UCTOOT CH128

Through the ice and snow, Shi Shu walked along the road, dangling the braised rabbit from his hand: “Still eating? I brought you takeout.”

Xie Wuchi: “Back to the manor, preparing for the festival.”

Xie Wuchi walked with swift strides. Once the carriage entered the city, they dismounted to walk on foot. As the New Year approached, snow blanketed the grounds of Yanzhou. Households had hung red lanterns, brimming with bustling joy and festive cheer. Walking shoulder to shoulder with Xie Wuchi, Shi Shu noticed an elevated stage erected by townspeople nearby. Shouts and vendor cries rang out continuously as performers demonstrated tightrope walking, sword swallowing, and shattering boulders across their chests. Amid the lively clamor, Shi Shu tugged Xie Wuchi along to watch.

Xie Wuchi: “Not watching.”

Yet Shi Shu wrapped his arms around his waist: “Look, look, look! Let’s watch, let’s watch! I want to see, gege, I want to watch!”

Tugging his sleeve, Shi Shu pulled him beneath the raised platform. The crowd was packed shoulder to shoulder amid a cacophony of voices. Fascinated by the performer climbing a ladder of blades, Shi Shu peered past the crowd to see the man’s bare feet stepping along razor-sharp edges, ascending step by step up the mountain of blades, heavy stones balanced on his shoulders as cold sweat beaded on his forehead.

Shi Shu hurriedly fished out some coins: “Here, take this, take this. Craftsmen have it way too hard.”

Pleased, he stepped forward: “Ge.”

Reaching back with a hand, Shi Shu caught only empty air. Turning his head, several meters separated him from Xie Wuchi across a sea of heads. Just as Shi Shu moved toward him, his wrist suddenly tightened in a fierce grip. Whirling around, he was met by a figure wearing a fanged beast mask.

Shi Shu’s instincts flared in alarm: “Who are you?”

The very next second, the figure raised a hand, silver glinting from within the sleeve. A mask? The fanged mask from the Ten Days of the Nativity, the night they fled the Min region, flashed instantly into his mind.

A Min warrior? An assassin?!

Shi Shu jerked his hand back violently as the man drew his blade. The crowd was excessively dense. A woman cradling a child was on tiptoes trying to see ahead; finding the spectators in his way, the masked assailant slashed indiscriminately. In an instant, mother and child collapsed into the dirt, blood spouting in thick gushes from their chests.

“Ahhh! Help! Help!”

“Help! Murder!”

The spray of crimson expanded into blinding blackness in Shi Shu’s vision. Screams erupted beneath the stage as the crowd surged backward like a panicked tide. At the epicenter stood the masked attacker swinging his blade, hacking down anyone in reach. Civilians crumpled into pools of blood, while others clutched bleeding abdomens, screaming as they crawled along the ground.

He’s coming for me. Shoved backward by the throngs, Shi Shu watched the Min attacker pursue him, grabbing a passerby by the hair to run him through. Shi Shu’s legs went weak with terror; he knew using the crowd as human shields was the safest option. Yet drenched in cold sweat, he snatched a wooden bench from the side and forced his way toward the blade-wielding killer.

Seeing him push forward, the assassin paused briefly before striding straight toward Shi Shu.

Catching wind of the ambush, Xie Wuchi’s guards had mobilized immediately, pressing inward against the surging tide of people. The moment Shi Shu broke through the crowd, he brought the heavy wooden bench crashing down with all his might.

The blade slashed toward him in response. Shattering the bench, Shi Shu shut his eyes, rolled across the cobblestones, and clamped his arms around the man’s legs, tackling him violently to the ground.

With a sharp crack, bone struck flagstone. Then a heavy thud landed squarely against Shi Shu’s chest, trapping a mouthful of blood in his throat. Adrenaline surging through his veins, Shi Shu acted on raw instinct, using the momentum of being kicked back to lash his foot out and send the assassin’s blade flying.

Seized by the collar, the man’s hand clamped around his throat, capable of crushing it with a single squeeze. Shi Shu lunged upward, sinking his teeth savagely into the man’s neck, driving his teeth deep into flesh and muscle.

He refused to die. Bound solely by the desperate will to live, primal resilience flared to its peak. Shi Shu tore at his throat with every ounce of strength as blood poured freely. In the struggle, the beast mask tumbled away, exposing a familiar face.

It was Yinkun.

“Long time no see, Second Young Master. Do you like the grand gift I brought you?”

Yinkun bared his teeth in a grotesque grin. Shi Shu’s jaw tightened as brutal punches slammed into his abdomen, inflicting excruciating agony.

“Hurts, doesn’t it? Remember what I said back at Hedong Academy? As long as breath remains in my body, I will see both your heads hung from the city ramparts. Here I am again.”

Blood surged up his throat. Cold sweat drenched Shi Shu’s brow, yet he refused to let go, coppery blood filling his mouth. Still, a few more blows like that would rupture his internal organs. He tore at him with desperate fury, breathing hard to clamp down with harder force.

Suddenly, Yinkun was sent flying through the air, crashing violently onto the paving stones, scraping skin and leaving a smear of blood across the ground. It happened in the span of a breath. Just as Yinkun attempted to scramble up, a crushing boot slammed into his ribs, collapsing him limp onto the snow as several bones fractured on impact.

Shi Shu coughed, a wave of nausea and tearing pain ripping through his stomach. Gathered into a pair of arms, he gripped Xie Wuchi’s robes, his vision darkening in pulses. Shrill screams, weeping, and the sickening sound of steel piercing flesh filled his ears.

Shi Shu clutched Xie Wuchi’s collar with white knuckles, only to watch Yinkun push himself upright through agonizing pain like some unkillable demon. Min warriors quickly shielded him; the towering, muscular Yin Wushu covered his retreat, cutting down pursuers as they melted into the frantic crowds.

Shi Shu: “It’s him! That lunatic…”

His voice was reduced to a raspy whisper. With chilling eyes, Xie Wuchi scooped Shi Shu into his arms as guards gave chase. The ground lay in ruined carnage, pooled blood and fallen corpses bearing witness to the ambush.

Clutching his stomach, Shi Shu’s vision swam in darkness. With a sharp gag, he threw up a mouthful of blood.

Beside his ear, Xie Wuchi’s command rang out: “Search the entire city! Pry up every single paving stone; do not let a single one escape!”

Winter snow drifted down. Pale and battered, Shi Shu sat beside the hearth, sipping warm tea.

The courtyard gates clattered as citizens continuously gathered outside, dropping to their knees in wailing grief: “My Lord, we beg Your Lordship to deliver justice! My daughter died so horribly!”

“My father was butchered! Stabbed to death in broad daylight!”

“My Lord…”

“On what should have been a peaceful New Year’s Eve, assassins struck and dozens of innocent commoners were butchered. What kind of tragedy is this?”

Lin Yan paced back and forth in a cold sweat: “Have those assassins been found?”

“The magistrate’s constables are too few, so troops from the main garrison were deployed as well. They are searching house to house.”

“On New Year’s Eve of all days, blood was spilled. It bodes ill for the coming year…”

Shi Shu waited for a long time until a scout finally arrived with news: “My Lord! Several Min assassins were apprehended and transferred to the city garrison dungeon!”

“The garrison dungeon?”

As a fortified frontier hub, Yanzhou housed two enforcement institutions: the civil yamen and the military garrison. In the yamen, one could at least plead a case before a judicial officer; in the garrison dungeon, prisoners were flayed alive, dying where even their bones could never be recovered. The garrison dungeon answered solely to the military commander, Xie Wuchi himself.

Shi Shu pushed himself up with difficulty.

Within the garrison dungeon, heavy snow accumulated outside, casting a bleak and frigid gloom. Sentries stamped their feet against the biting chill, taking surreptitious swigs of liquor to quell their shivering.

In the room where Shi Shu sat, separated by a single wall, seven or eight captured Min warriors were held in the cells.

Entering the chamber, Xie Wuchi swept his gaze over them, asking only: “Where is Yinkun?”

No one answered. Proud warriors of the Min, they glared viciously at Xie Wuchi with predatory, wolfish eyes.

“I like that look,” Xie Wuchi observed, inspecting blood-encrusted instruments of torture upon the rack. “Killing hardened assassins with fight in them is far more entertaining than butchering defenseless civilians on the street.”

Xie Wuchi raised a hand. An executioner stepped forward with a heavy blade. Xie Wuchi ordered: “Cut them down one by one. Exactly as the people on the street died, that is how you will hack them apart.”

Sickening sounds of cleaving flesh echoed through the dungeon.

Blood spattered across the stones. Torchlight flickered against the damp, dark walls, illuminating Xie Wuchi’s features. He glanced at the severed limbs on the floor, smoothing his clean sleeve.

“I have no fondness for gratuitous torture. You witness this only because you inflicted the very same upon others. Where did Yinkun flee?”

Still, no one spoke. The executioner moved to the second captive. That man, unable to contain his venom, finally roared curses at Xie Wuchi: “I do not fear death! Kill me if you have the guts! You think I’m afraid? You made King Zhouchi defect, swindled away Yong’an and Bufuzhou, and threw our Five Kings into civil war! My only regret is failing to slaughter you on that street!”

“So this was your vengeance?”

“Indeed! Just you wait, sooner or later, the Grand Sovereign of the Min will tear your corpse into ten thousand pieces!”

Xie Wuchi flicked his hand, and the blade severed the man’s head from his shoulders. Standing in the dungeon without a flicker of emotion, Xie Wuchi waited as the headsman executed them one by one. In this suffocating aura of death, though a wave of his hand could spare a life, he showed no mercy.

“Do you have anything to say?” he asked the next. Drenched in cold sweat, the captive’s neck veins bulged, his eyes rimmed with red. Xie Wuchi shook his head: “Kill him.”

Dim light cast bloody reflections against the weeping stone walls. The executioner was coated in gore, his hands trembling as the stench of death thickened. The remaining captives awaited their turn, forced to watch their comrades slaughtered before their eyes.

Finally, only the last man remained. He stammered desperate cries for his mother in the Min tongue, his legs shaking uncontrollably. Approaching, Xie Wuchi watched him pant in frantic terror.

Xie Wuchi: “Afraid to die?”

The captive could no longer speak, his limbs trembling violently before the visceral certainty of death.

Xie Wuchi: “I will not kill you.”

A heavy stillness fell. Looking up, the man saw Xie Wuchi still draped in his spotless white cloak, his eyes icy: “I will let you go back to deliver a message to Yinkun. I do not possess a patient temper. Whether it is you, Yinkun, or anyone else, if anyone harms a single hair on my younger brother’s head, I will not only slay him, but slaughter his ancestors, his children, his wife, his teachers, his brothers, and anyone he holds dear. I will kill every last one of them, and should any survive, I will hunt them to the ends of the earth until they are dead. To the bitter end. If you will not rest, neither will I.”

Freezing terror seized the captive, not daring to draw breath as he stared at the commander’s shadow.

Xie Wuchi: “Go back and tell him to wait. Now that he has crossed paths with me, the Min dream of riding south to conquer Dajing will never come to pass.”

With that, Xie Wuchi reached down to unbind the bloodstained chains. The captive choked on his breath, eyes bulging as if staring upon an infernal fiend.

Xie Wuchi turned away. Guards stepped forward, bundled the captive in a thick winter coat, shoved a pouch of dry rations into his hands, and marched him out toward the city gates.

The thick stench of blood within the prison dispersed in the winter wind. Stepping outside, Xie Wuchi found Shi Shu waiting beside a brazier, his face pale. As they walked out of the garrison dungeon, Xie Wuchi smoothed Shi Shu’s winter coat.

Shi Shu knew he had executed them, though not the grim details: “I heard Lin Yan say that during the New Year, spilling blood brings misfortune, and executions are usually postponed until after the first lunar month.”

Xie Wuchi: “A minor matter handled in passing.”

Shi Shu: “In passing? That assassination was so sudden…”

Walking shoulder to shoulder through the snow, Shi Shu took small, halting steps, needing Xie Wuchi’s arm for support. Pondering the situation, Shi Shu realized, “Reclaiming Yong’an and Bufuzhou weakened the Min, but they’re still watching us like hawks?”

“Naturally. Now we must contend with the Emperor on one hand, and guard against northern invaders on the other.”

Shi Shu tightened his grip on Xie Wuchi’s hand. After walking together through the snow for a stretch, a fast steed galloped toward them from ahead.

The rider was a civilian advisor from the encampment who drafted strategies. Dismounting in frantic haste, the advisor dropped to his knees before Xie Wuchi: “My Lord, disaster! Rumors have spread from unknown sources claiming Your Lordship is entrenching military power in open defiance of the court. Now, many of our colleagues have packed their bags and deserted Yanzhou to return to the Eastern Capital!”

Shi Shu: “What?” Feeling as though he had taken a punch to the chest, he looked up at Xie Wuchi.

Many literati in Yanzhou had been welcomed as advisors after Xie Wuchi took command. To think that beneath it all, their allegiance still rested with the imperial court.

Xie Wuchi’s brow furrowed in contemplation, uttering only: “Is that so?”