After killing the people of both villages, Shen Siwei felt no unease whatsoever.
As long as he could live in peace rather than be caught and punished, what did it matter how many more people he killed?
If he had possessed even a shred of conscience, he would never have become a traitor during the war.
After murdering the innocent people of both villages, he not only slept without a care but was even blessed with another child, a son at that.
The name he gave this son was interesting, too: Shen Zhongliang.
One day, Shen Siwei came to the largest house in Tang Family Village. He had heard the villagers say that it housed shrines to Judge Cui of the Underworld and the Fox Immortal. After its second renovation, it was only opened on festivals or for ancestral rites, when people went inside to make offerings to Judge Cui and the Fox Immortal.
Shen Siwei did not believe in gods or ghosts. If he had believed that gods watched from just three feet overhead, he would never have committed such atrocities.
So he planned to clear out the house and move into it with his wife and children.
But after chopping through the lock, entering the front courtyard, and chopping through the second door's lock, he stood in the doorway and collapsed to the ground in terror.
There was nothing else in the spacious house, only two towering stone statues. One wore a black gauze hat with soft winglike flaps and a round-collared red official's robe. His Underworld manifestation was solemn and imposing, with fierce brows and glaring eyes, radiating murderous intent. It was none other than Judge Cui.
The other statue had a fox's head and a human body, uncannily strange and almost alive.
The stone statues had