
If ordinary commoners had come to make trouble, they would have kicked them away long ago. There would have been no chance for things to escalate enough to alert their superiors inside.
But this time was completely different. The scar-faced man with the saber was notorious throughout the area. He was the Quicksand Gang's leader, known by nearly everyone in Wutong Ward—his name alone could stop children from crying at night.
As for the brocade-robed man being surrounded, he was Zheng Hong, master of the Zheng Family on South Street. The Zheng Family's tyranny was even worse than the Quicksand Gang's. Snatching women by force was nothing to them. Zheng Hong's eldest son, Zheng Yi, had once gotten into a verbal dispute with someone in a tavern, then ordered his servants to beat that person to death in the street before swaggering away.
There had even been City Guard Yamen Runners patrolling at the time. After Zheng Yi beat the man to death right in front of them, he directly told the runners to