Chapter 37

At that, Fu Ming and Lin Yu both turned to look at the guard.

Lin Yu walked over to the guard. The prefect on the ground sighed in relief, thinking he was safe, and collapsed limply into the snow.

Seeing that Fu Ming and Lin Yu were about to leave, the Imperial Guards followed them out. Only a few insignificant low-ranking guards remained in the hall. The prefect pushed himself up from the snow, preparing to stand.

His eyes burned with resentment. He held leverage over every official in Jiangnan. Once imprisoned, he'd find a way out—at worst, he could change his name and disappear.

Lin Yu reached the door but suddenly turned back. Seeing her, the prefect hastily knelt again, burying his face in the snow.

"Oh, right. Kill him," Lin Yu said.

The prefect, who had thought he'd escaped disaster, suddenly broke out in goosebumps. He stared at Lin Yu in disbelief.

Before the prefect could plead his case, the Imperial Guard drove a sword straight through his throat!

The prefect died on the spot.

The family members kneeling nearby were too terrified to move, and sobs began to rise from the hall.

Fu Ming followed behind Lin Yu as they left. Before he stepped out, he gave the Imperial Guards an imperceptible look. His voice was cold and devoid of emotion: "Kill them all."

By the time Lin Yu walked out of the prefect's mansion, the sounds of weeping had abruptly ceased.

...

Xie Wu huddled in a corner of the damp dungeon, hearing nothing but the drip-drip of water. After what felt like an eternity, he finally heard footsteps.

Xie Wu's heart raced. He didn't know who he had offended, but since they had sent someone to investigate him and thrown him in prison, they must be someone of high rank.

Xie Wu guessed it was an old friend of his father's.

"Tap, tap, tap."

The footsteps finally stopped in front of him. A figure in black appeared before Xie Wu.

"Lift your head," Fu Ming said.

Xie Wu obeyed and looked up, stammering, "May I ask... how have I offended you, my lord? Could you have arrested the wrong person?"

"Xie Wu?" A clear female voice sounded. Xie Wu turned toward the source and saw a woman standing by the door. She wore a white dress, her skin fair, with long black hair falling to her waist. She seemed out of place in the dim dungeon.

Xie Wu was taken aback. Lin Yu walked over, stopping beside Fu Ming, and said to Xie Wu, "So you're the young master of the Xie family?"

"I'm not! You've got the wrong person!" Xie Wu denied.

Lin Yu couldn't be bothered to argue with him and cut straight to the point: "Enough. First, tell me how the Rain Goddess entered your dream."

"I'm not!" Xie Wu struggled.

Lin Yu sighed. Xie Wu looked young, only seventeen or eighteen. Why wouldn't he take a hint when it was offered?

Fu Ming's voice echoed through the cramped cell: "Bring in the instruments."

Xie Wu felt a chill run down his spine but remained silent.

Soon, the jailer brought in a pile of torture devices. They hadn't been cleaned, and some still bore the blood of other prisoners, looking dark and grimy. Xie Wu couldn't stop his teeth from chattering.

Lin Yu looked him over from head to toe. "Break one of his legs first. If he still doesn't confess, break the other."

"Bones or tendons?" asked the jailer.

Without hesitation, Lin Yu said: "Both."

Lin Yu's voice pierced Xie Wu's ears like a demon's whisper.

The cell door clanged open, and two burly jailers advanced with leg screws and knives. Xie Wu recoiled in terror, but a seventeen-year-old boy was no match for two sturdy men.

They forced him to the ground, pinned his hands behind his back, and another jailer raised a knife to slice at Xie Wu's ankle tendons!

Xie Wu screamed.

The sharp instrument stabbed into his ankle, blood spreading. The intense pain shot through his brain, and his whole body went numb!

One cut wasn't enough. The jailer yanked the knife from his flesh and struck again!

Xie Wu squeezed his eyes shut, not daring to look at the jailer. He steeled himself and yelled, "I never dreamed of the Rain Goddess!"

"Stop," Lin Yu said.

The jailer halted. The two men held Xie Wu's hands and feet, forcing him to kneel before Lin Yu and Fu Ming, awaiting judgment.

Fu Ming picked up the thread: "The Rain Goddess didn't enter your dream? So you just made up a story and went out to swindle people?"

"Yes..." Xie Wu lowered his head, but showed no remorse.

Lin Yu frowned, unable to understand Xie Wu's motives. She asked, "Why did you do it?"

Xie Wu looked up at Lin Yu and suddenly laughed, his voice trembling. Ignoring the pain in his feet and the jailers' hold, he struggled to rise but was shoved back down. "What 'why'? I wanted to. Is that not allowed?"

His voice rose, filled with anger: "Lots of people claim the gods visited them in dreams, just to gain a reputation as a chosen one. I wanted that too. What did I do wrong? Why would you go to such lengths to catch me?"

Lin Yu raised an eyebrow and looked at Fu Ming. "Is that so?"

Fu Ming understood. "Break his leg."

"Ah!"

The jailers didn't hesitate. The heavy leg screw clamped down on Xie Wu's bone, and before he could react, he heard the crack of his shin breaking!

Xie Wu stared in shock. "Yo—you're the Emperor?"

Fu Ming clicked his tongue and said impatiently, "Break the other one too. When we're done, make him into a human urn and toss him out."

Xie Wu seemed unable to believe what he'd heard. Now he was truly afraid: "No! You—"

At that moment, two other jailers carried a person without limbs past them, evidently from the next cell. The bloody sight burned into Xie Wu's eyes.

Realizing his own fate was about to become the same, Xie Wu gasped, frozen in place.

Lin Yu leaned in and asked again, "Xie Wu. Are you going to talk or not?"

Snapping back to reality, Xie Wu scrambled on his knees to the iron bars, gripping them desperately. His whole body had lost its color.

"Someone told me to do it..." Xie Wu trembled.

Lin Yu had guessed as much. "It was Lu Yao, wasn't it?"

Outside the Ruyue Inn, Lu Yao had said she needed vast sums of money to forge a new god-slaying artifact, which was why she used the lie of the Rain Goddess's return to extort offerings from believers.

And the best breakthrough point was the Xie family of Jiangnan. It all added up.

"It was her," Xie Wu gritted his teeth.

"Why did you help her spin this lie?" Lin Yu asked.

"Because..." His eyes darted, and Fu Ming's icy gaze swept over his face. Xie Wu shuddered and nearly bit his tongue.

Seeing that he couldn't conceal it any longer, he blurted it all out: "Because Lu Yao said that if I helped her pull this off, she'd give me fortune a hundred, a thousand times greater than ordinary people, and make me the head of the Xie family."

Xie Wu had seen Lu Yao's luck firsthand. With what seemed like divine help, she had surpassed her family's century-old foundation within a year to become the richest merchant in Jiangnan.

So when Lu Yao made that promise, Xie Wu agreed on the spot.

Lin Yu sighed: "You killed over a hundred members of your family for such empty promises? Xie Wu, they were your family."

The words seemed to strike some nerve in Xie Wu, and he glared: "They were never worthy of being my family. Every one of them was rotten, and they still pretended to be high and mighty."

"They did plenty of dirty deeds. They only worshipped gods and gave alms to avoid divine punishment!"

"And have you thought about what will happen to you now that your family is dead?" Fu Ming asked.

Xie Wu still saw no fault in himself: "So what? They're dead. I can take the money and set up a new household elsewhere! Those vermin are better off dead. I don't care!"

After a long pause, Lin Yu spoke: "What did they do to make you hate them so much?"

Xie Wu said nothing.

Old Master Xie was renowned far and wide as a great philanthropist. He provided disaster relief, built irrigation works, founded free schools, and established charity halls. The Xie sons also appeared accomplished in others' eyes. Whatever their private morals, their deeds were tangible.

A gentleman is judged by his actions, not his thoughts.

Lin Yu studied Xie Wu. Even in his current sorry state, one could see he had once been a pampered young master. "I'll give you a chance. Find Lu Yao and bring her to me, and I'll spare your life."

Xie Wu's eyes lit up. He grabbed the bars, trying to rise, but the searing pain in his legs made him gasp and slump back onto the soggy straw mat.

"You'll keep your word!" Xie Wu said.

Lin Yu didn't answer, turning to leave. Fu Ming responded instead.

"I'll have men watching you," Fu Ming said.

...

The heavy snow fell for three straight days. All of Jiangnan was frozen, birds vanished, and the last leaf on the treetops withered in the wind and snow. The world was painted in endless white.

That day, Zhang Yulin and Zhou Yu finally returned.

They came back through the wind and snow, bringing an old acquaintance with them.

The man lay slumped over Xiao Ta's back, his clothes frozen stiff, covered in ice crystals. He was unconscious, frozen solid.

Lin Yu recognized him. The neighbors used to call him Hu Sheng. He was an astrologer who had lost his wife when he was young, then left home to wander, his whereabouts often unknown. She hadn't expected to see him again.

Zhang Yulin patted the snow off her clothes and stamped her feet. "Hey, my senior brother and I found him on the way back. Thought he'd frozen to death. It was awful. He looked familiar, so I brought him along."

"I just can't place where I've seen him," Zhang Yulin added.

Yu Jia and Zhou Yu worked together to help the man down from Xiao Ta's back, asked the innkeeper to open another room, and carried Hu Sheng upstairs.

Zhang Yulin didn't seem to remember him. Lin Yu replied, "He's the astrologer who became famous for predicting a natural disaster. Remember?"

Zhang Yulin's eyes lit up as it clicked. "That's it! The one who interfered with the heavens and offended the gods?"

Lin Yu's gaze followed Hu Sheng's back. "Him."

Hu Sheng's appearance had changed drastically—he no longer matched the Hu Sheng in Lin Yu's memory.

Around twelve years ago, before Lin Zhao had entered the Heaven's Mandate Tower, the two sisters, both young and orphaned, often relied on their neighbors' kindness.

That neighbor was Hu Sheng's family. Hu Sheng's wife was a gentle woman who would always give Lin Yu some homemade pastries.

But within six months, Hu Sheng's reputation as an astrologer grew—his predictions were uncannily accurate. As his fame rose, the couple moved out of that shabby alley.

Some time later, wildfires broke out frequently, killing many. The next time Lin Yu heard of Hu Sheng was when he accurately predicted the location of a subsequent wildfire, saving thousands of people across several mountains.

Hu Sheng claimed the fires were natural disasters.

Later, Hu Sheng, relying on his extraordinary astrological skills, helped the people avoid a series of wildfires with no casualties. But by defying heaven, he had interfered with too many fates, and the heavens sent down a divine punishment.

The gods demanded that Hu Sheng take his own life as atonement; otherwise, they would flood the land and drown all those he had saved to complete the predestined tally.

But Hu Sheng paid it no mind. On the night of the divine punishment, Hu Sheng's wife tied up her hair, donned his clothes, and hanged herself at home. She managed to fool the gods.

Since then, Hu Sheng had been wandering, without a trace.

Lin Yu lowered her eyelids, her gaze again resting on Hu Sheng's frostbitten, blue-tinged face.

The group covered Hu Sheng with two thick quilts and moved a charcoal stove next to the bed to warm him. His lips were still trembling, as if he wanted to say something.

Lin Yu stood by the head of the bed, observing his complexion. "Fetch some warm water."

Yu Jia replied with a quick "Okay." He had never met Hu Sheng before, but he had heard of his reputation. Fearing Hu Sheng might die, Yu Jia dashed out like the wind.

Zhou Yu didn't know Hu Sheng and didn't care much about his condition. He pulled a small bottle from his pocket and tossed it to Lin Yu. "This is the cultivation condensed from those Soul-Renewing Pills—a total of one hundred and thirty years."

Lin Yu caught the bottle. "Good. Thank you, Senior Brother."

Yu Jia and Zhou Yu left one after another, leaving only Lin Yu and Zhang Yulin in the room.

Zhang Yulin looked at Hu Sheng, whose eyes were shut, and said bleakly, "This snow has been falling so long... when will it stop? A man like Hu Sheng has come to this. I wonder how many will freeze this time..."

"We raided that corrupt prefect a few days ago and converted the plundered goods into clothing and food, distributing them. It should be enough to get by," Lin Yu said.

Zhang Yulin was taken aback. She knew "we" meant Lin Yu and Fu Ming, but she still hadn't figured out who Fu Ming really was.

So Zhang Yulin asked, "That man with you—which noble family is he from? He had the prefect searched and seized without a second thought."

Lin Yu was about to reply when Hu Sheng suddenly murmured in his sleep. Their conversation halted, and both leaned in to listen.

Hu Sheng repeated, as if in delirium, his voice faint and garbled.

"Disaster... disaster is coming... the people will suffer..."

Zhang Yulin frowned: "Is he having a nightmare, dreaming of the wildfires again?"

That catastrophe had been a devastating blow to Hu Sheng, so it was no surprise he kept dreaming about it.

But Lin Yu felt something was off. Her eyes caught a glimpse of something pale, and suddenly something clicked in her mind! All the anomalies seemed to fall into place.

Lin Yu's pupils contracted. "No, it's the second disaster!"