The Prince's Purge and the Night of Carnage
The Prince of Virtue and Virtue, Dukhyeon, had beheaded every single one of the Emperor’s lackeys who came to Sichuan, nipping potential threats in the bud for the sake of survival. What even the prince himself hadn’t anticipated was that Sichuan was the richest land in the Central Plains, and the officials sent to govern such a prized territory were anything but upright. A good posting wasn’t a duty to govern well—it was a reward, a gift granted to the Emperor’s favorites. Office had become less about the responsibilities of the position and more about the rightful spoils earned through personal connections. As a result, everyone simply enjoyed the perks and did absolutely nothing. Purging these corrupt officials wasn’t even difficult. One glance inside their warehouses was enough to justify chopping off their heads. “How dare you steal from the nation? Treason suits you far better than civil service,” was all it took. When the Emperor heard the news, he merely twitched an eyebrow and muttered, “Well, would you look at that.” Even he couldn’t very well complain about someone executing corrupt officials.
Once the purge of the corrupt was complete, those who had remained in office out of genuine principle and integrity suddenly found real power in their hands. And these newly empowered officials began to worship the prince with the fervor of lovers. The three branches of administration, law, and military—which should have been in constant political tension through the concept of separation of powers (a surprisingly ancient idea)—instead united completely in service to a single man. This was why, after Yang Sang-gun-ja secretly slipped in and out of the Sichuan Command Headquarters, both the Assistant Regional Commander and the Deputy Regional Commander had undergone such a sudden change in attitude.
They had strangled the Regional Commander, knocked him unconscious, and locked him away. As a result, the twelve thousand Sichuan troops mobilized under imperial decree began showing suspicious movements. The prince’s guests melted into the night. These were people who had fled the world and made the royal residence their home. So much so that they had sworn an oath among themselves never to use proper names with one another, choosing instead the most shameful and humiliating titles possible. If they weren’t family within the royal household, there would be no reason to call each other by name. Even if a family member said, “Hey, you idiot,” it was just how things were. But if an outsider said it, it would immediately become a matter of honor worth fighting to the death over. Just look at the names Cheong had seen among the guests: Old Dog Gyeon No and the twisted old hag Yeon Pa. As for the dog-like thief Yang Sang-gun-ja and the prostitute, there was no need to even mention them. When these freaks of the royal residence strode out with the character “親” (royal) boldly stitched on their shoulders, not a single soldier in Sichuan dared to stop them.
The Censor, stamping his feet in fury, roared, “What the hell is going on here! Changnan Geumho, you bastard! Didn’t you personally tell His Highness that you served him the poison—no, the medicinal herbs?!”
“Of course I did! Didn’t Your Excellency also confirm the corpse with your own eyes? This is all a scheme by those Tang bastards! They’re clearly impersonating the Prince’s banner just to buy themselves time!”
The middle-aged man who threw himself to the ground was strikingly handsome with particularly thick eyebrows that gave him an unusually honest appearance. He was far too good-looking to be called Changnan Geumho. “Chang” referred to a rotten ulcer, and “Nan” meant a festering, burned wound—truly the name of an ugly fox beast. Changnan Geumho poured out his sense of injustice with his entire body. His face was twisted and trembling, his eyes brimming with tears of resentment and grievance that looked ready to spill over at any moment. His reddened ears and bulging veins made him look, to anyone watching, like the very picture of an aggrieved man. The Censor found himself convinced.
“But no matter how lawless these traitors may be, how could they dare impersonate the Prince’s banner? If something goes wrong…”
The Emperor was a cold man. If something unsavory happened during a mission, it wasn’t the Emperor’s fault—it was the moral failing of the one who received the order. At this point, whether they abandoned the Tang clan or pushed forward, they would be labeled traitors either way. And so the Censor finally turned his arrow toward the true culprit who had caused this entire mess.
“U-um, Lord Eunuch. What should we do now…? We have already fired the cannons at the Tang clan as you commanded, but… would this humble one still be fulfilling the imperial decree correctly?”
The Censor glanced around nervously. The highest-ranking official present and the one responsible for everything was now speaking politely and watching someone’s reaction. And the one who naturally received that deference was a single soldier standing off to the side of the command tent, tending the fire and boiling water as if on duty.
The soldier was no ordinary soldier.
“When did I ever recommend firing the cannons? I merely advised that since an absolutely forbidden object had entered the premises, we should either retrieve it or eliminate all witnesses, didn’t I?”
It was the affected, nasal voice of someone pretending to be a woman. “But Lord Eunuch, you said—”
“Since you’ve already done it, wouldn’t it be better to finish the job and then beg for forgiveness? Just keep pushing forward as you were. Even if the Prince happens to be inside, doesn’t a person only die once in their lifetime? Someone who has already passed away can’t possibly die a second time, now can they?”
It was an utterly lawless statement. It essentially meant to bulldoze over the prince himself and pretend it never happened. Changnan Geumho’s eyes flashed. A fake woman using a nasal voice, a high official called “Lord Eunuch”—there was only one possible identity. A damned eunuch! One of the Eastern Depot’s dogs!
In that instant, Changnan Geumho sprang up and swung something from his sleeve. A thick, viscous liquid splattered across the eunuch’s face.
“Kyaaak! What—what is this?!”
“Haha. I thought it was strange that the Eastern Depot’s castrated dogs hadn’t stuck their noses into such a dirty business. That’s the rotten pus from a man with syphilis, you son of a bitch. If you don’t wash your face properly, you’re going to suffer something awful!”
Syphilis was a venereal disease. In severe cases, it could rot the flesh and cause horrific festering. The eunuch from the Eastern Depot, realizing what the “rotten pus of a syphilitic bastard” meant, shrank back, his pupils contracting as he opened his mouth wide and let out a blood-curdling scream.
“Kyaaaaaaaak!!!”
“Haha, serves you right!”
“You—you bastard!”
The Censor hurriedly drew his sword. But Changnan Geumho had already positioned himself near the entrance.
“Looking at Your Excellency the Censor’s face, I see a liver no bigger than a mouse’s piss and a temperament softer than tofu. You didn’t seem like the type to orchestrate such a wretched conspiracy. To rise to the position of Censor with such a spineless nature, just how much dirty money did you have to offer, I wonder?”
“You bastard!”
“You fired cannons at the place where His Highness resides. Your life and the lives of your entire family end here! Go ahead and struggle all you want!”
With that, he immediately fled using light footwork, slipping away on all fours like a dog running for its life. The eunuch was too busy screaming, crying, and frantically wiping his face. Meanwhile, the Censor felt a tremendous sense of despair. It was do-or-die now. As the eunuch had said, it was better to finish the job and beg for forgiveness than to give up and retreat. As he burst out of the command tent, the Censor shouted at the top of his lungs.
“Beat the drums! Advance and wipe out every last one of those traitors!”
A fox crawling on all fours appeared before the royal residence’s freaks. Yeon Pa narrowed her eyes as she spun her Jeonryun Mageop, letting out a suppressed growl.
“Well, well. If it isn’t the traitor fox.”
“Hehe. Granny. Traitor? That’s a bit harsh.”
“It’s not? Weren’t you the one who put poison in His Highness’s teacup?”
Changnan Geumho answered smoothly, “Someone held out a pile of gold and asked me to do it, so I just did them a favor. You know how soft-hearted I am—I can’t refuse a request.”
“If you don’t answer properly, today will be your funeral, you fox brat.”
“No, Granny. Did you really think I didn’t know His Highness had gone out? If it wasn’t me, someone else would have tried until they succeeded. If a disaster was going to happen anyway, shouldn’t we at least kill one traitor and find out who orchestrated the plot?”
“As if I could believe a con artist like you. So who was it?”
“I doused the Eastern Depot bastard with a heavy dose of tracking incense.”
Tracking incense was a special type of scent that allowed trained animals or trackers skilled in special movement techniques to follow a target. Yeon Pa snorted.
“Hmph. I’ll deal with you later, fox. Gyeon No?”
“You don’t have to tell me twice. I’ll go. Just make sure you keep an eye on that fox bastard.”
Gyeon No sniffed the air, looked in one direction, then leaped away and vanished. Only then did Changnan Geumho cautiously ask, “By the way, Granny, why is everyone suddenly gathered here? Why the midnight stroll? You people who never once stepped foot outside the royal residence, dragging everyone along like this.”
Yeon Pa smiled coldly and answered, “We’re going to crush the Imperial Guards. Why else?”
The Imperial Guards were the Emperor’s personal elite troops. From the beginning, they were on a completely different level from the local garrison soldiers. Even from Wolbong down to the support for martial arts training, they were naturally different from the local village boys who were nothing but arrow fodder in war. They were the Emperor’s true soldiers. So real soldiers like the Imperial Guards existed, and below them were the local village boys. At least, that was what the Imperial Guards claimed. To the Sichuan soldiers, the Imperial Guards were nothing but arrogant, obnoxious uncles they couldn’t stand to look at. Therefore, even after hearing the secretly delivered orders, they simply thought, Oh, those insufferable bastards must have really screwed up this time.
At the sound of the war drums signaling the advance, the Imperial Guards first gathered among themselves and waited. There was no need for them to charge first into the Tang clan’s impregnable fortress, which was riddled with traps, and end up as human obstacles. After all, this was Sichuan’s problem. Such disposable missions were for the Sichuan soldiers to handle. So they quietly stayed put, thinking, You guys go ahead. We’ll come in later and take the military merits. They even snickered among themselves while watching the soldiers struggle to drag the massive cannons forward, saying things like, “You’re really working hard. Aren’t your backs breaking?”
These general cannons, which existed at a rate of two per thousand-man garrison under standard military organization, were primitive scattershot weapons. They were loaded with gunpowder and then filled with iron fragments and stones before being fired at the enemy in front. The Imperial Guards’ mockery didn’t last long—because the muzzles of those laboriously dragged cannons had turned toward them.
The moment they went “Huh?” the fuse was lit. Before they could even shout “Take cover!” or take more than a few steps, the cannons roared, tearing men apart. Immediately after, spearmen wielding fire lances advanced behind walls of flame, and arrows rained down like a storm. The Imperial Guards, unable to even form ranks, became tangled together in a scene straight out of hell.
For reference, fire lances were primitive flamethrowers created far earlier than cannons. The military doctrine of soldiers charging directly at each other to fight in close combat was an outdated teaching from the ancient era when Liu Bei and Cao Cao fought for the empire while the regional warlord Sun Quan wreaked havoc in between. Why would martial artists who could shatter boulders with their bare hands and leap over castle walls fear the government’s soldiers? A single local gang of thugs could never stand against soldiers armed with cutting-edge primitive firearms. However, since a war between the government and the Murim would clearly end in mutual destruction, they simply pretended not to see it and called it the elegant principle of “officials and martial artists shall not interfere.” Of course, the result would be a victory by judgment for the Murim. If the two fought, the dynasty would certainly fall, ushering in another era of the Sixteen Kingdoms or the Warring States period. But the lineage of the Murim would somehow survive and continue.
In any case, while Cheong slept, these were the horrific scenes unfolding outside the Tang clan.