951 Gold Ingots (1/2)

News of selecting the Lord of Jade City through a kung fu competition finally went public. Though it hadn't been a secret for a long time, it still aroused animated discussions among the residents of Jade City. They argued about the pros and cons again and again. The wise ones made one prophecy after another, which became the cause of a series of bets.

As the news spread, the name of the Central Plainsman, Pang Jing, became known to a lot of people. Given all that he had done during the past few days, Jade City gave him a nickname that could be interpreted in multiple ways – Commander-In-Chief of Wind. Interpreted in a favorable light, this nickname suggested that he always did things quickly, and that he was energetic. The other meaning was that the Central Plains had sent a lunatic here to pacify the Western Regions.

Pang Jing indeed disliked doing things by the book. He might receive an important person in a haughty manner, and he also might go to the most remote alley to meet with a nobody who nobody had ever heard of. He might even go to the Four Noble Truths Temple on a whim at night, wait outside the outer gate until daybreak, and then return to the city before the amazed monks could arrive at the gate to welcome him.

Unexpectedly, after hearing that his nickname was ”the Commander-In-Chief of Wind,” Pang Jing liked it very much and offered a brand-new interpretation. ”I'm a wind, a strong wind, a wild wind, and I'll change every place I arrive at.”

Upon hearing this remark, the experienced merchants immediately became vigilant and started hiding their wealth, transferring it to their family. But overall, the residents of Jade City, who were fond of enjoying their life to the fullest, still liked this enthusiastic Central Plainsman. It was a pity that Pang Jing was not very interested in women, good wine, or gambling, which made a lot of people who wanted to fawn on him feel like there was nothing that they could do.

More and more intelligence reports piled onto Gu Shenwei's desk, and gradually, they all lost their meaning. The kind of person that the Commander-In-Chief of Wind really was was becoming vague due to his bizarre, contradictory deeds.

Zhong Heng, who had just been appointed to the position of Commandant of the Department of Guards, was also a liaison. He had thought that this would be an easy task, but unexpectedly, Pang Jing valued him very much and summoned him on an almost daily basis. He even jokingly suggested that Zhong Heng should stay in the Governor's mansion to do office work.

Zhong Heng had no choice but to resign from the post of the Commandant of the Department of Guards so that he could concentrate on dealing with the Commander-In-Chief of Wind lest anything go wrong during the preparations for the kung fu competition.

Gu Shenwei decided to have Long Fanyun become the new Commandant of the Department of Guards.

Both surprised and nervous about this, Long Fanyun came to the Dragon King and expressed his own opinions. Though he was now paralyzed, he still retained all of the qualities of a Big Snow Mountain swordsman, so he didn't say any grateful words and instead directly stated his concerns. ”I've never tried any cases before, and I have no idea about how one should mediate disputes. There are even a lot of words that I don't know the meanings of. How am I supposed to convince the residents?”

”Red Bat will help you with the reading. As for trying the cases, just do whatever you think is right and just. There's no need to satisfy everybody. You're the chieftain of Canopy Peak, so just regard southern Jade City as another Canopy Peak with a slightly larger population.”

Southern Jade City was not the Big Snow Mountain. The personalities of the residents here were entirely different from that of the residents living in mountainous areas. Though they all preferred to settle disputes with violence, things were different in a trial. Everybody would indignantly express their own arguments, and then even immortals would have difficulties deciding which side was telling the truth.

Long Fanyun accepted the appointment and took office. On the first day, he was totally confused and disoriented by a couple of cases. He didn't even manage to figure out the most basic of facts. None of those cases were decided. Taking the undecided cases left by Zhong Heng into account, there were over thirty cases waiting for a decision in total.

After pondering it over for a full night, Long Fanyun thought of an idea.

The residents of Jade City were snobbish. In this city, because of mutual mistrust, there were very few disputes that concerned money. In most cases, the people who came to the Department of Guards to seek mediation were fights, usually because one side had taken one more saber blow than the other side, and thus they demanded that the latter pay the price.

The next morning, Long Fanyun summoned all of his swordsmen and Hu Shining's sabersmen, and then said to those litigants, ”Come here. Fight with my men. I'll decide in the winner's favor. The other side must apologize and pay the indemnity.”

This was a new and simple method of deciding cases. Parties of a couple of cases looked at each other and would immediately feel that it was unnecessary to do this. As the saying went, ”Out of blows, friendship grows.” They would rather find a place to drink than fight with the Dragon King's men, so they all turned around and left. The topic of their argument switched from their original disagreement to which tavern might still be open at this moment.

There were also some who remained unconvinced and were willing to have their cases decided via a fight. There were only four kung fu competitions, and then the rest of those people left. Afterwards, the four sabersmen who lost sat in a tavern like friends, hands on their bruised eyes, telling their curious listeners, ”Actually it was not that we couldn't defeat them. At that time, I thought carefully and realized that – what can I get even if I win? It's not worth it to win the case at the cost of offending the Dragon King. Thus, I might as well let this go for the sake of the Dragon King. It's not like there's really any deep hatred between us.”

As a result, the number of cases accepted by the Department of Guards in southern Jade City decreased quickly while the business of the taverns became much better than before.

But it was impossible to turn Jade City into a place free of murder overnight. Impulsive sabersmen still whipped out their weapons to settle disputes out of force of habit. Though Golden Roc Castle no longer provided killers for hire, and the Essence Pavilion had also closed shop, a lot of people were still eager to join this profession. And there had even been several open fights between factions that stemmed from people trying to prove that they were more suitable to be killers.

Hu Shining never expected that the killers he had worked so hard to train would one day bear the title ”Warriors of the Department of Guards,” and that their duties would switch from killing to stopping killing. But he didn't take a dislike to this kind of change. Instead, he tacitly cooperated with Long Fanyun. The former was responsible for patrolling streets while the latter did office work in the Department of Guards.

Gu Shenwei had Xu Xiaoyi join them and provide them with intelligence, which enabled Hu Shining to nip a couple of murders in the bud before they happened.

The killer training that those warriors of the Department of Guards received was not in vain at all. To implement the Dragon King's ban on killing, they killed people almost everyday, sending a clear message to the sabersmen both in and outside of the city: the Dragon King's ban on killing was not just empty talk, and the Dragon King was by no means a merciful local magistrate.

At the same time, Long Fanyun recruited a lot of sabersmen and assigned them to the Warriors Battalion, making them a part of the patrol.