Chapter 927: A Strange Bitch, A Strange Guy, A Strange Guy (12)

—[Escort Captain Pori, I will provoke that man and draw him in, so in the meantime, please escort Her Highness.]

It was a voice that suddenly burrowed into Pori’s ear.

But before the meaning even registered, the voice itself made him flinch.

Voice Transmission was supposed to be a low whisper that seeped in—so a Voice Transmission this loud was something he had never encountered in his life.

And the strangest part was how clearly he could hear it.

It felt like some enormous, sacred-sounding Voice Transmission that was being shouted right next to his ear—yet it wasn’t noisy or irritating at all. It slid in naturally, impossibly.

Because the voice was too beautiful to scrape the ear.

Pori sent a reply.

—[No. This falls under our duty and our responsibility. We will handle it, so Madam, please take care of the princess.]

While the Eight Banners charged and engaged, Qing should evacuate the princess.

On Jurchen land, with an enemy of the tribe targeting the woman who would become the tribe’s mother—how could the tribe’s sons retreat?

—[Escort Captain Pori, even if I were to escort Her Highness, wouldn’t those who know this land be better suited to secure her safety than someone unfamiliar with Jurchen terrain? What matters most right now isn’t that man. It’s Her Highness’s safety.]

Pori’s mind snapped fully awake.

It was true. The princess’s safety was the single most critical matter. If something went wrong—

His complexion drained without him noticing.

On the way to the wedding—meaning the wedding had not yet happened—Princess Yeonsul still held the status of imperial blood. Not even an adopted branch: direct imperial blood.

And in Jurchen territory, with escort responsibility in Jurchen hands, if a direct imperial scion was attacked and an ugly tragedy occurred?

The Central Plains would demand accountability from the Jurchens—and that debt wouldn’t be something you could pay off with tribute or submission.

The Central Plains had ruled as the world’s center for a long age because of one thing: the towering authority of the Son of Heaven.

Authority built atop the corpses of enemies.

“Damn it. If the princess was what you wanted, you could’ve just said so from the start—‘Hand over the princess.’ Why make it confusing with all this kneel-this, kneel-that? Some crazy bastard was impersonating the emperor, so I was going to play along and send him on his way, but no—turns out he’s actually completely out of his mind.”

After that, as if she wanted him to hear, the Royal Censor’s “mutter” erupted—more like a shout than a soliloquy.

The words were rough and crude, downright vulgar—but Pori had already heard through Voice Transmission that she would provoke the Transcendent enemy and draw him in, so he could only grind his teeth and clench his fist.

Soon, the impersonator exploded with rage.

—Y-you...! You insolent lowborn bitch! How dare you spew that kind of filth at me!

“That wasn’t for you, so mind your own business. Why are you eavesdropping on someone else’s muttering? Seriously—my luck’s so rotten some brain-dead thing has to pop out. Who gave birth to something like that and called it their kid, honestly.”

—I will not let you die cleanly. I will capture every man and woman you know and—

“Kill them in front of me and pickle them and make me eat them? Yeah, I’ve heard that one more than once. Got anything new?”

—W-What?

“Seriously. Such a predictable line. ‘I’ll kill your family and friends in front of you and pickle them and make you eat them’—King Wei’s Guiwei already used that one. God, it’s boring. Boring. Don’t you have anything new besides that?”

Then Qing looked straight at the impersonator.

“No, really—if you want to leave even a single line in the history books, you should at least have one distinctive punishment. If all you do is reuse what already exists, it doesn’t carry °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° any authority. Since ancient times, punishment is the foundation of authority.”

Ahem. Qing cleared her throat and put on an unusually dignified voice, like she was dusting off something she’d learned a long time ago.

Since ancient times, punishment has been the foundation of authority, and a vital state affair by which a country is maintained.

In the past, the Tyrant King of Yin devised the Boiling-Cauldron Execution—boiling a man alive in a cauldron, making meat broth, and feeding it to the man’s family.

The Tyrant King of Zhou made men run across a red-hot iron plate—until their legs melted and they died—calling it the Red-Hot Iron-Plate Execution.

King Wei’s Guiwei... she already mentioned.

Qin’s First Emperor went one step further, enjoying the act of binding people to an iron rod and roasting them on it—and his chancellor, Shang Yang, devised the Nine-Clan Extermination, the first mass clan annihilation in the Central Plains.

Han’s Empress Lü was condemned for cutting off limbs and throwing victims into a pen, but in truth, that was the Five-Mutilations Execution—an extreme punishment created by Han’s founder.

And then our own founding ancestor delivered the fitting end to traitors—collaborators who ran wild as Mongol auxiliaries and oppressed their own people—this was called Steel-Comb Flaying.

You scrape the skin with a steel comb until the breath stops—eventually scraping down to muscle and bone—the pain truly befits a traitor, and—ugh, what is—hk—sshh—th-th—anyway—

Suddenly, the Heaven-Sundering Demonic Aura in her lower abdomen went berserk, and agony slammed into her gut—like being punched, like being kicked, like being stabbed with a heated spear.

Qing immediately changed the subject.

“And that’s not all. An ancient kingdom of the Miao people left no name behind—but their punishments remain, preserved as the Five Punishments in the history of the Central Plains.”

They were horrifying punishments recorded in actual histories.

“Excluding the tyrants who killed for amusement, all the rest were founders of dynasties—first kings. Even if they didn’t create new punishments to leave their names behind, every first king opened a new nation with cruel punishments. That kind of cruelty is a virtue an emperor ought to possess—hk—sshh—ah, damn it, again.”

This stupid Heaven-Sundering Demonic Aura—useless for anything except Heavenly Demon’s Army Descending Step—I really need to figure out how to rip it out and toss it.

The pain sank down at once, but—

“So what I’m saying is, if the guts of a guy who wants to play emperor are only that big, what—are you going to rule a village? Then that’s an emperor? That’s a village chief.”

—.......

“So, again. Present a punishment so terrifying my legs go slack and I collapse and piss myself just from hearing it. Not some ‘I’ll kill your relatives’ nonsense.”

The impersonator pressed his lips shut.

Because, somehow... it was persuasive.

The scary part about Qing’s Formless Poison was that her voice was so beautiful you listened without meaning to. On top of that, her projection was so good the words sank in cleanly, one after another.

In a verbal fight, if you just shut your ears and keep your mouth open—saying only what you want—you’re basically invincible.

But her voice shattered that defense.

You knew it was poison, and you still listened, and then you spat blood afterward—wasn’t that exactly why it was called Formless Poison, the end-times technique?

—Tch. Just because your mouth is attached—

The impersonator clamped his lips shut again.

He was stalling, pretending he wasn’t, while he tried to devise a terrifying, cruel punishment.

Qing’s lips twitched faintly.

A sign of someone sending Voice Transmission.

After a short pause—

—Sometimes a life more horrific than death exists. I will strip you naked and bind you in the most bustling street, so you will be treated not as a person, but as a tool—

“Oh, that already exists. Tattoo Punishment.”

—Then not binding. I will cripple your lower abdomen and sever the tendons and vessels of your limbs, and then carve characters into your body—

“Carving characters is Tattoo Punishment, isn’t it?”

—It is not Tattoo Punishment! Not! I said I would cripple your lower abdomen and sever the tendons and vessels of your limbs!

“But sects in the Central Plains do that too. And if someone gets driven out that way, and then later commits a crime and gets Tattoo Punishment, isn’t it the same thing?”

—But this is different, because it is proclaimed by imperial decree that anyone may do as they please to you—

“Even without that, if you get Tattoo Punishment, it ends up like that anyway. And characters—just erase them.”

In this primitive ancient Central Plains, criminals weren’t treated as people.

If you beat them to death, you were innocent. You weren’t punished.

So for those who received Tattoo Punishment, it was practically normal to burn the tattooed words with a hot iron or carve away the skin to remove them, then go somewhere far away and live a new life.

In fact, Tattoo Punishment was carried out with that in mind—like: Erase it yourself and leave.

—......I will attach watchers.

“Hm. In that case... my score is three out of ten.”

—No—why!

“Because it’s sloppy. If you enforce a punishment like that, it’s very likely to become a future disaster. You can bribe the watchers and escape. Or even if you can’t, if people who know you come to rescue you, you could slip away.”

—My subordinates will never betray me! And anyone who might help you is already in the same state, so how could they help you?

“Then what about the people who help the people who help me? After the people who help me get freed with help from their helpers, they can come free me, too.”

—Then I will make them the same as well!

“Then what about the people who help the people who help the people who help me? And after that, what about the people who help the people who help the people who help the people who help me? Are you going to turn the entire world into cripples and carve letters into all of them?”

—Fine. Then rather than making them the same, I should slaughter anyone who might help you and cut off the trouble at the root.

“Hm. Then this score—?”

—Don’t be ridiculous! Why does the score go down even more!

“Because. If there isn’t hope you can live, you won’t want to live. And if you don’t want to live, how is the situation going to be miserable and painful? If everyone you know is dead, what part of life gets more painful? You can just hang limp with dead eyes. A despairing person has nothing left to fear and nothing left to hurt.”

—Kgh... that’s...!

This was the power of Formless Poison.

Even if she became a laughingstock, she dragged the other side down to the same level.

And Qing was funny to begin with, so being a laughingstock didn’t cost her anything.

But the other person?

The expressions of everyone forced to listen to this idiotic “battle of wills” without being able to show it proved everything.

What the hell is this braindead conversation?

This isn’t a conversation from this world. It’s a conversation from the other world.

The Jurchen Eight Banners, the palanquin bearers holding up the golden pyramid, everyone—enemy or ally—wore the same subtle, miserable expression.

*****

And it was behind this impossible “battle of wills.”

—Your Highness, this servant is Yang. Please listen quietly. I am ashamed to say it, but there is an enemy outside, so you must evacuate quietly. Forgive this servant for daring to intrude upon your honored bridal palanquin in order to escort you. It is irreverent, but you must not ask questions. Then... I will lift you.

“This servant” was what eunuchs called themselves in official settings.

Meaning: Eunuch Yang was sending Voice Transmission to the princess from outside the carriage.

While the self-proclaimed emperor’s gaze was fixed on Qing, and his thoughts were fixated on devising cruel punishments, the eunuch had already slipped up to the princess’s carriage.

Jurchen riders who had subtly repositioned themselves blocked the sightline as the carriage door opened.

Then the eunuch, holding a thick bundle of bedding, quietly slipped out of the carriage.

He disappeared toward the rear and carefully placed the bundle into Pori’s arms.

—Please take good care of Her Highness.

—She is the one we will serve as our mother. We will escort her with that reverence.

Eunuch Yang turned his head and met the Golden Guard guardsman’s eyes.

The guardsman didn’t know Qing’s true identity, but at the words “we must escort the princess,” he naturally joined in.

Of course, Eunuch Yang couldn’t accept it.

No matter how many times he thought about it, it was suffocatingly absurd. Ridiculous beyond belief.

The real imperial scion was risking danger and volunteering as bait... to evacuate the fake princess?

If it were the other way around—if the fake dressed up and evacuated the real—fine. But this?

So what could he do?

The true child of heaven was resolute. So even he had no choice but to remain and help to the end.

And thus the escape group carrying Yeonsul quietly peeled away and vanished into the trees.

If that man weren’t seated so high atop the golden pyramid, they could’ve wrapped cloth around the horses’ hooves to mute the sound and galloped away to the rear.

But no matter how distracted he was, he wouldn’t fail to notice cavalry bolting the opposite direction—so they had no choice but to head into the forest off the road.

Even so, the situation wasn’t bad.

They only needed to buy a short amount of time—just enough to secure the fake princess’s safety.

After that, everyone remaining would charge and aid Her Highness’s escape, and for a master like Her Highness, it wouldn’t be difficult to flee with only her own body...

But that relief lasted only a moment.

“KIII-EEEEEK!!” “Kkyyooht!” “Food!” “Meal!” “Hungry!” “Hearts!” “KIII-EEEEEK!!” “Fresh hearts!” “Kkuaaak!”

A grotesque, throat-scraping shriek.

Shouts full of childish killing intent.

And on top of it—CLANGING weapon impacts.

The eunuch’s expression twisted in an instant.

An ambush.

There was an ambush.