62: Blood, despair, and lighting sky lanterns!

The heavy wooden door of the prison cell clanged shut behind Zhou Wenqing, cutting off the nauseating stench of blood and despair.

The footsteps, feigning steadiness but actually faltering, echoed down the corridor, growing fainter and fainter.

A deathly silence, tinged with the smell of rust and decay, once again enveloped this specially designed cell for high-profile criminals.

Only the 'Hoo... hoo...' sounds from deep within Zhou Jingxing's throat, made extremely strange and distorted by his severed tongue, like a broken bellows leaking air, or the unwilling whimpers of a dying beast, lingered.

He lay on his side on the cold, damp straw, soaked in his own blood, half of his face, stripped of its skin to reveal gruesome flesh and cheekbones, pressed against the ground.

His eyes stared fixedly in the direction of the cell door, a strange light burning within them—that of deep-seated hatred and mad anticipation.

“Brother? With our mother around, raising the family's heir to be just like me, how dare you hope that Zhou Zhiyao is good?”

“Father... you personally peeled off my face... personally cut out my tongue... thinking this would preserve your good name? Preserve the Zhou family? Preserve that good-for-nothing?”

“You simply don't know... what kind of things you've raised... Do you think Zhou Zhiyao only frequents brothels and pleasure boats?”

“Haha... He's just like me... plays even wilder... even more extreme! A Dragon begets a Dragon, a Phoenix begets a Phoenix; we are all like this, it's not our fault, it's your old Zhou family... bad stock!”

“Killing the person and punishing the heart, killing the person and punishing the heart! Hahahaha, I understand now, what a Sword Devil Lu Jiuyuan, this is truly killing the person and punishing the heart! This is what you call killing the person and punishing the heart!”

“You're not just punishing me, but also my incompetent father!”

Not far from the Heavenly Prison, Lu Jiuyuan stood on a tree branch, his sword in his arms.

Beside him was a white-robed figure, also holding a sword.

“Is this the person you want to kill?” Ximen Chuixue said indifferently, “Too many schemes, a mere Divided Soul, a few pieces of trash, not worth it!”

“I've already killed six, and there's a whole nest more; you're definitely going to lose!” Lu Jiuyuan said with a light chuckle.

“I've also killed six!” Ximen Chuixue suddenly said, “Do you want to try a different game?”

“How do we play?”

“We kill one person together! Whoever kills him wins!”

Lu Jiuyuan turned his head to look at Ximen Chuixue: “Kill whom?”

“Lu Xiaofeng!”

“Has Lu Xiaofeng violated the Heavenly Law? Why do you want to do this to him?”

“He slept with my wife! I saw it with my own eyes!”

“He really deserves to die! When did he sleep with her?”

“The third day of next month!”

“Oh! Hmm~? Are you two planning something?”

“Are we doing it or not?”

“I'm afraid if I join in, Lu Xiaofeng might really die!” Lu Jiuyuan rubbed his chin and said, “Do we have to play this big?”

“If he dies, then he simply wasn't skilled enough,” Ximen Chuixue said calmly, “The world knows you are his good friend. If I were to hunt him down, and you didn't step in to stop me, things wouldn't seem right!”

“Only if we both hunt him down, and truly hunt him down, making him struggle on the brink of death, can we make those who are watching believe it.”

“Why did you look for you first and not me?” Lu Jiuyuan asked.

“Because I have a wife... you don't!”

“Hahahaha...” Lu Jiuyuan threw his head back and laughed, “With a beautiful wife at home, even immortals can't cure the troubles; with such worries in your heart, is your sword still sharp?”

“I am gradually entering the realm of no sword being better than having a sword!” Ximen Chuixue said, then uttered three words he had been contemplating for a long time: “In swordsmanship, you are still far, far behind, Lu... Flower Boy!”

Lu Jiuyuan's smile froze: “That was my path back then... I didn't act as a Flower Boy, I just helped scatter a couple of handfuls...”

“Heh heh!” Ximen Chuixue sneered two words and drifted away.

“Hey! What do you mean by 'heh heh'? Why are you running so fast?” Lu Jiuyuan shouted after him.

Three days later, in the marketplace west of Hangzhou City.

Though the sun was high, in the aftermath of winter, it only offered a slight hint of warmth.

Executions were typically held in autumn, but Lu Jiuyuan used a golden seal to expedite the process as a special case.

Executing a lecherous villain was certainly not a problem.

In the middle of the marketplace, a dense crowd of people packed every inch of space around the execution ground, even climbing onto the roofs of shops facing the street and filling every window.

Thousands of eyes were fixed on the newly erected, high cedar pole, as thick as a bowl, in the center of the execution ground.

A person hung from the top of the pole.

No, perhaps that could no longer be called a person.

He was hanging upside down, head down, feet up, his legs and body wrapped in a thick layer of coarse sackcloth soaked in grease, like a candle.

The sackcloth wrapped around his feet hung down from one side; this was the fuse for the ignition.

The most terrifying thing was the face—or rather, the remains of a face.

Half of his cheek had been brutally stripped of skin, revealing dark red, swollen, and curled-edged muscle underneath, with the stark white cheekbone directly exposed to the scorching sunlight, appearing both cruel and grotesque.

The other half of his flesh, barely remaining, was also twisted beyond recognition from blood loss and intense pain; his lips were cracked and black, and his teeth were stained with congealed blood clots.

This was Liu Yulang, or rather, what was once Zhou Jingxing.

He was barely clinging to life, that last breath forced into him by Hangzhou City's best doctor with the strongest ginseng soup, sustaining the last flicker of life in his shattered body.

He hung there, suspended, like a dried, ready-to-be-lit jerky, silent and still.

Only his exposed, bloodshot eyeballs occasionally rotated with extreme slowness,

His murky gaze swept over the dense, excited faces of the spectators below, over the deathly silence, and finally, it fixed on the figure in the blue official robe on the main execution platform.

Prefect Zhou Wenqing sat upright on the execution platform, his official robe impeccably worn, his hat wings perfectly aligned.

The third quarter of the hour of Wu (noon).

Zhou Wenqing personally read aloud: “...The criminal Liu Yulang, guilty of countless acts of debauchery and rape, with hundreds of victims, his evil deeds are full and too numerous to record! He should have been sentenced to flaying and stuffing with straw, and the punishment of lighting the Heavenly Lantern!

However, due to his severe injuries and failing breath, fearing his immediate death, the flaying penalty is waived, and he shall proceed directly to the lighting of the Heavenly Lantern! To uphold justice!

The time has come—execute the sentence!”

The words “execute the sentence” echoed back like a boomerang, striking Zhou Wenqing's own heart and filling him with an unspeakable sense of suffocation.

The executioner took a torch from the brazier and slowly approached, igniting the grease-soaked sackcloth.

“Sizzle—”

With a soft sound, flames suddenly shot up, greedily licking the oily cloth and rapidly spreading upwards.

The crackling sound of flames burning grease was exceptionally clear and piercing in the deathly silence of the execution ground.

The crowd erupted in a fervent roar, mixed with curses of relief and excited shouts:

“Burn him! Burn this beast to death!”

“Light the Heavenly Lantern! Burn this dog thief to ashes!”

“Retribution! This is retribution! Heaven has eyes!”

The flames, like a violent golden snake, quickly ignited his feet along the fuse, burning downwards slowly like a candle.

Thick smoke billowed, and a suffocating smell of char spread through the air.

The inverted body convulsed and twisted violently within the embrace of the flames.

That was not a struggle of will, but a primal reaction of muscles and nerves under extreme heat, like live shrimp thrown into boiling oil.

“Hoo... hoo hoo hoo...”

Zhou Jingxing's throat erupted in an inhuman, broken shriek; it was the final wail from his severed tongue under agonizing pain.

Lighting the Heavenly Lantern is an extremely cruel punishment, its cruelty lying in the fact that it must last at least half an hour.

The burning would cauterize the blood, and it was very difficult to die until the flames reached the waist and abdomen.

And the entire process, for the condemned, was an incredibly cruel ordeal.

His flesh sizzled under the high temperature, rapidly charring, curling, and bursting, as grease mixed with blood was evaporated by the flames, emitting an even more intense foul odor.

His shattered face, illuminated by the flames, resembled a demon from Hell.

His eyes, pupils dilated to the extreme by the intense pain, were fixed, absolutely fixed, on Zhou Wenqing on the execution platform.