Chapter 405: Hengyang Village! The Way of Slaying Demons and Exorcising Evil! The Proper Use of Cuihua! The Stone Cave!
“Why not report this to the prefectural city, or at least inform the yamen?” Li Yanchu asked.
“I fear there may be demons involved,” Zuo Qian explained earnestly. “If I report too soon, the culprits may kill or move the girls before we can act. And... to be frank, I do not trust the county yamen.”
“You don’t trust them?” Li Yanchu said in mild surprise.
“Indeed. The place I discovered, the one where the missing girls are likely hidden, is none other than Hengyang Village.” Zuo Qian lifted his head slightly, meeting Li Yanchu’s gaze.
Li Yanchu paused in thought. He did know that place. Hengyang Village was famed for its tribute silk offered to the court each year, which many nobles and officials prized highly.
Silk usually came from the Jiangnan regions, but for it to be produced here in the northern lands, Hengyang Village was truly unique.
“This,” Li Yanchu said slowly, “does not sound like the usual way officials handle a case”
In this era, whether it was the county yamen, the prefectural yamen, or the Court of Judicial Review that specialized in dealing with demons, investigations were simple and brutal, especially the latter. If someone was a suspect, they got arrested. If they refused to speak, they got beaten and tortured until they confessed!
Of course, this often led to wrongful convictions, giving corrupt officials plenty of room to force false confessions.
But looking at it from another angle, the efficiency was damn high. If the suspect really was guilty, after being put through all that, escape from justice was nearly impossible!
In particular, when it came to cases involving demons and spirits, Kingdom of Qian’s stance was always uncompromising, and ninety percent were executed without mercy. They didn’t even bother with trials; if a demon harmed humans, it was killed on the spot. As for the remaining ten percent, some of them were simply too difficult to subdue. The others were like the monsters in Journey to the West and had powerful backers.
What looked like negligence or inaction from the court was, in truth, tacit approval, indulgence, or outright protection. Otherwise, how could the imperial court handle it? The Kingdom of Qian was a land where Buddhism and Daoism flourished, teeming with hidden masters. Why didn’t those eminent monks and true Daoists step in?