I can push my cultivation progress to the end

"Doctor Zhao, it's time to apply the medicine," Li Hai said to an old doctor who was standing guard nearby. "Otherwise, Zhou Hu will die in a little while."

"Yes, I understand, Hero Li," Doctor Zhao nodded in response. Immediately, he quickly took out the various medicines he had prepared and began to carefully apply them to Zhou Hu, who was panting heavily with a deathly gray face.

After applying the medicine, Li Hai began the slow slicing again, and the people below the stage cheered and scrambled once more.

Thus, time slowly passed.

This slow slicing led by Li Hai continued until noon before it officially ended.

During this time, medicine was applied dozens, even hundreds of times.

Until the very end, Zhou Hu was even sliced by Li Hai into a living skeleton, a skeleton wrapped in wriggling internal organs, constantly crying out in misery.

By the time he truly breathed his last, Zhou Hu had endured a full one thousand six hundred and sixty-six cuts.

As for why it wasn't three thousand six hundred cuts…

Unfortunately, Li Hai didn't have that much patience, and the human body is a fragile mass of living flesh filled with dense blood vessels, not a hard block of iron.

Especially since Zhou Hu was very weak after being defeated by Li Hai, his foundation shattered and his cultivation level destroyed, making it even harder for him to withstand such horrifying torture.

Even in the later stages of the slow slicing, even though Li Hai had tried his best to avoid his arteries, veins, major blood vessels, and vital points.

And even though there was more than one doctor carefully attending to Zhou Hu, they still couldn't stop the arrival of death. In the end, he died in despair from the near-hellish pain.

Li Hai threw his skeleton to the people below the stage, who frantically snatched it up and tore it into more than a hundred pieces, leaving him without a complete corpse.

After this, Li Hai didn't stay for even a moment. He turned around and strode into the air, leaving under the infinitely respectful gazes of the people of Niujiao Town.

At the same time, news of Li Hai's fierce appearance and outstanding martial arts, especially his earth-shattering feat of single-handedly annihilating thousands of wolf bandits and brigands, began to spread rapidly from Niujiao Town to the entire Qiulong Mountain area.

Thus, nicknames such as 'Heavenly Slaughter Star,' 'Worldly Demon Star,' 'Blood Double Whip,' 'Li the Human Butcher,' and 'Li the Savior' were passed from the mouths of Niujiao Town residents to many people's ears, all without Li Hai's knowledge.

…

In Chenjiabao's Shixi Town, six hundred miles away from Niujiao Town, there was an ancient garden called Ruizhao Garden.

Although this not-so-large garden had been located here for decades, the locals did not know the owner's name or origin.

They only knew that every midnight, carriages with windows on both sides completely covered with thick black silk would arrive at the garden. At that time, the garden's tightly closed gate would quickly open to welcome the carriages inside.

These mysterious carriages would leave the garden at dawn, quickly heading out of Shixi Town.

Almost no one knew what was inside these carriages. Only a few late-night revelers had vaguely heard the sounds of children crying inside when they happened to pass by these vehicles.

If someone could enter this half-acre garden, avoid the garden's guards, and walk along the winding corridors to the center, they would find a well about ten feet wide.

If they tied a rope and went down to the bottom of this well, they would find a wooden door on the side, close to the water surface. Behind this wooden door lay the garden's true secret.

If someone opened this wooden door and walked inside, they would find a winding and dark path.

Along this path, every few feet on the left and right stone walls was a prison cell surrounded by simple iron bars, and each of these prison cells held five or six young children.

They were all squeezed together on a tattered straw mat, their clothes ragged, their eyes empty, and each of them had been whipped, like slaves.

Yes, this was a human trafficking den. These children had all been abducted, deceived, stolen, or robbed.

The human traffickers who had abducted them were in a spacious and bright chamber at the end of the tunnel that connected all the prisons.

And the leader of these human traffickers was the owner of Ruizhao Garden—Zhou Yugen.

What the guards of the Zhou family mansion in Niujiao Town had mentioned about Zhou Yugen's business outside was precisely human trafficking.

"The grandson abuses innocent women, the son is a bandit leader, and the grandfather traffics in people. This family is really… tsk, tsk, tsk~"

Next to the well in the center of Ruizhao Garden, Li Hai shook his head and sneered coldly, "They've done every evil deed imaginable, they deserve to die!"

After saying that, his figure blurred and turned into a pale ghost shadow, flying into the well.

Before long, bursts of terrifying sounds of flesh tearing and continuous, shrill screams came from the well.

That night, more than a dozen wooden stakes suddenly appeared at the entrance of Ruizhao Garden, deeply inserted into the ground. Each stake had a trembling, wailing, dying person impaled on it.

These people were clearly pierced through their bodies by the stakes, but they didn't die quickly. Instead, they cried and screamed until dawn before they completely breathed their last, scaring the surrounding neighbors into staying awake all night.

In addition, the militia camp in Shixi Town also had a strange incident that night.

More than two hundred weak young children appeared in the camp, along with a thick stack of silver notes, an extremely thick envelope, and a clear palm print imprinted on the ground, of unknown depth.

The Chenjiabao Lord, who rushed over after hearing the news, was both shocked and suspicious. He immediately opened the envelope.

Then he discovered that it was full of evidence of Ruizhao Garden's human trafficking, as well as a roster recording the addresses of those children's families, and a folded, thin letter.

The shocked Chen Fort Lord then opened the letter.

Then he saw that the letter clearly stated… that the stack of silver notes must be used on those children. If anyone dared to misappropriate or embezzle it, then the palm print on the ground would next be imprinted on his forehead.

As for the signature on the letter…

Li Hai.

"Li Hai…"

The Chen Fort Lord put down the letter and murmured, "What kind of sacred being is he?"

"Fort Lord, the depth of that palm print has already… already been measured," the militia captain hurriedly ran to the Chen Fort Lord to report.

"How deep is it?" The Chen Fort Lord took a breath and slowly asked.

The militia captain swallowed and said in a trembling voice, "It's, it's… thirty feet deep."

*Plop!*

The Chen Fort Lord was so frightened that he fell to the ground on the spot, his face full of shock.