"No... not there! There's nothing there!"
Liu Guifang screamed herself hoarse like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.
Her reaction only gave her away.
Su Mingfeng's gaze grew colder. He did not even bother looking at her again and ordered Zhang Li directly, "Team One, go to the firewood pile."
"Yes, sir!"
Four soldiers immediately stepped out and strode toward the firewood pile.
"Stop! Don't you dare touch anything!"
Just as Li Goudan was about to charge into the courtyard, he snatched up a wooden club from the corner of the wall and blocked the soldiers, his eyes bloodshot.
"This is my home! Take one more step, and I'll fight you to the death!"
He adopted the stance of a desperate outlaw, trying to make one last stand.
Yet his threat looked utterly ridiculous before the fully armed soldiers.
The squad leader did not even look him in the eye. He merely said coldly, "Interfere with military duties, and you'll be killed on the spot."
Those icy words made Li Goudan stiffen.
In the instant he hesitated.
"Roar-"
A roar that shook the night sky came from the courtyard gate.
The snow leopard, which had been walking with graceful steps all this time, seemed to have lost its patience.
It abruptly stopped and turned its head, its golden pupils locking onto Li Goudan as he brandished the wooden club.
The next second, it moved.
No warning, no running start.
Its massive body became a streak of white lightning, crossing more than ten meters in an instant and whipping up a rank gust as it lunged straight at Li Goudan!
"Aah-!"
Li Goudan saw only a blur before a huge shadow descended over his head. The terrifying aura of an apex predator left his mind blank, and even his scream caught in his throat.
The wooden club in his hand fell to the ground with a clatter.
His legs gave out, and he collapsed to the ground.
A warm liquid quickly spread from his crotch, giving off a foul stench of urine.
He had actually wet himself from sheer terror.
The snow leopard did not actually land on him.
It stopped sharply less than half a meter from Li Goudan, its four enormous paws digging deep into the mud.
It looked down from above at the man sprawled like a puddle of mud, a low rumbling growl rising from its throat as though mocking him for overestimating himself.
Its massive head slowly lowered, and its barbed tongue slipped out to lick its sharp teeth.
The gesture was full of primal wildness and deadly menace.
Li Goudan's eyes rolled back, and he actually fainted from fright.
"Goudan! My son!"
Liu Guifang let out a piercing scream and struggled desperately, but two soldiers held her firmly in place, leaving her unable to move.
The villagers were so frightened that they kept retreating until they reached the wall, every face drained of color.
Some even dropped to their knees on the spot and kowtowed repeatedly toward the snow leopard.
"The Mountain God has manifested! The Mountain God has manifested!"
"Liu Guifang must have done something monstrous and angered the Mountain God!"
Before absolute power, every excuse and incitement was feeble and useless.
It took a vicious beast to deal with an evil person.
This king that had descended from the snowy mountaintops shattered Li Family Village's last resistance in the most direct, most violent way.
The snow leopard could not be bothered to give Li Goudan another glance.
It turned around and, under Nuannuan's mental command, charged straight into the courtyard.
It did not go to the main house but headed straight for the cellar entrance.
A heavy, rotten wooden plank and several old stone millstones weighed down the entrance.
Liu Guifang was still screaming, "Don't touch that! That's our family's food! You bandits!"
The snow leopard seemed to understand her cries.
It stopped before the plank, turned its head, and gave Liu Guifang a long look with its cold golden eyes.
Then it raised its right forepaw.
That enormous paw, capable of easily crushing a wolf's skull on the snowy plains, slammed down on the thick wooden plank!
Bang-crack!
A tremendous crash rang out!
The hard wooden plank shattered like a biscuit!
Wood splinters flew everywhere!
The enormous force also sent the millstones weighing it down rolling aside.
A pitch-black cellar entrance lay exposed before everyone.
Violent, direct, and utterly uncompromising.
The entire place fell silent.
Liu Guifang's screams also cut off abruptly, like those of a chicken seized by the neck.
She stared blankly at the opening smashed clear by a single paw, her face drained of all color, leaving only ashen despair.
"Go down."
Su Mingfeng's voice broke the deathly silence.
Without the slightest hesitation, two soldiers switched on their flashlights and descended into the cellar, one after the other, along the crude wooden ladder.
Holding Nuannuan, Su Mingfeng turned around and gently covered her eyes with his broad hand.
"Be good, Nuannuan. Don't look."
He did not want those filthy things to sully his niece's eyes.
Nuannuan obediently closed her eyes and buried her face in her uncle's warm embrace. Her ears, however, listened carefully to the sounds around her.
The soldiers' report soon came from the cellar.
"Reporting, sir! The cellar is piled full of sweet potatoes. Nothing unusual found!"
At those words, a flicker of hope crossed Liu Guifang's eyes.
Could it be... they couldn't find it?
Her heart was in suspense again.
Su Mingfeng's expression did not change at all. He merely said evenly toward the cellar entrance, "Move the pickling crock."
Liu Guifang's body jolted.
How did he know... he even knew about the pickling crock!
The sound of something heavy being shifted came from the cellar.
"Heave-ho... this crock is heavy!"
"Squad Leader, look at this!"
A few minutes later, the soldier's voice in the cellar suddenly grew grave.
"Reporting, sir! Under... under the pickling crock, we've found... found something unusual!"
"Dig!" Su Mingfeng said only that one word.
Soon, the sound of shovels digging through earth came from the cellar, stroke after stroke, as though striking everyone's hearts.
Liu Guifang began to tremble uncontrollably, her teeth chattering.
The surrounding villagers also held their breath and craned their necks, staring fixedly at the pitch-black entrance, their faces filled with fear and curiosity.
Several more minutes passed.
From the cellar came a soldier's voice, suppressing shock and nausea:
"Reporting... reporting, sir! We've... we've dug it up!"
"They're... they're human bones!"
Boom!
A collective gasp rose from the crowd.
There really was something!
A dead person really was buried in Liu Guifang's cellar!
"Bring it up." Su Mingfeng's tone remained even, but everyone who knew him understood that this was the calm before his fury.
Working together, two soldiers carefully carried something wrapped in a tattered straw mat out of the cellar.
The straw mat was laid on the ground and slowly opened.
Torchlight and flashlight beams converged on the mat.
When they saw clearly what was inside, everyone present let out an involuntary cry.
It was an incomplete set of remains, long since reduced to white bones.
There was an obvious hole in the skull, and several ribs were broken.
Beside the remains lay several scattered scraps of fabric, so rotten that their original appearance was unrecognizable.
But one piece could still faintly be identified as army green.
And among the white bones was a round tin badge covered in rust. The blurred writing on it seemed to be the character for "post."
A postman!
The deceased had actually been a postman!
The entire place was deathly silent.
A pin dropping could have been heard.
Every gaze shot toward Liu Guifang like a blade.
If there had only been suspicion before, now the evidence was irrefutable!
The villagers' gazes toward Liu Guifang changed instantly.
From sympathy to suspicion, and now to horror, disgust, and hatred.
They could not believe that this ordinarily sharp-tongued, spiteful woman was actually a monster who had murdered someone and buried the body!
They had lived beside a murderer for so many years!
At the thought, many felt a chill run down their backs and their stomachs churn.
"Urgh-"
Some fainthearted women had already vomited on the spot.
"It wasn't me... I didn't kill him..."
Looking at the pile of white bones, Liu Guifang suffered a complete mental collapse. She shook her head frantically, screaming incoherently.
"He fell to his death himself! It had nothing to do with me! He fell into the cellar himself and died!"
She tried to make one last struggle, passing everything off as an accident.
Yet her excuses were so feeble and useless before the ironclad evidence.
Su Mingzhe looked at her coldly and pushed up his glasses. "Fell to his death? A forensic examiner will determine whether the wound on the skull came from a fall or a blow with a blunt object. Liu Guifang, if you confess now, you may still be able to seek leniency. If you keep resisting to the bitter end, all that awaits you is a bullet."
"I didn't! I really didn't!" Liu Guifang was still wailing.
Just then, Nuannuan, whose eyes Su Mingfeng had been covering all this time, suddenly pulled free of her uncle's hand.
She did not look at the frightening pile of white bones.
Her gaze fell elsewhere.
There lay the things that had just been found in the firewood pile.
A similarly rusted tin lunch box and a few tattered pieces of clothing.
Nuannuan ran on her short little legs to the tin lunch box, held out her little hand, pointed at it, and said in her clear child's voice, one word at a time:
"That... is the postman uncle's lunch box."
"The mice said he took this lunch box with him every day when he delivered letters."
"Inside... there are letters that weren't delivered."