Where Immortals Once Walked

Chapter 373: State of Heaven’s Favored

“Avoiding divine grace, truly wretched.” The execution supervisor snorted. Only after he climbed out of the earthen pit did he turn to the two pseudo-tigers and say, “Proceed with the sentence!”

The pseudo-tigers had been waiting impatiently. One lunged at the unconscious prisoner and took a huge bite.

With a sharp chomp, blood sprayed a meter.

The man jolted awake in agony. By the time his scream tore out of his throat, a large chunk of flesh had already been ripped from his belly, his abdominal cavity pried open.

Of course, he fought like mad, but a human going against such a monster was like an ant trying to shake a tree. The pseudo-tiger pinned him with one paw and began to gorge on his organs.

The offal was the most delicious and nourishing part, and lions and tigers always ate it first.

The other pseudo-tiger refused to be outdone and joined the scramble, but it did not get more than a few mouthfuls. Furious, it snapped the prisoner’s thigh clean in two.

For a time, tiger roars and human howls mingled into deafening chaos. The visiting merchants, seeing such a scene for the first time, all went pale.

Now, He Lingchuan finally understood where the stains inside that sunken execution pit had come from.

The local townsfolk stared without blinking. That little girl craned her neck far over the edge, trying to see more clearly. But soon she complained, “A’Dong lied! The pit’s so deep, the blood can’t splash up here at all!”

After only a dozen or so breaths, the prisoner fell silent amid the two pseudo-tigers’ tug-of-war.

One continued to gorge itself, while the other simply turned around and went for the corpse of the prisoner who had smashed his head against the pillar.

Good meat could not be wasted. This was a reward they had only gotten with difficulty.

The sound of fangs crunching through bone frightened quite a few outsiders.

At this point, a constable brought over a huge sheet of black cloth and covered the entire execution ground. He called out to the crowd, “It’s over. Disperse.” Both prisoners were dead, and the pseudo-tigers did not want to be disturbed while they ate. Only then did the townsfolk reluctantly drift away.

Shi Congshui had broken into a cold sweat. He asked He Lingchuan, “Well? Still feel like drinking?”

He Lingchuan had seen all manner of monsters devouring humans, many far worse than this. Meanwhile, Shi Congshui kept swallowing hard, clearly queasy yet forcing himself to stay composed. So He Lingchuan stretched lazily and said, “No. I’m a bit tired. I want to head back to the post station and rest.”

Shi Congshui quietly let out a breath. “Good, good. Early sleep’s probably for the best tonight.”

They passed an alley where the roadside stalls sent out waves of sizzling fragrance. He Lingchuan’s stomach growled. He went over and bought a few baked flatbreads.

He had only just started on the second when a constable turned into the small alley as well, with someone following behind. That person’s eyes were red, as if he had just been crying. He sniffled as he walked.

Still chewing, He Lingchuan strolled over and stopped by the base of a wall.

With his hearing, eavesdropping from here was effortless.

The first thing he caught, though, was the jingle of copper coins clinking together. It sounded like the constable weighing them in his hand. Then the constable said, “Alright. Once the two tiger sirs finish eating, you can go collect the body. Hm, it should take an hour at most.”

The man thanked him repeatedly, all the while begging that his son suffer less.

The constable hurriedly shushed him. “Go, go. Don’t say nonsense.”

He Lingchuan understood immediately. The reason that one of the prisoners even managed to make a dash to smash their head against the pillar was not from the constable’s oversight. Instead, it was because the constable had taken a bribe.

The other condemned man either did not understand how things worked or perhaps had no money. He could only endure the devouring punishment and die that way.

Two human lives were gone, and the townsfolk hardly cared. They simply went on living their small, ordinary days.

He Lingchuan did not go back right away. Instead, he wandered around town.

The sky gradually darkened. One by one, household lamps lit up, the whole place filled with the warmth of everyday life.

Monsters and humans lived mixed together here, peacefully enough. He Lingchuan even saw a cat monster using its paw to help someone count money.

The townsfolk were also friendly to outsiders. Once they learned He Lingchuan was a guest from the south, they eagerly pointed out directions for him.

It was as though these people simply had a rather particular taste for spectacle.

A woman selling handicrafts smiled at him and said, “In the market, the tenth stall on the left is Old Cai’s wontons. Those are the best wontons in town. If you go now, then you’ll probably make it before he closes up.” By this time, the market itself had already dispersed.

He Lingchuan thanked her. Seeing that she also sold masks, he casually picked one up to examine. “This is...?”

“A Nuo Opera[1] mask. In ten days, it’ll be the Nuo Dance Festival. Here, adults and children alike wear these to drive off evil and ward away filth.”

“This is a ghost-head mask?” The design showed a fierce, azure-colored ghost face, though on second look, maybe it was a beast face.

Using ghosts to ward off ghosts?

“No, no.” The woman laughed. “That’s Qingyao, the mount of Heavenly God Tunai. It eats ghosts.”

He Lingchuan thought of the Red General’s mask, and mischief rose in him. He set down two copper coins. “Then I’ll take this one.”

It was very light in his hand. He did not know what kind of wood it was, but it would be fun as a little trinket.

Just then, a little girl ran over, and only then did he remember that this mother and daughter had also been at the execution pit.

The girl’s name was A’Yan.

He asked A’Yan, “You don’t get scared from seeing criminals get punished like that?”

“Why would I?” A’Yan’s eyes were large and clear. “Bad people don’t count as people anymore. They’re judged by divine grace. Only by suffering punishment like that can they wash away the sins on them.”

“Do you know what crime they committed?”

“They set fire to a military grain depot. This summer, lots of people will go hungry because of them.”

Just then, the two pseudo-tigers walked down the street, heading out of town.

They had already washed their fur clean, yet He Lingchuan could still smell the reek of blood on them. People on the street continued walking, chatting, and laughing. No one made a fuss.

The pseudo-tigers strolling through town like this seemed to be an everyday sight.

He Lingchuan casually pointed at their backs. “So you’re not afraid of them either, huh?”

“Not afraid!” Ayan said as if it were obvious. “They don’t hurt us. I’ve even ridden one.”

“Hoh, you’re that impressive?”

He Lingchuan stood up and followed the woman’s directions to the market, where he then ate a bowl of vegetable-and-meat wontons. Sure enough, they were astonishingly good.

When he returned to the post station afterward, Shi Congshui’s guest room door was shut tight, and his lamp was already out.

Early the next morning, he went to Shi Congshui for answers.

Second Boss Shi had recovered his usual composure. He poured himself hot tea and said, “The devouring punishment is tradition. The northern monster state forbids monsters and beasts from eating humans at will. If they do, they’re arrested. However, instinct is hard to erase, and blocking it outright isn’t as good as giving it an outlet, so Beijia wrote this law: criminals get punished, monsters and beasts get to satisfy their cravings. This way, everyone wins.”

A new hire traveling with the caravan could not help but blurt out, “Second Boss, that’s way too cruel, isn’t it?”

Shi Congshui thought, No kidding. It’s horrifying. But outwardly, he stayed calm and unruffled and said, “Punishment is punishment. If you don’t make the criminal suffer, how does it count as punishment? Tell me, what kind of corporal sentence doesn’t hurt? Isn’t slow slicing brutal? Isn’t hanging brutal? Isn’t being torn apart by five horses brutal?”

“But the punishment here is just outright terrifying. Don’t the people in town get scared after seeing that?”

“It’s actually the opposite.” Shi Congshui waved a hand. “It took me a long time to understand it, too. With the devouring punishment, monsters and beasts only eat criminals, and that actually makes the townsfolk feel much safer.”

“As long as you’re a good person, don’t do evil, and don’t break the law, the monsters and beasts won’t eat you. Do you understand?” He added with conviction, “And on the other side of it, these vicious monsters and beasts are a perfect deterrent against would-be troublemakers.”

He Lingchuan recalled what the little girl had said yesterday. She had even ridden a full-grown pseudo-tiger.

For ordinary people just trying to live, what they needed most might be certainty. Everything else came second. In the end, you survived one way or another.

He said blandly, “A single law comes down, and the monsters and beasts really don’t dare eat people at will?”

Even human nature could not withstand temptation, let alone monsters and beasts’ instincts.

He had long since stopped believing in anything so idealistic it felt like a fantasy.

“We’re only here to do business,” said Shi Congshui with a smile. “Why understand it that thoroughly? Though I have heard that every so often, there are cases with no clear culprit.”

“Right. Yesterday, when I wandered around, I realized this town actually has three temples. Each one had people burning incense and bowing. I even saw them offering raw sheep heads.” He Lingchuan sighed, thinking of what he had seen. “Where I come from, a town might not even have one temple, and blood offerings are strictly forbidden.”

Did the He Family not get ruined precisely because they were falsely accused of a rite of divine recompense?

“Oh, some states do ban rites of divine recompense harshly.” Wu Jinsong happened to return from outside and picked up the thread when he heard He Lingchuan. “But in Beijia, every household does it. Go to any townsperson’s home, and you’ll find an altar shrine. They bow morning and night, and on the first and fifteenth of every month, they’ll find some way to offer blood.”

He then said with a smile, “Beijia is famous across the world as the state of Heaven’s favored, the state blessed and protected by the gods. Here, the winds and rains come on time year after year, with few disasters and calamities.”

There was a faint pride in his expression.

Traveling with the caravan, He Lingchuan had heard Shi Congshui say more than once that Beijia was the state of divine grace, the state favored by Heaven. Even the capital, Lingxu City, was named after the honorific title of a heavenly god, the Divine Majesty Lingxu.

And Beijia’s monster emperor and monster kings alike had to be personally chosen by the gods and undergo divine consecration before they could take power and inherit their thrones.

For five to six hundred years, it had been this way.

Great Yuan was the opposite. From the founding of the state, it taught its people that gods could not be trusted.

Between these two approaches, which one was closer to the truth?

He Lingchuan remembered Zhu Erniang’s constant cold sneer in the Demon Nest Swamp, saying that those who believed too easily never had good endings.

She really was a cynical former monster immortal.

And yet Beijia’s rule had lasted nearly six hundred years, watching other small states rise and fall like shifting seas, changing masters like a lantern show.

So what did that mean?

* * *

After traveling another three days, the Stone Gate Merchant Caravan reached Fufeng City, the capital of the Kingdom of Baoshu.

They had made such good time partly because the main road was straight and wide, ideal for pushing the horses, and partly because they only passed two toll checkpoints, and the fees were still quite low.

Across all of Beijia, commercial taxes and carriage-and-horse taxes were not high. Yet infrastructure was excellent, trade regulations were complete, and commerce flourished. He Lingchuan often found that the number of travelers and merchants even exceeded the number of local townsfolk.

When Beijia was founded, sixteen monster kings had been enfeoffed, and the Baoshu King was one of them. But as time passed, the number of monster kings rose and fell, once dropping to twelve. Then, a little over a hundred years ago, another king was enfeoffed, so now Beijia had one monster emperor and thirteen monster kings.

Each of the thirteen monster kings held a vast fief, also called a vassal state. Apart from the chancellor and the grand tutor of each, who were appointed by Lingxu City, everything else—personnel, laws, and taxes—was handled autonomously. They even maintained their own armies. They were, so to speak, states within a state.

1. This is an ancient, ritualistic Chinese folk theater. ☜