Xu Qing’s voice softened a little, but it carried a power that struck straight at the heart.
“The Yongchang Marquis case has been clarified, yet the soldiers on the northern frontier have bled and toiled while their pay was long withheld, naturally unsettling military morale. I propose that the irrefutable evidence that the Yongchang Marquis colluded with the enemy and embezzled military funds be transcribed by the great scholars of the Hanlin Academy into multiple copies and distributed to the military camps across the Northern Frontier for circulation.”
“Let those sentries standing guard in wind and snow know the court was not deceived, that it has not forgotten them. The traitor has been lawfully punished, and the great injustice has been cleared!”
When the emperor heard this, his eyes instantly shone with a keen light.
What a brilliant move to regain the army’s loyalty! With this action, those northern border troops who might have wavered over the Yongchang Marquis’s death will surely feel grateful to the court and be completely won back.
“Approved!” The emperor immediately struck the imperial desk, his voice like a bell, “Issue the edict! Order the Ministry of Works to carve stone tablets at once, inscribing Chen Yuan’s ten major crimes upon them, and erect them on the parade grounds at each garrison in the Northern Frontier as a warning to all!”
“At the same time, all the gold and silver seized from Chen Yuan’s residence, and the proceeds from selling his lands and shops, shall not enter the national treasury. The Ministry of Revenue will appoint commissioners to distribute those funds directly to the families of the fallen soldiers at the Northern Frontier as compensation! Xu Qing, you will personally carry out this matter; anyone who dares to intervene will be executed on the spot!”
“Your servant receives the decree! Long live the emperor, ten thousand years!” Xu Qing kowtowed deeply.
As the court dismissal bell rang, this earth-shattering imperial assembly, destined to be recorded in Great Xing’s history, finally drew to a close.
The ministers dispersed like people who had just survived a life-or-death ordeal, their steps faltering as they left in ones and twos. No one dared speak to Xu Qing; they looked at him as if he were a death omen.
Xu Qing paid no attention to those glances.
He was the last to leave the Hall of Golden Chimes.
Standing on the white marble steps, he looked up and inhaled a deep breath of the clear, cold late-autumn air.
Above the high palace walls, the sky was a pure blue, without a single cloud. The rising sun warmed his green robe, soft and gentle.
He slowly closed his eyes.
Five years.
Su Ming, can you see it?
Those woodworms that sucked your blood and the blood of the soldiers at the Northern Frontier, I dug them all out.
……
Three days later.
In a bustling teahouse not far from the Great Xing imperial city.
Su Ming sat quietly by the window on the second floor, wearing an unremarkable gray cloth robe and a bamboo hat. He held a cup of tea that had long since gone cold, his gaze casually sweeping across the street.
His eyes were fixed toward the southern part of the city.
There was the vegetable market square. The execution ground.
In his divine sense, a dull, teeth-grinding metallic scraping was faintly coming through.
It was the executioner, sharpening his blade.
......
Great Xing capital, the vegetable market square.
Dawn was just breaking. The late-autumn frost still clung to the bluestone slabs, and a bone-piercing chill rode the cutting autumn wind as it howled down the wide avenue.
Yet that cold, enough to send people shivering, could not dampen the cityfolk’s volcanic fervor.
Crowds surged from all directions, packing the area around the execution ground so tightly there was no room to slip through. Heads jostled, forming a dense black tide that swelled like the ocean. Not only the open ground around the execution platform, but the second floors of shops along the street, the teahouse windows, even the sturdy branches of ancient trees were filled with people craning for a better view.
They all had come to witness history.
To see how the Yongchang Marquis, who once lorded over the capital so arrogantly that even the palace trembled when he stamped his foot, would meet a head-and-body-separated end.
“He’s coming! He’s coming!”
Someone in the crowd shouted, and the already noisy area around the execution ground instantly erupted into a roar.
In the distance, at the far end of the long street, a squad of heavily armored Imperial Guard cleared the way. Their heavy boots struck the bluestone with a thunder that made hearts race.
Escorted by the guards, a long line of prisoner carts made from thick round logs, their massive wooden wheels creaking, slowly rolled toward the execution ground.
The lead cart was especially large, its sides welded shut with iron bars as thick as forearms.
Standing inside that cart was the Yongchang Marquis, Chen Yuan.
The one-time symbol of supreme honor, his top-rank qilin brocade robe, had been stripped away and replaced with a coarse, thin, stained white prison garb. Salt-and-pepper hair hung disheveled over his shoulders; the face that had once been stern and dignified was now gaunt, his cheekbones protruding and eye sockets hollow.
A huge iron hook that had pierced through his pectoral bone remained fixed deep in his flesh; every jolt of the cart tugged on the chain and brought excruciating pain.
But he did not make a sound.
He did not collapse and wail like the other condemned men, begging for mercy.
His chain-bound hands gripped the iron rail in front of him so tightly, and his back remained as straight as ever, like when he used to patrol the northern borders astride his warhorse for thirty years.
He slowly lifted his head. His eyes, like a wounded lone wolf’s, swept coldly over the dense crowds lining the street.
“Bah! Traitor to the nation! Treacherous minister!”
“You dog official! Give me back my son’s life! You stole his compensation, you’ll die horribly!”
“Beat him to death! Kill this beast who colluded with the enemy!”
The people’s fury detonated like a powder keg.
Rotten vegetable leaves, stinking eggs, even clumps of stone and hardened mud were hurled like a storm from all sides toward the prisoner cart.
Slap! Slap!
The stinking yolk splattered across Chen Yuan’s face and dripped down his salt-and-pepper beard. Putrid leaves stuck to his prison garb, giving off a nauseating stench. A walnut-sized stone struck his temple precisely, opening a gash that bled crimson and blurred half his vision.
Chen Yuan merely blinked and shook the blood from his eyelashes.
His expression remained calm, even carrying a trace of lofty mockery.
“Plebs.”
He sneered inwardly.
What do you understand? You miserable commoners who only know rice and oil, living like ants in the capital’s cozy nest, what do you know about the foundation of Great Xing?
Three hundred thousand armored cavalry! That will swallow mountains of silver and grain, even lives, into a bottomless pit!
The meager treasury funds aren’t even enough to stuff the warhorses’ mouths with hay! The emperor only knows to demand victories in court but will not provide sufficient forage — how can these wars be fought?
Did he embezzle military pay? Yes, he did take it. But he turned that money into fine weapons and robust warhorses to arm his trusted troops! He used his way to keep the military face and strength of Great Xing intact!
As for colluding with evil cultivators and forging corpse puppets…
A flash of madness and unwillingness crossed Chen Yuan’s eyes.
One commander’s glory costs ten thousand bones! Those soldiers who die in battle — rather than becoming a fistful of yellow earth, better that they become undying corpse puppets to continue fighting for Chen Yuan, to further Great Xing’s grand ambitions!
Once the Ten Thousand Soul Banner is completed, he would have an invincible army capable of crushing Northern Barbarian, and perhaps… even overthrowing that hypocritical, incompetent emperor from the dragon throne to establish a truly strong, iron-blood empire under his rule!
He should have been a hero who made history.
He had calculated everything — the emperor’s suspicion, Xu Qing’s patience, even the fallback of prison-raid escape after a military defeat.
But he had never calculated that in this seemingly mundane world, there existed a kind of despair-inducing, rule-transcending terrifying force.
Chen Yuan’s gaze no longer paid heed to the crazed, cursing populace.
His bloodshot eyes scanned the crowd like radar, wildly searching every face, every figure.
He was looking for that person.
The youth in the green robe, wearing a bamboo hat, who with a single finger shattered all his plans and ambitions.
“Where are you… come out! Let me die knowing why! Who exactly are you!”
