Chapter 731: The Great Instructor Ximen Qing (3)

This punk is really something. Not that insanely, critically serious, but still—captives should stay captives.

There was no way he’d slipped in secretly, not with the Martial Alliance fighters on emergency duty after we’d nabbed imperial people. So rather than barging in by force, it had to be that someone upstairs let him through.

“...Instructor.”

Mandarlo’s face was stiff as a board.

The guy who always wore that sullen, irritating look—professional term: a punchable, pissy face—was, for once, totally deflated. Like he’d lost all his swagger. He’d probably heard about who the assassins really were, and that the Golden Guard had been aiming for him.

“Um. So, I... heard you were badly hurt. Are you... are you okay...?”

A full-body shiver ran up Qing’s back.

What the hell, did he eat something wrong? I don’t think there’s another guy alive who makes polite speech look this unnatural. He’d been resisting me with that stubborn, gritty pride all this time, and now—what kind of mental whiplash was this?

I mean, sure, if you get your life saved like that you should get courteous, but, wow. It doesn’t fit.

“Hard to say I’m fine even as lip service. But don’t worry about it. As an instructor, I just did what I was supposed to do. Even if my internal organs are basically all ruptured and my insides got totally pulverized, I’m not bothered about it.”

“Ah...”

It was a joke wearing a truth-mask, but Mandarlo just fidgeted, helpless, lips twitching like he didn’t know what to say.

Hm. Where’d that nonstop defiance go, huh.

Well, whatever. Even a dog-bone has rights. Since he was the assassins’ target, he had a right to know why this happened.

But.

“Unfortunately, what you’re about to see is adults-only. Mandarlo, you’re going to listen quietly from out here. Got it?”

A little resentment swirled across Mandarlo’s face.

“Instructor, I’m eighteen this year—”

“Not past the coming-of-age ceremony, right? If you were a woman, you’d count as an adult already. But a man? No chance. You haven’t even done your rite yet. You’re a total baby. A baby.”

For reference, in Central Plains custom, a man becomes an adult at twenty, a woman at sixteen.

Mandarlo’s expression went awkward.

“Baby... that’s a bit—”

“Right? Kinda gross. Anyway, my decision stands. Minors can’t watch. You’ll listen with your ears only. Understood?”

“...Understood.”

It’s not like that dog-bone had actually suffered any real harm from the assassins, so what grudge would he even have? The damage was on me and on innocent civilians. All he did was get dangled and shaken around while tied up.

With that, Qing opened the iron door to Youngban’s cell again.

CREEEEAK—

As the door swung open, Mandarlo’s face—looking faintly sulky, faintly dumbfounded, faintly pissy—was hidden behind it.

The darkest place is always right under the lamp, and the hardest place to spot is behind an iron door.

The moment it opened, I saw Youngban sitting there in lotus, and beside the bars, Jang Cheonho slumped against them, hanging limp.

Only... he was extremely quiet.

He’d been making that nonstop GRRK GRRK noise through the breathing hole I punched in his throat, but the dead don’t talk, and they don’t make noise.

Qing looked at Youngban’s wet hands and grinned.

“Weren’t you fond of that subordinate? Silencing the witness, huh. A captain choking out his own man—now that is a personality perfect for an assassin.”

Youngban’s eye corner twitched.

Not just his eye corner—his hands on his knees were trembling, too.

—Captain... kill me. Please... kill me.

That was his disciple’s last request, now that his skin had been peeled off and nothing of his old face remained.

And on top of that, this whole situation was exactly what that horrific woman wanted. Why else would she demonstrate, right in front of him, how to block the breathing hole to let a voice come out?

But there was nothing he could do.

Leaving him to die in agony would’ve been worse than sending him off quickly. The man had begged for it himself. How hard and unbearable must it have been for him to plead for death like that...

“Alright. So now will you tell me? What did my cadet do so wrong that you Golden Guard officers personally came to kill him?”

Youngban snorted.

KIK.

So. She thinks I’m a pushover, does she? Maybe I should’ve started by peeling the skin off one of his arms and tossing it to her as a rag.

Qing’s brows pinched.

“Khhhhh... hah, hahahahaha!”

Youngban burst into loud laughter.

He slapped his thigh over and over, laughing like it was the funniest thing in the world—

Then, suddenly, he snapped his face cold and glared at Qing as if nothing had happened.

“After experiencing your martial-world rabble’s atrocities, I understand more clearly than ever how right His Majesty was. Creatures born and raised by the Son of Heaven’s grace, still breathing by that grace, yet this is how you dare treat his servants. You people are traitors—treasonous rebels with not a shred of loyalty in your eyes.”

If I didn’t have an audience, I’d have spat “Son of Heaven my ass, that Son of Heaven bastard” right back in his face.

But there was a kid listening behind me. And as an instructor, I couldn’t exactly start cursing the Son of Heaven out loud. Not good for minors, you know?

“If you claim to be His Majesty’s servants, but you toss His Majesty’s name around freely and use it as an excuse to do evil, then aren’t you the traitors? Or are you saying His Majesty personally ordered you to secretly execute the Administrative Commissioner’s son?”

“Yes! That’s right! It was His Majesty’s command!”

“Don’t make me laugh. Why would His Majesty swing his blade in secret, and for what reason—”

“Because of a dreadful killing demon like you, that’s why!”

Youngban cut Qing off mid-sentence and shouted.

“Martial-world people are nothing but mangy wolves, filthy beasts! Why do you even exist? Do you farm the fields to feed the empire? Do you travel the land like merchants and move goods? Do you toil like soldiers to block enemy armies and prevent war?”

What martial-world people do is train their martial arts and serve only their own private force. They don’t help a single life under heaven.

If they were merely useless, that would be lucky.

They break the law, carry weapons, kill without hesitation, and steal others’ property without blinking. Even with magistrates and soldiers in place, they intimidate civilians and collect protection money on their own authority—if that isn’t a bandit, what is?

Then they sneer at national law and claim “officials can’t touch us,” which is basically saying they refuse the state’s rule outright. So you can see in their hearts how they mock the law, the country, and His Majesty himself. In the end, didn’t that outrageous brute Mucheonja dare to invade the imperial palace and seize the precious royal body, shaking it—an unspeakably blasphemous history that proves it all?

Honestly, even to Qing’s ears, it wasn’t wrong.

Not “a reason to get punched” but “not logically false.”

Because yeah, “the martial world” sounds cool, but it’s really just private armed groups playing turf war with a nicer name.

Still, even a correct statement depends on whose mouth it comes from. And I’m not about to hear it from this piece of shit.

“So the bandit scolds the bandit. Civilians say officials are scarier than tigers, scarier than plague, and in a world where you have to count clean officials on one hand, you’re not about to spew some bullshit like ‘today’s officials are doing a great job,’ are you?”

“Stupid woman! You think governing is that simple—everyone smiling, everything ending happily? Decide one thing and someone laughs while someone cries. The one who benefits says it’s thanks to him; the one who loses blames the country and shouts. There’s no official who doesn’t get cursed, and a bandit who’s never handled state affairs dares to babble nonsense!”

Have you ever handled state affairs? Officials get cursed too much, so the whole world treats all officials that way?

Qing was dumbfounded.

So he’s done state affairs, then? At Youngban’s level, he’s never faced unfairness from power or money. How would he know what the people live like?

But saying this to a guy like him would be useless. In the Central Plains, anyone backed by imperial command is invincible. Heaven’s mandate sits on their shoulders, so they’re automatically “right.” Question them and you’re a treasonous rebel.

“Then what about burning His Majesty’s people, throwing fire-bombs into His Majesty’s people, and harming an innocent woman to save your own life?”

“It was imperial command! It was the great cause! If you obsess over small things, how will you ever accomplish big things? Are you some idiot who can’t step forward because you’re scared to crush a bug?”

“Hmmm. Wow. Okay. Let’s skip that. I guess we can skip it.”

He’s going to die a miserable death anyway. No need to waste rage on fresh proof of how fucked he is.

You only get enraged when a guy you can’t kill runs his mouth. When a guy’s already emptied his dantian and sits caged behind iron bars, all you do is think, yeah? keep talking, let’s see how proud you are later.

Still, I feel like I’ve heard that exact line before.

The same kind of thing every bastard who screams about “the great cause” says—“small sacrifices are natural for big goals.”

“So. Why were you trying to kill my cadet? If His Majesty wanted him dead, all he had to do was send an edict ordering suicide. Instead he sent the Golden Guard disguised as assassins to kill him secretly, so...”

Why kill him in secret?

To hide that he killed him.

Why hide it? Why did he need to hide it?

I asked why the Son of Heaven gave the order, and he snapped back with ‘because the martial world is trash.’

Because he hates the martial world. Meaning: he wanted to hurt the martial world.

Suddenly, old memories flashed through Qing’s mind.

Back in Sichuan.

The Emperor killed a prince, then tried to pin it on the Tang Family of Sichuan so he could shout “treason!” and wipe them out.

The Administrative Commissioner’s son enrolled at the Righteous-Proper Martial Academy, then died.

Assassins killed him, but if they insisted the assassins were “martial-world people,” they could claim it was a martial-world feud.

Then they could “investigate” and slaughter everyone involved. Or maybe they planned to demand the Martial Alliance disband entirely.

“So you’re saying: to pick a fight with the martial world, you’d kill my cadet—who wasn’t exactly innocent, but still—and pin the crime on the martial world?”

“Heh-heh. You slipped out this time, but with His Majesty’s will set, how long do you think you can keep escaping? You’re already as good as dead. Khhheh....”

That was the moment—

“Is... is that really true?”

Mandarlo, who couldn’t hold it in anymore, popped out with a trembling voice.

I told him this was adults-only. Truly a guy who never listens.

But wow, look at this bastard.

He’d been spitting casual speech at me even while I beat him half to death, and only got polite after he owed me his life—

And now that it’s Youngban, the guy who came to kill him, he’s naturally using respectful speech too?

I was a little—no, a lot—pissed off.

But I let it slide this time. The kid was pitiful.

He wasn’t just lightly shocked. His eyes were shaking, his eye corners, his mouth corners—he looked like he’d been hit by a cannon.

I mean, he was the son of a high official. Even if his personality was garbage, he might’ve still believed in the imperial house.

If the imperial house had thrown him out as bait, of course he’d be shaken.

“Oh, Young Master! You’re here! Perfect! Dispose of that lawless woman! She foolishly hugged Heaven-Shaking Thunder and took the explosion alone. Even if she looks fine, she’s already badly injured!”

“W-what? Hugged Heaven-Shaking Thunder...?”

Mandarlo turned to Qing.

Qing scratched the back of her head, awkward.

“Uh, yeah. He tossed a fire-bomb into the middle of the market street.”

Mandarlo’s eyes went wide.

Blink, blink.

Hugged Heaven-Shaking Thunder? And she’s still in one piece?

He’d heard she was heavily injured, but she was walking around and talking like usual, so he’d assumed it wasn’t that serious.

But now a huge question hit him.

If it was thrown into the market street... what does that have to do with hugging it and taking the blast alone? Why not kick it away? Or just drop flat and avoid it?

If Qing had read his mind, she would’ve gone, ah, so you really are an official’s son—your brain is filled with bastard thoughts. You can’t even imagine that a bomb in the market would hurt civilians!

But she didn’t.

Youngban urged him again.

“So, Young Master, you heard it. It was all His Majesty’s command. Hurry and kill that vicious, treasonous killing demon—no, first open this cell. I’ll finish her myself.”