Ch. 26
Chapter 26: River-Severing Sect... Cheng Family... Just Wait for Me
Cui Duo had been deceived by Cheng Yu and was literally enraged to death.
The Jinyiwei did not care about that in the slightest. Once they had gotten the intelligence they wanted, his life no longer held any value.
If he wanted to die, then so be it. They respected his choice.
The Battalion Commanders looked at Cheng Yu with worship in their eyes.
One of them eagerly asked, “My lord, should we go track down that man’s illegitimate son and eliminate him?”
After several days of following Cheng Yu around to confiscate households left and right, they were no longer the cowards they had been at the beginning.
No longer were they the imperial hounds looked down upon by others.
If they said they would kill you, then they would kill you!
Cheng Yu sighed helplessly. “Do you all have nothing better to do?”
Now that they had already forced out all the secrets, why waste more effort on that?
If the person had been in the Cui Residence back then, Cheng Yu naturally would not have shown any mercy.
But that did not mean he was bored enough to make a special trip just to kill off someone else’s last surviving bloodline.
“You have confiscated a few households and already turned into bandits. You don’t look like Jinyiwei at all.”
“Do you know how to infiltrate? Do you know how to interrogate? Do you know how to handle security? You mustn’t forget the traditional craft!”
What were the Jinyiwei?
Spies!
What kind of Jinyiwei were they if all they ever did was charge in head-on and kill?
After that round of scolding, all the Jinyiwei lowered their heads with flushed faces.
They had disgraced Lord Cheng!
But after thinking about it again, they realized that Lord Cheng was actually so meticulous about the identity of the Jinyiwei, and their admiration for him only deepened!
The Jinyiwei were the blade of Great Qian!
Recently, the people in the county have been treating them far better than before.
Having once endured endless scorn, they naturally had to follow in Cheng Yu’s footsteps!
“Reviving the glory of the Jinyiwei is our bounden duty!”
【The host has guided his subordinates and corrected the Jinyiwei’s unhealthy tendencies. Reward: One Shaolin Dragon-Tiger Great Rejuvenation Pill!】
Cheng Yu’s eyes lit up.
A Shaolin Dragon-Tiger Great Rejuvenation Pill!
It contained the power of dragons and tigers. Upon consumption, one’s strength would surge and the body would be cleansed!
Even Shaolin Temple itself could rarely come by such a fine pill!
“It seems the system is extremely generous whenever the task truly involves building up and carrying forward the Jinyiwei.”
After putting away the Dragon-Tiger Great Rejuvenation Pill, Cheng Yu tossed out the Tiger Strength Internal Fortification Pills he had obtained earlier.
“Take these and distribute them to the brothers who went to Qingjiang Prefecture this time. Those who work under me naturally won’t be treated unfairly.”
“Thank you, my lord!”
His subordinates excitedly took the Tiger Strength Pills, stunned by the rich and powerful medicinal force within them.
That miraculous pill from last time had already greatly increased the strength of this pack of worthless trash who had not even entered the ranks before.
Every one of them had reached a level close to entering the ranks.
And with the Profound Iron Heavy Crossbows in their hands, they were now able to chase down even First Rank and Second Rank martial artists and shoot at them.
How could the old them ever have imagined such a thing?
It was all thanks to Banner Captain Cheng!
No, thanks to General Banner Captain Cheng!
Today, the court’s reply to Cheng Yu’s report had arrived.
For his meritorious service in pacifying trouble and eliminating traitors, Cheng Yu was rewarded with one thousand taels of silver and promoted to General Banner Captain of Qinghe County!
As for the matters behind the Red River Gang, the court did not say much. It merely instructed Cheng Yu to continue investigating and act at his own discretion.
Put simply, it meant two words:
They did not care!
Cheng Yu truly had not expected things to turn out like this.
He was thoroughly exasperated with the Emperor’s attitude by now.
Every day, he went around accusing people of gross disrespect and breaking the rules, piling high hats of serious crimes onto their heads.
Yet in the end, the real master of all this, the Great Qian Emperor, simply did not care about those things at all.
Or rather, he had no energy left to care about such minor matters.
With internal strife and foreign threats pressing on all sides, Great Qian’s court and imperial house truly had it hard!
No wonder the likes of Ma Yuan and Wu Lenggang could betray those on whose payroll they stood so openly and without restraint.
Because, under normal circumstances, the things they were doing carried no risk at all. As long as they did not beat drums and gongs about it, that already counted as being cautious.
Who could have imagined that someone like Cheng Yu would appear?
“That works too. If the court really did send experts to take over and settle it, then dealing with all the things I seized from confiscating those households would become rather troublesome.”
Cheng Yu nodded inwardly.
More importantly, what the Cui Family and Ma Yuan had joined forces to do was absolutely no small matter.
According to Cui Duo, the strange transport expenses and food expenditures in the account books had all been used on transporting laborers who had been tricked, cheated, or sold into servitude.
The likes of the Red River Gang were merely their black gloves.
All across Qingjiang Prefecture, they bullied the weak, swindled and deceived people, then shipped away boatload after boatload of labor.
In the end, those people were delivered into several famous jianghu sects in Qingjiang Prefecture.
“The jianghu again.”
Cheng Yu let out a cold laugh. He had already seen the jianghu clearly for what it was.
A pack of martial artists who filled their mouths with chivalry and righteousness and styled themselves as heroes, yet the things they ultimately did always left families destroyed and lives ruined.
Their sense of morality had always benefited only themselves.
As for ordinary commoners, they were nothing but ants.
They were not even worthy of being associated with the word chivalry!
“A hypocritical jianghu like this has no reason to exist at all. Once I gain power in the future, I will trample the jianghu beneath my horses’ hooves!”
In Cheng Yu’s heart, he had already sentenced those people to death.
But the urgent matter at hand was still to proceed step by step and continue building his strength.
If he could personally uproot everything bit by bit, then the eventual rewards would surely be immeasurable.
“Men, tell everyone to sharpen their blades, fill their bolt cases, and prepare to set out for another confiscation!”
“Yes!”
At Cheng Yu’s single command, dozens of Jinyiwei responded excitedly at once.
The forces large and small within Qinghe County had already been almost completely wiped out and confiscated by them.
But Qinghe County had none left.
Was it possible that a prefecture as large as Qingjiang could not still have forces that deserved to be killed?
A few days later.
At nightfall.
“Who are you people?! Why are you killing members of my sect?!”
The shrill howl was miserable beyond measure as flashes of saber-light and sword-light streaked everywhere.
“Naturally because you deserve to die.”
Before a sea of fire and ruins, Cheng Yu planted one foot on the back of a struggling Third Rank martial artist.
He looked at the huge mountain gate, now already seven or eight parts destroyed.
“What a fine sect. And now it has gone up in flames.”
Just as he was sighing over it, the Jinyiwei also completed all their confiscation and search tasks.
“My lord, just as expected, this place was indeed colluding with those sects! They too were involved in capturing and deceiving laborers!”
Cheng Yu nodded and looked down at the martial artist beneath his foot.
“With so many laborers, are you planning a rebellion?”
“Bullshit from your mother! You vicious, ruthless dog official! Imperial hounds deserve to die and will die a miserable death!”
Cheng Yu smiled and shook his head.
He did not bother responding.
Instead, he asked about something else. “This mountain gate of yours is quite nice. How much did it cost to build? Tell me, and I’ll let you live.”
“I... I don’t remember! I have nothing to say to a hound like you!”
“Don’t remember? I’d say you just can’t say it. When great heroes build mountain gates, how could they possibly pay anyone for it?”
“Th-that’s naturally...”
Slash!
The martial artist still had no idea what Cheng Yu was getting at. Before he could react at all, his head was cut off by the Xiuchun Saber.
【The host has swept clean a jianghu force and executed its leader. Reward: Internal Energy!】
That enormous barrier of the Fourth Rank had drawn much closer once again.
Cheng Yu raised his head and looked into the sea of flames. Just moments ago, this place had still been luxurious and majestic beyond measure.
That inevitably made him think of the grandest sect he had ever seen, a colossal sect that occupied an entire mountain.
“River-Severing Sect... Cheng Family... just wait for me. I hope you’ll be ready when that time comes.”
...
At the same time, inside the River-Severing Sect that Cheng Yu thought of day and night, the Sect Master’s family was not there at all.
They were in Dragon Abyss Prefecture, Dragon Abyss Path, in Jiangnan.
After a month apart, the whole family had gathered together once again.
Zhao Xichun held her two daughters in her arms, tears of longing falling from her eyes.
“Yue’er, Si’er, Mother missed you both so much.”
The two sisters, Cheng Yue and Cheng Si, were also visibly emotional.
At Divine Physician Mountain, Cheng Si had received treatment from Divine Physician Ma.
Though her old illness had not been completely eradicated, the symptoms had improved greatly.
When she heard that Father and Mother had also come to Dragon Abyss Path in Jiangnan, she immediately came with her elder sister to pay them a visit.
Sitting in his chair and looking at all his children gathered together, Cheng Zhenjiang smiled in satisfaction.
“It’s truly a good thing for the whole family to be reunited here. Feng’er has broken through to the Fifth Rank, and Si’er’s illness has improved. We must celebrate properly!”
“Yes, Father is right!”
At once, Cheng Feng nodded eagerly from the side in agreement.
As the family basked in cheerful harmony, Cheng Si frowned in confusion.
“Is the whole family really reunited?”