Oh no! My grandmother made me shoulder the responsibility for eight households!

Chapter 225 The Complete Cleansing

East of the border.

The morning mist had not yet completely dissipated, and dew clung to the blades of grass.

Zhou Tong squinted and said to the tall, thin man next to him:

"Sixth Brother, you're here!"

As the words fell, several black dots on the gray dirt road grew clearer and clearer as they approached.

"Four, no, five... there are more to come," the sixth brother snorted.

"You little rascal, you run fast, don't you?"

Behind the two men, a thousand elite soldiers remained completely silent.

The bow is nocked, and the arrowhead is gradually glowing.

"General!" A younger captain leaned over and whispered.

"Are they all from the Cui family?"

"That old fox Cui Yuanming, does he really think the Prince is a pushover?" Zhou Tong sneered.

"The first batch of cicadas escaped by shedding their shells, and this batch is his grand-nephews and grand-nieces. They thought they could get away with it by splitting up."

The sound of the carriage wheels grew louder and louder.

The driver of the lead car was a man in his forties. He was stunned for a moment when he saw the dark mass in front of him from a distance.

When he realized that it was clearly an army formation, his face turned pale instantly.

"Turn around! Turn around now!"

Screams from the women and cries from the children could be heard from inside the car.

The driver pulled on the reins desperately, but the carriages behind squeezed in, and the official road was narrow, so everything became a mess.

Zhou Tong remained expressionless and said calmly:

"Release the arrows."

Two words, light and airy.

The next second, the sound of the bowstring vibrating was like tearing a thousand pieces of cloth at the same time.

Arrows rained down into the sky, a dark mass that momentarily obscured the newly risen sun.

"Whoosh—Pfft!"

The first arrow pierced the eye socket of the lead horse, which reared up with a pitiful neigh, throwing the driver off.

Immediately afterwards, arrows rained down like a storm, making the carriage walls rattle and splinter.

"Help--!"

"mother--!"

The people inside the car tried to climb out, but as soon as they poked their heads out, they were pinned to the door frame by arrows.

A teenager rolled out of the car window, and after running a few steps, he was shot in the back with an arrow, fell to the ground with a thud, twitched a couple of times, and then stopped moving.

Zhou Tong looked on expressionlessly.

About twenty breaths later, he raised his hand.

The sound of the bowstring abruptly stopped.

The air was filled with the smells of blood and dust, and faint sobs emanating from a car that wasn't quite dead yet.

Zhou Tong slowly walked over, carrying his gun.

The tip of the gun pierced the curtain of the first car.

There were five or six corpses lying haphazardly inside, men and women, dressed in fine silk, now completely soaked in blood.

A woman in a bright green dress had three arrows stuck in her chest, her eyes were still open, and she was clutching a brocade pouch tightly in her hand.

"Search," Zhou Tong said.

The Tiger Warriors stepped forward and dragged the corpses out one by one, lining them up by the roadside.

The sixth man squatted down and began to examine each item one by one.

"This is Cui Yuanming's eldest son, named Cui Wenhuan," the sixth brother said, pointing to a young man in his early twenties.

"This one is Cui Yuanming's cousin's daughter. She married the prefect of Longxi as his second wife," the sixth man said, turning over another woman.

"At least half of the corrupt silver embezzled by the prefect flowed back to the Cui family."

Zhou Tong nodded, his gaze sweeping over the pale, blood-stained faces.

"You're all convinced?"

"There's no mistake, we've checked the portrait three times."

"Bury it."

The Tiger Army began digging pits to bury people, and the carriages were pushed into deep ditches by the roadside and doused with kerosene.

Zhou Tong casually swept a wisp of true essence across the area.

"boom--"

Flames rose, and black smoke billowed upwards, twisting into a thick pillar in the morning sky.

"Boss," the sixth brother leaned closer and whispered, "the rest of the Cui family..."

"Someone's cleaning up." Zhou Tong turned around, no longer looking at the firelight. "Our work is done, let's go back to camp."

……

Donghai Wharf.

A dozen or so members of the Cui family disguised themselves under the cover of their guards.

They paid a huge price to bribe their way through Dongli, hoping to escape to Zhongzhou.

They were all direct descendants of other branches of the Cui family and were not among the first batch of people evacuated by the Cui family.

Suddenly, three figures appeared ahead.

The leader was a young man dressed in ordinary cloth clothes, but his eyes were as sharp as an eagle's.

"The Cui family?" the young man asked.

The head of the guards gritted his teeth: "Who are you? Why are you blocking my way?"

"The Unruly Guard, the Eastern Li Spy, Li Qi," the young man said calmly.

"By order of the commander-in-chief, intercept and kill the remaining members of the Cui family."

The guard leader's expression changed: "We're just passing through—"

"Passing through?" Li Qi laughed. "Taking the direct descendants of the Cui family and a large sum of money to escape to Zhongzhou, is that what you call passing through?"

He waved his hand, and the two people behind him attacked simultaneously.

Three breaths later, all the guards collapsed to the ground.

The dozen or so members of the Cui family were trembling with fear and knelt down begging for mercy.

Li Qi walked up to them and sighed:

"The commander-in-chief has ordered that none of the direct descendants of the Cui family be spared."

A flash of light, and a head fell to the ground.

Li Qi sheathed his sword and said to the two people behind him:

"Clean up the scene, take away the valuables, and bury the body."

"Yes."

The three worked swiftly, quickly finished their task, and disappeared into the dense forest.

It was as if nothing had happened.

……

At the same time.

Jiangning County, one of the twelve counties south of the Yangtze River.

Seventy-year-old Uncle Cui sat on a grand chair in the ancestral hall, holding a string of Buddhist prayer beads in his hand, and muttering incantations with his eyes closed.

Outside the ancestral hall, the sounds of crying, running, and clashing weapons grew closer and closer.

"Fourth Uncle! Fourth Uncle! They've broken in!" A young man tumbled in, his clothes covered in blood.

Fourth Uncle opened his eyes, his cloudy pupils staring at the ancestral tablets.

"What's the panic?" he said slowly. "The Cui family has stood for a thousand years; what storms haven't we weathered..."

Before he could finish speaking, the door to the ancestral hall was kicked open.

Several men dressed in black stood at the doorway, each carrying a blood-dripping knife.

The leader was a woman in her thirties, with an ordinary face like any other vegetable vendor in the market.

"Cui Yuannian?" the woman asked.

Fourth Uncle straightened his back: "It is indeed I. Who are you, daring to trespass into the Cui Clan Ancestral Hall?"

The woman smiled, didn't answer, but turned to her companion and said:

"Let me verify. Cui Yuannian was the head of the fourth branch of the Cui family. He passed the imperial examination forty-seven years ago and served as the prefectural judge of Jiangning Prefecture."

During his tenure, he embezzled 800,000 taels of silver allocated by the imperial court under the pretext of repairing the dike, which led to the dike breach the following year, drowning more than 300 people.

He later spent money to bribe his way into a sinecure and retired peacefully.

With each word she spoke, Fourth Uncle's face paled a little more.

"You, you are...?"

"A rogue guard, a secret agent from Jiangnan, ranked thirteenth," the woman said as she entered the ancestral hall, her gaze sweeping over the densely packed memorial tablets.

"By order of the commander-in-chief, purge the Cui family."

"Purge?" Fourth Uncle laughed bitterly. "My Cui family has hundreds of thousands of members, spread across the nine provinces of Dayan. You dare—"

"What's there to be afraid of?" the woman sneered.

"What good are a million men if you have offended the Lord?"

Having said that, he ignored the old man and listened to the sounds outside.

The screams had become sporadic and were almost inaudible.

"That's about it," the woman said.

Fourth Uncle suddenly stood up and threw the Buddhist prayer beads on the ground:

"I'll fight you to the death!"

A flash of light appeared.

The old man clutched his throat, stumbled back a few steps, and crashed into the offering table, scattering incense burners and candlesticks all over the floor.

He stared wide-eyed at the ancestral tablets, then slowly slid to the ground.

The woman bent down and picked up the broken Buddhist prayer beads.

"One hundred and eight beads," she counted, then smiled.

"Perfect, the Cui family has four branches, with 108 main culprits."

She tucked the Buddhist prayer beads into her bosom.

"That's it for now. Next family, the Cui family of Luling."

The men in black retreated silently, just as they had arrived.

Inside the ancestral hall, only a mess remained, along with blood that was gradually congealing.

On the incense table, the plaque at the highest point that read "Passing Down Poetry and Etiquette in the Family" was splattered with a string of bloodstains, which looked glaring in the candlelight.

……

In Suzhou, the ancestral home of the Cui family has been reduced to ruins.

Yuan Tiangang stood in the center of the ruins, holding a pen in one hand and a roster in the other, listening to the reports from various rogue guards while crossing them out with his pen.

"East of the border..."

"Donghai Wharf..."

"The Cui family of Jiangning..."

"The Cui family of Luling..."

"The Cui family of Nanyang..."

"..."

Each time he received a message, Yuan Tiangang would cross it out with his pen.

At this point, most of the roster had been crossed out.

"Cui Yuanming," Yuan Tiangang said calmly, looking at the bound Cui Yuanming.

"You think sending them to Zhongzhou will make them safe?"

Cui Yuanming was already out of his mind and seemed not to have heard Yuan Tiangang's words.

But tears of blood streamed down his face.