**Chapter 37: Breaking the Earth Fiend Ox-Dissection**
The villagers crowded around the freshly dug pit, peering into the soil. A farmer's shovel clanged against something metallic. As dirt fell away, a grotesque sight emerged: a severed bull's head, eyes wide and tongue lolling, a rusted butcher's knife embedded between its sockets.
"By the gods…" someone whispered.
Li Chengfeng's jaw tightened. "Keep digging. There's more."
Across the marked sites, villagers unearthed horrors—livers, lungs, hooves, all hacked from living bulls. Each organ bore a blade, their positions mirroring the 72 cracks in the stone oxen. Beside the smaller statue, they found a calf's dismembered corpse, its tiny bones charred black.
"They slaughtered them *alive*," Li Chengfeng said, voice taut. "Infused every cut with agony to magnify the怨气 (*yuàn qì*—grudge energy)."
Wang Bin gripped his shovel like a weapon. "Animals… no, *worse* than animals!"
---
At Li Chengfeng's command, the villagers built a pyre. Flames consumed the cursed remains, black smoke coiling skyward—72 tendrils snaking toward Qingzhou.
"The *sha qi* returns to its masters," Li Chengfeng murmured.
---
**Qingzhou City, Japanese Liaison Office**
Sato Kenji choked mid-bite of sashimi. His chopsticks clattered as 72 shadowy filaments drilled into his pores.
"K-Kenji-san?" His colleague, Takahashi Masao, recoiled.
Blood bloomed across Sato's white kimono—phantom wounds splitting his skin: a slit throat, gouged eyes, a blade protruding from his sternum. He collapsed, twitching, as the final cut bisected his brow.
Takahashi screamed.
---
**Shiniu Village**
The crows fled.
Li Chengfeng watched the last embers die. "It's done."
The elderly farmer grasped his arm. "Will they… the ones who did this…"
"Retribution," Li Chengfeng said coldly. "The Earth Fiend's teeth always bite twice."
---