Chen Yuan roared silently in his heart. This was the one obsession he couldn't let go of at the end of his tyrant's road.
He could lose to the Emperor's schemes, he could lose to Xu Qing's calculations, but he couldn't accept losing to an unknown phantom.
But there was nothing.
The crowd was bustling with activity—fierce-faced brutes, weeping old women demanding blood for their dead, idle loafers watching the spectacle—but there was no sign of that shadow in the green robe and bamboo hat.
That person truly seemed to have been nothing more than a nightmare born of his despair. When he woke, there was nothing left.
The prison cart, with a creaking groan, came to a halt in the center of the execution ground.
The massive guillotine had been washed countless times with clear water, but the dark red bloodstains deeply seeped into the wood grain could never be scrubbed clean, emitting a nauseating smell of rust.
Beside the guillotine, five burly executioners, bare-chested and tied with red sashes around their waists, stood holding their ghost-headed broadswords, coldly watching the condemned being escorted off the cart.
Sunlight broke through the clouds, spilling onto the execution ground.
The blinding light shone on the freshly sharpened blade of the ghost-headed sword, reflecting a dazzling, deathly gleam.
"Scrape—scrape—"
An executioner picked up a rough whetstone and lazily ran a few final strokes along the blade that could split a bull's bones in two, producing a grating, teeth-grinding sound.
The Yongchang Marquis's death had officially entered its countdown.
Just as Chen Yuan was being roughly dragged out of the cart by two wolf-like Imperial Guards and shoved toward the steps of the guillotine—
His gaze suddenly froze.
On one side of the overseeing platform, instead of sitting in the Overseer's master's chair reserved for a third-rank official, was a young man in an ordinary gray cloth robe.
He wore no official uniform, standing quietly at the very front of the crowd, closest to the guillotine.
Just as he had done five years ago, outside the capital's Xizhi Gate, watching Su Ming being shackled and exiled to the Northern Frontier—he stood straight, he stood the closest.
It was Xu Qing.
Xu Qing's face was gaunt, his eyes calm without a single ripple. Unlike the fanatical crowd around him, he didn't shout curses or howl with rage. He just watched Chen Yuan, being escorted onto the platform, with a gaze that was utterly focused and profoundly deep.
The distance between them was no more than a few zhang.
At the very moment he passed in front of Xu Qing, the Imperial Guards escorting him seemed to share some unspoken understanding, and their steps paused ever so slightly.
Chen Yuan stopped.
He lifted his head, his face covered in blood and vegetable scraps, and stared straight into Xu Qing's calm eyes.
The deafening noise of the crowd, the grating sound of the executioner sharpening his blade, even the wind itself—it all seemed to be cut off by some invisible force in that moment. The air between them solidified, leaving only two souls, spanning five years of time, facing off in their final confrontation.
Chen Yuan looked at Xu Qing, and then he suddenly smiled.
A smile filled with profound desolation, yet carrying a piercing sharpness that saw through everything.
He leaned forward slightly, ignoring the tearing pain from the iron hooks piercing his collarbones, and moved his lips, using a voice so hoarse that only the two of them could hear, to ask the last question of his life:
"Xu Qing... you won."
"But this Marquis knows—that wasn't your power. With just you, you could never have killed my 'Shadow Guards.'"
Chen Yuan's bloodshot eyes stared dead at Xu Qing, as if trying to see through his soul:
"That person... the one outside East Straight Gate who killed seventeen of my top-tier death-men with a single finger... who the hell is he?"
Xu Qing looked at him.
He looked at this once-invincible military overlord, the man who had ruined half his life's work and driven away his only friend, now groveling like a dying stray dog, desperately begging for an answer to a void.
Xu Qing's eyes betrayed not a trace of triumph, not a shred of vengeful satisfaction.
He just looked at Chen Yuan quietly, like looking at a dead thing.
Then, he gently shook his head.
He didn't answer. Not a single word.
Because a dead man didn't need to know the answer. And Su Ming's name should never again be exposed to the sunlight through the mouth of a mortal bureaucrat caught in the vortex of power.
This was his final protection for a friend.
The moment Xu Qing shook his head, the light in Chen Yuan's eyes completely dimmed.
It was a hollowness more despairing than death itself.
"Move!"
The Imperial Guard ruthlessly kicked Chen Yuan in the back of the knee, shoving him roughly onto that blood-soaked guillotine platform.
"Thump!"
Chen Yuan's knees slammed heavily onto the blood-stained wooden block.
He didn't resist. Like a puppet that had lost its soul, he let the executioner lock the shackle around his neck, letting the cold ghost-headed broadsword be raised high above him.
On the overseeing platform, the Minister of Justice glanced at the sky, then suddenly pulled out a command token and threw it to the ground.
"Wu hour, three quarters, has arrived!"
"Read the indictment!"
"Official Chen Yuan, having received Imperial grace and hereditary title, did not dedicate himself to loyal service to the country, but instead bred treason in his bones!"
The Overseer's sharp, drawn-out voice echoed above the overseeing platform, overpowering the clamor of the surrounding crowd.
"First crime: Embezzlement of military funds, substituting inferior goods, causing the Northern Frontier troops to have no clothes or food, dying in the ice and snow..."
"Good! Kill him!" An outburst of hysterical cheering erupted from the crowd.
"Second crime: Secret collusion with the Northern Barbarian, leaking military intelligence, causing the complete annihilation of three thousand troops at Wind Crossing Ferry..."
"Kill him! Chop him up and feed him to the dogs!" The citizens shook their fists, their eyes bloodshot.
"Third crime: Privately raising death-men, conspiring with demonic forces, plotting treason..."
Ten counts of guilt, like ten life-cursing talismans, were read out one by one. With each crime announced, a wave of frenzied noise, higher than the last, surged through the crowd. This was the rawest anger of the mortal world, the most merciless trampling of fallen power.
On the guillotine platform.
Chen Yuan knelt on the blood-stained wooden block, his head pinned tightly into the groove.
He couldn't hear the crimes being read, nor the cheers of the people. The clamor of the mortal world, in his perception at this moment, seemed to be separated by a thick curtain of water—muffled and distant.
Sunlight shone directly down, somewhat glaring.
With difficulty, he moved his eyes, turning them upward bit by bit.
From his angle, he could only see the square patch of sky above the execution ground.
The deep autumn sky was so blue, blue without a single impurity. The sunlight on his face carried a long-forgotten warmth.
Suddenly, he remembered his youth.
He remembered the year he turned seventeen, when he first mounted a warhorse, gripped a long spear, and followed behind the Old Marquis, charging into the howling wind and snow of the Northern Frontier against those savage Northern Barbarian cavalry. Back then, the sky was this blue too, his blood was hot, and his heart was filled with nothing but ambition to build a career and protect his homeland.
When had it all started to change?
Was it to secure his power? To fill the insatiable black hole of military funds? Or the first time he came into contact with that sinister "Ten Thousand Soul Banner," corrupted by a power that did not belong to mortals?
He didn't know.
He only felt tired.
In the last few breaths of his life, he gave up remembering those blood-soaked power plays, gave up that laughable grand ambition.
He just stared fixedly at that stretch of blue sky.
That shadow in the green robe and bamboo hat invaded his mind again, abruptly. That long, slender finger, that deadly blue droplet of water—they became the last brand etched deep into his soul.
"Who the hell... are you..."
Chen Yuan opened his mouth, his dry, cracked lips moving slightly, and with a hoarse whisper only he could hear, he muttered.
This was the last question he, a tyrant of a lifetime, ever asked.
A question that would never receive an answer.
"CHOP—!"
