The Slaughter

Chapter 197: Slaughter

As the troupe leader, Lü Zhuangyuan managed to hold the stage together despite the chaos unfolding on it.

He rushed onto the platform, positioning himself in front of Lü Juren, and began bowing repeatedly to the audience with an apologetic smile plastered on his face.

After finishing his bows, he shot a meaningful glance at his youngest son, then grabbed his dazed elder son by the arm and dragged him toward the backstage.

Lü Xiucai, who had been dropping the ball all night, finally didn't falter. He flipped onto the stage with a few quick somersaults.

He scooped up the fallen bronze gong, flipped its dented face over, and began bowing and scraping as he picked up the scattered props and placed them inside the gong.

"This Lü family business… it's a tough one," Li Huowang muttered as he walked toward the cart.

He understood perfectly well what Luo Juan had endured in the bandit den. But this kind of thing—he couldn't help with it.

Just as he reached the cart, he saw Lü Zhuangyuan beating his eldest son's head with his pipe.

"She's your wife! Saying that about your wife on stage—whose face are you losing? Yours! The Lü family's!"

Lü Juren suddenly reached out and snatched the pipe from his father's hand.

Lü Zhuangyuan stumbled forward, looking at his eldest son with a strange, unfamiliar gaze.

"Losing face! What face is there to lose! We're all bottom-tier opera singers! Isn't that already shame enough?! Our family is the dregs of the dregs! We have to call even whorehouse girls 'auntie'! Is there anyone lower than us?"

"Didn't you see how she acted in that bandit den? The way she laughed and joked with those thugs!"

"She… she even did that in front of me, with a bandit! Father, I can't take it. I can't fucking take it anymore!"

Lü Juren fell to his knees, his face twisted with grief and rage, pounding the ground with his fists.

"Why do I smile at people? You think you don't know? I do it for the Lü family! If I hadn't kept smiling, Xiu'er would have been thrown to his death long ago! You're bitter? You think I'm not?"

"You really think I have no shame? You really think Luo Juan is some whore who'll sleep with anyone? But what the hell was I supposed to do!"

"I'm hurting too! But I know I'm no lady—I'm just the wife of a worthless actor! When I suffer injustice, I can only swallow it! I can only pretend it doesn't matter!"

Luo Juan, her belly already starting to show, burst into loud wails beside him.

Watching the chaotic scene before him, Li Huowang slowly exhaled.

The root of all this was the bandits. As long as those bandits existed, there would be thousands of Luo Juans.

Eliminating bandits should be the army's job, but somehow, they were all tangled up together.

Maybe Wang Deqiu had been right after all—soldiers and bandits really weren't all that different.

"What a fucking shithole of a place."

There wasn't much Li Huowang could do. He turned aside and quietly gave a few instructions to his fellow disciples.

Soon, Sun Baolu and Gouwa pulled Lü Juren aside, while Bai Lingmiao and Chun Xiaoman helped Luo Juan to another corner.

"Master Lü, don't just stand there. Pull yourself together. The show isn't over yet." Li Huowang walked up to Lü Zhuangyuan and patted his shoulder.

Lü Zhuangyuan, who seemed to have aged several years in an instant, clutched at his empty hands, hunched his back, and shuffled toward the front of the stage.

"Juren has never been like this before…"

But the moment he emerged from backstage, he saw that the audience was gone.

The people on the street were also panicked, all gathering toward the edge of town.

Forgetting his family troubles for the moment, he shouted urgently, "Little Daoist! Little Daoist, come quick! We've got trouble!"

Li Huowang rushed over at the call. The moment he took in the situation, he ordered everyone to prepare for an immediate retreat. Something was clearly wrong.

"Wait here. I'll see what's happening."

With that, Li Huowang sprinted back to the cart, grabbed his sword, wrapped it in his costume, and bolted toward the town entrance.

Pushing through the dense crowd and past the rank-smelling camels, Li Huowang soon saw what lay beyond the town.

Soldiers. Rows of ferocious-looking soldiers had surrounded the entire town.

They weren't wearing uniforms—they wore whatever they pleased, and their weapons were just as mismatched.

The only thing that identified them was the blue character tattooed on each of their foreheads: 囚 (prisoner).

When Li Huowang spotted Hou Er—the bandit tie—shouldering a heavy iron spear among them, he immediately understood their purpose.

They were here for him.

Hou Er, along with other men carrying the same black iron spears, sat on horseback, sticking close to a tall general.

This man was massive, a full size larger than everyone around him. He wore an iron mask and pitch-black battle armor, and the heavy halberd in his hand, over a zhang long, gleamed with cold light.

Just standing there, the killing intent radiating from him was palpable—Li Huowang could feel it even from this distance.

The man gave him a very bad feeling. If he had to compare it to something, it was like a thunderbolt waiting to strike.

At the sight of these soldiers, the crowd began to buzz with panic. As natives of the Later Shu, they seemed even more uneasy than Li Huowang.

"Heavens above, it's the convict army! The convict army!"

"What do we do? We have to get out of here!"

"Get out where? They've blocked the rear too!"

Li Huowang shrank back into the crowd, his mind already racing.

"They're probably here for me. But they shouldn't know who we are yet… otherwise, they'd have just attacked directly."

"I'll need to get through their screening. Not easy. But these troops look undisciplined. Maybe I can try bribery…"

Just as Li Huowang was calculating his options, a fat man in silk clothes, wearing a humble expression, ran toward the distant army.

As soon as he reached the general's red horse, he took off his hat and began speaking in a low voice.

Given his manner, he was probably the town headman or some local gentry.

"This is a major crossroads. There are plenty of outsiders passing through besides me. It's a mixed bag. Even asking the locals won't help."

But the next thing that happened made Li Huowang's heart clench.

The massive halberd rose high and came down heavily.

The fat man's head and body were cleaved clean in two.

A sweet-tinged gust of wind blew into everyone's faces.

Clop, clop. The iron hooves stepped forward a few paces. The distant general slowly lifted his visor with his gauntleted hand.

Beneath it was a face as delicate as a woman's. No—it was a woman!

Her face, like the other convict soldiers', was tattooed with characters.

The four sprawling characters "精忠报国" (Serve the Country with Utmost Loyalty) were stamped directly across her face, twisting what should have been a comely countenance into something utterly ferocious.

"Everyone! Four Qi spies have infiltrated the town. I ask for your understanding!"

The female general's voice was quite pleasant to hear. But the words that followed chilled everyone to the bone.

Clang. The heavy visor slammed shut over her face.

"Come, my lads. One day without sheathing your blades. Slaughter them all, so no Qi spy slips through."

"HAH!" The gleaming blade-tips leveled at everyone in the town.