Eternal Night

Chapter 562 They said it themselves
Hanshan Village.

It is a small village in Yangzhou. The village is not large, with only a thousand villagers. Almost all of them have lived here for generations. The men farm and the women weave. Although life is hard, the villagers live peacefully.

until today……

After nightfall, the entire Hanshan Village was pitch black.

This is the Song Dynasty, ancient times. Working at sunrise and resting at sunset was the norm in this world. Except for a very few major cities of this era, such as Bianliang (Kaifeng), the whole world was almost completely dark after nightfall.

But in this dark mountain road, a few scattered lights were flickering.

"Brother, ahead is Hanshan Village, the last place with human traces before entering the mountains. After that, we'll be safe!" A trembling male voice rang out under the torchlight.

No one spoke or answered; there were only the sounds of panting and hurried footsteps.

We've lost! We've lost!!

The situation was initially very favorable. Rebellions broke out in all the southern regions of the Song Dynasty, local governments opened their treasuries, wealthy families from various prefectures united, scholars rallied, and numerous schools of thought and powerful families encouraged the rebellion. Whether they were local gentry, local tyrants, or wealthy merchants, everyone contributed grain and manpower. In just half a month, they had assembled an army of over 500,000. They were united in purpose, with money and supplies, and were of one mind. Even within the Song court, there were many who were inclined to join the rebellion.

This should have been a sweeping war; anyone with a modicum of insight knew that the time for a change of dynasty had arrived.

but……

The disciples of immortals descended from the sky, killing 150,000 in the first battle and 200,000 in the second. It collapsed, truly and utterly collapsed!
This number isn't just some fabricated claim; it's the actual number of people killed—150,000 to 200,000.

A disciple of an immortal, with a single stroke, severed mountains and rivers. Right outside Wu County, the capital of Suzhou, a blade mark stretched for thirty miles, killing tens of thousands of people with a single strike, and directly cutting Qingliang Mountain outside Wu County in half!

The might of the heavens and the human!

It was almost like the might of Heaven!

We've lost! We've lost!
How could mortals possibly contend with the offspring of immortals? Moreover, these immortals might have already become gods, otherwise how could they possess such terrifying power?

Flee, flee, flee; defeat, defeat, defeat! The entire southern part of the Song Dynasty was in chaos, with terrifying routs appearing everywhere. It seemed that a catastrophe was about to befall them. However, this immortal traveled thousands of miles a day, fighting on various southern routes. Whenever he saw routs, he would first shout three times, "Kneel down and raise your hands!" If they complied, the immortal would sense them for a moment in a peculiar way. Some routs would be unharmed, while others would be ordered to be killed one out of ten, one out of five, or even one out of two. If they dared to resist, they would be slaughtered.

It can be described as extremely cruel!
This routed army was one of the rebel armies in the south. It had scattered along the way and now only had more than 300 men left. However, they were all the officers' trusted confidants and core members. Although they were in disarray, they were not scattered. According to his plan, they were heading into the mountains, and their destination was the Da Yue Dynasty further south.

Although it's a long journey and I don't know how many people will make it, it's still better than staying here and waiting for an immortal to come up and do a double kill, right?
Others may not know, but the general who commanded this rebel army probably knew the reason why the immortals did not kill one person, but killed one out of ten, one out of five, or one out of two... Those who plundered and slaughtered the people, regardless of whose orders the army was under, were basically killed one out of ten, one out of five, or one out of two. The more people they killed, the more brutal their deaths would be.

He knew his own situation well. His army of over ten thousand men had plundered many villages and towns, and had even ravaged a town at the very beginning of the rebellion. He himself had also enjoyed the company of several women and had killed many civilians...

He has absolutely no chance of escaping justice!
So rather than waiting to be killed, he might as well take a gamble and run to the south of Da Yue. He had once used his position to get in touch with the forces there. If he joined them, even if he didn't ask for high-ranking officials or nobles, he could at least become a wealthy man.
With this in mind, the officer led his more than three hundred personal guards into Hanshan Village.

The mutinous army... The common people of this era knew very well what a mutinous army meant, but they were powerless to resist. Although there were a thousand people, more than three hundred of them were soldiers with knives and guns, while the rest of them were mostly old, weak, women and children, and the remaining young and strong were mostly honest villagers with only hoes and pitchforks.

After a brief clash, more than ten villagers were killed, and the remaining villagers were all gathered on the drying ground in the center of the village, where they all crouched down in terror.

The officer, escorted by guards, arrived at the drying ground. He looked at the villagers and said loudly, "Fellow villagers, please rest assured, we are just..."

The sound had barely begun when a woman's wailing suddenly came from a villager's house not far away. The officer's face stiffened instantly, and he glared fiercely at his personal guard. He was about to order the soldier who had disobeyed orders to be executed on the spot, but before he could even speak, he suddenly saw that the eyes of the soldiers around him were turning green, and the order he was about to give immediately fell silent.

The defeated and scattered troops are now only being commanded and united by the inertia of their superiors. Not to mention these defeated troops, even his twenty-odd personal guards might not obey his orders once his family, wealth, and status are gone.

That's the system. When it's intact, people will naturally shout "Long live the Emperor!" But if the system collapses, he's no different from these soldiers, and might even become the target of their anger because of his previous higher status.

Why could that immortal act with impunity? Why was he able to kill hundreds of thousands?
It's simply a matter of taking all the power for oneself. Whether you submit or not, you'll kill them all, and the rest will naturally submit.

But he couldn't do it!
So he fell silent. Seeing that he had nothing to say, the fleeing soldiers around him grinned and rushed towards the thousand villagers. In an instant, there were screams and howls, and blood was everywhere. All the women, regardless of age, were dragged out, and even some young men were pulled out. If anyone dared to resist, they were immediately hacked down with broadswords. In an instant, the entire drying ground was filled with blood and flesh.

The officer closed his eyes, sighed, and turned to follow his personal guards to a mud-walled house to move into. But just then, a sharp whistling sound came from the dark night sky.

Upon hearing the whistle, the officer shuddered and immediately shouted, "Go, go..."

Before he could finish speaking, the dozen or so soldiers who were still hacking and slashing on the dam exploded, their blood and flesh splattering all over the survivors.

The surviving villagers were still stunned when they saw a tall, imposing young man land with a fairy-like figure. The moment he touched the ground, he let out a roar that struck the heavens like thunder, silencing all the shouts and commotion in the village. Immediately afterward, the routed soldiers howled and tried to flee the village. But how could they possibly escape now?
Everyone saw the imposing young man tap the ground with one hand, and all the fleeing soldiers who were running out of the village immediately fell to the ground. But they didn't die immediately; instead, they screamed and howled in agony. Then they tore at their own flesh and bones, and in just a moment, they dismembered themselves into a pile of rotten flesh, so unrecognizable that they were no longer human. Only then did they truly die.

After hundreds of people were treated this way, the remaining two hundred-plus people dared not make the slightest move. They lay on the ground, wailing and pleading for mercy. Immediately, the ground was filled with cries of "Master," "God," "Grandpa," and so on.

The newcomer was Wu Pifu, who stared at the village's miserable state with a grim expression.

The massacre had clearly just begun, but at least two or three hundred villagers had already been killed, and many women and children had been defiled. The threshing ground was already littered with corpses.

"...Does someone want revenge!?"

Wu Pifu roared, looking at the villagers and saying, "I grant you permission to kill them! They are not human, but demons, monsters, and beasts in human skin. You can kill them, and I guarantee no one will pursue the matter. The government will not pursue it, and those gentry and local tyrants... there will be no more gentry and local tyrants in this area. In short, is there anyone who wants revenge?!"

For a moment, no one in the village dared to move. Wu Pifu was not impatient. He just repeated the same words over and over again. After repeating them seven or eight times, a few young men in the village jumped up crying and picked up knives and guns from the ground. They then frantically slashed and stabbed at the soldiers lying on the ground.

Wu Pifu simply watched them vent their anger and commit slaughter. He had enough patience and empathy for these working people, simply because they were human beings, and only humans can suffer.

After killing several people, these villagers were all weak in the knees and limbs. Even with the anger of their loved ones being killed, they were crying, howling, and vomiting, kneeling on the ground and shouting to vent their frustrations.

Wu Pifu said with pity, "I'm late... Folks, watch me avenge you!"

As he spoke, Wu Pifu disregarded everything else and, relying on the super brain's emotional perception, singled out the most heinous criminals among the two hundred-plus surviving defeated soldiers. He directly injected his internal energy into their bodies, causing their meridians to flow backward and their nerves to overload. Now, it was time for them to pay for their sins...

Instantly, nearly a hundred soldiers screamed in agony, tearing their own flesh and bones apart like demons, and died right before the villagers' eyes.

The process wasn't long; for an ordinary person, it would take less than a minute from the injection of qi to death. But for the fleeing soldiers and villagers, it felt like an eternity. Countless people urinated and defecated, and some fleeing soldiers who hadn't been injected with qi even slit their own throats with knives.

"Immortal, immortal... this is so cool!"

At this moment, an elderly man among the villagers, dressed in neat cloth and seemingly living a life of luxury, stood up shakily and shouted.

Wu Pifu glanced at him, and with a quick sense of his emotions, he immediately knew who this old man was: the so-called village elder, the only landlord in this cold mountain village, and also a scholar from the Song Dynasty.

However... this old man was not greedy or wicked in his daily life. He seemed to really believe in the teachings of the sages. Although he was a landlord, he did not oppress the villagers. At least from the perspective of this era, he could be considered a good person in the village. He not only taught the villagers' children to read almost for free, but also charged them rents that were more than 20% less than those of landlords outside the village.

He... is a person.

After making his assessment, Wu the Pifu patiently said to the old man, “Old man, they are not human. Don’t be fooled by their appearance. They are just some kind of monsters in human skin. These monsters cannot feel pain. Look at them howling so pitifully. They are just imitating our human behavior to make us humans feel sorry for them and let them go. But doing so would be like letting a tiger return to the mountain.”

Seeing that Wu Pifu spoke to him politely, the old man's last worries disappeared. He immediately cupped his hands respectfully and said, "Immortal, our village of Hanshan is truly blessed by Heaven for being saved by you. However, Heaven is benevolent in its compassion for life. Even if the wicked master is killed, so be it. They also have parents and relatives. Such cruelty is truly too contrary to the principles of Heaven..."

Wu Pifu scratched his head. He couldn't bring himself to kill people directly, so he was in a dilemma. He didn't know how to persuade this old scholar either. After glancing at him for a moment, he nodded and said, "What you say is true, sir..."

The remaining hundred or so soldiers all exhaled in unison, and even the surviving villagers who had been stunned by fear seemed to have regained their composure. But Wu Pifu then changed the subject, saying, "But they didn't kill you, old man. The saying 'the wronged should have their culprits, and the debtors should have their debtors' applies here. Am I wrong?"

The old man was somewhat puzzled, but this principle was universally applicable, so he nodded and said, "What the immortal says is very true."

Wu Pifu laughed and said, "Alright, sir, let the people they killed stand up and tell me that they have forgiven them. Then I will let them go and never kill another one of them. Is that alright? Because the people they killed were not you, sir, so why should you forgive these people for them? Therefore, sir, let the people who were killed speak for themselves."

Old man: ?

Villager: "?"

The routed army: "?"

Wu Pifu's bewilderment level rose by several hundred points in an instant. He didn't notice anything amiss and turned to the routed soldiers, saying, "Since no one is standing up to say they forgive you, there's nothing I can do. I can only send you down to see them and see if they forgive you or not."

"Five draws, four kills!"

"implement!!"

(End of this chapter)