Qiaotou Village's assembly place was decorated with little patches of barren earth.
Under the sunset, the village's 100 families gathered here. They stood in dead silence for nearly an hour and had turned dusty from all the dust blowing in the wind.
However, no one dared to utter a sound, and everyone held their breath, tinges of fear visible in their eyes. They watched as the cyan-robed man walked around while leading a hyena the height of a human.
The man had a languid smile on his lips as he leisurely walked toward the crowd.
The hyena was ceaselessly sniffing around the legs of the people, causing everyone to be frozen to their spots in fear, not daring to move a single centimeter.
Suddenly, the hyena bared its sharp teeth and lowly whimpered before fiercely leaping toward a certain figure in the crowd. Its swift speed and the force behind its pounce elicited a sharp, terrified scream from the crowd, and they instinctively dispersed to the sides with a swish.
Immediately, the hyena's thick legs collided with a middle-aged man, and his back crashed onto the ground, sending dust flying everywhere.
The people around the middle-aged man receded back like a tide—unease, apprehension, and fear dominating their eyes.
Whish! A whip mercilessly landed on the middle-aged man, and everyone could clearly see how he slightly curled up and how his limbs violently spasmed.
"You lowly scum!" The cyan-robed man who released the hyena to attack stood in front of the crowd with his arms crossed in front of his chest. He derisively peered at the man underneath the hyena, and his lips coldly turned up as he mockingly jeered, "Everyone knows that magnetite mines belong to the Heavenly Law Sect. If anyone who privately extracts from one, then it is considered illegal possession! You have committed an unpardonable theft! Tell me, how do you want to die?"
"Liu'zi!" A woman whose hair was in disarray charged out from the crowd with an 11-or-12-year-old girl.
The two of them threw themselves forward in a scramble; however, they involuntarily cried out in fear and retreated back in panic after being mercilessly whipped a few times by the cyan-robed man.
"Leave! Hurry and go!" the middle-aged man, Qiao Liu, fearfully shouted when he saw that his wife and daughter had recklessly charged out.
The hyena stood on its hind legs, reaching 1.8 meters in height, and ferociously pounced on the girl. It then chomped on the end of her dress, carelessly tearing it apart. The girl fell back in fright, her legs paralyzed, and she scrambled backwards with her arms while screaming.
On the other hand, Qiao Mu was being held by her father, who was standing in the crowd, with clear displeasure on her face.
After all, she was already quite old in mental age, so how could she enjoy being held by her father. Least of all, a father who she inwardly felt a tinge of anger and dissatisfaction toward.
Her mother, Wei Ziqin, worriedly watched Qiao Liu's family of three before looking down at her younger daughter, the three-year-old Qiao Lin, who was hugging her calf and hiding behind her. She patted her daughter's head and gently comforted her. "Don't worry, child. It's okay, it's okay."
This was merely Mother's weak comfort. How could it be okay?
Meanwhile, in the center of the crowd, a human-sized hyena was chasing Qiao Liu's daughter, who was screaming from terror, and ripping her clothes and dress like it was playing with a toy.
Although the onlookers had fury on their faces, they did not dare to voice it aloud. As for the cyan-robed man who allowed the hyena to bully and humiliate the girl, he simply stood on the side with a smile and enjoyed this amusing show with ridicule in his eyes.
The girl's clothing was ripped apart piece by piece and scattered down like snow, the rags on her covering less and less skin.
The old village chief of Qiaotou Village stood there on his crutch and furiously looked up at the sumptuously dressed patrol officials beside him.
However, the officials turned a completely blind eye to Qiao Liu's daughter's humiliation as they stood next to a noble young master, lavishing him with flatteries.
But the noble young master did not look pleased in the slightest, and he even ignored those brown-nosing officials. Instead, his gaze anxiously followed the movements of the cyan-robed man, a thin layer of sweat faintly surfacing on his forehead.
"Tell me, where is the magnetite mine that you illegally started mining?" The cyan-robed man tugged on the rope leashing the hyena and stepped on Qiao Liu's chest. The enormous force behind his foot made Qiao Liu's face flush red and his chest feel indescribably tight.