Chapter 1038: There Are Sea Creatures in the Sea (3)

In the warm atmosphere inside the command cabin aboard the General’s flagship, Qing laid out the information on witches and abominations that she had gained from her candid conversation with the first mate.

Well, if those bastards from the Western Regions could do things like that, wasn’t that naturally information the army ought to know?

Besides, she could also use the chance to dump off the memorial she would otherwise have to send to the Forbidden City!

If what had happened this time was going to be counted as an operation by the Water Forces, then naturally the routed memorial for it would have to be written and submitted by the General.

For reference, both a direct memorial and a routed memorial meant reports submitted to the Son of Heaven, but the difference was that a direct memorial went straight to him, while a routed memorial passed through the office that handled his documents.

Anyway, not having to write the report herself was sweet as hell.

So Qing explained things in as much detail as possible while stressing how important it all was.

And a man did not win a General’s seat in a gambling den, so the General, too, listened closely to information about the enemy, even taking notes as he did.

“Let’s see. I think that’s about everything I had to say.”

“Hm. There is something I am curious about, milady. What you have told me will be sent to the Forbidden City so the entire army may know it, however, why is it a witch? If so, should a man who uses such evil sorcery be called something separate, a witch-man?”

“No, even if it’s a man, a witch is still a witch, so what I mean is, the word witch doesn’t distinguish between women and men, huh.”

Qing, who had started to answer the question, instead began throwing up that expression, the question marks of her homeland, little hooked marks rising one after another.

Huh. That really was true. Then why was it witch?

Qing’s all-purpose method of learning foreign languages was the kind of lazy, shameless cheat skill that practically just made languages known to her on their own.

If it was a concept she already knew, she could say it in the foreign language, and if it was a concept she did not know, she understood it after hearing it.

And to know a language meant understanding the meaning packed into the word as well.

In the Western pronunciation, witch was a neutral noun, a word that did not particularly distinguish between men and women.

A woman who practiced evil magic was a witch.

Then what was a man who practiced evil magic?

Something about that felt strange, but this man too was a witch. He would suddenly find himself plunged into confusion over his gender identity, but still, what could you do, even if he was a man, he was still a witch.

What was this? Something felt off.

Why had it become a feminine word back home?

There was not even a separate word like witch-man, so shouldn’t it have been translated as demon-person or demon-mage instead?

But then again, had there ever only been one or two mistranslations like that?

It was the kind of thing where whoever first translated it made a mistake, then once it had already spread everywhere, by then it was too late to fix.

Qing mulled that over for a moment, then at last arrived at her conclusion.

“Let’s just go with witch-man and witch-woman, I guess. It’s confusing otherwise.”

It was a conclusion that had not really required any thought in the first place, but changing a word that had supposedly already existed all along just because she felt like it was a little...

At that, the General nodded and wrote witch-man in the margin beside witch in his notes, and it was right then.

BANG!

The door flew open violently, and a soldier whose face had somehow gone paper-white came rushing into the command cabin in urgent panic.

Qing, who had been starting to rise awkwardly from her seat because she figured it was about time to head back, whipped her head around.

“My apologies for interrupting!”

“What is the meaning of this rudeness!”

The General’s edge-sharp roar followed at once.

But the soldier only hurried forward.

“General, just a moment, there is urgent news—”

Then the soldier leaned in and whispered something into the General’s ear.

Swoosh.

That was the sound of blood draining from a face. It was the kind of scene where it almost felt like you could literally hear it.

The General’s complexion changed that dramatically.

Because, apparently, the hero standing before him was not a hero at all.

Milady’s true identity was none other than a Censorial Inspector of the Twelve Provinces!

In that instant, everything went black before the General’s eyes.

Because the story split into a completely different branch depending on whether the hero standing before him was truly just some passing martial artist from the martial world, or a hidden master of the imperial palace, a Censorial Inspector with the right to submit memorials directly to the Son of Heaven.

Foreign enemies attacked.

Before the Water Forces arrived, an unnamed hero stepped in and cut the enemy down.

And when that hero, who refused to reveal a name to the very end, would not claim the deed, the General asked whether it could then be counted as a merit of the Water Forces.

The hero readily agreed, and the General treated that benefactor with the utmost courtesy...

If it stayed like that, it would have made for a rather splendid tale of a hero.

But?

Foreign enemies attacked.

And by chance, a high personage from the Forbidden City, favored by His Majesty, happened to be present there.

In place of the Water Forces, who did not come no matter how long one waited, that personage exterminated the foreign enemies.

And then?

That late-arriving Water Forces General bastard?

Even though the city had suffered severe damage from bombardment, the first thing he did was try to secure the credit for himself, scheming some shady fraudulent request.

He had even gone so far as to put their heads together and draft a routed memorial to submit to His Majesty.

In other words, this was a routed memorial containing falsehoods, and he had dared discuss with a Censorial Inspector herself how to fabricate lies and submit them to the Son of Heaven together!

It was the exact moment when a tale of heroism suddenly changed genres into a tremendous twist, a terrifying sleepless-night story, a dreadful ghost story.

In military affairs, failure in an operation could be forgiven, but negligence in operations could not.

Neglect of military duty, death!

And because he had dared try to submit lies to the Son of Heaven, that was the crime of insulting the throne, punishable by the harshest penalty.

Execution of the entire family!

In truth, that was not all.

Qing had only stepped down from being a princess. She was still one descended from heaven, and if one descended from heaven entered a city, then naturally every nearby soldier ought to have guarded that person without the slightest gap.

In the term for troops, the soldiers were the military men and the constables were the security officers under the constable corps, so the mere fact that bombardment had come crashing into a city where one descended from heaven was staying was already a total catastrophe of heads rolling one after another.

Fortunately, the General did not know that part, and if he had, he would by now have been seriously considering killing himself.

If he apologized right there in front of her and took his own life, then perhaps, seeing that show of spirit, she might at least spare his family and relatives.

Anyway.

Describe, in under one hundred characters, the state of mind of the Censorial Inspector herself inside this ghost story.

Actually, it probably did not even need one hundred characters.

Wouldn’t a single line be enough?

This little bastard was really starting to take liberties. She almost wanted to see just how far he was going to take it.

If so, then what needed to be done now?

The General, who had been sitting in his chair, abruptly sprang to his feet.

What? Startled because the other party had suddenly stood up, Qing looked up, wondering what was going on, whether something serious had happened, only to see the General step out from behind the table in tight-lipped silence and stop in the open space.

And then—

THUD!

The sound of knees smashing into the floor.

Then his forearms hit with another THUD, and his forehead slammed into the floor with a CRACK!

A great formal bow that flowed as naturally as water!

It was the kind of precise, razor-disciplined full prostration that served as a model for all officials.

At the same time, a roaring bellow burst out like that of a wild beast.

“Aaaaiiiieee!!! I have committed a crime worthy of death!!!”

Qing was startled.

No, what the hell? Out of nowhere?

“I, your humble servant Kim Jigang! Waking and sleeping, day and night, have devoted myself solely to loyalty and concern for the state, so all of this was only for the good of the nation!! The prestige of the army is none other than the prestige of the nation itself!! There was not the slightest trace of personal selfishness in it besides that!!! Censorial Inspector, please, I beg you, take that into account!!!!!”

“No, but how did you even find that out...”

It was not like she had brought along some underling like that one top-tier chef she had seen as a child, the kind who untied the cloth hiding the armband at just the right moment and revealed the true identity.

Qing was simply baffled.

The person who had been perfectly fine sitting there writing a report with her had suddenly jammed his head into the floor and gone into full sincere-apology posture, so of course she was baffled.

THUD!! THUD!!! THUD!!!!

And somehow the General’s headbutting power was no joke. It looked like he had entered into some bizarre contest of grit between the ship’s floor and his own forehead, as if to say, all right then, let’s see which one breaks first.

“No, please, don’t do this. General, stand up first. From what I’ve heard, this isn’t even something that can really be called your fault, and there was no way you could have predicted those foreign bastards would fire cannons...!”

“No! Before the direct memorial that the Censorial Inspector might submit, I dared try to write a ridiculous routed memorial of lies—how can that not be a crime!!”

With that, the General jerked his head back up again.

In truth, to a Central Plains official, apologizing properly was a basic qualification one naturally had to possess, because an excellent apology was the greatest insurance for keeping one’s life.

Therefore, he abandoned his forehead!

After all, only if the forehead split open, got mashed up, and blood streamed down a bit would the apology truly carry the right tragic gravity.

And thus the head-smashing aimed at breaking his own forehead once again targeted the blameless ship’s floor!

But Qing was one step faster.

“No, just stop that first.”

Qing hauled the General upright.

With the hearty force of yanking up a radish, the prostrate General was simply pulled right up.

Well, there was no way the strength of a mere General could stop the monstrous power of someone who had passed Transcendent Transformation, reached Ultra-Transformation, and gone beyond human.

And thanks to that—

SMACK!!!

The catastrophe occurred. The head he had drawn all the way back and then slammed down with all his strength crashed straight into Qing’s forehead.

It was a total catastrophe in the truest sense.

Wood, by nature, had elasticity as a material, so it absorbed part of an impact.

But Qing’s forehead?

It was the head of all heads, a true stone skull—no, calling Qing’s head a stone skull might actually be a severe insult,

because Qing’s head broke stones!

He had driven himself headfirst, with all sincerity, straight into a monstrously hard black-iron skull that could dent not just boulders but even iron plates with one real headbutt.

“Gyaaaagh!!”

At the desperate scream that burst from the General’s mouth, Qing, startled, let go.

Then, with a clatter, he collapsed onto the floor clutching his forehead and rolled from left to right, left-left-right-right-right, tumbling all over the place.

Hm, how should she put it. Watching this, she somehow felt it was kind of pathetic. Was this what her master had felt when looking at her after she got hit with a Nuclear Forehead Flick and went rolling around?

A little later.

At last, the General’s forehead swelled up enormously.

In truth, bleeding from smashing one’s head against the floor was usually no more than the skin being torn open by the rough surface of the floor.

But this was a General who had slammed himself with full force into Qing’s forehead, which was smooth, without so much as a single fine wrinkle, and even rounded in such a way that the entire impact concentrated into one point.

Was it not the case that even the greatest female martial artist, upon reaching the Mystical Realm, would still feel a dull ache from the rebound if she struck Qing’s head?

For the forehead of a mere ordinary man, the fact that it had not cracked was itself a stroke of heavenly luck...

And so the General, with his forehead now bulging up in a big lump, had forgotten even his own age and was currently sprawled flat, clutching at Qing’s ankle.

“Your Excellency, please, if you would only spare this Kim Jigang just once, I will serve you as my benefactor for the rest of my life...”

“No, I said it’s fine. I really wasn’t planning to report any of this anyway. I told you all that because even filing a memorial dispatch myself sounded like too much of a pain...”

“Truly, truly? Truly, then—then swear it, no, no, never mind, forget I said that. I must have gone mad. Then, in the routed memorial, I shall record the divine might shown by the Censorial Inspector exactly as it was. However, that we did not delay in the slightest and departed immediately...”

“No, I said I understand, didn’t I? Let go a little. I need to go home now. You live on the General’s flagship, but I have to go home...”

“But please, just once, just once spare me, think of it as saving many lives...”

“No, I said all right already. So let go...”

In the end, the General had unleashed his ultimate secret technique, Cling to the Ankle.

And it was not like she could just kick him away, nor had he been negligent in the first place. Somehow, his first impression had been strict, grave, and serious, yet now he was falling apart with a crash.

Well, when your life was on the line, how many people in the world would really stay strict, grave, and serious and say, kill me if you must?

“...Then please at least accept this. It is my reserve command tally. If in the future you seek me out and show this, my men will receive your orders as if they were mine.”

A command tally was the lowest grade among a General’s tallies of command, so in truth it was not something that carried much authority.

But it was still proof of the General’s orders, so even if it was only a reserve one, it carried the same weight as one of the General’s commands.

“No, why are you giving this to me...”

“Please, please at least accept this. My heart demands it.”

“No. Hm.”

If she did not take it, he looked ready to grab her trouser leg again and never let go, so in the end Qing accepted the reserve command tally.

Qing had acquired command authority over the Shaoxing Guard of the Water Forces!

Hm, come to think of it, whenever people of the Central Plains owed someone a favor, they always seemed to shove some kind of token into that person’s hand...

And so Qing, having successfully collected yet another token, found herself thinking that at this rate she might really end up gathering every token in the world.

Maybe she would unlock some kind of achievement.

Anyway, like this, at long last, freedom!

*****

When she entered the city under the soldiers’ lavish escort—though to the city constables it might have looked more like they were transporting a criminal—her stomach had by now reached the point of genuinely aching with hunger.

Even so, it was still broad daylight, though that was probably just because midsummer days were so long.

And so Qing, leaving the soldiers’ farewell behind her, hurried toward the inn.

Damn, I’m starving. I need to hurry back and eat.

I hope those girls aren’t waiting for me, going hungry and skinny while they do.

And our Jayeo must be awfully bored too.

Jayeo had been drooping there between two thoroughly unfun mothers, after all, so if Qing did not hurry back and replenish her with some fun, the kid might actually die of boredom.

Fun was serious business to a little kid.

Without a doubt, she had to be standing there craning her neck and staring longingly at the entrance of the inn, waiting for Dad.

So before Jayeo developed a full turtle neck from that, Qing had better hurry back.

...Or so she thought?