Crushing the Flower (Part Two)

When Li Yu stepped into the bedchamber, his expression changed slightly.

Beads of blood flowed by the foot of the bed, like waxen tears, not yet congealed.

The woman lay faceup on the floor, a great hole caved into her left temple. Blood covered her face, obscuring her original features, yet it could not hide those bulging eyes, staring blankly upward.

At the head of the bed, two gold hooks and half a length of red silk swayed idly.

"Your surname is Li?"

The scholar surnamed Yan knelt before the bed with his back to the door, his shoulders trembling incessantly in utter grief.

Hearing footsteps, he spoke.

"I heard everyone outside calling you Cult Leader Li?"

"My surname is indeed Li."

He asked again, "Do you have a feud with that beast?"

"Jianghu grievances. There's no saying whether it counts as a feud."

"No saying whether it counts as a feud? How lightly you put it..."

The scholar surnamed Yan gave a cold laugh and slowly turned his head, his face full of venomous resentment. Suddenly, he pounded the floor with both hands, shouting himself almost hoarse.

"But that beast vented all his hatred of you, all his fear of you, on us!"

"You're a cult leader, a great hero. You carry three feet of honed steel and roam the jianghu. What about us... we were just an ordinary pair of newlyweds... my surname is Yan, not Li... he insisted my surname was Li..."

He gathered the woman's corpse into his arms and wailed.

"I had no choice. I had no choice..."

Li Yu roughly understood what had happened and sighed softly. The couple's plight had come from Yang Le's wickedness, but they had also been caught without cause in the ripples of jianghu grievances. The world was ever-changing, fortune and disaster came without warning, and this was especially true for ordinary people.

"Give him some extra gold and silver to bury his late wife."

The Fish-Dragon Banner's men had now split into two groups. One stood guard and kept watch all around, wary of unexpected trouble, while the other forced the surrendered men to turn out chests and cupboards, plundering the Red Flower Villa. In a short time, five large wooden chests had been carried outside.

Li Yu called over a minor leader and passed on his instructions.

"You killed-my wife!"

The scholar surnamed Yan's grieving cries paused slightly before he tipped his head back and continued wailing, ceaselessly stroking his dead wife's wide-open eyes.

"Stop putting on an act!"

An angry shout came from outside the door.

"I've never seen anyone so brazenly shameless!"

Fu Rong strode inside, followed by the minor leader, who had fetched two gold ingots. She stared coldly at the scholar crying before the embroidered bed, her eyes full of contempt. "Cult Leader, let me question him."

Li Yu nodded and stepped aside.

"You... what are you saying? My liver and guts are torn apart with grief, and you say I'm acting... have you ever lost a husband?"

The scholar surnamed Yan looked up at her, his face filled with grief and indignation.

Fu Rong asked coldly, "How exactly did she die?"

"I'm asking you, have you ever lost a husband?"

He refused to answer and only questioned her instead, his face full of sorrow.

"If you've never lost a husband, how could you know the agony of parting in life and death?"

Bang!

Fu Rong drew the Black Slaughter Great Saber and slammed it down, driving it into a crack between the blue bricks. Its gleaming blade, smeared with scraps of flesh and fresh blood, resembled an executioner's blade. The scholar surnamed Yan froze, and his grieving cries stopped.

"I'll ask one last time. How did she die?"

The scholar surnamed Yan lowered his head and whispered, "It... it was all that beast's doing. He took out his anger at your cult leader on her, so he tortured my wife to death..."

Fu Rong cut him off with a shout. "I saw it with my own eyes. After Yang Le went out, your wife woke up. She had no fatal injuries!"

"I told you just now. My wife couldn't bear the humiliation and was too ashamed to face the world, so she killed herself."

With the sharp blade beside him, the scholar surnamed Yan wanted to cry but dared not. His expression grew panicked, and his words gradually became contradictory.

"I couldn't stop her in time. I was beside myself with grief and was about to follow her... but I feared that both our parents would have no one to support them, and our poor families would struggle to get by..."

By now, Li Yu had realized something was wrong. His attention had previously been mostly on Yang Le. Though he had seen a naked woman lying in the room, it had been inappropriate to look closely, and he had nearly miscalculated. Now, he could not help sneering inwardly.

He had slain Zhang Hengye, one man against a hundred, and prided himself on his stratagems; he had destroyed the Red Flower Society in a nighttime raid, which had also taken planning. Who would have thought he would nearly be deceived by a scholar who knew no martial arts whatsoever? He truly did not deserve to call himself a hero.

It seemed that no matter how wise a man might be, a single pair of eyes was still not enough.

"You won't tell the truth?"

Fu Rong twisted the saber's hilt and kicked its spine. The edge, sharp enough to sever a hair blown against it, swung toward the scholar surnamed Yan and stopped mere inches away. He suddenly froze, his expression turning terrified. On the mirror-bright blade, two faces had actually appeared.

The one on the left was from their blissful wedding night, beneath the bridal candles: under a mandarin-duck bridal veil, she had been lovelier than a flower.

The face on the right had its eyes wide open and blood streaming over it, horrifying beyond measure.

"Spare me, spare me..."

"My wife, I shouldn't have forced you to die..."

Abandoning the corpse, the scholar surnamed Yan knelt on the floor and kowtowed ceaselessly to the Black Slaughter Great Saber, muttering to himself.

"This... this can't all be blamed on me. The Yan family has been unblemished for generations. After suffering such humiliation, I could no longer show my face among scholars. What did I do wrong... I did nothing wrong... if you won't give me more gold and silver, what kind of great heroes are you? Could you actually mean to slaughter an innocent? Once word gets out, I'll see you utterly disgraced, hahahaha..."

Li Yu glanced at the two gold bars in the minor leader's hands and slowly walked outside.

"What the cult leader means is, since this man's love runs so deep, grant his wish."

Fu Rong spoke coldly, pulled out the Black Slaughter Great Saber, glanced at the two gold bars, and quickly followed him.

"Grant his wish?"

After pondering for a long while, the minor leader suddenly understood. He walked up to the dazed, despondent scholar surnamed Yan, took aim, slowly raised both hands, and smashed them down. With two muffled thuds, two jets of blood shot skyward.

The gold bars lodged in his forehead, as though he had sprouted horns.

"Yang Le deserved death a thousand times over, but he did bring us a windfall."

Five chests stood in the courtyard. Two held gold, paintings, calligraphy, and antiques. The other three were filled entirely with silver cast into four-jin bricks, neatly stacked and gleaming.

Fu Rong was all smiles. She had arrived a step late earlier because she had been counting the valuables.

"The Red Flower Society's treasury was hidden beneath this villa. It was quite well concealed. I separated two of Yang Le's personal attendants for questioning, and each feared the other would speak first, so they raced to confess."

"By a rough count, eight thousand taels of silver and three hundred taels of gold. The other valuables should be worth another two or three thousand..."

At Black Sand Wharf, a bowl of wontons cost only fifteen copper coins.

Great Song paid tribute every year, and its military budget was tight. Even in economically prosperous Jiangnan, silver was dear and copper coin was cheap among the common people.

These chests of silver could buy a great many bowls of wontons.

Looking at the five wooden chests, Li Yu breathed a sigh of relief. The trip had not been in vain after all, and it had put out the fire at his brows.

As repayment to the Seventy-Two Peaks, the fishing tax had been lowered to ten percent, costing him a large source of income. Several hundred mouths needed food and drink as soon as their eyes opened each day, leaving him stretched so thin that pulling down his lapels exposed his elbows. This was also why he had been so eager to annex the Red Flower Society.

"The Red Flower Society had built up its holdings over three generations, and Yang Le even specialized in abducting and selling respectable people. Only then could they amass such a fortune in ill-gotten wealth. By comparison, the Black Flood Dragon Gang's treasury was far shabbier, with no more than two thousand taels of silver."

Zhang Hengye had wanted to bring the Seventy-Two Peaks under his control, yet had allowed Black-Hearted Tiger to bleed the fishermen dry with heavy taxes. The two seemed contradictory, but in truth, he had had little choice.

Being the boss was no easy task!