"Yes!"
Yang Ge responded, and under the watchful eyes of countless people, he reluctantly stepped forward to carefully examine the middle-aged man.
The middle-aged man had a gag in his mouth, rendering him unable to speak. Seeing Yang Ge coming close and scrutinizing him without blinking, he began to whine in terror.
With his hair disheveled and tears streaming down his face, he looked both ferocious and pitiful.
"Behave yourself!"
The Imperial Guard, unsure if he was afraid that Yang Ge would be frightened by the middle-aged man or that Yang Ge had other concerns, turned and kicked the man, knocking him to his knees on the ground.
Who knew that the middle-aged man would take the opportunity to crash to the ground, wailing and rolling all over as if he had suffered some grave, unwarranted injustice.
The crowd of onlookers stirred slightly...
Although there was no audible whispering, the air seemed to buzz with innumerable flies darting about.
Yang Ge looked up at the Imperial Guard.
But he noticed that the Imperial Guard was also staring at him... staring intently at him.
He lowered his head, stepped on the neck of the middle-aged man, bent down and pulled open his shirt, revealing a bandaged hemostatic cloth tied around the near chest area on his left shoulder.
He lifted the hemostatic cloth, and a sinister scabbed wound roughly half a foot long, running from left to right with the flesh flipped to the sides—still oozing dark blood despite being heavily smeared with Hemostatic Medicine—came into view.
Upon seeing this scar, Yang Ge finally confirmed the identity of the man beneath his foot.
The night before, the man dressed in black had flipped the table and extinguished the lamp on it as soon as he made a move.
Thus, the only clue Yang Ge had to verify the man's identity was the first axe he threw into the darkness, which was based on the last memory before the light went out and the direction from which the man's cry came.
He distinctly remembered that the axe had hit the man's chest.
The subsequent struggle was just blind chopping, although he himself felt that a few more blows landed, but where exactly they had hit, he did not know.
"Your Honor, this man is indeed the villain who sneaked into our Yuelai Inn and committed the crime last night. That night, as a villager, I was forced to fight with the villain and I hit the villain's chest with the axe used for chopping wood in our inn... Please look, Your Honor, this scar is the evidence!"
All eyes, following Yang Ge's words, turned toward the middle-aged man's chest.
The crowd gradually fell silent, and the faint buzzing of flies in the air slowly disappeared.
The Imperial Guard glanced at the scar and looked up, "Do you have physical evidence?"
Yang Ge bowed slightly, "There is physical evidence... Wang, the axe is hidden on top of the latrine shed, please go get it."
Upon hearing this, Wang Dali, panicked as if he were a large sieve, dropped a "I'll go fetch it" and ran toward the inn with hurried steps.
Seeing this, the Imperial Guard waved his hand, and immediately two Imperial Guards with swords at their waists followed swiftly behind.
In no time, the two Imperial Guards returned, flanking Wang Dali, and presented a rusty axe with some bloodstains on the blade to the Imperial Guard.
The Imperial Guard took the wood-chopping axe, walked to the middle-aged man, crouched down, and matched the axe against the wound on his chest.
Quickly, he waved his hand towards Yang Ge without looking back.
Yang Ge understood, lifted his foot from the middle-aged man's neck, and took a step back with a bow.
The middle-aged man had overheard the entire conversation between Yang Ge and the Imperial Guard. Once he got up, he started "woo woo woo" continuously kowtowing to the Imperial Guard.
The Imperial Guard removed the gag from his mouth, stood up, and shouted from a height, "Ding Man, regarding your crime of sneaking into Yuelai Inn last night, committing burglary and harboring ill intentions, do you admit to these accusations?"
With the evidence undeniable, where could the middle-aged man dare to defy the formidable Imperial Guard? He immediately broke into a wailing cry of begging, "Your Honor, that night I intended only to steal..."
The imperial guard spoke coldly, cutting off his pleas for mercy, "You admit to your crimes, that's good!"
The middle-aged man was stunned for a moment, then suddenly straightened up, about to shout loudly...
Unfortunately, it was already too late.
"Clang."
A dazzling bright light flashed before their eyes.
Standing behind the middle-aged man, Yang Ge hadn't yet realized what had happened when a warm liquid splattered his face.
He instinctively touched his cheek and took a closer look: it was red and sticky.
Looking down, he saw the middle-aged man's head had rolled to the ground. It bounced a couple of times like a ball before rolling up to his feet, turning to face him with its eyes wide open in horror, staring straight at him...
Yang Ge shivered violently, a tingling sensation spreading from his spine, quickly climbing up to his scalp and turning into a body full of goosebumps.
"Thump."
The headless body fell heavily, and blood gushed out like water from a faucet, staining the ground a deep red.
Yang Ge finally came to his senses and backed away rapidly, stumbling and sitting down on the ground, his hands frantically scratching all over his body.
He kept his eyes tightly shut, unwilling to witness the bloody scene before him.
But the ghastly image of the severed head and headless body floating in blood on the carpet seemed etched into his mind.
This caused him to continuously break out in goosebumps, and no matter how much he scratched, he couldn't stop the itching!
The imperial guard glanced at him disdainfully, then turned to face the surrounding crowd who had gathered to watch the spectacle, pointing with his sword at the middle-aged man's headless body and bellowed.
"Ding Man, a master from the Huwei Escort Agency of Taiyuan Prefecture, has no respect for the law and is outrageously bold. During the martial examination period, he committed the capital offenses of breaking and entering, robbery, and murder, corrupting the grace of His Majesty and the integrity of the martial examinations. He deserves death for his crimes and shall not be tolerated. This execution serves as a warning to all!"
The crowd fell silent for a moment, suddenly someone shouted, "The official is wise!"
"The incorruptible great lord!"
"With the official here, Luting County has its savior..."
The crowd erupted, cheers and praises intermingling, the atmosphere as festive as a holiday.
Only Yang Ge still sat where he was, scratching his head and face frantically: "A nightmare, a nightmare..."
...
At this moment, across from Yuelai Inn, inside the second floor of a nearby residence.
Shen Fa sat by the window, unblinkingly watching the scene unfolding in front of the inn that was approaching its dramatic conclusion.
Behind him, a dozen or so figures dressed as rough as street hawkers hurriedly paced back and forth.
"Painter, the customer is clawing at his head and face, eyes closed, unwilling to look directly at the decapitated body, muttering under his breath: 'Nightmare, nightmare,' and 'They are all fucking crazy.' Ah, latest news, the customer has thrown up," one of them reported.
"Accountant, the customer bought six bushels of millet, two bushels of wheat, two pounds of pork, and three ounces of unlicensed salt from the eastern market of Luting on June 18th, spending a total of 127 coins."
"Local authority, there's property available in the eastern market's vegetable valley. The family is wealthy, with an only daughter, Gu Yingchun, who is quite attractive. She has expressed interest in having the customer as a live-in son-in-law. She asked the innkeeper to help propose three times, all of which were politely declined. The customer stated that he has no immediate plans to start a family or a career. Gu Yingchun, extremely upset, once secretly went to find the customer at the inn, but he avoided her..."
"Teacher, three months ago, a merchant from Dongying stayed at the inn and tipped Wang three coins. Wang was overjoyed and wanted to let the customer know to also seek a reward, but the customer said: 'These Dongying folks, petty courtesies without true morality, human faces without human hearts,' and advised Wang not to be deceived by appearances. Wang, suspecting the customer's jealousy over the tip, spread the word in the neighborhood..."
As Shen Fa listened to these reports from behind him, the image of Yang Ge began to become clearer in his mind.