Ji Jinyu stared at Dou Shichang, whose expression showed no surprise, and slowly widened her eyes as if she had understood something. Then, as though pierced by ten thousand arrows, she swung the cleaver in her hand toward his left arm. “You knew he was my A-Ming, yet you still sold him into the Marquis’s household!”
Ji Jinyu’s grief-stricken roar drowned out Dou Shichang’s piercing scream. “Dou Shichang, even a tiger does not devour its own cubs. Why?!”
The thought that her exceptionally gifted young son had been turned into a plaything for others’ amusement, all because of his own father, made Ji Jinyu feel as though her heart were being torn apart, weeping blood in agony.
“Just because he is my son, for the sake of my soaring career, what’s wrong with him making a little sacrifice?”
“Beast! Beast! Beast!”
Ji Jinyu roared with eyes wide in fury, simultaneously thrusting the short, sharp ventilation knife into Dou Shichang’s mouth, mangling his tongue, gouging out his eyeballs, and returning every bit of suffering her young son had endured, blow by blow, onto Dou Shichang’s body.
But it was not enough to vent her rage—still not enough. Even if Dou Shichang died ten thousand times, it could not extinguish the fire burning in Ji Jinyu’s heart. She hated him so much, she truly hated him so much!
Ji Jinyu’s gaze, filled with hatred, turned toward the tightly shut gates of the Marquis Kangle’s residence.
The moon hung high in the sky. Inside the Marquis Kangle’s residence, music and dance flourished, seemingly unaffected by the bloody incident that had occurred outside the gates during the day. Only from a side room in the rear courtyard of the residence came the sound of uncontrollable sobbing.
“Don’t kill me. It was the Young Marquis who drugged and raped Ji Yingjun. It was the Marquis who said he had never played with twins before. Their tragic deaths have nothing to do with me…” Dou Yixuan trembled as she spoke, her eyes fixed on the cleaver resting against her neck.
“Where are they?” Ji Jinyu asked, suppressing the urge to sever Dou Yixuan’s neck.
“The waterside pavilion. The Marquis is hosting Lord Lin, the Minister of the Court of Judicial Review, tonight.”
Ji Jinyu cared nothing about banquets or important officials. All she knew was that Marquis Kangle was a beast, and anyone he entertained must also be a beast.
“Take me there.”
As Dou Yixuan was forced by Ji Jinyu toward the waterside pavilion banquet hall by the lake in the rear garden, she looked at the fallen servants of the Marquis’s household and felt goosebumps cover her entire body.
This madwoman, for the sake of her dead son and daughter, intended to slaughter the entire Marquis’s household.
She was nothing but a lowly commoner. How dare she? How could she?
But regardless of whether she dared or could, Ji Jinyu had already done everything she should and should not have done.
However, she did not slaughter the entire Marquis’s household. Instead, after burying the bodies of her son and daughter, she took two pounds of homemade Muscle-Softening Powder from her eldest daughter-in-law, infiltrated the Marquis’s residence, and mixed all of the powder into the household’s water supply.
The flourishing music and dance that had accompanied Ji Jinyu’s infiltration of the Marquis’s residence had vanished by the time she stepped into the banquet hall of the waterside pavilion.
The people inside the pavilion lay sprawled and limp on the ground, unable to move, yet fully conscious as they watched the aged Ji Jinyu drag Dou Yixuan by the hair into the pavilion.
Ji Jinyu paid no attention to the surrounding gazes. Squinting her eyes, she lifted Dou Yixuan in her grasp and, with a voice like a broken gong, asked the crowd before her, “Which one is Marquis Kangle? Which one is the Young Marquis?”
Dou Yixuan was too terrified. She pointed to the two men at the head of the banquet table.
Ji Jinyu stared at the middle-aged man sitting directly in front, unable to move but glaring at her, and the young man beside him, trembling in fear. With a sinister tone, she said, “So it’s you.”
Ji Jinyu threw Dou Yixuan aside and, just as she tried to crawl away, swept her blade horizontally, severing both her legs.
Not a single person who had humiliated her children would escape.
As a piercing scream echoed, Ji Jinyu dragged Marquis Kangle from his chair and addressed the horrified guests around her: “Have any of you ever seen a pig slaughtered?”
She laid Marquis Kangle and his son side by side on the table like pigs.
“Since childhood, I followed my father slaughtering pigs—over ten thousand of them.”
Ji Jinyu untied the knife roll from her waist, opened it, and took out a gleaming sharp blade to cut through the fine silks adorning Marquis Kangle.
The trembling Young Marquis pleaded, “I’ll give you anything you want, please spare me.”
Marquis Kangle, with a shred of dignity left, shouted fiercely, “You insolent wretch! How dare you murder a member of the imperial family? This is a capital offense!”
Listening to their incessant chatter, Ji Jinyu smashed their teeth with a single punch.
“Six hours before slaughtering a pig, you must stop feeding it and only give water to empty its intestines and ensure the quality of the meat. But their flesh is already rotten.”
As Ji Jinyu spoke these words, everyone present felt a chill run down their spines, especially when they saw Marquis Kangle and his son lying naked and pale on the table, truly resembling two pigs awaiting slaughter.
“Before slaughtering a pig, you must stun it. But since their flesh is rotten, there’s no need.”
After saying this, Ji Jinyu took two long, sharp skewers from her knife roll and drove them into Marquis Kangle’s shoulders and neck, then violently lifted and nailed him to a nearby pillar.
By now, everyone in the waterside pavilion was so terrified by Ji Jinyu’s actions that they fell silent, barely daring to breathe, until she hung both Marquis Kangle and his son naked on the pillars and spoke again.
“When bleeding a pig, the blade must face upward, and you must stab steadily, accurately, and swiftly at this angle, then withdraw the blade outward.” Ji Jinyu demonstrated as she explained.
Splatters of blood landed on her face, but she seemed not to notice.
“To ensure smooth blood flow, it’s essential to strike with one perfect cut. But…” Ji Jinyu looked at Marquis Kangle and his son, blood flowing freely and urine staining their bodies, then switched to another knife and said, “I want to showcase my knife skills.”
“I am very skilled with a blade.”
Ji Jinyu then performed for the guests what it meant to inflict a thousand cuts without killing a person.
The forced spectators had nothing left to vomit. By the time the drug’s effects wore off and they fled in panic, Ji Jinyu was still diligently slicing flesh from Marquis Kangle and his son, piece by piece.
When the soldiers arrived upon hearing the news, the waterside pavilion suddenly burst into flames.
A woman with a sorrowful face, carrying an oil barrel, approached Ji Jinyu and whispered, “Mother.”
Ji Jinyu sheathed her knife and stood still, gazing at Marquis Kangle and his son, whom she had hung on the pillars, gouged out their eyes, severed their arms and legs, and sliced into thousands of pieces—yet they still clung to life. She took three pouches from her bosom and handed them to Yu Huilan. “Take these.”
Yu Huilan set down the oil barrel, obediently stepped forward to take the pouches, and stood waiting for her mother-in-law’s next instruction.
“Lan Niang, take this money and live a good life.”
The fire in the waterside pavilion grew fiercer. Apart from the grotesque, agonized, and barely alive Marquis Kangle and his son, only Ji Jinyu and her daughter-in-law remained.
“Mother,” Yu Huilan said, her voice trembling.
“Go.”
Yu Huilan watched Ji Jinyu standing motionless, pressed her lips tightly together, and did not move.
“Didn’t you hear me telling you to leave?!” Ji Jinyu turned to face the sorrowful woman and roared angrily, “Get out!”
Yu Huilan’s eyes reddened as she clutched the three heavy pouches in her arms and turned to leave.
The fire blazed fiercer and fiercer. Marquis Kangle, his eyes bulging, stared at Ji Jinyu and said, “You will go to hell.”
Upon hearing this, Ji Jinyu finally deigned to plunge the cleaver into Marquis Kangle’s heart, smiling as she replied, “Then you’d better pray to the gods that you never meet me again.”