Everyone turned their heads at once to look.
A troop of men in black stood at the main gates. Starbursts shimmered on their collars and cuffs, and every one of them wore a tall black crown, a black cloak, black boots, and carried a black scabbard.
Expressionless, they marched in with imposing solemnity.
All the men from the eleven brigades in the courtyard stood in unison and bowed deeply.
"Greetings, my lord!"
"Dispense with ceremony."
The leading man in black didn't pause for a second as he strode forward. His collar and cuffs were embroidered with three gold stripes, a gold star, and a silver star. He had a square face, a straight nose, and a broad mouth, his expression grim and cold, radiating a merciless detachment.
Four men in black dressed identically followed behind him, distinguished only by the insignia on their collars and cuffs.
In a single stride, he mounted the raised platform.
The remaining men in black split into two files and swiftly fanned out on either side of the platform in a wild-goose wing formation, hands resting on their pommels, their faces stern and their gazes sharp.
Suddenly, an aura of austere slaughter rushed forward, sweeping across the entire courtyard.
Xu Yao looked up. Among the men following behind this dignitary were two officials from the Demon Suppression Bureau—the very two who had descended beneath the cliff alongside the Ning siblings when the white jade skeleton was discovered.
One of them had even given him cold-dispelling pills back then.
Now, they stood obediently behind the black-robed official adorned with three stripes and two stars.
Beside Xu Yao, Liu Zhen introduced him in a whisper: "That's Lord Li Keshi, the Prefectural Director of our Qi'an Prefecture Demon Suppression Office. The two you recognize are County Directors Lord Liu and Lord Wang. Aside from Lord Liu and Lord Wang, everyone else here today is from the prefectural office. That proves... someone is being executed today. Blood will be shed."
Xu Yao's mind was a bit muddled.
For a moment, he couldn't figure out why the absence of other county officials proved blood would be shed. Where was the proof in that?
Xu Yao was currently in that stage where he hungered for knowledge and found everyone else's words profoundly reasonable, so he applied his thoughts to pondering the cause and effect.
Yet after pondering for a long time, all he could deduce was that people had come from Qi'an Prefecture, none had come from Taining Subprefecture beneath it, and men from the Black Mountain County Demon Suppression Inspection Office had arrived. In other words, an administrative tier in the middle was missing. Why?
Because a superior official had come in person?
Chen Chong shot Liu Zhen a discreet glare. Liu Zhen lowered his head, cast down his eyes, and fell silent.
"I am Li Keshi of Qi'an Prefecture! Overseer of the Demon Suppression Bureau for Qi'an Prefecture, Southeast Circuit, of the Great Qin Mountain and River Prison."
Standing with his hands behind his back at the front of the platform, Li Keshi unexpectedly launched into a self-introduction: "Not *keshi* as in 'perhaps,' but *keshi* as in 'unrivaled in this generation.'"
His expression was stern, his cloak fluttering in the wind, carrying the aloof air of an incorruptible, iron-faced magistrate.
Yet the moment he spoke, Xu Yao couldn't help but feel an overwhelming sense of droll foolishness.
*Nobody said anything about your name, yet you started explaining it the second you opened your mouth. Besides, didn't you come here to handle official business?*
He hastily lowered his head.
Glancing around, he saw everyone present keeping their heads bowed just like him.
"The Second Squad of the Fifth Brigade was careless and sloppy in the execution of their duty! Consuming their rations while sitting idle, neglecting their posts, failing their responsibilities, and performing their tasks perfunctorily! Consequently, they allowed a mountain demon to escape and bring disaster to the mortal realm! It took multiple experts deployed across the prefectural office, subprefectural yamen, and county yamen, along with massive manpower scouring the mountains for two whole months, before the matter was resolved. This is dereliction of duty in every sense, a crime beyond pardon!"
Li Keshi's expression grew solemn. "Once a mountain demon escapes, how much calamity will it bring upon the common people of this land? How many deaths will it cause? Might it one day grow into a great monster that wreaks havoc across the entire world? All of this, you already know. I need not elaborate.
"Or perhaps you do not care.
"Yet there are always things in this world that everyone cares about!
"Therefore, I have only one thing to say: merit shall be rewarded! Faults shall be punished! Crimes shall be answered with the blade! Great Qin has Great Qin's statutes; the Mountain and River Prison has the rules of the Mountain and River Prison; and the Demon Suppression Bureau has the regulations of the Demon Suppression Bureau!
"None of us have it easy. We are all brothers working in these parts with our heads hanging by a thread. Whether this was truly a dereliction of duty or whether you were forced by circumstances, I know in my heart. But that is useless! When a mountain demon escapes, no matter how cautious you might have been, allowing such a thing to occur is dereliction of duty! There is no room for debate!"
Facing all the men of the brigades, Li Keshi's countenance was grim.
"That is why whenever such matters arise, I must come in person. First, having been brothers in the past, I come to oversee the execution and see our brothers off on their final journey, honoring the bond of our meeting in this life.
"Second, as you all well know, once I arrive, pleas for leniency are futile!
"If we indulge it once, upholding the rules will be impossible in the future! This precedent cannot be set."
With that, he swept his sleeve and barked coldly, "Fifth Brigade, you may come out! Whoever committed the offense, step onto the platform of your own accord! Do not bring shame upon your brothers!"
The doors swung open.
Led by a burly man, all thirty-seven men of the Fifth Brigade filed out, not a single one missing.
None were bound.
None were guarded.
Ever since they received the order, they had been waiting inside the hall.
Every face was ashen as death.
No words passed between them; words were no longer necessary.
Everything had already been said over the past few days.
Then, two men in tight-fitting martial attire stepped out from the crowd and strode onto the platform.
"Greetings, Lord Overseer! The two of us have come to accept our punishment!"
"Kang Hu has come to accept punishment! Yu Sen has come to accept punishment!"
Li Keshi let out a long sigh, turned his head aside, and said, "You two... speak for yourselves."
"On the twenty-sixth of June, the demon-catching compass issued an alert. My Second Squad set out for Ghost Cliff to deal with a mountain demon. The previous evening, our squad had gathered for drinks at my home. After getting drunk, we were exposed to the mountain winds, and several men suffered diarrhea at dawn, delaying us by half a shichen..."
Li Keshi glared fiercely at the speaking Kang Hu.
Chen Chong and all the others shot Kang Hu a piercing glare as well, their warning virtually spilling over: *Why are you mentioning details that only aggravate your guilt?!*
At the same time, despair gripped everyone's hearts: *It's over.*
For this was an open-and-shut transgression. Putting aside the unexpected diarrhea from drinking, there was one undeniable fact: they were on duty on the twenty-sixth, yet got drunk on the twenty-fifth. The duty roster hung there all year round—did you not know you were on duty the next day?
Was that not practically seeking death?
Kang Hu's voice hitched.
He continued, "...On our way, we encountered torrential rain and rockslides. The original road was destroyed by collapsing boulders, forcing us to take a detour and losing more time. When we reached Ghost Cliff, the critical moment had already arrived. As squad leader, I, Kang Hu, immediately designated Yu Sen to descend the cliff with me on the mission. Yet to our surprise, once we went down, we discovered three mountain demons forming simultaneously. We had brought only two ropes, so only two men could descend."
Kang Hu said with heavy grief, "When we found the mountain demon peach trees, the demonic green miasma had already begun to rise, and the demon peaches were ripening.
"The two of us could only do our utmost, slaying two of the demons. But when we lunged for the third, it had already dissolved into mist and risen. Our paired sabers could not disperse it, ultimately leading to this disaster.
"We reported it at once. The county and prefectural yamens immediately dispatched demon catchers—over four hundred men hunting for more than two months—before finally locating the escaped mountain demon and slaying it to eliminate future calamity.
"We committed a grave error, and our punishment is death; we harbor no resentment.
"We thank Your Lordship for your magnanimity in delaying our sentencing until after the threat was eliminated, allowing the two of us to go to our deaths with peace of mind, sparing us brothers from dying with regret.
"Today, our brothers have gathered, and Your Lordship has arrived in person. Our hour has come, and we submit ourselves to the law!"
The mountain wind howled.
A bleak chill hung in the air.
Chen Chong and the others turned pale, their hearts sinking cold.
By the gate at the courtyard's edge, two pairs of mothers and children knelt in white mourning clothes, consumed by despair, having cried until their strength was spent. They looked like docile livestock led to the slaughterhouse, waiting for the final decree.
The children were only six or seven years old, and the women were not particularly old either, appearing in their thirties, their bodies and faces marked by years of hard labor.
They were clearly the families of the two men.
Liu Zhen, Buck Teeth, and several others from the Third Squad tensed up completely in formation, their eyes nearly bulging from their sockets and their hearts pounding like drums.
The twenty-sixth of June, the torrential rain.
That was the exact day their squad and Xu Yao had encountered the triplets and discovered the skeleton—it was the downpour of that very day!
So triplets had also appeared over on their side that day.
Had Xu Yao not made his discovery, two more men would be kneeling here waiting for death right now: Liu Zhen and Buck Teeth!
At the thought, cold sweat drenched their backs.
Xu Yao's eyes were filled with shock. According to Kang Hu, eighty percent of this was due to sheer misfortune and natural disaster. How could that be linked to 'dereliction of duty'?
The only flaw lay in 'the squad had gathered for drinks the night before, gotten drunk, and several suffered diarrhea at dawn, delaying them by half a shichen.'
Yet they had set out ahead of schedule in the first place; had the rockslides not destroyed the road, they would have arrived in plenty of time.
They were simply too unlucky. A rockslide had wiped out the road en route to their mission, forcing a detour. When they arrived, the situation was not only unexpected, but their time had already run out. How was anyone supposed to overcome that?
No matter who it was, wouldn't they be helpless in such circumstances?
Could this not... be deemed extenuating circumstances?
Chapter 42