Wei Taiping brought seven or eight household servants to Sanyang Village. The village headman hastily sent his wife to tell Old Man Jiang to take his grandson and hide outside, while he himself stepped forward with a fawning smile and said, "Young Master Wei, what brings you to our humble village for an outing?"
Wei Taiping replied impatiently, "Where is the great plum tree in your village? Take me to see it..."
*The great plum tree again,* the village headman lamented inwardly. *That tree is nothing but a curse!*
Though he grumbled in his heart, his feet were obedient enough. He dutifully led the men of the Wei clan toward the great plum tree behind the village. The villagers who had just returned from the town followed along in high spirits, eager to watch the excitement.
The moment he laid eyes on the enormous plum tree, Wei Taiping's eyes lit up. Its gnarled, robust boughs twisted like coiled dragons, carrying an archaic, vigorous beauty that supported a canopy as vast as a carriage parasol. The trunk was nearly two arm spans around, covered in the deep scars of passing years. Judging by the limbs alone, pitch-black as though cast from pig iron and seemingly dead long ago, it stretched upward with the heavy weight of history.
Yet at the very tips of those boughs, lush, emerald life burst forth abruptly.
Dainty, charming plums hung nestled among the greenery, their tempting pale yellow enough to make one's mouth water.
Wei Taiping stepped forward and patted the pitch-black trunk. True to appearances, the wood felt as heavy and solid as iron. He gripped a branch as thick as a child's arm and channeled true qi to bear down on it, but the plum branch only bent slightly. The wood was clearly extraordinarily tough—not the unyielding hardness that deflected blades and axes, but the resilient tensile strength capable of withstanding crushing weights.
As he tentatively poured his true qi into the trunk of the great plum tree, he immediately sensed a profound and vigorous vitality, faintly infused with a persistent, frigid yin chill.
*It truly was tempered by baleful qi... Why didn't I discover such prime spiritual material sooner!* Wei Taiping felt a pang of regret.
Sanyang Village sat right next to Jiaobu Town, and this great plum tree had grown for a century. Because of its quaint, bizarre shape, and because it had once poisoned someone to death, it had long enjoyed a considerable reputation. Wei Taiping had heard of it before, and now he only blamed himself: why had he never thought to come have a look after hearing about those strange occurrences? If he had visited earlier, he might have already refined this plum tree into a magical implement.
"A fine tree... Truly a fine tree!"
Wei Taiping praised it endlessly. Turning back to his household servants, he barked, "Chop it down for me!"
Before the village headman could say a word, the other village elders grew frantic at the order and rushed forward to stop them. "Young Master Wei, you cannot cut it down... This is our village's fengshui tree! The immortal said so himself—if it is felled, great calamity will surely follow! Previously, the Shi family's boy tried to chop down this tree, and he is still crippled in one leg to this day!"
"A tree my Wei clan wants to chop down—and you dare stand in the way?" Wei Taiping swept a cold, sneering gaze across the assembled villagers.
Glowered at by a young master of the Wei family whose name resounded throughout Jiaobu Town, the villagers felt their courage falter. The Shi family lad had hobbled over on crutches as well; seeing this, he shrank back in fear. Seeing that he had intimidated the villagers, Wei Taiping sneered, "Chop it down for this young master!"
Yet who would have thought that an elder who had gone to Jiaobu Town earlier and seen Daoist Zhen had recognized him as the jianghu charlatan who had previously stopped them from chopping down the tree? The elder had believed every word Daoist Zhen had uttered. The great plum tree's canopy spread like a carriage parasol, which meant an eminent person of noble rank would emerge from their village... And this elder's son was the only person in Sanyang Village who held an official examination degree. In the elder's mind, if this eminent person was not his son, who else could it be?
At this moment, the great plum tree was as precious to him as his very life. Seeing that Wei Taiping intended to fell it, he threw all caution to the wind.
Stepping forward to shield the plum tree, he cried, "You cannot cut it down! This is a fengshui tree! Cutting it down will ruin our fengshui!"
Seeing someone take the lead, the villagers also found their courage. Some joined in clamoring, "This is the fortune of our Sanyang Village, ordained by the immortals... How could you chop it down?!"
A few bolder villagers even came forward to grab hold of the servants...
The servants had their reservations and were kept from approaching the great plum tree. Made to look somewhat disgraced by a bunch of mud-legged bumpkins, Wei Taiping flew into a rage. He kicked the village elder standing before the tree flat on his face. The white-haired elder could only lie on the ground, groaning softly, leaving the villagers—who had always revered their elders—completely stunned.
Several hot-blooded young villagers instantly clenched their fists...
Seeing that he was losing control of the situation, Wei Taiping circulated his true qi and roared, "Beat them! These wretched peasants have lost their minds! Are you lot dead, or what?!"
At that roar, the servant thugs snapped back to their senses. Swinging the clubs and staves in their hands, they began thrashing wildly in all directions.
The headman knew that immortal was no true immortal and the plum tree was no good tree. He had originally intended to persuade the villagers to let them cut it down and be done with it. Little did he expect Wei Taiping to be so tyrannical, escalating matters beyond control in the blink of an eye.
After all, villagers were merely villagers, possessing nothing but reckless courage.
As for the Wei clan's servants, though they were merely rough hirelings and not martial artists who fought in battle or guarded merchant ships, the martial arts they had practiced were more than enough to knock these villagers down with ease. Before long, villagers lay strewn across the ground, many of them severely injured, while the women and children nearby collapsed into weeping heaps.
These thugs showed no restraint; many were truly beating people within an inch of their lives. More than a few stomped mercilessly on the heads of fallen villagers...
Some who had merely mingled in the crowd to watch the spectacle were beaten until they lay motionless without a sound!
With injuries like these, even if no one died, some were maimed for life. A few servants who had taken a couple of blows grew vicious; they kicked directly at a villager's diaphragm between the chest and abdomen. The man immediately coughed up a spray of pink, frothy blood. Anyone with experience knew at a glance that his lungs and viscera had been injured. Even if he survived, he could never dream of doing heavy labor again!
These men were the pillars of their households, with entire families depending on them for their livelihood.
For men who earned their living with their faces to the yellow soil and their backs to the sky, breaking their backs to survive, losing the ability to do heavy labor and turning from prime breadwinners into invalids bound to medicine jars was arguably worse than death for a family.
How could these villagers have imagined that simply stepping forward to intercede would invite such vicious brutality?
Summoning his courage, the village headman stepped forward, grabbed Wei Taiping, and pleaded, "Young Master, stop the beating! If you keep beating them, people will die! It's just a tree! If you want it, take it!"
Wei Taiping merely sneered. Only then did he bark an order: "Everyone, stop!"
The servants gradually dispersed. Wei Taiping had someone take out three taels of silver and toss it onto the ground. One thug called out to the villagers groaning and wailing across the dirt, "The young master takes pity on you! Take this silver to treat your wounds! Don't be so blind and tactless next time! Well? Aren't you going to thank the young master for his benevolence?"
The villagers dared only cast covert glances of hatred at them...
Wei Taiping had an axe brought to him. Channelling his true qi, he struck a heavy blow into the base of the great plum tree. Tough as the trunk was, it was not impervious to axes after all; with that single chop, a gash two hand-spans wide split open.
The villagers, who had been staring with expectant eyes, found that the scene they hoped for did not occur. The crippled Shi family lad muttered in dazed disbelief, "Impossible... Why are his legs fine?"
The village headman smiled bitterly. "He is an immortal's disciple!"
As the axe bit deeper and deeper, the injured villagers of Sanyang Village were helped aside one by one. With a thunderous roar, the great plum tree crashed to the ground. Even villagers who originally had no attachment to the tree found their eyes reddening. Perhaps from the grief of being trampled upon, or perhaps from the ache of their battered bodies, tears flowed silently with that thunderous crash.
Chapter 57