Medicine Master Disciple’s Cultivation Notes

Chapter 78: Settling Scores with the Inside Man to Welcome the New Year

Li Qiuchen felt increasingly grateful that his consistent caution and careful conduct had been meaningful.

Just because he had transmigrated didn't mean he could assume the local people here came equipped with some innate aura that dulled their wits.

Tu Feiyun had just given him a vivid lesson in what it truly meant to act with deliberate intent and to plan before moving.

This man had never once abandoned his pursuit of the Medicine Master remnants, and had gone so far as to lay a trap that spanned several months in order to close the net.

If Li Qiuchen hadn't been painstakingly concealing his true identity all along, maintaining his constructed persona without letting a single crack show, then right now it wouldn't be a matter as simple as the question "why were you staring at my arrows."

Tu Feiyun hadn't continued to press him, but Li Qiuchen was certain the man had filed him away somewhere in the back of his mind but where exactly had he slipped up? Was it really just because he had looked in that direction for a moment too long while standing among the crowd?

Li Qiuchen returned home and turned the question over in his mind for a long while before arriving at the key issue.

The state he had presented in that moment was far too composed.

This was Tu Feiyun's second visit to Blue Stone Platform, and his fearsome reputation had preceded him. The local people felt far more dread toward him than respect yet Li Qiuchen, standing nearby watching the proceedings, had shown none of that dread.

You could of course offer the excuse that he was newly arrived and unfamiliar with the local rules of the jianghu but Tu Feiyun was not a judge. He had no need to hear excuses.

Tu Feiyun was without question a cultivator. That great bow of his was something an ordinary person couldn't even draw.

A cultivator's senses were sharp and their perception far beyond normal. They didn't even need to use their eyes to detect the shift in gazes around them.

Li Qiuchen had behaved differently from everyone else, and that difference had naturally drawn attention.

Under ordinary circumstances, a normal person wouldn't care about such a small detail.

You aren't a gold ingot. Not everyone is going to take a liking to you but Tu Feiyun was precisely not a normal person and it wasn't Li Qiuchen alone he suspected. He suspected everything.

Tu Feiyun departed, and the entire town of Blue Stone Platform snapped instantly from a dead silence back into the festive atmosphere of the New Year.

Not that this was specifically because the young general who had killed without hesitation had left.

It was the New Year, after all. The bandits had been driven off. There was every reason to celebrate.

Swarm Nest Stronghold had been completely annihilated, and their chief's head had been displayed for all to see.

With the Zhao family's greatest threat removed, Squire Zhao was in high spirits. He had ten large fat pigs slaughtered on the spot and set up a continuous banquet in the town, hosting the young and old of every household.

Naturally, the county garrison soldiers who had put in work during the battle and Boss Tang's party were also included.

Beyond the flowing feast of pork and dishes, there was one more important matter to attend to, which was settling accounts with the inside man.

As had been said before, Blue Stone Platform was not a large place.

When Swarm Nest Stronghold's scouts had arrived, where they had stayed, whose home they had lodged in, who they had approached for information, none of that was any great secret.

Everyone here was an honest farming family. The number of people worth suspecting was small.

Li Qiuchen, as an outsider, had initially been included among the suspects. However, the bodies of the bandits outside the Liu family gate cleared him of suspicion entirely.

If the Zhao family had an inside man, then naturally the Liu family had one too.

Liu Po was now the only spirit medium in town. Regardless of whether her abilities were genuine, that identity alone was enough to make ordinary people reluctant to cross her.

They say the gods watch over us from three feet above our heads. If you were scheming against someone like her behind her back, weren't you afraid the spirits would come after you?

Thinking along those lines, the likely suspect practically named himself.

There was an idle layabout in town by the name of Liu San, nicknamed Liu Datou, meaning Liu Big Head.

This person was thoroughly unaccomplished, well-versed in drinking, eating, visiting brothels, and gambling, a well-known drifter in town who regularly kept company with disreputable people.

His surname was Liu, making him a distant relative of Liu Po's late husband.

When Liu Po's husband had died of illness, this Liu Datou had shamelessly turned up at the door to try and swallow up the widow's assets, and had even behaved improperly toward the elder daughter-in-law Xiulan.

At the time, Liu Da hadn't yet made it back from outside, and Liu Er was the sort who never took charge of anything. It was only thanks to Liu Po's fierce nature, feigning madness and acting wildly, that she managed to frighten him off.

Liu Datou had long coveted the small courtyard that two generations of the Liu family had built up through their trade. After drinking too much, he would go around boasting that the courtyard was ancestral Liu family property and ought rightfully to pass to him.

The local people all treated it as hot air.

They were all neighbors who had lived alongside each other for years. Who didn't know the full story?

Setting everything else aside, the family still had two grown sons.

No matter how you looked at it, the line never reached him.

That was all perfectly true, but what if Liu Po and both her sons were dead?

Who stood to benefit the most? Or rather, who was the sort of person who would think that wiping out the Liu family would bring something good his way?

The answer to that question needed no further elaboration.

Liu Da was a businessman who believed in treating people well. In other circumstances he might have swallowed his anger and let it go, unwilling to stoop to Liu Datou's level but this time it had nearly cost lives. If Li Qiuchen hadn't been there, lives would certainly have been lost.

Something like that was simply impossible to swallow, no matter what.

In the past he'd had no brothers to back him up, which made things inconvenient. Now that he had Li Qiuchen as a sworn younger brother, his courage surged. After eating breakfast at home, the two of them put their heads together and, without wasting any words, went directly to Liu Datou's door.

Liu Datou was the type who harbored ambitions but lacked the nerve to act on them, a genuine coward. Seeing the two brothers arrive at his door with such aggressive intent, he didn't dare even try to talk his way out of it. Without a word, he turned and bolted.

The moment he ran, his guilt was as good as confirmed.

Outside it was a frozen world of ice and snow. Stumbling through it with one foot sinking deep and the next barely finding purchase, how far could he possibly get?

Liu Da was far quicker on his feet. He closed the distance in a few strides, flattened him with a single punch, sat astride him, and proceeded to deliver more than twenty open-handed slaps left and right while cursing between each blow, "Have you got any conscience at all, you sorry wretch?"

Liu Datou covered his head and begged desperately for mercy, "It wasn't me! It really wasn't me!"

"I haven't even asked yet, and already you're saying it wasn't you? If it wasn't you, then who was it?"

Even at this point, Liu Datou refused to admit outright that he had leaked information to the bandits, no matter how hard he was pressed but whether he admitted it or not made little difference, because there were still survivors on the bandits' side.

Watching Liu Da finish venting, Li Qiuchen advised from the side, "Big brother, don't hit too hard. In a moment we'll escort him to Sheriff Ma's people and let him do his explaining at the county office at his leisure."

The moment Liu Datou heard he was to be handed over to the authorities, he immediately broke into wailing, "Liu Da, I'm your uncle! You can't treat me like this!"

"Sounds to me like you've had too much horse-piss wine rotting your brain. By what reckoning am I supposed to call you uncle? Even if you were a real uncle, after doing something like this, there's no more kinship left to speak of between us!"

Liu Da was not the kind of man to be rigid about such things. Taking Li Qiuchen's suggestion to heart, he immediately had Liu Datou's hands and feet bound and marched him over to the sheriff.

Sheriff Ma Tiancheng had been worrying that his share of the credit wasn't enough. The lion's share had been taken by Tu Feiyun, and he and his men from the county office had gone through all the trouble of a New Year campaign without much to show for it. The tribute from Squire Zhao didn't count toward official merit. Going back after an assignment like this, he needed something to show for it, and having only captured a handful of bandit survivors felt rather thin.

Hearing that there was also an inside man, he was overjoyed. There was no need to haul anyone to the county seat for a hearing. He opened proceedings right there in the Zhao family estate.

Among bandits, what loyalty or integrity was there to speak of? They could swagger and bluster all they liked in their prime, but the moment they were caught, they crumpled like whipped dogs