Chapter 535: Poison-Blade Uproar, Poison-Blade March (8)

“Most excellent, the feigned‐surrender stratagem! This Wang Ssangryong has broadened his poor horizons today! What a beautiful tactic!”

A “feigned surrender,” spelled out, is precisely that: the ruse of pretending to yield.

We hoisted the white flag and lured the islander raiders in—an impeccable application of feigned surrender.

“A great commander does not go to the enemy; she makes the enemy come to her. Truly, a finesse worthy of being called a master of war!”

“C’mon, it’s not that—”

“No, no! By the Thirty-Six Stratagems, this was ‘A Dagger Hidden in a Smile’—you concealed a secret weapon and deceived the foe; and ‘Seize the Ringleader to Seize the Bandits’—you blew the headman away in one stroke as first priority! And the great guns hidden behind the city gate were ‘Borrow the Road to Annihilate the Guo’—an attack the enemy could not foresee! Three of the Thirty-Six, applied at once—ah, so this is how the grand currents that govern a battlefield truly move! I, Wang Ssangryong, congratulate you on a resounding victory!”

“Resounding victory, he says.”

Qing feigned modesty—

with the corners of her mouth creeping up.

Am I really that great?

Isn’t this the easy kind of trick anyone thinks of once you remember cannons exist?

Well, they do say thinking of it first is the hard part.

So... did I just stand the egg up on its end?

As if.

Since when was Qing some grand master of stratagems?

It’s simply that, to Central Plains commanders, feigned surrender is hard to use even when they do think of it.

Because even a false surrender is still “surrender” on the record—a shell whose fuse you can’t see, that might blow up at some unknown future moment.

A surrender, false or not, is a surrender; if a superior takes it into his head, it becomes fault enough to discard you. By law, a general who “surrenders without fighting” is, by the arithmetic of collective punishment to the third degree, erased.

It’s a threat with a political edge for later—and a physical one.

So generals would rather throw most of their soldiers into the meat grinder to guarantee a win.

There is no reason at all to feign surrender “to reduce casualties.”

This is why a state needs sound, fair governance in the first place.

Of course, a feigned surrender done under orders is a pleasure.

My soldiers are second only to me in value.

And when it’s “my lady,” she can freely use tactics others might get called to account for; so Wang Ssangryong’s dazzling flattery isn’t exactly wrong either.

“Here he is.”

“Mmm.”

Qing looked at the barbarian locked in the dungeon cell.

His eyes were blazing with a late-arriving fury, a cold blue rage thrown at her—but so what? What exactly are you going to do about it? Glare harder?

Qing bared a thin, nasty smile and asked:

“Want me to let you live?”

The islander jerked in shock.

Wang Ssangryong jerked in shock.

“My lady!? You speak their island tongue!? Heavens! In the arts you’re famed through the world, in beauty you surpass the world! In warfare you are Sun Wu reborn! In calligraphy you shame even Wang Xizhi! Astoun—huh! I, Wang Ssangryong, am—am—are you, my lady, truly a divine being!?”

Wang Ssangryong gulped air and bawled at the top of his lungs.

“Great General? That... all sounds very nice, but could you save it for later?”

“Ah. Yes.”

The panting general snapped to attention with a crisp “at ease,” regaining his composure.

Is this man truly a great commander?

For a great commander, he’s awfully light.

“You’ll spare him?”

“I can give him a chance. I have some questions about your people’s martial arts.”

At that, the islander let out a short, scornful laugh—and answered in a grave tone:

“My lady, which part would you honor me by asking about?”

For reference, the “my lady” he used was their most respectful form of address for a highborn young woman—the “princess” tier, not the ordinary “miss.”

Whether Central Plains or barbarians, what loyalty do bandit scum have to the martial way to begin with?

“Do you barbarians have this?”

Qing let starlight glint from her hand—made all the more dazzling in the dim cell.

The islander’s face froze in shock.

“Sword Pressure! And honed to the level of principle!”

Oh. So they do have it.

“Are you a licensed Sword Sage, my lady? O gods—so a female Sword Sage exists in the flesh!”

“Mmm. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

His eyes went dreamy, glittering with a hero-worship that looked suspiciously like the way Paeng Daesan’s fanboys stare at Young Master Ok Girin.

But why “Sword Pressure” when my hand is what’s shining?

“If the momentum hardens into pressure visible to the eyes, it is proof of a warrior who has entered the middle palace. Naturally one must term it Sword Pressure.”

So—anything with a blade is “sword” to these people. Thinking on it, they swing sabers yet have the gall to prattle about “sword.” A sword is a weapon with two edges. If “anything with an edge is a sword,” is a razor a sword too?

Idiots, honestly.

So she asked this and that about islander “swordsmanship”—to be exact, saber work, short-blade work.

And then her status window’s martial-arts pane lit up.

Qing checked the list and almost laughed.

“Abstract School (islander sword).” Blue border.

What? These backward barbarians—no, these backward islander raider bastards—ugh, living in the Central Plains has made the slurs stick to my tongue.

Anyway, do foreign arts also count as martial arts?

Blue border means bottom of the bottom tier.

Barely a step up from white-border trash.

Insulting to islanders and barbarians alike, I’m sure.

But to Qing it was only natural.

In arcade games the bottom two tiers are usually just materials at best—and even then, given what they cost in other resources, they’re so inefficient you don’t touch them.

Either way, a new entry popping up in the window meant this islander had rattled off the truth without lying.

In fact their national habit is to worship strength: in front of a true master who embodies principle in the sword, the thought of lying never even crossed his mind.

Even so, Qing’s eyes kept drifting to the ugly trophies still looped around his neck.

She’d noticed before: each one collected different body parts—whoever those victims were, not a single piece of them would have been left whole.

Still. A promise is a promise.

“All right. A promise is a promise—I’ll let you live.”

Qing’s smile brightened, the corners of her mouth spreading until they nearly touched her ears, turning her face into a cheerful devil’s mask.

“Since I’m going to the trouble of letting you live, you’d better live a long, long time.”

****

Every city in the Central Plains has, as a rule, one venerable, “efficacious” old tree.

Yego County had an ancient pagoda tree spreading a massive trunk over the town square.

Beneath that tree—eight zhang high, two zhang around at the base—they fixed thick ropes and collared beasts.

They were oddly shaped beasts.

At a glance they looked human, but the hair was strange, and their limbs had joints in unnatural numbers, writhing bonelessly.

When they howled—ghastly, broken sounds—they opened their mouths and had not a single tooth. What rare beasts are these?

A great placard was posted in bold script:

Please refrain from the following:

Kicking, punching, or striking with tools or objects.

Throwing hard, heavy things.

Throwing soft feed such as filth or rotten food is acceptable.

If, due to a personal grudge, you wish to watch the beasts perform,

pour exactly one personal cup of boiling water over them.

Your neighbor’s grudge matters as much as your own.

Let us all diligently tend them so they do not die and may suffer long.

—Heavenly Flower Sword Qing.

To paste that above bodies with smashed limbs and pulled teeth—there are hardly words for how atrocious it is.

And she even stuck her proud name on it.

Her friends and Wang Ssangryong had tried to stop her.

Why advertise something so cruel and vicious with your own name?

Qing was adamant.

At most, she “compromised” by letting Steward Yang do the fair copy—fine script gets peeled off by collectors, after all.

Because if anyone comes looking with a grudge, let it point to me.

Who asked for soldiers, even if they were only to be a safe folding screen? Qing did.

Who insisted on firing cannons when the talk was to “chase them off nicely”? Qing again.

And besides.

If rumor spreads far and wide, the islanders might try revenge—though, being bandits, who knows if they have that kind of loyalty.

If they do, and they vent their anger on random commoners, then marking “your enemy is here” might reduce the collateral a little.

In any case, once this is done, I’m going back deep inland—west of Hubei—to my sweet home.

What exactly are islander raiders going to do about that?

Few even frowned; those who did were out-of-towners come to gawk—or lingering prospectors sniffing after “demonic arts.”

Anyone who has lived by the East Sea has a grudge against the raiders; there is not a single exception.

If you extend it beyond yourself to your family, kin, neighbors, and friends, then at least one life has been lost to islander raiders.

“These islander vermin—bugs! It is my life’s regret I cannot wring their necks myself. You there, give me one cup’s worth—boiling.”

“Yes, right here.”

A stall had set up nearby to keep water at a rolling boil. It looked like trade in human hatred—

but the stall-keeper’s face was fearsome for a “merchant.”

A surprising truth:

when a man has no nose, his expression looks filthy.

Everyone in Yego County knew he was the sole survivor kept as a warning from a village the islanders exterminated.

So it was no surprise he bought fuel out of his own pocket and provided boiling water free.

“Of course he would,” people said. “He has cause.”

A passerby hacked up phlegm, took a cup, and trickled it over the beast.

A “personal cup” in the Central Plains means a quality liquor cup—a thick cup for strong spirits.

Being fineware, the noseless man used a wooden copy—but the capacity was similar.

About a single heaping spoonful; even so, boiling water hurts.

It hurts a lot.

You can pour it “gently,” but boiling water hurts the same either way.

“Gyaaaah! ##! ####! #######!”

The beast screamed something, but no one understood the beasts’ speech.

If Qing had been there, she could have translated: he was begging to be killed.

When they thrashed from the heat, the pulverized limbs shifted and multiplied the pain a hundred, a thousandfold.

Watching, the noseless man made a strangled, hiccuping sound—yet his whole face shone.

With each little writhing performance these beasts put on, the tightness in his chest seemed to ease.

After a long while, the man looked again at the tree—and at the placard affixed there.

Heavenly Flower Sword Qing.

He let those six characters—the epithet and the {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} name—burn into his eyes.

He’d been nearly illiterate, knew only numbers.

But now, at least those six he would be able to write, bold and clean.