Merchant of the Underworld

A trace of embarrassment flashed across Wu Ping's face, but he quickly covered it up.

He smiled at me and said that there was no other way. The victims must be gathered together to facilitate protection.

Of course I can understand his approach. What I'm afraid of is that if these people don't understand, there will be conflicts!

Sure enough, the man who just spoke dissatisfied and cursed: "Wang Qiang ran away yesterday, and you didn't care about it. Why are you holding on to us?"

It seems that they still don’t know the news that Wang Qiang is dead. I glanced at Wu Ping, and he frowned and said dissatisfied: "You don’t know what your own affairs are? At least if something happens in the hospital, someone will find out. At home... "

"We consider ourselves unlucky even if something happens to us at home. Who the hell wants to stay in the hospital all day long? Smell the smell here and let you be treated?" The man said plausibly.

Indeed, five grown men were eating and drinking in the ward. Although it was not officially a hot day yet, the smell was already very unpleasant.

Wu Ping breathed out and did not bother with the man. He just wanted us to take a look at the injuries of several people and see if we could come up with any solution.

When he heard that he was checking the wounds, the man yelled again: "We look at the wounds every day. We are not monkeys. What do you mean?"

After the man repeatedly pestered him, the other four people also started to make a fuss and expressed that they didn't want to stay in the hospital. It was useless not to talk and delay things. After all, they are all running small businesses, so one day of delay means one day of less money collected.

"What nonsense are you talking about? If you don't want to die, just shut up!" Wu Ping was furious. He probably had no place to vent the depression in his heart. This man happened to hit the muzzle of the gun.

After all, he is an official, and his aura when he gets angry is very scary! The man muttered a few words and did not dare to say anything else. He slowly lifted up his clothes and turned his back towards us, and the others followed suit.

I sneered. No wonder the man yelled the loudest just now, because the injury on his body was the most superficial, just a light red patch. Compared with the purple bruise on the waist and buttocks of the other guy next to me, it looked like it was scratched.

"Why are you laughing?" The man said dissatisfiedly when he saw me staring at him and laughing.

I glanced at him and lowered my voice: "If you want to die, go out by yourself. Don't hurt other people. Do you think your injuries don't hurt so you're just making trouble here? Then don't look at the injuries on other people's bodies. If they don’t stay in the hospital, they will definitely get inflammation when they go home, who will treat them then?”

The reason why I say this is to reduce the impact of the situation. If he makes trouble alone, we can still deal with it. If five people make trouble together,

It will inevitably alarm other patients in the hospital.

Sure enough, after hearing what I said, the expressions of the other four people who were helping the man changed and they stopped talking.

The man glared at me fiercely, but in the end he didn't make any more trouble, but obediently let us check the wounds.

Although the photo is clear, it is not as convenient as checking it in person. The man in the T-shirt and I checked separately, and what I checked was the man who caused the most trouble.

I pressed his wound gently, and he hissed: "Don't you know how to be gentle?"

"It's not a shame for a grown man to make a fuss over such an injury." Wu Ping was doing nothing but was obviously very angry with the man, and even insulted him.

The man was frustrated and gritted his teeth and stopped talking.

"What does it feel like when you are beaten?" I pressed on several places. The wound looked familiar, but I couldn't remember where I had seen it before.

The man said dullly: "Isn't it just that I was spanked? I have said this many times, don't you understand?"

I didn't care about his attitude. I patted the wound again, and the familiar feeling came to my heart again.

Then I looked at several other people. Except for the different severity of the wounds, their feelings and the shapes of the wounds were similar. Even the positions were not biased, as if one person's wound was directly imprinted on another.

The man in the T-shirt and I checked each other and then left the ward. The man asked unwillingly when he could let them out. Wu Ping said calmly that they could go out after their wounds were healed.

After leaving the inpatient department, Wu Ping hurriedly asked us if we had found anything. I frowned and said, "I always feel that this wound gives me a very familiar feeling. I didn't feel it when I looked at the photo, but it was very obvious after being exposed to it like this." This condition also happened to Ado, but I thought it was because of the photo and didn’t mention it, but now it seems it’s not the case.”

"Familiar?" Wu Ping was stunned: "Is it possible that you have been exposed to it in other cases?"

I shook my head. The location of this wound was still very strange. If I had come into contact with it, I would definitely not forget it. So where had I seen it?

"It's not surprising. This should be a punishment. Maybe you have been exposed to it." At this time, the man in the T-shirt said lightly.

I slapped my head and said, "Yes, this is a punishment of flogging! It's just that flogging was common in ancient times, and it gave me an inexplicable sense of familiarity. I must have seen it in some book or on TV."

The more I talked, the more excited I became. Ever since I met A Duo yesterday, I felt that this case was like a fog. I was naturally excited when some clues finally emerged.

The man in the T-shirt also became interested after hearing what I said. He immediately asked Wu Ping to go back first, and he wanted to look for clues with me.

"Where can I find it?" After Wu Ping left, I looked at the man in the T-shirt in confusion.

He pointed to an Internet cafe not far away and said that there was no library in the town and there were no valuable historical books to be found, so he had to try his luck online.

We entered the Internet cafe. Considering that the man in the T-shirt was too handsome and eye-catching, I simply asked for a private room with two machines, and then started rummaging around seriously.

I directly typed the words "whipping punishment" in the search engine, and a full screen of related searches popped up. Because I didn't know which ones were useful, I could only read them one by one.

Halfway through watching it, I remembered to remind the man in the T-shirt not to watch the same thing as me. As a result, I looked up and found that he and I were not on the same channel at all. He had pulled up many history books from somewhere and was flipping through them...

Seeing me staring at him, he raised his eyebrows, meaning to ask me what I was doing?

I smiled awkwardly and turned around to continue browsing my webpage.

To be honest, it would be okay if I were asked to flip through ancient paper books, but I would go crazy just staring at the computer and reading history books, so I didn’t change my method and continued to search slowly on the search page of Flogging.

After reading through it one afternoon, I highlighted several of them!

One is the punishment of whipping during the Three Kingdoms period. The most well-known is that after Guan Yu defeated Maicheng, Zhang Fei was eager to avenge his brother, so he whipped two idle men, which eventually led to his assassination. Since the record doesn't specify the location of the whipping, I'm a little confused.

Another one is the punishment of flogging during the Southern Song Dynasty. At this time, the law was relatively complete. The punishment of flogging was mainly used to punish some criminals who violated morals, or to extract confessions through torture.

There are several others, but after careful screening, I found these two to be the most likely, so I searched in the search engine for which dynasties were flogged on the waist and buttocks?

The search results produced now are more diverse, and there are few relevant items.

Not giving up, I contacted Wu Ping and asked him to send a photo of the wound, and then directly uploaded the photo to start searching. Although the answers were still very messy, there were still a few that were useful.

I turned over them one by one, and first excluded the punishment of whipping during the Three Kingdoms period, because whipping was mainly used in the army at that time, which is inconsistent with today's situation.

After excluding this, I spent all my energy on whipping punishment in the Southern Song Dynasty. Sure enough, several related options popped up in the relevant search instantly.

I immediately clicked on it and found out that whipping in the Southern Song Dynasty was not only used on treacherous officials and traitors seeking glory, but also on civilians. It was mainly used on a type of thugs who oppressed the people. The scope was very wide.

The more I read, the more excited I became, because one of the searches also included a picture. Although it was blurry and unclear, it was indeed a prisoner tied behind his back on a ladder, with his waist and buttocks exposed, and the person next to him was holding up I'm about to hit him with a whip!

"First year of junior high school, look at this!" I excitedly pulled the arm of the man in the T-shirt, and he came over and looked at it carefully, and then pointed me to a historical record he was reading. The above record is unofficial history, but it also proves that flogging in the Southern Song Dynasty was indeed a punishment used among civilians, and the method was very consistent with the wounds we saw.

I exhaled. I thought that the reason why it felt familiar to me was because I had come into contact with many ghosts from the Song Dynasty before. As a result, I was very interested in the history of the Song Dynasty, so I read more about it. I just scanned them roughly, but I don't remember them clearly.

"It seems that these people are a bit weird." I sighed while leaning on the chair.

Since the punishment of flogging is aimed at some lawbreakers, then the few people in the ward must not be good people.

The man in the T-shirt hummed: "Let's go!"

"What are you going to do?" I was still immersed in the excitement of finding out about the punishment of whipping, and I didn't react for a while.

He chuckled: "Of course, let He Chengda and the others investigate in depth. Isn't this what the hawks and dogs are best at?"

After listening to the T-shirt man's words, I knew that He Chengda was very upset that he didn't trust any of us, so I took the opportunity to find something for them to do. But thinking that it was indeed easier for them to check than for us, I didn’t say anything.

Wu Ping came up to us as soon as he saw us, and He Chengda on the side also nodded to us.

I didn’t tell them specifically what I had found, I just asked them to increase their efforts to check the reputation of several victims in Yamen Town in the past few years.

"We checked, and the neighbors said it was ordinary and nothing noteworthy." Wu Ping frowned.

The man in the T-shirt glanced at him and said coldly: "I told you to increase the intensity! There must be something wrong with these people."