Chapter 143: Chapter 77 Executioner_4
"I’m confident enough to kill them without anyone finding out."
The last sentence echoed ominously through the graves like the sigh of a ghost, in eerie stillness.
Liu Kun trembled all over.
He knew the person in front of him was right.
Although Liu Zide and Liu Zixian were a few years older than Little Girl Tong, in terms of intellect and scheming, they were nowhere near Lu Qian, let alone Little Girl Tong. There was also Wang Chunchi, who only knew how to roll dough and cook, loud but without any brains or cunning. Little Girl Tong had managed to topple both the Ke Family and the Fan Family, clearly indicating she had come prepared. His own family was like lambs to the slaughter before her, utterly powerless to resist.
Lu Tong looked at him, slightly lifting her forearm, the medicine bottle in her palm gleaming with a sinister luster in the night.
"Cousin?"
He reached out woodenly, stiffly, to take the medicine bottle, looking at Lu Tong, "If I drink this, you will let them go?"
"Of course," she said.
"You swear?"
Lu Tong smiled without speaking.
"Fine," Liu Kun pulled the stopper from the bottle, looked deeply at the person in front of him, "Little Girl Tong, you keep your word."
The frosty wind was biting, and the night rain fell in chilling silence. The dim light from a lonely lantern fell on the unmarked solitary graves, as if at any moment, wronged spirits might crawl out of the mud to claim vengeance.
From the bushes, he brought the bottle to his lips, about to drink.
But at the very last moment, he fiercely tossed the bottle away and, with a sharp stone clutched in his hand, lunged at Lu Tong.
"You forced me—"
Why should he? Why should he surrender without a fight? Why should he let himself be slaughtered by others? No matter how formidable Little Girl Tong might be, she was just a sixteen or seventeen-year-old girl, fragile and delicate in appearance. A blow with this stone could crack her skull! Chaos Burial Mound was a natural place to bury a body, and no one would ever discover it here!
He didn’t want to die; he wanted to kill all who threatened his family, he wanted to save Zixian and Zide!
In the night, that honest and simple face twisted with ferocity, the last traces of guilt washed away by overwhelming fear and madness, morphing into a devilish visage.
"Little Girl Tong, don’t blame your cousin, I have a whole family to care for, I can’t die!"
Shouting this, he swung the sharp stone savagely at her head.
The noise startled a roosting crow in the distance, but his stone-clutching hand couldn’t reach her head.
At this critical juncture, a bone-chilling sense of suffocation rose from his throat as though someone had suddenly grasped his neck. He instinctively covered his throat and collapsed to the ground.
Lu Tong sighed.
Clutching his throat, he rolled on the ground in panic, "What did you do?" As soon as he spoke, he realized his throat felt extraordinarily itchy, as if teeming ants were gnawing at it.
The answer came in the other’s calm voice.
"Cousin, did you read the letter I sent you? Where is it?"
He clawed desperately at his throat, "Burned... it’s burned."
"How cautious."
She said it as if commending him, speaking slowly, "Thank you."
"...for destroying the evidence for me."
"You poisoned me?" He stared at Lu Tong, wildly frightened, an unbearable itching and pain spreading from his throat, as if insects were biting within, making him desperately want to gouge out whatever was inside.
"This is called ’Carefree Oriole’." Her voice was calm, as if she were patiently explaining to him, "It is said that many years ago in the Liang Dynasty, there was a courtesan whose singing voice was clear and melodious, surpassing that of the carefree oriole in March. Eventually, she aroused the jealousy of her peers, and someone poisoned the tea she drank daily. When the poison took effect, she clawed at her own throat so fiercely that it became a grotesque mess, like mud and netting, a horrific sight to behold."
"I smeared Carefree Oriole on the letter, and now, do you feel an unbearable itch?"
As if to prove her words, the stinging itch in his throat suddenly intensified; Liu Kun was on the verge of madness. He scratched at his throat, but in just a few moments, his throat turned red from his clawing, and with a look of terror, he screamed, "Save me—"
Lu Tong looked down at him from her superior position and spoke indifferently, "Some poisons bring pain, while others bring release."
She walked over to the porcelain bottle that had been thrown on the ground, bent down to pick it up, her gaze filled with a touch of regret.
"I gave you a choice, but unfortunately, you did not treasure it."
Liu Kun scratched at his own neck in agony.
So that was it.
She had poisoned the letter from the start. If he had drunk the poison to take his own life, he would not have had to suffer this gnawing torment. If he refused to drink, he would still not be able to leave Mount Wangchun alive.
From the very beginning, she had never left any path for his survival!
In his despair, Liu Kun felt something moving in his throat. He desperately widened his eyes as if to imprint the visage of his killer deeply in his mind, to carry it with him to the infernos of hell. His eyes were scattered, and with a hoarse voice, he said, "You’re mad... With me dead, no one will testify for you. The Lu Family’s grievances, no Examiner Official will ever dare to take up..."
Suddenly, his expression changed drastically, and he cried out, begging for mercy, "Little Girl Tong... Uncle was wrong, Uncle knows his mistake..."
"Save me, please save me..."
Lu Tong looked on coldly as he struggled in pain on the ground, his intermittent sobs and moans being drowned out by the autumn rain amid the desolate and silent Chaos Burial Mound.
After a while, she let out a light sigh. She walked over to Liu Kun, knelt down beside him, picked up the sharp stone that Liu Kun had been holding in an attempt to attack her but had dropped along the way, and put it back in his hand.
Liu Kun, now nearly mad, suddenly had something added to his palm, and without thinking, he stabbed it fiercely into his own throat—
The night became even more desolate at that moment.
With a sharp "hiss,"
The screaming stopped abruptly.
Blood spurted from his neck, splashing onto the woman’s face.
She blinked slowly as a large drop of crimson trickled down her eyelashes, then ran down her cheek, gradually seeping into her snow-white cloak.
The person on the ground convulsed and twitched, and after a short time, he exhaled his last breath, lying on the ground face up, dead.
Lu Tong stood up, silently watching the body that lay still on the ground. The light within the fallen lantern was extinguished by the night rain, and the surrounding weeds became blurry, the shadows between the graves forming a labyrinthine barrier that would never be dispelled.
She did not feel afraid, because this might be where Lu Qian was buried, and the final resting place for the condemned of the Department of Criminal & Justice.
Heavenly retribution, sooner or later, Liu Kun’s death here was the fruition of karma, nothing more.
She murmured to herself, "The Lu Family’s case, no Examiner Official dares to take up?"
That was Liu Kun’s last piece of advice before he died.
Perhaps in Liu Kun’s view, it was easy for the high and mighty to manipulate the lives and deaths of commoners, while she, a mere commoner, seeking to shake the entrenched nobility, was delusional and overstepping her bounds.
However...
He was wrong.
The woman raised her hand to wipe the blood from her face and said calmly, "Why rely on someone else to decide?"
"I can be the Examiner Official for the Lu Family’s case..."
"And I can be the Executioner."