A Prophet - Chapter 3 (Part 6)
Chapter 6 - Iron Spike Execution
"Immortal Hands" prepared to execute the kill. Following established custom, gang executions were usually handled by the First Boss's faction, but "Immortal Hands" was so eager to distinguish himself and show off that he petitioned Grandfather to let him handle it personally! "Immortal Hands" laid out his analysis to Grandfather: this execution would be unlike any before—it had to be bizarre, unfathomable, seamless, and completely silent, making it look as though an evil spirit had quietly reaped the victim's soul, pulling off an eternal and untraceable masterpiece of deception! How should such a man be killed? A gunshot was entirely out of the question because it left a bullet hole; stabbing him to death with a blade left a blade wound; strangling him with a rope left ligature marks; poisoning him would be revealed by silver needles! The victim had to pass away peacefully, bearing absolutely no external trauma or poison damage. Grandfather asked, "Then how do we do it?"
"Immortal Hands" replied, "An iron spike!" When he mentioned this method, it stunned even Grandfather. The specific procedure went like this: taking a foot-long iron rod roughly the thickness of a little finger, they would sharpen one end to a fine point and heat the entire rod over a furnace until it glowed glowing red. Then, they would pry open the victim's buttocks, use iron tongs to grip the white-hot iron rod, and drive it straight up through the anus. The iron rod would pass smoothly into the rectum, pierce the energy center of the lower dantian, puncture the winding intestinal loops, and push all the way into the stomach until the entire rod was completely buried inside the rear. Finally, using an awl, they would push it in a fraction deeper. At that moment, the person prying the buttocks apart would let go, causing the flesh to snap back and contract slightly, rendering the entire iron rod completely invisible from the outside. This method of murder had appeared only once before during the Song Dynasty, a case famously solved by Bao Zheng. The technique was simply too covert and bizarre! Just imagine, if one were to shove an unheated iron rod straight up there, it would instantly cause a gush of blood and fecal matter, and it would be exceedingly difficult to force in. A red-hot iron rod, however, was a different story entirely; heated to over 700 degrees Celsius, entering the human body meant it would instantly scorch and sear the intestinal walls and internal tissue, preventing a single drop of blood from escaping. Where flesh met metal, the high temperatures melted away all resistance, allowing the iron rod to glide effortlessly straight inside. From the outside, the victim bore no wounds whatsoever, yet the interior was thoroughly cooked. In ancient times, autopsy techniques were not backed by modern anatomy, making it exceedingly difficult even for renowned constables and county magistrates to detect the trick. That historical case from the Song Dynasty involved an adulterous wife murdering her husband; due to her nervousness, she hadn't pushed the iron rod deep enough and failed to seal the aperture properly, forcing Lord Bao Zheng to rack his brains for days before finally uncovering the anomaly hidden within those buttocks. Now, amidst the chaos of war, who would exhaust their wits helping to investigate the mysterious death of a household servant? Naturally, executing someone with the iron spike method required the absolute prerequisite that the target was either completely unconscious, knocked out by soul-stupefying powder, or blind drunk—otherwise, shoving an iron rod directly up a conscious man's rear would cause enough agony to make him bite off his own tongue! After all, this operation wasn't something "Immortal Hands" could pull off entirely alone.
Fearing his hands might slip, Grandfather dispatched several truly skilled martial artists from the faction to infiltrate the Li estate under cover of night. After blowing soul-stupefying powder into the room, they rolled one of the servants up in a quilt and carried him out. While he remained unconscious, two errand boys grabbed his buttocks, pulling them apart, while "Immortal Hands" personally drove the red-hot iron rod inside before returning the corpse to the Li residence. An innocent man died just like that, without a whisper. The following day, as the sun climbed high into the sky, the Li household erupted in chaos upon waking. They searched everywhere and reported the case to the authorities. Several local bailiffs came by, loitered around for half a day without making heads or tails of it, and finally concluded that it was "heart disease"—what modern people call a sudden heart attack! But Li Qiming did not see it that way. Seeing the servant's pale face and completely unblemished body, he instinctively connected it to the vengeful ghost exacting its debt of blood that "Immortal Hands" had warned him about. He immediately dispatched men to invite "Immortal Hands" back. Thus, everything proceeded smoothly according to the trap laid by "Immortal Hands": Li Qiming spent his entire fortune on grand Daoist rituals and funding the construction of the Zhang family ancestral hall. Zhang Ergou was ecstatic, savoring a wave of sheer, unadulterated delight. Little did he know that this was the final moment of triumph in his life, and his downfall was fast approaching. The moment he handed over his meager family savings to lavishly reward "Immortal Hands," the time had come for "Immortal Hands" to turn on him and deliver the fatal blow! Why did they have to do this? To prevent the trap from leaking. In a double-sided scam of this scale, if the two families ever confronted each other one day, or if Ergou got sloshed on alcohol one night like his grandfather and blabbed, everything would be ruined.
Therefore, "Immortal Hands" had to silence him permanently. The initial plan was to orchestrate a fire and burn the entire household to ashes, but Grandfather vetoed it. In the end, the Second Boss suggested, "Don't kill them—turn them into mutes! Mutes can't talk!" "Immortal Hands" countered, "They can't speak, but they can still write." The Second Boss replied, "Then turn them into fools!" After deep and repeated deliberation, Grandfather declared, "Spare the children; do not harm the children." Thus, just as the Ergou family's newly built ancestral hall was completed, the household happily hosted a banquet for "Immortal Hands." "Immortal Hands" attended bearing the "Carefree Powder," a secret poison concocted by the Fourth Boss using oleander sap and pufferfish toxin. This poison attacked the human brain; once ingested, the toxins were absorbed through the oral cavity and digestive tract, triggering initial bouts of dizziness. Most people would simply attribute this daily grogginess to physical exhaustion, but within half a month, the toxin would spread completely, causing the cerebrum and cerebellum to atrophy simultaneously, leaving the victim permanently demented. After the Ergou family members lost their minds, the Li family even asked "Immortal Hands" if this was divine retribution. "Immortal Hands" replied, "Of course! You spent money to buy your life, but they didn't. Furthermore, they had also dabbled in malice against your family. Whoever commits evil must pay for it themselves—they incurred the wrath of Heaven!" At that, the Li family felt a great burden lift from their hearts. Though they had initially felt uneasy about spending a fortune to build an ancestral hall for their sworn enemies, seeing the Zhang family ruined and reduced to idiocy thoroughly extinguished the embers of their lingering hatred.
Using the art of "flying paper," "Immortal Hands" successfully resolved the three-generation feud between the two families, stuffing the faction's coffers with boundless wealth while both feuding clans fell victim to the swindlers after deploying every venomous trick in their arsenals. "Immortal Hands" could have used this triumph to catapult himself to instant fame and cement his position as the Seventh Boss, but man's plans pale before Heaven's will. In his own words, it was "divine retribution"—he lost his mind and died a few days later. Although Grandfather diagnosed his affliction as rabies, the exact source of the infection remained a mystery. It wasn't until the 1980s, after the founding of the People's Republic, when my son and daughter started junior high school, that I finally learned the truth. When they brought home a fresh batch of schoolbooks at the start of the term and proudly showed them to me, I read in their biology textbook that bats also carry the rabies virus, albeit with an extremely low probability—0.5 percent. And yet, "Immortal Hands" had managed to hit that exact probability; when Heaven decrees your destruction, there is simply no escape. The trap had been executed with flawless perfection, yet it carried a deeply tragic undertone.
Once it was all over, Grandfather did not hold a celebration banquet as he usually did. Instead, he locked himself in his room for a long time; no one knew what was running through his mind. Was he feeling remorse? Or was he pondering how to rearticulate his philosophy of "acting on behalf of Heaven" to his brothers? In all his years, he had never taken an innocent life, but this time he had broken his own code. Was it about money? Although business had grown difficult over the past two years, Grandfather had spent more than two decades at the helm of the "Muzi Lian" faction, meticulously planning and seizing every opportunity to swindle, executing over a thousand scams both large and small across the eastern, southern, western, and northern branches. Even if we had reserves, as long as we practiced thrift, surviving for three to five years would not have been an issue. What followed left the various gang bosses even more bewildered, and even bred resentment among the errand boys: during a newly convened grand assembly, Grandfather gave away a vast quantity of the faction's gold and silver unconditionally to the other branches. The bosses simply could not fathom why Grandfather was squandering the faction's hard-earned wealth to bail out other branches, leaving their own flesh-and-blood brothers in such dire straits! Wouldn't putting on a superficial show with a token amount of silver have sufficed? Grandfather declared, "When you all joined the faction, you took sacred oaths. How could you forget them the moment a crisis arose? Though we belong to different branches, we all share the same roots in the Hong League and are descendants of the Jiang Xiang faction—we are brothers!"
His words silenced everyone into quiet submission. Grandfather was entirely right; when each of them drank the rooster-blood wine during their initiation, they had passionately shouted: "Tonight we forge an alliance under heaven, all lands draw upon the surname Hong; with golden needles we draw blood to swear a single oath, brothers bound as one in heart and accord!" Through the thrilling and perilous trials of the past, they had relied on those solemn vows to unite, support, and comfort one another. True as Grandfather's words were, given his habitual caution of always leaving himself a fallback plan, it still felt fundamentally wrong. Emptying his own branch's coffers to rescue the others—wasn't he afraid of chilling the hearts of his loyal subordinates? Mortals were, after all, mere mortals; their vision could never match the distant horizon of Grandfather's foresight. Subsequent events proved that Grandfather was playing a massive, long-term game. Grandfather aspired to become the supreme "Grand Master" of the entire nation, and the sole "Grand Master" at that! That was the ultimate truth! For decades, Grandfather had long recognized the fatal flaw of the Jiang Xiang faction: the four major branches operated as independent fiefdoms. Although an annual grand assembly was held and compromises were struck, the entire Jiang Xiang faction lacked a unified leadership and strong executive power, which was precisely why it could never achieve true greatness! With the nation currently teetering in the storm, Grandfather was busy buying people's hearts. If he wanted to bring the entire Jiang Xiang faction under his absolute command, he could not afford to leave out a single swindler. Walking over piles of gleaming silver and the blood of wrongfully slain ghosts, Grandfather was determined to ascend to the highest peak of the Jiang Xiang faction!