Vengeance Eight Years Early
Assassination. A word for killing a person in secret.
I don't know whether to call it something to be proud of, but since the day I was born into this world, I've weathered more than a few attempts on my life.
The reasons behind them were quite the assorted collection, too.
"That's their commander! Get the commander first!"
It started with the simple fact of my being the head of an enemy faction—
"Because of you, my family...!"
—and ran all the way to the unavoidable duty of avenging one's kin.
Other motives existed as well, but those two accounted for the lion's share.
You know how it goes. In the worlds of wuxia fiction, you must never take a life carelessly! Spill someone's blood, and a web of gratitude and grudge inevitably forms; that web then spins off new threads of its own, knotting the whole affair into an ever-tightening tangle of trouble. Something along those lines.
Killing had never sat well with me to begin with, so I made a point of sticking to peaceful means—the less bloodshed, the better, even if it took a little longer.
But as it turned out, with men who'd been devoured whole by their own desires, a completely bloodless path was never in the cards.
The standard-bearers were Governor Liu Biao of Jing Province, whose very name tires me out to mention these days, and the honey-water monster, Yuan Shu.
And yet between those two stood one absolutely decisive difference.
"I offer the General-in-Chief the head of the arch-traitor Liu Biao!"
"...A loyal servant does not serve two lords."
Unlike Liu Biao, who failed to hold the hearts of his own people and ended his life in betrayal, Yuan Shu had a man who stood by him to the very end, offering up his loyalty without reservation.
Seeing that, you might think Yuan Shu wasn't entirely without competence...
You might...
...No, the man was incompetent, all right.
He simply had his unexpected sides, that's all.
As the old tale of Lu Ji and the Hidden Tangerines shows, Yuan Shu was the sort whose sentimentality had a habit of erupting out of nowhere.
A small boy who had followed his father to a banquet tried to sneak off with some tangerines, saying he wanted to bring them home to his mother—and was caught red-handed by Yuan Shu himself.
Going by the petty, mean-spirited character everyone associates with Yuan Shu, the boy's humiliation there and then would have surprised no one. Instead, the man declared himself so moved by the child's filial devotion that he packed up an entire bundle of tangerines and sent young Lu Ji home with it. A genuinely heartwarming tale.
What truly took the cake was that a mere month later, he marched an army against them on the grounds that his military provisions had been withheld—and did away with Lu Ji's father, Lu Kang.
Had the tangerines simply been a manufactured pretext for raiding their stores? Or was it a massacre born of a cast of mind no ordinary person could hope to fathom?
Perhaps it was both.
Just as in the tale above, a few souls seemed to have been genuinely touched by those occasional displays of feeling, and gave him their loyalty to the very last.
What I can't for the life of me understand is why a man like that treated the Sun family—his most valuable people—so shabbily that they turned against him.
Did he truly see them as nothing more than well-trained hunting dogs?
At any rate, the assassination that had just played out was tied to Yuan Shu as well.
Yu Chong, who had come to see me in the small hours before even the sun had risen, bowed deeply at the waist.
"I am beyond ashamed! To think my own retainer would stir up such trouble...!"
"I'm perfectly fine, so please, think nothing of it."
At the rare sight of a prince of the imperial blood prostrating himself before me, I hurried to raise him back up.
And as I did, I sank deep into thought.
One of the retainers Yu Chong had brought in his train.
His name, if I remembered right... had been Jang Gae-yang.
The name had struck me as unfamiliar at first, and I'd wondered who the man might be—but racking my memory, I recalled that he'd left his mark on the original history as well.
Naturally: he was the man who assassinated the Prince of Chen, Yu Chong—the very man now sitting before me.
The cause of that assassination was nothing remarkable, either.
Yuan Shu nursed a grudge over being denied provisions, and so he simply commissioned the murder.
Come to think of it, it's almost comical.
He demanded supplies as his due, was refused, and let the slight fester until it curdled into murder.
A truly monumental petty man, through and through.
One thing did puzzle me, though: why was an assassin who had once served under Yuan Shu now attached to Yu Chong's household?
Judging by how he'd been presented as a trustworthy retainer, he must have served there a good many years...
And on top of that, the person Jang Gae-yang had tried to kill this time was me.
"His Highness the Prince has sent me. Might I step inside for a moment?"
"Hm? At this hour of the night?"
The sun had long since set, supper was finished, and bedtime was creeping close when a figure stirring outside my room addressed me in a deferential voice.
"..."
"...Seo Yeo? What are you up to now?"
"I have something to take care of."
Whether she sensed something in Jang Gae-yang's voice, Seo Yeo slipped behind me and out of sight; taking it that she had her reasons, I calmly gave Jang Gae-yang leave to enter.
"..."
Almost eight chi tall—call it six feet one—and built of slab upon slab of muscle beneath a menacing face, the man would have fooled no one into believing he was a humble servant.
...And to be fair, he was no humble servant.
A setting where no one but me, Yu Chong, and the escort detail was permitted to bear arms.
"..."
As if none of that concerned him in the slightest, Jang Gae-yang strode right up, closing the distance between us—
WHAM—!
"Gahk—?!"
The moment he flung out his arm, something slammed into him and sent him crashing out of the room.
Something in that collision had gone off like an explosion.
How does a human body make a sound like that?
"...How dare—"
The one who'd sent Jang Gae-yang flying was, of course, Seo Yeo.
She had been right behind me—when, exactly, had she moved in front? Judging by her stance it was a kick, but had she really leapt clean over my head to land it?
"..."
"...Huh?"
CRRACK!
Seo Yeo, in a visibly foul temper, wasn't content with merely kicking him away—she hefted my bed overhead and hurled it at the spot where Jang Gae-yang had flown.
Yes. That bed. The one people lie down in to sleep.
CRASH—!
A bed flung with that kind of inhuman strength shattered, naturally.
...So does that mean I'm sleeping on the bare floor tonight?
"Urk...!"
What made it all the more staggering was that this Jang Gae-yang dodged the airborne bed and made off at a blistering clip.
Hadn't he just been launched away with a resounding bang?
Bones or innards, one of the two should have been paste by then—how was he still moving? His looks had been alarming enough from the start; evidently this was a man of serious martial ability.
Hmm... so that was the caliber of man it took to assassinate the Prince of Chen?
Given the Prince's own martial arts, it only stood to reason.
This was, after all, the man who in the original history had killed not only Yu Chong but Luo Jun, the chancellor at his side, in a single stroke. No third-rate killer could have managed that.
I turned to Seo Yeo, who had glued herself within arm's reach for my safety, and asked:
"How did you know?"
Right up until he reached for my throat, even I—the intended victim—hadn't noticed a thing. I'd taken the narrowing distance at face value: a servant stepping close for a word, nothing more.
Seo Yeo, who still looked none too pleased, gave me her answer.
"...There was killing intent in his voice. The kind that cannot be hidden."
"..."
Killing intent, of all things.
Fine, it's a word that belongs in a wuxia novel—but wouldn't a professional assassin know how to conceal exactly that?
Then again, this was Seo Yeo, and with her usual so-what air she had evidently read a man's murderous purpose from his voice alone.
"Assassin! It's an assassin—!"
"Don't kill him! We need to know who's behind this!"
And thus, by one winding road and another, we arrive at the present.
"I step away for one moment to fetch the baby a change of clothes, and this is what happens?!"
"Attempted assassination."
"Ugh, uuuugh—! Unforgivable—!!"
BANG—!
Lü Bu, who had only stepped away for a moment because Yeo Hwa had woken mid-nap and kicked up a fuss, came charging back with an explosive boom.
"Dada?"
Naturally, with Yeo Hwa bundled snug in my arms the entire time.
I do seem to be hearing an awful lot of crashing today.
Had he chosen his moment—slipping toward me in the brief gap while Lü Bu, the fabled Peerless Under Heaven, was away from my side? One thing was certain: this was an assassin with real skill.
The question was why he'd wanted me dead...
"Ah! There he goes—he's running! Grab that bastard, quick!"
"...Don't rush him, Yide. Lady Xuande is already lying in wait where he's headed."
"Huh? She really is?! How did she get ahead of us?!"
We could always catch the man and ask.
Was it vengeance for Yuan Shu—the man who, once he fell into my hands, had ended up as boiled human pork on Her Majesty the Empress's table?
Or had someone else commissioned the killing, hoping to sow confusion through my ranks?
Either way, you'd have to call it a fascinating motive.
Truthfully, given how patiently he'd played the faithful retainer through all his years under Yu Chong, the former carried the greater weight.
Sleep on brushwood; taste gall.
The old idiom means to lie down on firewood and lap at one's own gall—to swallow and surmount every hardship that comes your way, all for the sake of a revenge or a goal yet unachieved.
Or, as they say: a gentleman's revenge is never late, even if it takes ten years.
It had been barely two years since Yuan Shu died. The man had beaten his deadline by a full eight.
Perhaps he'd reasoned that serving one of the imperial princes would, sooner or later, seat him in rooms where the high and mighty conferred.
To stake his entire life on an assassination whose hour even he could not predict.
Say this much for him: no one could touch his single-minded obsession.
Which was, presumably, why he'd taken up the assassin's trade in the first place.
"Found him—!!"
"Wh-what?!"
BOOM—!
Scarcely had Lü Bu's shout rung out before detonations erupted all around us.
He's not dead, is he?
He'd bolted off at a full sprint even after taking a hit from Seo Yeo, so surely he isn't dead.
...Probably.