Chapter 1058: That Creature Is a Harmful Creature (13)

The mood in the banquet hall turned cold.

The fine banquet spread laid out with such effort was cooling by the moment, and as Qing sat there forced to merely look at it, her heart was cooling too—

“Lord Yeongsi.”

At the king’s summons, the warrior seated near the left-hand row rose to his feet.

Then he stepped forward calmly and dropped to his knees in the middle of the room with a thud, sitting upright.

“You were the one who informed me of my son’s death. And yet the dead man has returned perfectly alive. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Qing’s expression soured at once.

No, really—what the hell were these bastards doing, laying out a whole meal and then pulling this? No, she knew exactly what they were doing, but did they really have to do it at the dinner table?

It was obviously some kind of hearing. The intent was plain as day. Yeongsi was that bastard, the one who had abandoned the prince, cut down the comrade who tried to stop him, and run.

“My lord. His Highness the heir, together with the three warriors Zenichi, Jūsu, and Heihachi, and six soldiers under their command, rode out to scout the enemy camp the other day. Of them, only one man returned—Kichō, a soldier under Heihachi. He reported that His Highness had fallen into an ambush laid by Central Plains troops, fought valiantly, and at last died in battle. I believed his words. If trusting the report of a subordinate was a crime, then I will gladly accept that guilt.”

“So you did not confirm it with your own eyes?”

“Zenichi, Jūsu, and Heihachi were all masters of withdrawing under pursuit. If men of that caliber could not return alive, then I judged they must have encountered the enemy’s elite.”

“And where is this Heihachi who lied to you? I would hear his words myself. Bring him before me.”

At that, a loud, “Yes, sir!” came ringing in from somewhere out beyond the outermost area.

Apparently he was a man of low rank, for a nervous-looking fellow rose from somewhere under the tents outside the banquet hall and cautiously made his way inward.

His face looked miserable beyond description, utterly drained of color, unable to hide the fine trembling that ran through him. He was the very image of a man terrified out of his wits.

Then he dropped to his knees outside the threshold of the innermost chamber.

“I am Heihachi! His Highness charged into the enemy ranks, and arrows blackened the sky from every direction while the enemy host was without number, yet His Highness advanced without the slightest fear. I withdrew so that I might carry word of his glorious end!”

Huh?

What the hell was this nonsense?

The villagers had clearly said he panicked at a few arrows and ran, fell into a trap, and nearly got himself killed.

The prince had not even run on his own feet. One of his men had hoisted him up and fled with him, and because of that the prince had ended up crushing that man beneath him and thus escaped the sharpened stakes at the bottom of the pit.

So what was all this now about enemy hosts and charges?

Qing’s brows came crashing down, but the soldier kept talking.

“But now that His Highness has returned safely, I beg leave to atone with my death for the danger I caused through my reckless judgment! Grant me permission!”

The soldier’s voice carried unmistakable terror.

Qing narrowed her eyes.

This did not sound like a man speaking of his own free will.

“I grant it.”

Saying that, the king flicked something through the air.

It was a short dagger, about a foot long from hilt to point.

The soldier stared at the blade that had fallen before him. Then he bit his lip hard, seized it with trembling hands, and lifted both hands high, gripping it in reverse.

“Long live Ippen! Long live His Majesty the King!”

Then he drove it deep into his side and, grinding his teeth, shoved it across.

From one flank to the other, he sliced his belly open in a long horizontal tear.

This, right here, was the traditional culture of Japan: self-disembowelment.

“Khk—”

“Your loyalty has now been proven. You die an honorable death.”

“Th-thank... you...”

Thud.

The soldier pitched forward face-first, and bright red blood spread in every direction from the body collapsed as if in a bow.

The king paid it no mind.

His gaze turned forward once more, toward Yeongsi kneeling there.

“Kichō has testified with his life, so I will no longer reproach your judgment. However, you also murdered Nakamura, a warrior of mine, and cut down the soldiers who followed him. Do you have anything to say about that?”

At once Yeongsi began pouring out excuses with practiced fluency, as if he had expected this.

“Lord Nakamura declared that he would avenge His Highness and lead the whole force out. But the enemy host was powerful, and His Highness had already displayed the valor of our nation. What meaning would there have been in the remaining troops charging out only to die uselessly? Yet Lord Nakamura would not yield his intent. Thus I had no choice but to resort to harsh measures.”

“You admit the deed was yours?”

“Yes. I do. The Central Plains host is powerful, and our own forces are inferior to it. At a time when every last soldier matters, it was only right to preserve the strength of our nation, if only for the sake of revenge later on.”

“Hm.”

The king pretended to deliberate.

This all felt awfully staged.

The answers came out too neatly, as if prepared in advance, and so did the terrified soldier who had just split open his belly so smoothly.

More than anything, they had dragged every pirate bastard in their den in here under the excuse of a banquet and gathered them all together as if to say, Look here, all of you.

And why was the prince just sitting there in silence?

Even with his face drawn tight in a frown and discontent plain in his eyes, he was keeping his mouth shut and saying nothing.

Qing’s eyes narrowed.

These bastards had rigged the whole thing, hadn’t they?

Now all the king had to do was step in and forgive Lord Yeongsi, and then that would be it. Everyone lives happily ever after. A world where no one gets hurt.

Perfect.

The prince had not feared even the overwhelming might of the Central Plains army, and not only that, he had even returned alive afterward.

That was a legendary martial exploit—beyond legendary, practically mythic. For an heir meant to inherit the throne, it was the kind of achievement one could never buy twice.

Nakamura would remain a loyal retainer who knowingly marched to his death while proclaiming vengeance.

Yeongsi would become a man of cold loyalty, someone willing to cut down even a comrade for the good of the nation.

And that bastard who had just gutted himself? There had probably been something in it for him too.

Die as a traitor and have your whole family killed, or die alone and let your family live. Something along those lines.

At that moment, Qing’s eyes flashed.

Everybody profits, do they?

Then doesn’t that mean I’m the only one taking the loss here?

And how dare they put on this rigged little performance right in front of her? Everyone gets a happy ending, nice and tidy? These pirate vermin, lower than beasts, dared?

Were they expecting her to read the room and play along?

She wasn’t good at reading the room.

Reading the room? She didn’t know the first thing about that.

Or at the very least, they should have told her beforehand.

If they were going to stage a performance, why hadn’t they told her? She knew the truth too, didn’t she?

Qing flung out her hand, pointed grandly, and shouted:

“Wait! I object!”

Her voice rang through the hall so thunderously that it almost felt as though huge bright-red letters had appeared in the air and begun shaking.

“Your Imperial Majesty! That man is trying to make a fool of you! You must not be deceived!”

At that, the prince’s face turned white on the spot.

Only then did the realization hit him.

Because the prince had absolutely no desire to forgive Yeongsi either. The problem was that he himself had also made a colossal fool of himself.

The problem was that his scouting party had not been wiped out by Central Plains soldiers at all.

It had been brought down by a miserable trap set by lowly peasants.

But Yeongsi had genuinely believed the prince’s death was the result of an ambush by Central Plains troops, and hadn’t the true source of that lie just disemboweled himself a moment ago?

So if the prince wanted to demand Yeongsi’s punishment—

He would have to confess honestly that he had forced the scouting mission through, dragged the warriors along with him, panicked at a few arrows, turned and ran, and been wiped out in humiliating fashion.

He had never been able to bring himself to say it.

So after some hemming and hawing, it had all turned into: let’s just wrap this up quietly and nicely.

And once things had gone that way, when the banquet was arranged, he had forgotten to tell Qing about it.

In truth, he had not even had the chance.

The king was flustered too.

Imperial Majesty?

Who the hell was she calling Imperial Majesty?

He played at being a king of Ippen, yes, but he had not the slightest intention of acting as some emperor. His plan was simple enough: keep building power like this, then later send envoys to the Emperor, have his royal title recognized, and win glory for his house as a feudal lord.

That was all.

“W-wait, Imperial Majesty—”

“Your Imperial Majesty! His words are a blatant lie! The prince never fell for any scheme of the Central Plains army! To begin with, the Central Plains army has no interest whatsoever in coastal affairs—isn’t that something all of you, who have been preying on those coasts all this time, know better than anyone? The Central Plains army does not guard the coast!”

Setting aside the title, it was a perfectly reasonable point.

After all, they had been pirating for years without ever once running into the Central Plains army.

“Lord Seomun, just a moment—”

“His Highness fell into the hands of those wretched village bumpkins—illiterate, useless, half-starved nobodies! That’s what happened!”

Well, sorry to the villagers of Salt Village, but this was for their sake too, so surely they would understand.

The prince, however, lost every trace of color.

He had not expected Lord Seomun to betray him here.

“The Central Plains army? Please. If anyone had really charged into the Central Plains army, how would he have returned alive? Those men assigned to guard His Highness—what were their names just now, Zenichi, Jūsu, Heihachi? Those bastards were disloyal, incompetent, worthless vermin. Those trash heaps dared drag His Highness into danger! It was all because of those bastards! They were the filthy ones!”

A huge bomb exploded in the middle of the hall.

Up until a moment ago, those men had been heroes who followed the prince into a glorious last stand.

Now suddenly they were trash?

“Lord Seomun, please calm yourself for a moment—”

“Your Highness, don’t worry. I’ll lay out the truth clearly right here.”

“No, that’s—”

“Everyone, those bastards panicked over a few arrows fired by mere villagers, abandoned His Highness and ran, then died falling into a crude little pit trap barely half a zhang deep! His Highness was left alone, and the villagers, after seeing his noble jade-like face, decided he was too exalted for them to touch, so they simply locked him up instead! His Highness was being held in the filthy hands of those low creatures!”

A wave of murmuring swept through the room.

Among Japanese bastards, it came in Japanese-bastard style—a buzzing uproar.

The prince helplessly scrubbed a hand over his face.

Yeongsi’s expression froze solid. Then he shot the prince a glance and immediately twisted into a savage scowl.

Damn it.

Every word that tall, Eight-Foot Ghost-looking bitch was saying was true.

So that idiot heir, who had pushed past everyone telling him not to go and insisted on going scouting anyway, had been captured in such a laughable—

No, it would have been better if it were merely laughable.

Such a shameful way.

Yeongsi felt cheated.

He had been told it was an ambush by Central Plains troops, so he had believed that was what it was. He had thought it a little strange that Central Plains troops would lay an ambush there, but then again, maybe they had finally decided to set a trap just that once.

This, in the end, was the limit of bad men.

Bad men never took responsibility for their own actions. They only ever tried to wriggle out through lies and excuses.

So even when they seemed to trust each other and laugh together, all of them were really standing atop a layer of lies hidden in shadow.

And once the sun rose and the truth concealed in those shadows was exposed, that trust shattered too, collapsing in an instant.

Such was the shallowness of friendship among villains.

“Furthermore, that man brutally tried to murder Lord Nakamura, the only loyal retainer who sought to rescue His Highness. If there were no twisted grudge behind it, how could he have laid hands on him in such a horrifying way? Lord Nakamura had been skewered through by a great blade and pinned to the ground! If it was only a difference of opinion, the two of them could have settled it cleanly in a warrior’s duel. So why leave him in such a wretched state—pinned to the earth like that, not even killed outright?”

Yeongsi opened and closed his mouth.

At that, everyone in the room turned to look at him.

When the lines had been rehearsed in advance, he had been able to speak them smoothly enough.

But now that this unexpected turn had left him utterly stunned, all he could do was flap his mouth soundlessly.

“That man slaughtered his comrades in hideous fashion and hung their bodies through the camp, and what he did to Lord Nakamura was just the same—every last bit of it was done for one reason only: to deceive Your Imperial Majesty from beginning to end. Of course Your Imperial Majesty would have wished to recover at least the body of the loyal lord Nakamura, and at that point he could have blamed it all on the Central Plains army and washed away his own crimes! That bastard was a rebel through and through, from the very beginning—a traitor who thought of nothing except deceiving Your Imperial Majesty!”

The king flinched every time she said “Imperial Majesty,” but as Qing’s accusation continued, his eyes grew sharp.

He had heard Yeongsi say he had merely been forced into using warriorly measures after a disagreement of principle. This was the first he had heard of comrades butchered horribly and displayed.

“Your Imperial Majesty! You must cut off that bastard’s head at once and set it upon Lord Nakamura’s funeral table! In ages past, Qin Shi Huang buried alive every Confucian scholar who offered loyal remonstrance and kept only flatterers close, and in the end he ruined his state like the fool he was! And Xuanzong of Tang trusted the treacherous Li Linfu, who framed loyal ministers and had them imprisoned, and he too ruined the state like a fool! And Gaozong of Song executed the loyal Yue Fei and employed the traitorous Qin Hui, and in the end Song was destroyed, so he too was a fool among fools! Is it not only idiots, halfwits, morons, and mongrel trash who keep traitors close and cast aside the loyal?”

It sounded impressive, citing historical examples and all, but what she was really saying was simple enough:

If you don’t execute him, then you are an idiot, a halfwit, a moron, and mongrel trash.

“You there, Yeongsi! If you have anything to say, then say it! Is there a single false word in my accusation? And you, Your Highness! You know too, don’t you? Was there even one lie in what I said!?”

“I... I... that is...”

With one move, Qing had handed an enormous lump of shit to all three of them at once—the king, the prince, and Yeongsi.

And she herself had not told a single lie, so she stood there upright and shameless.

This was the true way of chaos.