Now then, having received the case file and the petition written on Nan Zhi's behalf, and having heard Zhan Zhao's report, Bao Zheng was indeed furious. He declared that since the founding of the Great Song, there had never been such an utterly insane, inhumanly monstrous injustice.
Therefore, he urgently summoned soul reapers to bring up the ghost of Wang Fugui that very night, conducting a midnight interrogation of the deceased criminal right inside the Kaifeng Prefecture yamen.
The front hall, usually bright and dignified, was now filled with gusts of eerie wind. Green light surged toward the ceiling as ghostly fog billowed. Layer upon layer of moisture condensed on the tables and desks inside the hall, feeling bone-chillingly cold to the touch.
Two soul reapers whose feet hovered off the ground brought Wang Fugui's deceased soul into the hall, bound by pitch-black Soul Binding Chains.
Wang Fugui looked in a state of utter wretchedness. Unclad, emaciated, with half the flesh on his face seemingly carved away, leaving only a single layer of skin clinging to his bones. His body was covered in wounds, with deep whip marks etched straight into his bones.
Suddenly brought back to the mortal realm, he was still somewhat dazed, stumbling along ahead of the soul reapers. Whenever he slowed down even a step, he was immediately greeted by discipline rods—
The discipline rods in the hands of those soul reapers were no ordinary items; they were crafted from the trunks of Small Chun trees found along the road to the Yellow Springs.
A single blow guaranteed pain that seeped deep into the marrow; two blows would split a ghost's flesh and skin wide open; three blows, and even the most fierce Greater Ghost would have no choice but to scurry away in terror as its spirit body dissolved.
Since it was harmful for living people to see ghosts, Bao Zheng dismissed his attendants, keeping only Zhan Zhao and Gongsun Ce to observe the proceedings.
Seeing other living mortals in the hall, the two soul reapers kept their distance. They simply cupped their hands toward Bao Zheng from afar, signaling that the prisoner had been brought forth.
“Bang!!”
Bao Zheng slammed his gavel. His round eyes glared in fury, and the crescent moon on his forehead glowed with a faint light.
“Is the soul before this court Wang Fugui of Dingyuan?! I am Bao Zheng, Prefect of Kaifeng Prefecture, and I have accepted the petition filed against you by the Qu family! Your evil deeds in the mortal realm have come to light. Confess at once how you secretly harmed the Qu family in past years and schemed to steal their family fortune!”
Having suffered torture in the Underworld for days, Wang Fugui was terrified at the sight of Bao Zheng and the discipline rods hovering above his head. Unwilling to endure more agony, he fell prostrate on the ground and confessed to his crimes truthfully.
Not only that, but he also exposed a co-conspirator from back then.
As it turned out, the presiding judge Wang Fugui had bribed years ago was none other than Ma Wuyan, his relative by marriage.
Ma Wuyan and Wang Fugui had acted in collusion. On the surface, they claimed to confiscate the Qu family's estate into the public vault to compensate the thirteen victimized families. In truth, the two divided the assets fifty-fifty in private, stripping the Qu family completely dry, gnawing them down to the bone, and swallowing everything whole.
Wang Fugui obtained the family's secret recipe, and once the heat died down, he resumed the brewing business.
Ma Wuyan, meanwhile, took his huge cut of money to buy official posts and bribe superiors, enjoying decades of smooth sailing in his political career. However, due to his limited talents, years of scheming only managed to secure him a modest position as a Military Affairs Interpreter.
In contrast, his distant nephew, Qi Mingyuan, came from a martial background and earned great favor from his superiors. At a young age, Qi Mingyuan became a Zhaowu Lieutenant in the Northwest Circuit's Bureau of Military Affairs.
Even Wang Fugui did not know whether Qi Mingyuan's meteoric rise had been fueled by the money stolen from the Qu family.
Later, Ma Wuyan felt he held leverage over Wang Fugui and grew greedy for the Wang family's estate. Leveraging Qi Mingyuan's prestige, he married his daughter into the Wang family.
Knowing full well how greedy Ma Wuyan was, Wang Fugui worried his own family would end up like the Qu family. He guarded against his daughter-in-law and never revealed the true recipe for “Immortal Brew.”
Yet who could have foreseen that retribution would come so swiftly? Before he could even see a grandson born to the Wang family, Wanniang came seeking vengeance and gouged out his heart and liver.
“Your Honor, Honorable Blue Sky, I, Wang Fugui, deserve to die ten thousand deaths! But it is also true that the demon suppressor colluded with a vengeful ghost to harm me! Otherwise, my home was protected by the Kitchen God and door gods, and the vat was suppressed with talismans. Nothing went wrong for decades! Why did calamity strike on that exact day? It was clearly that demon suppressor abusing her official power for personal gain, ignoring her duties, and letting an evil ghost into my residence!”
Speaking to this point, a trace of regret appeared on Wang Fugui's face before turning into bitter resentment:
“I deserve to die, but is that demon suppressor without blame? I even gave her gold, silver, jewels, ancient books, and calligraphy paintings, yet she treated me like this! Your Honor, she took my money, yet she helped an evil ghost take my life! She truly deserves to die ten thousand deaths!”
Wang Fugui felt regret in his heart, but he did not regret stealing the Qu family's fortune—rather, he regretted not being ruthless enough back then. He shouldn't have been soft-hearted enough to leave Wanniang alive.
—If he had listened to others and destroyed Wanniang's corpse, leaving her with no physical remains and scattering her soul, how could today's mess ever have happened?
Seeing Wang Fugui act so self-righteous, both Zhan Zhao and Gongsun Ce displayed expressions of disgust, wishing they could immediately expose this man's true colors to the whole world.
“Bang!!”
The gavel slammed down again as Bao Zheng shouted furiously, his gaze piercing like lightning:
“Audacious! How dare a villain like you tell lies and quibble in my presence?! This court is questioning you about your plot to harm the Qu family! What does that have to do with anyone else?! If someone truly bent the law for personal gain, this court will investigate and ascertain the truth. How can I allow you to roar in this hall and slander others as you please?! Men! This man has shown utter disrespect for the law in this court! Drag him down and hit him with twenty heavy slaps of the board first, then let me question him further!”
As soon as the words left his mouth, the other two living people in the hall looked at each other in confusion.
Zhan Zhao: “...”
Beat whom? A ghost? Who beats a ghost? Me? Beat a ghost? Twenty heavy slaps?
Gongsun Ce: “...”
Your Honor, do you still remember that your humble student is merely a frail scholar unable to even tie up a chicken?
Bao Zheng withdrew his hand in slight embarrassment, but since the command tally had already been thrown, he couldn't very well pick it up himself.
Right on cue, the two soul reapers waiting in the distance swiftly took the order. They immediately floated into the hall, pinned Wang Fugui's ghost onto a long bench, raised their discipline rods, and beat him without another word:
“Pa! Pa! Pa!”
“Pa! Pa! Pa! Pa!”
“Pa! Pa! Pa!”
This was also the first time the three of them had seen the cruel officials of the Underworld mete out punishment. With every strike of the rod, Wang Fugui twitched in intense agony, his entire body curling uncontrollably into the shape of a shrimp, only to be pulled straight again for more beatings.
This repeated over and over. After twenty strikes, the soul beneath the hall appeared on the brink of scattering completely. His limbs flew through the air, shattering and scattering across the floor.
The soul reapers hurriedly used their Soul Binding Chains to scoop up the scattered fragments, piecing them back together into a rough human shape before obsequiously presenting him back in front of the hall.
—If not for the current time and place being completely unsuitable to mention to outsiders, Zhan Zhao would have let out a long sigh.
Currying favor and flattering superiors... From the looks of it, aside from the nature of the punishments, the offices in the Underworld didn't seem all that different from those in the mortal realm.
Under this round of torture, Wang Fugui could barely manage human speech, pouring out all the evil deeds he had committed like beans spilling from a bamboo tube.
He admitted that while severing Wanniang's head back then had been an impulse, suppressing the wine worm with talismans later on had been done under the guidance of someone behind the scenes.
“It was a scruffy old Taoist who usually looked no different from a beggar. It was he who taught me to pour fine wine and clear water into that vat on the first and fifteenth of every month to nourish the wine worm. He also taught me to paint the image of the Kitchen God in my home and invite portrait images of the two door gods, Shen Tu and Yu Lei, to block ghosts from entering my door. He even told me to do more good deeds, give to the poor, and accumulate more Yin notes and Yin merit so that even when my soul returned to the Underworld in the future, I could bribe the soul reapers and escape punishment...”
At this point, Wang Fugui received another blow from the rod. His entire soul drifted downward, sinking into the ground and vanishing without a trace.
The two soul reapers also left in a hurry, unwilling to show themselves any longer.
“For such a monstrously shocking case, I must present a memorial to the Emperor and ask His Majesty to decide, restoring innocence to the Qu family and justice to the victims!”
Bao Zheng was so enraged that his hair stood on end. He hastily called out, “Guard Zhan! That Ma Wuyan has committed endless evil, colluding with merchants to usurp the Qu family's property. He is unrighteous as an official and unkind as a father, disloyal to the court above and disloyal to the people below! Such a disloyal and unrighteous traitor should be executed according to the law! I order you to leave the capital immediately and ride with all speed, carrying my command tally to bring Ma Wuyan to the capital to face judgment! As for Qi Mingyuan, Wang Chen, Manager Wang, and the rest, we shall decide how to handle them once I have interrogated Ma Wuyan!”
Taking the order immediately, Zhan Zhao galloped off into the night. Before leaving, he only had time to send a quick message to the Demon Suppression Division.
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