Chapter 22: The Pitiful Often Have Despicable Traits

“Uncle Lin, I’m very full, thank you for the hospitality.”

In front of the breakfast stall, Li Chaosheng thanked the leather worker who pretended not to feel the pain, then he cheerfully returned to his own courtyard with Old Qian. Old Lin shook his head, took the money and went to the market to buy some rice and flour to take home. Eating out all the time was not a long-term plan. Although the food outside was tasty, it was too expensive. Tailoring and mending did not make much money now, so life must be managed carefully.

When Li Chaosheng returned home, he found Turtle Son had once again climbed onto that rag on the bed and lay motionless, very much like a showy brat pretending to study. If not for the fact that this era did not have television, Li Chaosheng would have wanted to touch the back of the paper to see if it was somehow warm.

While Turtle Son diligently studied and the paper men rested by day, Li Chaosheng found himself idle. He thought that butcher Zheng had been killed by Old Zhang, and according to the Great Qian law, a killer must pay with his life. He figured Old Zhang would be seized at the county magistrate’s office and soon be beheaded. If that was the case, he should not wander about. If Wang Er came looking for him and he was not home, he would miss a killing and the chance to collect a reward.

Although Old Zhang looked like an ordinary man, even a fly was meat. Small gains added up. If he could harvest every day, he’d make progress every day. This was what Li Chaosheng pursued.

Li Chaosheng’s current mindset was like a couplet. The first line read: If one has perseverance, why sleep at midnight and rise at dawn. The second line read: The most useless thing is to enjoy the sun for one day and freeze for ten.

In other words, to improve one must persevere and one should not slack off because progress is small. Likewise, Li Chaosheng should not give up serving ordinary people just because the reward for killing an ordinary person was small.

If it were not that executioners were a monopoly in the entire Yanggu County and Li Chaosheng’s trade had no branches, Li Chaosheng might put up advertisements in the streets. He already had the slogan ready: If you want a head chopped, go to the Li family. Li family executions, an old shop with guaranteed quality, quick and not painful, guaranteed to give you a different experience. For details please come to the last courtyard in Dead Street for a personal consultation!

A pity that such a good ad idea could not be used, because this was a one man business. Really, compared to him, Old Lin next door was better off. He could casually put out an advertisement. After all, sewing up heads and bodies did not have to be the result of someone getting executed, they could just be a victim of murder or accidents. That was a much larger market compared to an executioner’s, since he was not limited to only one type of customer.

Not like himself, who lived off the government and could not go into private work, otherwise he would not be an executioner but an assassin.

Li Chaosheng sighed about how business had been poor lately as he sat on a reclining chair in the courtyard, squinting at the sun. As he closed his eyes, his consciousness involuntarily came to the foot of White Bone Mountain where the Killing Scripture resided. He climbed the mountain into the stele forest, and then the Human-Skin Catalog descended from the sky.

Watching the Human-Skin Catalog, Li Chaosheng realized that he had never seriously read this Human-Skin Catalog. He usually took his reward and left. It was very likely that he had not grasped the true function of this Killing Scripture.

Thinking this, Li Chaosheng opened the Human-Skin Catalog. The first page he turned to was the first female prisoner he had killed a few days ago, Bai Chunfeng, the one who became a female ghost at midnight to take revenge on him.

Upon turning the page, beneath the portrait and rating there was a big red word that read “Life.” Li Chaosheng’s gaze focused on that red word. Instantly his mind was drawn by the characters. Immediately Li Chaosheng watched, as if in a movie, and from a bystander’s perspective saw the whole life of Bai Chunfeng.

Bai Chunfeng, from Xiayang Village in Lin County, had a husband who was an honest farmer. Three years ago he was conscripted by the court for labor. Two years ago all the villagers returned, except her husband. Upon inquiry it turned out he had been buried in a collapse during the labor. With that, the family’s main support was gone.

However, Bai Chunfeng still had hope to live because she had a young son. She did sewing and helped others wash things to earn a bit of money, to feed the family and raise the son. But how could this world let someone live so peacefully?

A year and a half earlier, the court needed troops for the northern barbarians and raised taxes by five hundred wen per household. At that time Bai Chunfeng only had six hundred wen left. She planned to pay the five hundred and live frugally on the remaining one hundred, hoping to get through the winter.

But at this critical moment, her son, lacking winter clothes and weakened by long-term malnutrition, caught a cold and fever. Bai Chunfeng had no choice but to go to the village healer to treat him. The healer demanded three hundred wen. Bai Chunfeng was about to pay, when at that moment tax collectors from the county magistrate’s office arrived to collect taxes and chanced upon Bai Chunfeng, so they snatched away the money she had hoped to use for her child’s treatment.

Bai Chunfeng begged bitterly but only received a brutal beating from the tax collectors, and even her last one hundred wen was taken. After the officials left, Bai Chunfeng pleaded with the village healer to show mercy and save her child, but the healer drove her out.

Returning home and watching her son’s condition worsen, Bai Chunfeng knew he could not be saved. Gritting her teeth, she strangled the child to death. Before dying, the child opened his mouth and called out, “Mother!”

After strangling her child, Bai Chunfeng no longer wanted to live. She went to the riverside, found a tree with low branches and prepared to hang herself. But just as she was about to hang herself, she was rescued by a wandering Taoist.

The Taoist said to Bai Chunfeng, “Why do you seek death?”

Bai Chunfeng then recounted the whole story. The Taoist kowtowed and said, “The Queen Mother of the West redeems the world. Are you willing to come with me? I will teach you the way to survive, and in time you may return to avenge your great hatred!”

When Bai Chunfeng heard she could take revenge, she went with the Taoist. Later the Taoist possessed her body, taught her some magic, and introduced her to the White Lotus Sect. He told her that the world was full of suffering and only the White Lotus could save it. Join the White Lotus to root out traitors and evil, build a new world where everyone had land and clothes, and where there was no sickness and no death.

And to achieve that, they had to first overthrow this wicked court and kill all evil people.

Thus, one and a half years later, which was just recently, Bai Chunfeng secretly returned to Xiayang Village, buried her son who had turned to bones at home with no one to collect the body, then infiltrated the healer’s home, used evil magic to torture the healer’s family to death, and hung the bodies at the village head’s gate, demanding the village head lead the whole village to build a Queen Mother of the West temple, or she would kill the entire village.

The terrified village head sent a strong young man overnight to report the matter to the county magistrate’s office. The county magistrate’s office sent constables to arrest her, but all were killed by Bai Chunfeng’s evil magic. The bodies were hung on the trees at the village entrance, and she forced the villagers to act as laborers to build the temple.

But the killing of the constables was no small matter. The county official had no choice but to report it. More than ten days later, the Chief Warden led the Nightwardens and rushed in. In the fight, Bai Chunfeng used evil magic to kill three guards, and was then captured in one move by the Chief Warden and sent to Yanggu County for execution by beheading.

Li Chaosheng felt as if he had just watched a 3D immersive movie, browsing through Bai Chunfeng’s life. How to judge it? The first half of her life was pitiful, the latter half hateful. The village healer saw death and did not save them, so killing him was one thing, but what crime had the wife and child committed? Especially that infant in swaddling clothes, driven to be eaten by mice until only bone fragments remained. The Human-Skin Catalog labeled Bai Chunfeng with the character for “evil,” which was not undeserved!