Yellow Earth Town had no night watchman.
Old Sun, who had sounded the watches, had caught typhoid last month. He had lain coughing in his ramshackle house for half a month before someone finally found him dead on his kang, his whole body stiff, with no one even to collect his corpse.
From then on, the nights in Yellow Earth Town had fallen utterly silent.
Jiang Fa kept his eyes closed, repeatedly going over the information he had gathered during the day.
Liu Laizi, real name Liu Laifu, thirty-seven years old, lived in the innermost blue-brick, tiled-roof house in the third alley at the eastern end of town.
His elder brother, Liu Laigui, was a petty clerk in the county office's household department, responsible for collecting grain taxes in the Yellow Earth Town area.
Put plainly, he was a dog kept by the county office and let loose to bite people.
Aside from gambling dens, the places Liu Laizi frequented most were the clandestine brothels at the eastern end of town.
Whenever he lost money gambling or drank too much, he vented his anger on the tenant farmers in the nearby towns, beating and kicking them at best, ransacking their homes and smashing up their houses at worst.
The tenant farmers of Yellow Earth Town hated him enough to grind their teeth, yet none dared make a sound.
Because his brother worked for the authorities.
Even the Heavenly King himself would have to give the authorities a wide berth.
Jiang Fa opened his eyes.
A rustling came from the end of the alley. A stray cat had jumped down from a wall and run off over broken roof tiles.
Tonight, Yellow Earth Town was so dark that a man could not see his own fingers before his face.
"Come on, come on! Place your bets and hands off!"
"Damn it, Liu Laizi, your luck's too good tonight! You've won three rounds straight!"
"Cut the crap! I deserve this luck. Hurry up and bet!"
Liu Laizi's voice was coarse and grating, slurred with drink, like a cracked gong swaying in the wind.
Jiang Fa crouched beneath the window, moistened the window paper with his tongue, and gently poked a small hole through it.
There were four men inside.
Liu Laizi sat in the seat of honor, bare-chested, with a few sparse hairs on his head and grease shining all over his face.
A heap of copper coins and several pieces of broken silver lay before him, worth at least three to five taels.
The other three had their backs to the window. Judging by their clothes, they were cut from the same cloth as Liu Laizi.
Several dishes of discarded peanut shells and bones gnawed clean sat on the table. A wine jar lay tipped beside a table leg, and a large puddle of wine stained the floor.
"Brother Laizi, I heard you went collecting the head tax again today?" a skinny, monkey-like thug asked as he cast the dice.
"I did."
Liu Laizi gulped down some wine and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Damn it, this job gets harder by the day. Those mud-legged peasants are all iron roosters-not a feather to be plucked. They don't know the meaning of rules unless you take a stick to them."
"What, someone dared not give Brother Laizi face?" another thug, with a mole on his face, asked with a chuckle.
Liu Laizi scoffed and tossed the dice into the bowl, his tongue stumbling slightly. "Bullshit! I'm the heavens over Yellow Earth Town. Who dares not give me face?"
He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs, smugness all over his face. "Besides, the order to raise taxes came from above. Even if the Heavenly King himself came, I'd still be in the right. What's there to fear?"
"Exactly, exactly." The mole-faced man hurried to flatter him. "Who in all the surrounding villages hasn't heard Brother Laizi's name?"
The men roared with laughter and cast another round of dice.
Jiang Fa listened to their conversation inside without moving a muscle.
The night deepened. A dog barked a few times in the alley, then fell silent.
Near midnight, there was finally movement inside.
"Break it up, break it up. I still have to collect dues at Willow Tree Gully tomorrow. Can't drink too late." Liu Laizi stood and swept the copper coins and broken silver on the table into a cloth bag.
The three thugs also rose drunkenly and staggered toward the door.
The skinny one tripped at the doorway and nearly knocked the door panel down. The mole-faced man steadied him, and the two left the courtyard with their arms over each other's shoulders.
The last to leave was a big fellow. Before leaving, he turned and waggled his eyebrows at Liu Laizi. "Brother Laizi, you'd better give that business with Widow Liu some attention. I hear her man's coming back from the mine next month."
"Get lost, get lost. I know what I'm doing."
The big fellow chuckled and swayed away.
The courtyard gate clanged shut, and the courtyard fell completely quiet.
Liu Laizi lay flat on his back on the kang, his mouth wide open, his snores growing louder and louder.
He still clutched the cloth bag of silver to his chest. Even asleep, he kept one hand resting on it.
The room reeked of wine. Two empty wine jars lay discarded on the floor, and half a bowl of unfinished cheap wine still sat on the table.
Jiang Fa stood beside the kang, looking down at that face.
It was covered in brutish flesh, with a bulbous nose and eyebrows so sparse they were almost invisible. Several scars left by scalp sores on his forehead shone a ghastly white in the darkness.
He reached out, moving lightly and slowly, without the slightest tremor.
His five fingers clamped around Liu Laizi's jaw, and he abruptly exerted his strength!
Crack! The muffled snap sounded especially clear in the darkness.
Liu Laizi's eyes flew open, his eyeballs bulging. His mouth opened wide to scream, but only a series of indistinct gurgles came out.
He desperately tried to grab Jiang Fa's wrist with both hands,
but that hand remained as immovable as an iron clamp.
Expressionless, Jiang Fa covered Liu Laizi's mouth with one hand while the five fingers of his other hand exerted force.
Crack!
Another sharp snap.
Liu Laizi's entire lower jaw was wrenched loose.
Blood gushed through the gaps in his shattered jawbone, staining the bedding on the kang dark red.
Liu Laizi kicked desperately, his heels scraping white streaks across the kang's surface.
Jiang Fa did not stop.
He changed his grip to a fist and drove a punch into Liu Laizi's throat.
A Ming Jin martial artist's strength increased sharply. At full force, one punch could drive through a tree as thick as the mouth of a bowl.
Jiang Fa had not used his full strength in this punch, only thirty percent, but it was enough to completely crush a person's throat.
Liu Laizi began convulsing violently, his limbs flailing, his eyeballs nearly popping from their sockets.
But Jiang Fa's hand remained firmly over his mouth, blocking every dying howl back inside his throat.
Gradually, Liu Laizi's struggles weakened.
His eyes rolled upward, leaving only a ring of murky white.
A few breaths later, his entire body went limp and never moved again.
Jiang Fa released him.
His breathing remained steady, but his face was extremely pale. After all, this was his first time killing someone.
Yet his eyes remained resolute.
With a thug like Liu Laizi,
unless he killed him outright, his family would never have peace afterward.
After steadying his emotions,
Jiang Fa lowered his head to look at Liu Laizi's corpse and confirmed that he was thoroughly dead.
Then he raised his head and swept his gaze across the room.
He looked around, picked up the wine bowl from the table, and set it on the edge of the kang in a seemingly incidental position.
Then he picked Liu Laizi's old shoes up off the floor, rubbed their soles repeatedly in the blood on the kang, and tossed them back where they had been.
After doing all this, he kicked over an empty wine jar on the floor, letting it roll beside the kang.
He made it look as though Liu Laizi had lost his footing while drunk and fallen off the kang, striking his jaw against its edge, shattering the jawbone and driving bone fragments into his throat, killing him on the spot.
The method was crude, but it was enough for the death of a worthless thug.
The county office's coroner might not have the leisure to examine him carefully. Even if he did, it would take considerably more effort.
Who knew how many enemies Liu Laizi had made in recent years alone?
Still more people secretly wished him dead. Jiang Fa did not think anyone would suspect him.
Even if they did, they would need evidence!
Jiang Fa gave the corpse on the kang one last look, then bent down and picked up the cloth bag of silver.
Inside were twenty-odd taels of broken silver and several dozen copper coins.
He had intended to take it outright, but on second thought, he picked out only the largest pieces of silver and tucked them into his robe, then stuffed the remaining copper coins and broken silver, bag and all, back onto Liu Laizi.
Then he went to the battered cabinet in the corner and searched carefully. Sure enough, there was quite a bit more loose silver.
Jiang Fa took all the silver out.
He turned, slipped silently out of the room, and climbed back over the courtyard wall.
The night was still pitch-dark, and the alley was deserted.
He retraced his route, using the bases of walls and the shadows of trees for cover, returning home as silently as an old cat.
With everything done, he lay back down on the kang and closed his eyes.
In his mind, the panel quietly appeared.
[Mountain-Breaking Fist (mid yellow grade) · minor achievement (18/500)]
His progress had jumped straight up by three points.
Looks like killing people can increase martial arts proficiency too!
Jiang Fa murmured inwardly.
At some point, the wind had risen outside the window, rustling the leaves of the jujube tree.