The clean morning sunlight shone on the two filthy city gates outside the Ziwei Palace, where the dried blood under the sunlight looked as black as ink with an added sense of nauseating stickiness.
The two gates stood one on each side of the palace entrance, facing the Imperial Road, where ministers civil and military, escorted by a large contingent of the Imperial Guard, were being led into the palace. The gates seemed to welcome them with ghastly, dirty faces either fierce or twisted.
However, every civil and military minister who passed by in front of them shivered and stooped, covering their faces with their sleeves in horror.
The very few who could suppress the panic in their hearts also turned pale and averted their eyes as they hurried past these two city gates.
Not one dared to look directly at these colleagues, who just yesterday morning had been laughing and talking together!
They feared seeing their own reflection in those faces...
A troop of the Imperial Guard, upon seeing their charge trembling so much that he staggered as if about to fall, kindly reminded him, "Master Qin, put some more strength into it. Today, you really cannot afford to be late!"
These ordinary words, when they reached the great man’s ears, somehow took on a different meaning, scaring him so much that his legs went soft and he was about to stage a fall right there on the street.
Seeing this, the Imperial Guards escorting him did not step forward to help him up but silently drew their waist sabers out of their sheaths three inches.
The sound of the steel being unsheathed sent shivers down the great man’s spine, and he lurched forward with all the strength he could muster, calling out loudly as he stumbled, "I can walk, I can walk..."
The pitiful and clumsy spectacle nearly made the other great officials cry out.
How did it come to this!!!
A group of civil and military officials was thus escorted by nearly a thousand Imperial Guards, shuffling along both sides of the long Imperial Road towards the Golden Throne Hall.
This road had been traveled by them for many years.
The elders had spent twenty or thirty years walking from the palace gate to the Golden Throne Hall.
The younger ones had also spent twenty or thirty years walking from the classroom of their private school into this grand and magnificent palace.
Yet this familiar Imperial Road seemed especially lengthy today.
Longer than the twenty or thirty years they had walked.
So long that they had run through their entire life’s highlight reel in their minds.
...
Inside the Golden Throne Hall.
Yang Ge, dressed in a purple-red round-collared robe embroidered with four-clawed pythons, wearing a black hat and a jade belt around his waist, stood with his back to the dragon throne, below the steps of the royal desk, resting with his eyes closed and hands on the Cold Moon Saber.
The civil and military ministers who timidly entered the hall recognized him immediately, even though many of them saw him for the first time today.
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With shoulders tensed, backs hunched, and heads bowed, they walked on tiptoe to their usual spots, not daring to look around or speak to each other, feeling each second as long as three autumns!
"Ding..."
The clear sound of the bell rang out, announcing the start of the grand court meeting.
The ministers lined up and stealthily looked around, only to find that at least one-quarter of their colleagues in the Golden Throne Hall were gone!
Then, filled with expectation, they finally raised their heads and looked towards the throne... In the past, at this moment, the young Emperor would have made his dazzling entrance surrounded by all his courtiers, coming out from behind the screen.
But today, they looked for a long time and still did not see the young Emperor’s awkward, toddling figure.
What they did see was the equally youthful and excessively upright figure facing them, slowly opening his eyes.
Without any expression, he surveyed the room and under the watchful gaze of frightened eyes, he blandly recited a long list of names, "Shi Shixiu, Xiang Chengkang, Cui Sixue, Xu Guangyi..."
As he called each name, hordes of the Imperial Guards, fierce as wolves and tigers, rushed into the crowd, seizing a person and pinning them to the ground.
Yang Ge recited more than twenty names in one breath, and then, under the gaze of countless horrified eyes, he lightly lifted his chin and said, "Drag them out, behead them!"
In an instant, the captured officials exploded into chaos, screaming at the top of their voices.
"This is a grave injustice, Marquis Luting. I am wronged!"
"I am the top scholar appointed by the previous Emperor himself, a court official. How dare you, you madman, to kill me!"
"Your Majesty, I have nothing but loyalty that shines like the sun and the moon, Your Majesty..."
"Lord Chancellor, Lord Chancellor, please speak for me..."
"When a nation is about to fall, there must be demons! When a nation is set to fall, there are surely demons!"
Those who could still stand among the civil and military officials kept their heads down in silence, careful not to glimpse the convicted officials in the eye, fearing that even a glance would associate them and lead to the same fate.
Even Wang Jiangling, who stood proudly at the leading position on the left of the officials and who had reassured himself of his clear conscience, was now stiff-faced, his pupils contracting sharply.
At this moment, like Nangong Feiying last night, he kept thinking that Yang Erlang would stop at this point, constantly shocked by Yang Erlang’s determination...
The feeling that it was all completely unexpected, like climbing mountains and always thinking the peak in front of you is the highest one in the range, only to find that behind it lies an even higher one...
You can never climb enough; it’s simply endless!
Yang Ge watched the convicted officials with an indifferent expression, letting them wail and cry, his face as stern as a sculpture.
The cries and pleas of the convicts grew fainter and fainter...
Until there were no more cries or pleas to be heard in the Golden Throne Hall, Yang Ge spoke again, his voice calm and soft, "I am here today for no other reason but to get to know the pillars and beams of great Wei, the foundations of the state."