UCTOOT CH128

In the ice and snow, Shi Shu walked along the road carrying the braised rabbit. “Still want to eat? I brought you takeaway.”

Xie Wuchi: “Head back to the residence and get ready for the New Year.”

Xie Wuchi walked quickly. The carriage entered the city, and they dismounted to walk. Near year’s end, snow covered Yanzhou’s streets. Every household had hung red lanterns, the whole city lively and festive. Shi Shu walked shoulder to shoulder with Xie Wuchi, noticing a tall platform built by commoners to the side. Shouts rang nonstop as performers did tightrope walking, sword swallowing, and breaking stones on their chests. Amid the commotion, he tugged on Xie Wuchi, wanting to pull him closer to watch.

Xie Wuchi: “Not watching.”

But Shi Shu hugged his waist: “Watch, watch, watch, watch! I want to see, gege, I want to see!”

Shi Shu dragged him by the sleeve to the front of the platform. The crowd was noisy and packed shoulder to shoulder. Shi Shu was fascinated by the man walking on a mountain of blades. He craned his neck over the crowd and saw the man’s feet stepping on the sharp knife edges, climbing the “mountain” formed by blades step by step, a heavy stone on his shoulder, cold sweat beading on his forehead.

Shi Shu hurriedly pulled out some money. “Here, here. Craftsmen have it too hard.”

In high spirits, he walked forward. “Ge.”

His hand reached back to grab, but didn’t catch anyone. When he turned back, there were several people between him and Xie Wuchi—only their heads visible over the crowd. Just as Shi Shu was about to go back and pull him, his wrist suddenly tightened. Turning his head, he saw it was a man wearing a tusked mask.

Shi Shu tensed at once. “Who are you?”

The next second, the man raised his hand, and a flash of silver slipped from his sleeve. A mask? The image of that tusked mask from the Ten-Day God-Birth night when they fled in the Min region flashed instantly through his mind!

A Min man? An assassin?!

Shi Shu yanked his hand free. The man’s knife gleamed. The crowd was too tightly packed. A woman holding a child was tiptoeing forward. The masked man, annoyed by the crush of people in his way, casually swung his blade. The next moment, the woman and child fell together to the ground, a massive gush of blood spurting from her chest.

“Ahhh! Help! Help!”

“Help! Help!”

Red spread into pure black before Shi Shu’s eyes. Under the stage, the crowd erupted into screams, surging backward like a tide. At the center sat the masked man swinging his knife, hacking at anyone in reach. Many commoners fell in pools of blood, others clutching their spurting waists and bellies, screaming as they crawled forward.

He’s here for me. Pushed by the crowd, Shi Shu stumbled backward while the Min man gave chase, grabbing random bystanders by the hair and running them through, cutting them down. Shi Shu’s legs turned to jelly, terror gripping him. He knew that hiding within the crowd and using others as a human shield was the safest choice. But with cold sweat dripping off his brow, he suddenly grabbed a bench from the side and squeezed toward the Min man swinging the bloodied blade.

Seeing him move forward, the Min man’s arm paused, then he strode straight toward Shi Shu.

Caught unawares by the assassination attempt, Xie Wuchi’s guards had already mobilized, forcing their way into the retreating tide of people like fish swimming upstream. The instant Shi Shu broke free of the crowd, he brought the bench down hard!

The knife swung toward him. Shi Shu smashed the bench, rolled to the ground with his eyes shut, and threw his arms around the man’s legs, yanking him down with all his strength.

Bang! Bone hit the ground with a crisp crack. Thud! A kick slammed into Shi Shu’s solar plexus, blood surging up and clogging his chest. Adrenaline spiked—Shi Shu barely had time to think. Using the momentum of being kicked away, he lashed out with one foot and sent the blade flying.

Then his collar was grabbed. The man reached to crush his throat; just a twist would snap it. Shi Shu surged up desperately and sank his teeth into the man’s neck, biting down savagely into flesh—

He didn’t want to die. The will to live flared to its extreme at the edge of death. Shi Shu used every ounce of strength to tear at his throat, blood gushing wildly. In the struggle, the mask slipped off, revealing a familiar face.

—Yin Kun.

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

Yin Kun gave him a feral grin. Shi Shu’s jaw clenched sharply as punches hammered his waist and belly, pain exploding through him.

“Hurts, doesn’t it? Remember what I said at Hedo Academy? As long as I breathe, I’ll hang you brothers’ heads on the towers of Layered City. I’m here again.”

Blood surged into his throat.

Cold sweat poured from Shi Shu as he refused to let go, the taste of blood in his mouth growing stronger.

But a few more punches and his internal organs might rupture.

Shi Shu tore at him with everything he had, breathing hard as he bit down even harder.

Suddenly—Yin Kun was sent flying straight through the air, crashing hard to the ground, skin scraping across stone as blood streaked everywhere. It all happened in a blink. Just as Yin Kun tried to get up, a boot slammed into his chest, dropping him limp to the ground, several ribs snapping at once.

“Cough…” Agonizing nausea surged through Shi Shu’s waist and belly. As a hand lifted him into an embrace, he clutched at Xie Wuchi’s clothes, his vision going dark in waves. His ears filled with screams, sobbing, and the sound of blades piercing flesh.

Shi Shu clung desperately to Xie Wuchi’s collar and saw Yin Kun, through searing pain, stagger back to his feet! Like some fake man, Min soldiers rapidly closed around him. The towering, muscular Yin Wushu shielded him, hacking their way through the crowd as they retreated.

Shi Shu: “It’s him! That lunatic…”

When he spoke, only air hissed from his throat. Xie Wuchi’s gaze turned glacial as he lifted Shi Shu into his arms. The guards charged after the fleeing men. The ground behind them was a shambles—blood and corpses everywhere, the scale of the sudden carnage plain to see.

Shi Shu clutched his stomach, his vision blacking out in waves.

“Ugh!” He suddenly spat a mouthful of blood.

By his ear, he heard Xie Wuchi say, “Seal the city and hunt them down. Turn over every paving stone—I don’t want a single one to get away.”

—

Snow fell thickly. Shi Shu’s handsome face looked pale as he sat by the brazier, sipping hot tea.

The door banged and rattled. From time to time, people came and knelt outside the residence gate, crying in anguish: “My Lord, please, you must give us justice. My daughter died so horribly!” “My father died so horribly, stabbed to death alive!” “My Lord…”

“On a perfectly good New Year’s, assassins show up out of nowhere and dozens of commoners die—what is this world coming to?”

Lin Yan paced back and forth, drenched in sweat. “Have those assassins been found?”

“There are too few yamen runners, so the main camp’s soldiers went too. They’re searching house to house.”

“How many days now, how many days! This New Year’s is ruined. Bloodshed on New Year’s Eve—no auspicious start at all!…”

Shi Shu waited a long time until someone finally reported: “My Lord! Those Min assassins have been captured and sent to the city garrison prison!”

“The city garrison jail?”

As a key frontier garrison, Yanzhou had two violent enforcement organs: the yamen and the city garrison. At the yamen, one could still argue with the criminal officer. At the city garrison, they’d strip you of a layer of skin, and dying inside meant even your body might never be found. The city garrison answered only to the military commander—in other words, to Xie Wuchi.

Shi Shu stood up with difficulty.

At that moment, snow was heavy over the city garrison compound, the air cold and desolate. People stamped their feet to keep warm. One guard took a secret swig of liquor, shuddering all over.

In a room where Shi Shu sat, just one wall away, seven or eight captured Min men were locked in the dungeon.

Xie Wuchi stepped inside and swept them with a glance. “Where is Yin Kun?”

No one answered. They were all Min warriors, glaring viciously at him with predatory wolfish eyes.

“I like that look,” Xie Wuchi said, examining the bloodstained torture tools on the rack. “Killing fierce, blooded killers is much more interesting than killing weaklings on the street.”

He raised a hand, and someone stepped forward with a blade in hand. Xie Wuchi: “Cut them down one by one. However the people on the street died, that’s how you’ll cut them.”

The sickening sound of chopping flesh filled the dungeon.

Blood spattered everywhere. Candlelight flickered in the dark, damp cell, reflecting in Xie Wuchi’s eyes. He glanced at the severed limbs on the floor and straightened his unstained sleeve.

“I don’t have a hobby of torturing people. You see all this because you’ve done the same to others. Where did Yin Kun escape to?”

Still no one spoke. The second man was dragged up. Something weighed on his heart; he finally couldn’t help cursing Xie Wuchi: “I’m not afraid of death! Kill me if you dare! You think I’ll be scared? You tricked the King of Zhouchi into surrendering, stole Yong’an and Bu Prefectures, and plunged the Five Great Kings into civil strife. My only regret is not killing you on the street!”

“So this is your revenge?”

“That’s right! Just you wait—sooner or later, sooner or later! The Min Emperor will have you torn to pieces!”

Xie Wuchi raised his hand, and the man’s head tumbled from his shoulders. Standing in the dungeon, his face expressionless, he watched the headsman execute them one by one. In the suffocating stench of death, he could have saved any of them with a single word—but he didn’t.

“You, anything to say?” he asked the next one. The man was soaked in cold sweat, veins bulging in his neck, eyes bloodshot. Xie Wuchi shook his head. “Kill him.”

In the dim light, the damp walls seemed soaked in blood. It splattered all over the headsman, whose hands began to tremble. The choking smell of death thickened layer by layer. The Min men waited their turn to die, watching helplessly as their comrades were cut down.

At last, it was the final man’s turn. He kept crying for his mother in Min tongue, his legs shaking. Xie Wuchi walked closer to look at him. His breathing was ragged.

Xie Wuchi: “Afraid of dying?”

The man no longer dared to speak. Before the instinct for death, his legs trembled uncontrollably.

Xie Wuchi: “I won’t kill you.”

At those words, the dungeon fell abruptly silent. The man lifted his head to look at him. Cloaked in white, Xie Wuchi’s gaze was ice-cold. “I’ll let you go back with a message for Yin Kun.”

“I’m not a man with a good temper. Whether it’s you, or Yin Kun, or anyone else—if anyone so much as touches a single hair on my younger brother’s head, I won’t just kill him. I’ll kill his ancestors, kill his sons, kill his wife, kill his teachers, kill his brothers—kill anyone he cares about. I’ll kill them all. If any survive, I’ll keep hunting them, until they’re all dead. No end until death. You don’t stop, I don’t stop.”

The chill in his voice made the Min man hold his breath, staring at his silhouette like a nightmare.

Xie Wuchi: “Go back and tell him to wait. As long as I’m here, the Min people’s dream of marching south to unify Great Jing will never come true.”

When he finished, he reached out and unfastened the bloody shackles. The Min man’s throat worked, his eyes almost splitting with rage and fear as he looked at Xie Wuchi like he was a demon.

Xie Wuchi turned away. Guards stepped forward immediately, draping a thick coat over the man and pushing him out of the cell, stuffing a bag of dry rations into his hands and escorting him toward the city gate.

The thick stench of blood in the cell dissipated as soon as the wind blew in. Xie Wuchi stepped outside; Shi Shu, pale-faced, waited by the brazier. As they walked out of the city garrison prison, Xie Wuchi straightened the snowy cloak on Shi Shu’s shoulders.

Shi Shu knew he had killed people but not how. “Lin Yan said that during the New Year, bloodshed is taboo. Executions are usually postponed until after the first month.”

Xie Wuchi: “A casual matter.”

Shi Shu: “Casual? This assassination came too suddenly…”

The two walked side by side through the snow. Shi Shu’s stride was shorter and slower; he needed Xie Wuchi’s support. Turning things over in his mind, he finally understood: “Recovering Yong’an and Bu Prefectures weakened the Min, but they’re still watching us like tigers, aren’t they?”

“Of course. Now I have to deal with the Emperor on one side and guard against the northern barbarians on the other.”

Shi Shu gripped his hand tightly, squeezing hard. They walked together through the snow for a while when suddenly a fast horse galloped up ahead.

The rider was a civil adviser, usually kept in the camp to offer counsel. He rushed over and fell to his knees before Xie Wuchi. “My Lord, terrible news! Somehow, rumors have spread saying you are self-respecting with heavy troops and defying the court. Now, quite a few colleagues have packed their bags and left Yanzhou to return to the Eastern Capital!”

Shi Shu: “What?” It felt like he’d been punched. He looked up at Xie Wuchi.

Many scholars in Yanzhou had been taken in as behind-the-scenes guests once Xie Wuchi arrived. Unexpectedly, these people were still loyal to the court.

Xie Wuchi pondered, his expression only slightly thoughtful. “Is that so?”

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