Chapter 1056: That Creature Is a Harmful Creature (11)

In a situation already this chaotic, moving in secret could only be so effective.

Still, it had to be better than openly trumpeting the prince’s return in every direction and making a grand procession of it.

So first they dropped a cover over the prince’s head to hide his face. But of course someone of rank could hardly walk all the way to the royal castle, so a palanquin appeared from somewhere and carried him off.

Yes.

One palanquin.

Exactly one.

These bastards really are stingy with their hospitality...

Not that Qing particularly wanted to ride in it, but still—if the prince had called them his benefactors, shouldn’t they at least have produced a carriage or something?

Still, this worked out nicely.

As she walked among several warriors and their men, Qing took a careful look around Ippen.

Perhaps because of the rain, the streets were sparsely populated. Only shabby, filthy laborers moved about, each bent to their own miserable task.

But the state of those laborers...

Why was it that nearly every single one of them had a piece of one ear cut away?

And among them, scattered now and then, were people missing noses, their ugly nostrils left exposed.

Then again, very few of those blackened, grimy hands seemed to have all five fingers intact.

No wonder they handled their tools so awkwardly.

What in the world for?

Did the people of Ippen have some peculiar custom of cutting off ears, and then a finger or two whenever they got bored?

Of course not.

Qing might not be a particularly thoughtful person, but she was not that thoughtless.

The answer was obvious.

Slaves.

Kidnapped people.

Wasn’t kidnapping one of the Japanese pirates’ specialties from the very start? Even in the history of her own homeland, how many had Japan abducted and dragged away?

It was not raining especially hard, but in weather like this, with the sky so dreary, the people trudging around doing drudge work with faces that hopeless and sunken could only be such unfortunates.

As Qing’s gaze moved past those laborers, gloomy as the dark weather itself, it settled on the bracelet hanging loose around the wrist of one of the Japanese pirate guards escorting the prince.

At first glance it looked like a loosely strung set of prayer beads.

But the thing dangling lowest from it was a blackened human toe.

Surely he had not cut off his own toe and strung it there, so whose toe had he lopped off and threaded onto it?

It was a truly horrifying sight.

Threading human body parts onto prayer beads?

If not the body part, then at least leave the beads alone. Prayer beads were meant to symbolize the Buddha’s wisdom and teachings, and they had stuck human remains onto them?

Even a Buddha of limitless mercy and compassion would have exploded in towering rage and shouted, This crosses the line, before smashing their heads off on the spot. It was that obscene a desecration.

Qing swept her gaze across the Japanese pirate soldiers.

Every last one of them wore some ornament made from a human body part, proudly displayed as a necklace, bracelet, armor decoration, or something of the sort.

The ones in miserable cloth armor had fewer ornaments, and fewer body parts strung onto them—usually just toes.

But the bastards in proper-looking armor, with swords hanging neatly at their waists, displayed trophies in all varieties.

One had multiple ears strung together like Nakamura.

Another had noses.

Another, fingers.

And another had what looked like a ripped-off penis complete with the root, hanging long.

There was no possible excuse for trash like this.

Of course, the Japanese pirates themselves might have felt wronged.

After all, gathering pieces of the enemy’s body after a victory was, from ancient times, a traditional way of tallying military merit, wasn’t it?

Someone claims he killed ten men. Then another says he killed fifteen. Then perhaps it wasn’t ten but twenty after all? Then another brags he killed thirty. Compared with endless, pointless arguing like that, hard proof was certainly more convenient.

Of course, the side effect was that even captives who could have been taken alive got butchered, and weak peasants got massacred so their body parts could be picked up and counted as military merit.

Even so, it was undeniably one of the fairest ways to reckon military achievements.

Qing knew that much too.

But?

Weren’t excuses like that only for actual armies?

If both sides were soldiers who had gone into battle prepared to kill and be killed, fine. In war, perhaps such things had their place.

But these bastards were just pirates.

They were not facing real armies. They sailed around picking only the weakest, softest targets they could find and preying on them, so what military merit, what trophies, were they talking about?

This was nothing but beasts worse than animals proudly displaying the evidence of their own crimes.

The more she looked, the more glad Qing was that she had come.

If she had not, then all these harmful creatures would have just gone on sucking the blood of innocent people and thriving from it.

As they moved deeper into the island, the houses grew larger and more respectable.

Honestly, near the coast the structures had barely counted as houses at all—more like walls with roofs perched on top. The closer they got to the castle, the more the buildings at least began to resemble actual dwellings.

And then, at some point, after passing through rows of large estates enclosed by broad, proper walls, the royal castle of Ippen finally came into view ahead of them.

It was a Japanese castle of the sort she had seen somewhere before.

What was it called again?

The keep?

Its defensive works were closer to extensions of the moat than to a proper city wall. The wall itself was not particularly high, but because the moat below it had been dug so deep, the effective height came to around five zhang.

And the path to the keep was not something one simply crossed in a straight line. You had to wind your way up a slope toward the high hill, circling as you climbed.

Of course, no one at their level would grow tired from a climb like that, and after circling around it two and a half times, they finally reached the rear of the keep, where a proper entrance at last came into view.

And then?

Instead of heading into the towering keep itself, they turned toward the residence attached beside it.

Which made sense enough. The keep of a Japanese castle was not a living space but a practical defensive structure crowned with the symbolic shape of danger itself. In truth the interior was cramped, and it lacked even the most basic living arrangements. The actual castle lord lived and worked in the residence attached to it—the Main Ring.

The guards at the entrance to the Main Ring wore wary expressions at the sight of such a crowd approaching, but the moment the prince removed the cover hiding his face, they immediately dropped into a deep bow.

And once they entered the Main Ring, a woman with her face painted white shrieked a long, high cry and came running toward them.

“My heavens, Your Highness! You are safe! Oh, this humble one can scarcely contain her joy. How splendid you look, so gallant.”

“That is how it turned out. Where is my royal father?”

“He is before the court. Your Highness, lately our lord has been sunk in grief.”

“...Then I have been at fault. Go and send word to my royal father at once. I must see him in person and greet him first.”

“Yes, this way, please. We will prepare fresh clothes for you. But these people...?”

“They are my benefactors. Treat them with all due respect.”

“Yes, naturally. Yuja, attend the honored guests. Show them to the Second Ring, and see that bathwater and clean clothes are prepared for them.”

In Japan, the space given to guests differed according to their rank.

Ordinary guests were not even allowed inside the castle walls.

Guests or envoys of somewhat higher standing could stay within the walls, but only in the buildings below the hill—that was the Third Ring.

The leader of a guest party could be lodged in the Main Ring on the hill, though only in strictly limited areas. That was called the Second Ring.

Since staying in the Second Ring meant living, one way or another, in the same space as the castle lord himself, this was a fairly serious show of respect for honored guests.

Not that Qing knew or cared about any of that.

She was guided into a spacious room floored in Japanese mats, and the first thing she did was plant her ample backside squarely on the floor with a loud flop.

It was only human nature. Stand long enough and you want to sit. Sit long enough and you want to lie down.

And of course no one here could stop Qing, so the rest of her body naturally followed after as she flopped all the way onto her back.

Then Seol Iri naturally drifted over to Qing’s head, plopped Qing’s head onto her lap, and pulled down her face veil.

Qing let out an “Oh,” and chuckled to herself, and then Peng Daesan’s flat voice cut in.

“Couldn’t you be serious at a time like this? We’ve walked into enemy territory of our own accord.”

“Hm? I’m always serious. Hup.”

Qing bounced upright and sat cross-legged.

“Now listen. Original plan’s on hold. First things first, they said they’re preparing bathwater, so let’s all soak ourselves nice and good in hot water. Everyone’s tired, right? Whew, that ship pitched like crazy.”

“On hold?”

“You all saw them on the way in, right? The people with their ears cut off. Looks to me like these Japanese pirate bastards are capturing innocent people and working them as slaves. If we stick to the original plan in this situation, stray sparks might hit the wrong people.”

The original plan had been extremely simple.

One: bring the prince back to the island.

Two: the king, delighted that the prince he thought dead has returned alive, expresses his gratitude.

Three: punch a hole through the king’s belly.

Some might argue that something had been omitted between two and three.

Astonishingly enough, this really had been the original plan.

Terribly sorry to meet you for the first time like this, but I’m about to put a hole in your stomach. Actually, I’m not sorry at all, but anyway.

The king would collapse, the castle would erupt into chaos, and after that they would simply cut down everyone they saw, set the place on fire, and slip off into the mountains. The Water Forces fleet would remain farther out maintaining the blockade, then move in and pour down cannon fire once they saw the flames, reducing the pirate den to ashes.

In a way it was a wildly reckless plan.

But Qing’s party was, after all, a compact assault force made up of three Harmonization masters and one Transformation master.

There was just one problem.

“You all saw it on the way in, right? Looks like these Japanese pirate bastards have captured innocent people and are working them as slaves. We can’t just rain cannonballs down on a place like that. We need to move the innocent people out of harm’s way first, then send the signal.”

At that, Gongsun Yoye’s head drooped.

“Ah. I... I saw it and still did not understand. I was thinking only of glorifying my family’s name. How shameful I am—no, how shameful thou art—ah, um, truly shameful...!”

“Come on. You came along with me to beat up Japanese pirates just because I dragged you into it. That alone already makes you a hero of the age. What’s there to be ashamed of?”

“A hero? I am unworthy of such—no, unworthy art thou—ah... I am still foolish. I still have far to go...!”

Gongsun Yoye’s speech kept accumulating more errors by the moment, caught between formal phrasing that came automatically and casual speech that refused to sit naturally in her mouth.

If anything, wasn’t she drifting into an even stranger state than before?

Well, it was entertaining.

Meanwhile, Peng Daesan let out a long sigh.

That was just how Qing always was.

She acted light and careless, as though she never thought about anything, yet the moment anyone dug into it, she started saying perfectly righteous things and leaving everyone else looking bad. It was an uncanny sort of talent.

Seol Iri, on the other hand, had no thoughts at all about it.

Because she had no thoughts at all.

She did not understand why they should risk themselves for those people.

And given where Seol Iri came from, that was only natural. To someone of the North Sea, the weak were those meant to be culled. In that brutal environment, the weak had to be discarded without hesitation if anyone was to survive. So from Seol Iri’s perspective, it was incomprehensible.

But?

If Qing wanted to do it, then they would do it.

No further reason was needed, and so Seol Iri did not think about it beyond that.

Then Qing casually brought up her next thought.

“Still, from what I can tell, if we leave them alone, they might start killing each other all on their own. Now listen?”

*****

The warrior Kaketoki—written with the characters and read as Yeongsi—quietly closed his eyes.

Then in the next instant, flash.

He hurled the scabbard roughly behind him, and at the same time his sword shot out like a ray of light.

From below to above, then rising diagonally, the blade brushed the target—a rolled straw mat set upright.

If Qing had seen it, she might have piped up in false familiarity—oh, that thing, cutting rolled mats.

But the rolled mat remained standing as if the sword had never touched it.

Yeongsi stepped up and examined it.

A diagonal line running through the center had been cut to the depth of roughly one inch.

At that, Yeongsi nodded in satisfaction.

If Qing had seen that, she might have tilted her head instead.

What’s this? Why does the guy who failed to cut through it look so pleased?

But the act of chopping a rolled mat clean in one stroke was, in truth, not swordsmanship at all.

It was something one did to test a sword.

When cutting a person, you could not simply slice through them in a single blow the way you cut a rolled mat.

Japanese warriors, in the first place, wore armor.

And if you tried to strike an armored warrior that way, straight through the center with the body of the blade, you would only snap your sword clean in half.

To damage a person, the width of two finger joints at the sword’s tip was enough.

Because that much alone was enough to kill.

Really, it was the Central Plains that were the abnormal case.

Masters there spat out aura and sword aura like nothing, cutting clothes and armor apart at will.

So if everything was going to get cut anyway, light clothing was better, and in fact wide, flowing garments that concealed the shape of the body were much more useful.

Of course, that only applied to masters. For the weak, armor was overwhelmingly advantageous. If two such people fought a hundred times, the one in armor would win ninety-nine.

But armor was expensive, and by the national law it was not something private persons could wear at will.

So weaklings without power, background, or money could not wear armor even if they wanted to.

And masters with power, background, and money had no need of it.

That was why Murim martial artists did not wear armor.

In any case, Yeongsi ran his fingertips over the cut face of the mat with a pleased expression.

Had it been a man standing there, the strike would have entered through the lower side of the abdomen, torn through the viscera, and cut its way out past the ribs.

Even by his own judgment, it had been a swift and exquisitely precise blow.

That was when it happened.

Clatter, clatter—the urgent sound of footsteps crashing into the training grounds.

Yeongsi’s body spun in an instant.

He thrust his sword at the boor who dared intrude upon a warrior’s training ground, and the restrained, lightning-fast point came to a dead stop right before the intruder’s throat.

The would-be interrupter, who had been about to shout something, merely gaped soundlessly in shock.

“I favored you, and yet you have grown so insolent as to interrupt your master’s training. You will have to provide a reason I should not cut you down.”

“It is... because something terrible—something terrible has happened.”

“Something terrible? That is for me to judge, not for trash like you to put into words. Go on. Make your excuse.”

“Uh... Master... the heir has returned.”

At that, Yeongsi’s expression hardened instantly.

He withdrew the sword, set a hand on his waist, then jerked his chin toward the scabbard he had thrown behind him moments before.

The disciple ran at once, picked up the scabbard, and held it out respectfully in both hands. Only then did Yeongsi take it and sheathe his sword.

“Hm. So the heir was alive after all. And has returned by his own strength, no less...”

“Then perhaps... the heir might toward Master...”

The disciple let the sentence trail off.

To say it too openly—that perhaps the heir would bear a grudge for having been abandoned and try to do him harm—would have sounded far too plainly like treason.

Still, the meaning had been conveyed well enough.

“There is nothing to worry about. My lord is the king and this country, not the heir. If an heir defied opposition, sought merit, went out scouting in person, and died for it, then he was never fit to be king in the first place. And to fight a losing battle for revenge would only squander the kingdom’s precious warriors, would it not? That revenge is for my lord to judge. Lord Nakamura, on the other hand, sought only to burden my lord through misguided loyalty. Our purposes did not align, so we fought, and I won. What part of that is anything but upright?”

“B-but...”

Yeongsi smiled gently as he spoke.

“My lord is a just and impartial man. If I explain it to him, he will understand. If the heir inherited the same just and impartial character from my lord, then he too will understand. And if not, then one need only leave. So the disciple has no need to worry.”

Of course, whether there truly was no need to worry—

That, at least for the moment, remained something no one yet knew.