Early the next morning.
The heads of the Geng father and son were hung outside Hangzhou's city gate.
Two strips of white cloth hung on either side of the heads.
One read: "The heads of Geng Jingzhong and his son, chief villains among Jiangzhe's corrupt officials."
The other read: "Those who collude with Japanese pirates to slaughter their countrymen shall die without an intact corpse-left by Ding Xiu."
The heads and white banners drew great crowds of Hangzhou residents.
Amid the curses and heated discussion, the people pooled what they knew, piecing together every evil deed the Geng father and son had committed in Jiangzhe.
Only then did those who had known nothing of the matter learn that this Grand Secretary Geng, who had risen from their own Hangzhou, was a rotten bastard with sores on his head and pus dripping from his soles.
The stark black words on the white cloth-"colluding with Japanese pirates, slaughtering his countrymen"-made the crowd want to climb onto the battlements and piss on those two heads!
People elsewhere knew only that the Japanese Pirate Raids along the southeastern coast were severe.
But the locals knew that the pirates ravaging the coastal towns were not all Japanese. There were men of Wei among them, too.
Now the mystery was solved. It was that old dog Geng Jingzhong who had been colluding with the Japanese pirates!
Simply killing the old dog had let him off far too lightly!
The furious townspeople cursed at the tops of their lungs, scooping mud and stones from the fields and raining them down on the two heads atop the wall.
The barrage was so fierce that the patrolling soldiers dared not approach that stretch of wall, lest they become fish caught in the spreading calamity.
In the crowd, two commoners