Good and Evil Both Reap Their Due

The Great Xia Dynasty proved efficient after all. After another half month on the road, they finally reached Wugong Town and saw a constable posting a notice stamped with a Jin seal and vermilion ink on the board beside the Town Office. Issued by the provincial governor, it was written entirely in ornate parallel prose, but its meaning was clear enough.

The County Magistrate of Lubei County had colluded with a monster to harm people and had been dismissed and arrested. Provincial soldiers had killed the monster, which proved to be a man-eating Mountain Ogre. In its cave, they had found the gnawed remains of nearly a hundred people. The number found in the mountain ravines and valleys was even greater.

"I never imagined that Mountain Ogre had eaten more than two hundred people!" Han Feng said in shock. "So many!"

Pan Long could not resist borrowing a famous saying. "An ancient sage said: 'When the kitchens hold fat meat and the stables hold fat horses, while the people show the pallor of hunger and the wilds hold the starved dead, it is no different from leading beasts to eat people.' But that was only a metaphor. The County Magistrate of Lubei County truly did lead a beast to eat people. He deserves to die!"

"It had probably been on Mount Lu for more than two hundred years, and it worked with the County Magistrate's Lineage for at least several decades. Spread across all those years, two hundred-odd victims came to only a few a year," Li Qiang said. "In Yong Province, a few deaths in a county each year—perhaps even travelers passing through from elsewhere—would go unnoticed. No one would pay them any mind."

Yet after saying that, he let out a deep sigh.

"At least they can finally