Then, they saw Li Mohu’s head slowly sliding off his neck and finally falling onto the hard ground with a dull thud.
Dead, the head of the embezzler of the consolatory fund had fallen.
Li Mohu, the maternal uncle of the Ninth Prince of the Da Li Dynasty and a royal relative, had been personally beheaded by his nephew, the Ninth Prince.
A dead silence fell over the scene.
"Excellent!" someone shouted loudly.
A sudden roar of cheers erupted; at that moment, Rufeng’s popularity had reached its peak.
"Bring them up!" Rufeng commanded loudly again.
Soon, a group of twenty people were brought up by the soldiers, kneeling down in front of the platform in a straight line facing the crowd below.
"It’s a misunderstanding!"
"Spare me, Your Highness, spare me!"
"We were forced, forced!"
"Please, Your Highness, spare us! It was the gang leader’s order; we had no choice!"
These people cried out loudly, weeping bitterly.
They were members of the Qing Gang, also the ones who went to the villages of the fallen soldiers’ families to collect the consolation money.
There were many of them, indeed not just a few, reaching into the thousands.
Yes, thousands of them.
These thousands of people had already been brought and held in the dungeon behind the execution platform.
The inhabitants of the Imperial City were either wealthy or noble, but the common folk were more numerous.
These members of the Qing Gang naturally didn’t dare target the wealthy or noble, so they mostly extorted from the common people.
They were protected by the third son of the Secretary, treating the villages around the Imperial City with utter impunity.
Thus, not a single one was undeserving of death.
Not to mention, they did not hesitate to use force when collecting the consolation money.
However, with repeated instructions from Lord Li Mohu not to kill or violate women, they may have gone too far, but there were plenty of cases where they disabled those who resisted.
Rufeng was not planning to spare these thousand people; he intended to kill them all!
"These people are members of the Qing Gang who preyed on the common people with impunity and also collected consolation money,"
"It’s hard to imagine that such people existed within the Imperial City. Tell me, do they deserve to die?" Rufeng looked around and shouted loudly.
"That beast deserves to die, it was him, it was he who broke my nephew’s mother’s leg," a clan elder from the front pointed at one of the people above and shouted loudly.
"Kill, they should be killed!"
The people from the elder’s region shouted with extreme emotion.
"It’s him, Wang Ergou, he’s the one who broke my son’s leg."
"My poor daughter-in-law was taken away by a minor Qing Gang leader and was sent back the next day as a corpse. My son went to argue the next day and was beaten to death and sent back."
"They should be killed, all Qing Gang members should be killed!"
The onlooking civilians also erupted in a terrifying chorus of cries for execution.
It was clear that the Qing Gang had accumulated too much resentment at the grassroots level.
It wasn’t that no one had reported them to the authorities, but it was futile; they just pinned the crimes on a few street thugs.
Then those who reported them were either disabled or killed on the second attempt.
Seeing these Qing Gang members being held on the execution platform, how could they not feel exhilarated and cry out for their deaths?
With a swing of his saber, Rufeng sent a streak of bloody aura across the necks of a group of Qing Gang members.
Soon, heads began to tumble from the execution platform and blood sprayed out, as if a rain of blood had started below.
"Bring them up!" Rufeng shouted again.
Another group of twenty Qing Gang members was brought forth.
The guards stepped forward, kicked the headless corpses off the platform, then broke the legs of the Qing Gang members, forcing them to kneel on the ground facing the people.
After completing these actions, the guards turned and walked down.
Once again, Rufeng swung his saber, and more heads rolled down, blood pooling on the ground.
Then came the third batch, the fourth batch...
Rufeng was like a machine, expressionless, continuously beheading one after another.
There was no pause, no lingering, just continuously chopping.
Rufeng had beheaded the last batch of people.
The corpses below had piled up level with the execution platform, and that was after several clearings.
Otherwise, they could not have fit them all.
Many spectators had left.
It wasn’t that they didn’t want to watch, but they couldn’t bear it anymore; the sickening smell of blood and the visual impact made many people unable to endure.
Some vomited, some fainted, but even so, the surroundings were still packed with people.
Old spectators left, new ones arrived, the crowd of onlookers was even larger than before.
Most of the secretly watching dignitaries had also left, as they too couldn’t bear the sight.
Two hours of beheadings had also left Rufeng feeling somewhat fatigued. He had felt nauseous at the beginning, but now that was gone, replaced by numbness.
[Your Insane Comprehension has led you to understand the Blood Sea Divine Saber after beheading a thousand people quickly.]
[Your Insane Comprehension has led you to understand the spiritual secret technique: Corpse Mountain Blood Sea.]
These two notifications surprised Rufeng.
The Blood Sea Divine Saber was a powerful saber technique; the stronger the killing intent, the more powerful the strike. Similar to the Killing Fist, it attacked with killing intent but was even more ruthless and brutal.
As for Corpse Mountain Blood Sea, it was a spiritual secret technique that, once used, could plunge people into immense fear, letting them experience intense killing intent and fierce energy.