Chapter 493: Cruel Punishment
Ning had been a lawman for the last week or so. While he had quickly learned how much he hated working as a lawman, he couldn’t deny that this was the best way for him to work his way up the tower.
He just had to show how great his skills were, and he would soon be transferred to the Aether Tower headquarters.
Well, it wasn’t that Ning hated working as a lawman exactly. He actually quite liked it. Going around town, solving his own mystery. He quite liked that and found it rather refreshing.
What he really hated was the paperwork that came after. He would have to fill out multiple forms explaining all the events that had happened during his investigation. That was so very tiresome for him.
What was worse was that he couldn’t even use his system to fill out the paperwork. Every time he was done with an investigation and had captured someone or got them to pay a fine, the original lawmen here would stand over Ning, watching him do the paperwork so as to make sure he made no mistake.
Sometimes, Ning simply wanted to show his system and do it all automatically, but he reigned in his stupid thought.
“Hey Terran, where are you going?” a middle-aged man asked, who was walking in with a person tied behind him. This was one of the men that helped Ning with the paperwork.
“Brother Hans,” Ning called out. “I’m just going to an old woman’s house to look for a stealing neighbor. Just got the job.”
“Oh, old women huh? Those can be tricky to deal with if they don’t get what they want. Make sure the neighbor is actually guilty okay?” Hans said.
Ning nodded. “What’s up with him?” Ning asked.
“Just the same old. The guy was drunk on his newfound Aether power and went to fight his old boss in the mill who he hated. Fortunately, I was close by and caught him,” he said.
The man behind him was wearing just shorts and a white vest, nothing else.
He seemed to be vacant and was too sedated to do anything for now.
Sedation was what the lawmen did to folks who had Aether powers so that they could stop them from fighting against the lawmen.
“What’s going to happen to him?” Ning asked.
“Same old,” Hans said. “A few days in the cell. If he reforms, he is let out. If he goes back to the old habit, then… I’m afraid we will have to give him the death penalty.”
Ning sighed. That was something he had come to learn during the time he was taught the law.
Most criminals that were Aether Master and above, if their crimes were heinous enough, and they were particularly troublesome, were given the death penalty without hesitation.
This was one of the reasons why police stations could even work despite everyone being superpowered being in this world. Just the threat of death made people not do anything impulsive.
However, Ning still felt that this was a bit inhumane. He could understand giving the death penalty to the people that did do the bad crimes and tried to fight back, but what about the normal person that maybe got into a fight and was arrested.
What if they thought they weren’t deserving of jail time and tried to get out.
What if a white-collar criminal tried to escape using Aether, would they be killed too?
They probably would, but they didn’t deserve to die.
Ning tried to think of ways around this, but he wasn’t able to.
He thought of crippling one’s body by destroying the sea of Aether, but that wasn’t any different from killing them either.
The police certainly didn’t hold that right.
Ning wondered what he would do if this was a cultivation world, instead of an Aether world.
He would have most likely made some pills or drawn a formation around the jail where the prisoner wouldn’t be able to use Qi at all.
But Aether wasn’t like that. There was no pill or formations that worked with Aether. It was simply energy that flowed through the air, that no one could keep out.
Ning shook his head and forgot about it for the moment. He left the tower and made his way to the eastern side of the city where the old woman’s house was.
The place lay on the city lord’s side of the city and was right around the base of the eastern mountains.
Ning entered the farm and went to check up on the vegetables that were stolen.
Coincidentally, he saw a man picking up a vegetable from the farm as he entered.
He nearly burst out loud laughing when he saw the man. This was perhaps his easiest investigation as of yet.
“Sir, please stop right there,” Ning said, stopping the man.
The man tried to run when he saw Ning, but his foot seemed to have hit something and he fell onto the ground.
Ning walked up to the man and caught him.
“Sir, I am arresting you for stealing from someone else’s farm,” Ning said.
“Wait, wait, wait,” the man said. He looked to be a little older than a middle-aged person, but not enough to be a senior citizen.
“I’m not a thief. I’m only borrowing the fruit,” he said.
“Borrowing?” Ning asked.
“Yes,” the man said. “I… I can’t farm at the moment due to my broken leg, so they took away my farm. Thus, I have to resort to using someone else’s food to survive. But I promise, as soon as my foot is healed, I will pay all the food back with my next harvest.”
Ning looked at the man’s foot. It was indeed broken. ‘So he didn’t trip on something,’ Ning realized.
“Do you have children?” Ning asked.
“No, I have no family,” the man said.
He felt a little sympathetic for the man’s situation. However, he was still a lawman.
“Let’s go to the tower, sir. We will decide there how much fine you will have to pay,” Ning said and took the man back towards the tower.
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