Chapter 429: Hall of Golden Chimes |
“Heh heh...”
A faint, cold sneer shattered the deathly silence that had settled over the Hall of Golden Chimes.
Ironclad evidence!
At this very moment, even the most loyal officials of the Yongchang Marquis’ faction couldn’t utter a single word of defense. Embezzling military funds could still be glossed over with excuses like “poor management” or “accounting errors.” But how could this massive fortune in gold from an enemy nation, arriving at such a suspiciously opportune time, possibly be explained?!
The eyes of everyone present converged on the Yongchang Marquis.
Yet, contrary to all expectations.
The livid expression on the Yongchang Marquis’ face slowly began to fade. He even... let out another cold laugh.
That laughter carried a hint of disdain, a trace of mockery, and a touch of... bone-deep sorrow.
He didn’t look at Xu Qing, nor at the civil officials glaring at him with righteous fury. Instead, he turned back around to face the dragon throne. That back of his, always held so ramrod straight, now seemed to bear an almost imperceptible stoop.
His voice no longer carried its previous aggression. Instead, it had become eerily calm, a calmness that was terrifying in its intensity.
“Merchants chase profit—this has been the way since ancient times. A Northern Barbarian merchant caravan came to do business in Great Xing and saw the reputation of my son’s money house as trustworthy. They chose to deposit their wealth here—is that also a crime? Based solely on a business transaction, is His Excellency Xu trying to brand me as a ‘traitor’... isn’t that... a bit too far-fetched?”
He paused, then shifted his tone abruptly, injecting a bone-chilling weight into his words.
“If this is the standard for conviction, then anyone who has ever dealt with Northern Barbarian merchants is guilty of treason. Is His Excellency Xu trying to implicate an entire nine generations of families?”
He slowly raised his head, his gaze burning as he looked at the Emperor on the dragon throne. That look was a complex storm—there was grievance, resentment, fury, but most of all, a profound sense of being betrayed.
“Your Majesty.”
He suddenly swept his court robes aside and dropped to both knees on the cold, unyielding stone floor of the Hall of Golden Chimes, performing a bow of a minister to his sovereign so textbook perfect it was almost ritualistic.
“Your servant, Chen Yuan, enlisted at seventeen, bearing armor and wielding blades for Great Xing. It has been thirty-four years now. In this life, your servant has fought in seventy-three battles, large and small, and bears eighteen sword wounds and arrow scars on his body. Your servant guarded the northern frontier for Your Majesty, holding the savage Northern Barbarians at Heaven’s Moat Pass for twenty years, never allowing them a single step south!”
“Your servant asks himself—for thirty years, toward Your Majesty and toward Great Xing, he has given his all, never harboring a single shred of disloyalty!”
His voice echoed through the empty hall, each word ringing like metal striking stone, carrying the weight of blood and fire.
“And now, in my advanced years, I never thought I’d be framed by petty men, reduced to the charge of ‘treason and betrayal.’”
“So be it!”
He abruptly pulled a tiger-shaped tally from his bosom, forged entirely from Mystic Iron and carved with a tiger totem. He raised it high with both hands.
“This is the commander’s tally for the three hundred thousand troops of the Northern Frontier! Today, your servant returns it to Your Majesty!”
“If Your Majesty no longer trusts your servant, I... I am willing to surrender all military command, lay down my armor, return to my fields, and retire to my hometown! From this day forward, I will not meddle in court affairs, and will live only as a wealthy idle man!”
“I only beg Your Majesty, in recognition of my thirty years of tireless service—even if without great merit, at least I have toiled hard—to grant the Yongchang Marquis Manor a path to survival!”
As his words fell, he thumped his forehead heavily against the floor, three times, kowtowing to the dragon throne.
“Thump! Thump! Thump!”
The entire Hall of Golden Chimes was dead silent.
Everyone was stunned by the Yongchang Marquis’ sudden gambit.
Retreating in order to advance!
This wasn’t a confession at all—it was... the most naked threat imaginable!
The commander’s tally in hand, half the military was loyal to him. If he retired, who could command those three hundred thousand northern troops? Who could move them? With the Northern Barbarian army pressing on the border, replacing a general on the eve of battle was a cardinal sin of warfare!
He was betting the safety of the entire northern frontier, wagering the fate of Great Xing itself, on the gamble that the Emperor wouldn’t dare to touch him!
In an instant, everyone’s heart leaped into their throats.
Every gaze turned toward the silent sovereign on the dragon throne.
In the Hall of Golden Chimes, the atmosphere froze to its lowest point.
The Yongchang Marquis’ commander’s tally lay like a red-hot branding iron before the Emperor and all his civil and military officials, too searing for anyone to speak.
This was a high-stakes gamble.
The Yongchang Marquis was betting on his three decades of military prestige, on the loyalty of the three hundred thousand northern troops, on the Emperor’s unwillingness to cut off his own arm with the Northern Barbarian army at the border.
On the dragon throne, the face of Great Xing’s Heavenly Son revealed no expression. He only gazed silently at the marquis kneeling below. Those deep, dark eyes were as calm as a bottomless abyss, giving no clue to his thoughts.
Time seemed to stretch infinitely in that moment.
Within the great hall, only the heavy, stifled breaths of the hundred officials remained.
At the corner of his mouth, the Yongchang Marquis allowed a faint, upward twitch that went unnoticed by all. He knew his gamble had succeeded.
But just then.
Xu Qing, who had stood still as a statue throughout the entire affair, moved again.
He drew a deep breath, as if summoning every last ounce of strength.
Then, amid the startled, bewildered, and even slightly pitying gazes of everyone around him, he reached into the deepest recess of his wide sleeve and produced a third—and final—file.
This file was very thin, just a single folded piece of paper made of a special material.
But the moment Xu Qing unfolded it, the just-forming smirk on the Yongchang Marquis’ face instantly froze. For the first time, a genuine, heartfelt... look of horror appeared in those eyes that had been so full of confidence and control.
“Your Majesty!”
Xu Qing’s voice was no longer as cold as before. Instead, it carried a sense of relief, and a grim determination that his great vengeance was about to be fulfilled.
“Your servant hereby impeaches the Yongchang Marquis on a third charge: conspiring with evil cultivators, refining corpse puppets, plotting to subvert the dynasty, and poisoning the realm!”
Conspiring with evil cultivators?!
These four words carried more weight, more forbidden implications than all the previous charges combined!
“Nonsense!” the Yongchang Marquis roared almost instinctively. “Xu Qing, you’re spewing blood and framing me!”
Xu Qing ignored him completely. Instead, he raised the paper high.
“This is a copy of a secret letter forwarded to your servant through special channels by the Cloud Hidden Sect’s External Affairs Office! The letter explicitly records all the details of transactions between His Lordship the Yongchang Marquis and an unidentified black-robed man!”
“This includes His Lordship providing the black-robed man with the remains of Great Xing’s fallen soldiers as materials for refining ‘corpse puppets’! It also includes the black-robed man’s promise to help your subordinate ‘Blood Cavalry’ trample the Northern Barbarians, and even... to replace Great Xing itself!”