Free Web NovelChapter 407: Chapter 158: Bloodbath
"Call the authorities! Hurry, call the authorities!"
"The peddler’s head is smashed in! Mrs. Shi’s brains are splattered everywhere! It was Shi Guan’er! Shi Guan’er is a murderer!"
The crowd roared and scattered in an instant.
Mr. Shi steadied his trembling legs, forcing his voice to come out loud and clear.
"It wasn’t Shi Guan’er! It was those two vile creatures, Chen Wanyue and Liang Jishan! They were after our money and tried to kill us! My son was just avenging his mother!"
"No, that’s not right! My son didn’t kill anyone! I... I didn’t do anything! He was just... sleeping with his wife."
No one believed his nonsensical ravings. After all, they all had eyes and could see the state of the room.
Everyone else was covered head to toe in blood. Only Shi Guan’er was completely unscathed. If he wasn’t the killer, then who was?
Late into the night, lights flickered on in all the nearby homes.
Someone went to the government office to report the crime that very night. And so, Chen Song, who had been sound asleep, and a group of his colleagues rubbed their faces and headed out.
When they arrived at the scene, Chen Song recognized it as the Shi family’s home.
Upon entering the blood-spattered room, even veteran constables like Chen Song couldn’t help but shudder.
The brutality of the scene was truly heart-wrenching to behold.
And yet, despite the severity, no one was actually dead.
But they weren’t much better off.
The peddler was barely hanging on. Mrs. Shi was diagnosed with no chance of survival, merely lingering on.
As for Chen Wanyue, her injuries were the lightest of the three, but she had suffered a miscarriage.
It might have been the shock, or the intense trauma. Or perhaps it was Shi Guan’er’s movements, which were as savage as an untamed beast, knowing only how to thrust again and again.
Her body couldn’t withstand such torment, and the child, from a pregnancy not yet secure, was ultimately lost.
"Such a shame. I heard she can never get pregnant again."
"Who knows whose child it really was. It might have been the bastard child of Chen Wanyue and the peddler."
"It’s an absolute tragedy."
"The peddler and Mrs. Shi won’t live long. Chen Wanyue will have to pay with her life, won’t she?"
"Not necessarily. Haven’t you heard? She insists it was Shi Guan’er who attacked them. But Shi Guan’er is a simpleton. No matter what you ask him, he just giggles. This case is impossible to solve."
The case was at a standstill. But in court, Mr. Shi insisted through gritted teeth that it was Chen Wanyue and the peddler who had attacked Mrs. Shi.
He claimed that when he fled to get help, he saw the two of them bashing Mrs. Shi with a stool. There was no doubt about it.
Chen Wanyue, however, insisted that the peddler had inflicted the wounds on Mrs. Shi’s head. She said she tried to intervene, but the peddler went into a rage and started hitting her too. That’s when Shi Guan’er happened to wake up and helped her by subduing the peddler.
But then, Shi Guan’er’s savage side emerged. He not only beat her, but also caused her to miscarry.
With all the conflicting stories, the truth was impossible to discern. It seemed the case would just be muddled through and forgotten.
But just then, a few petty thieves were hauled into the government office.
These were local ruffians who normally lived off whatever they could steal. But for the past two days, they’d come into possession of quite a few items and were furtively trying to sell them off.
The stark contrast naturally aroused suspicion.
Someone reported them to the government, and through this, the constables uncovered the truth behind that night’s violent brawl at the Shi family’s home.
As it turned out, the thieves had originally been targeting the property of the peddler and the Shi family.
It was all because Mr. Shi, wanting to take over Wo Laicai’s courtyard, had knocked a hole in the wall between their properties.
Because of the discovery of a skeleton in the latrine, Wo Laicai’s yard had once again become a crime scene, with no one permitted to enter. But Mr. Shi’s greedy ambitions hadn’t subsided, so he hadn’t bothered to patch the hole. He was waiting for the whole affair to blow over so he could resume his plan to take over Wo Laicai’s property, bit by bit.
This provided a convenient entry point for the town’s hooligans.
Just think how secure Mr. Shi used to keep his home. The walls around the front and back courtyards were a full two meters high, topped with densely planted cacti. On top of that, both inside and outside the walls, he had planted layer upon layer of prickly vines.
To prevent anyone from breaching his multiple lines of defense, Mr. Shi had also placed a dozen or two dozen mousetraps at the base of the wall.
Once, a defiant thief who didn’t believe the rumors had jumped over the back wall, planning to steal Mr. Shi’s hidden gold and silver. He’d barely taken two steps into the yard before his feet were snapped by traps three times. When he fell on his rear in agony, even his buttocks got caught in a trap.
By the time they had negotiated the "compensation" and Mr. Shi came to remove the traps, the flesh on the man’s rear had already started to rot.
That black-hearted Mr. Shi hadn’t just set out mousetraps; he had also coated them with itching powder.
The powder seeped into the torn flesh, creating an itch so deep it felt as if ants were crawling inside his very bones. The sensation was beyond excruciating.
In short, that incident served as a harsh warning to every rogue in town. After that, they all learned their lesson, and no one dared to covet Mr. Shi’s belongings again.
