Chapter 497: A Son Spreads Like Wildfire

Chapter 497: A Spark Begets a Prairie Fire

Thud!

Zheng Xing felt his body slammed violently against the cold, hard floor tiles. Seizing the brief moment to let out a pained groan, he split his eyelids just a fraction, swiftly scanning his surroundings.

Almost instinctively, he deduced where he had been brought. In the entirety of Fenghua Prefecture, except for the slums sprawling across the northern suburbs, such antiquated, obsolete pseudo-historical architecture had vanished from every other district.

Yet, even with that realization, what could he do? Given the staggering strength his captor had displayed, the man was utterly unfazed by any prospect of his escape, showing so little concern that he hadn't even bothered to confiscate the firearms hidden on Zheng Xing's person.

Zheng Xing even harbored a faint, ominous premonition: the man who had dragged him here was actively hoping he would resist, merely to find a justifiable pretext to end his life.

Casting away the dangerous thoughts that could get him killed, Zheng Xing's gaze swept past Chen Shuo, the Magistrate of Fenghua Prefecture who lay unconscious beside him. He noticed a simple altar arranged dead center in the room. Behind the thin, drifting ribbons of incense smoke stood a black ancestral tablet.

Inscribed upon it was a name completely unfamiliar to Zheng Xing: Lin Liaoyuan.

Flames surged within the brazier resting at the foot of the altar. A man with a sharply chiseled profile crouched beside it, tossing bundle after bundle of red paper into the fire.

This traditional method of mourning, inherited from the former Ming Dynasty, was rare nowadays; Zheng Xing had only ever seen it depicted in a few exotic Huangliang dreamscapes.

But that was not the point. What truly sent a jolt of shock through Zheng Xing at this moment was the nature of the items the man was feeding to the flames.

Those were not ritual paper offerings, but stacks of crisp, brand-new Great Ming Banknotes!

"Are you Zheng Xing, the Jinyiwei Company Commander of Fenghua Prefecture?"

The voice hit his ears like an electric current. Dare he lie on the floor playing dead any longer, Zheng Xing scrambled to his feet using both hands and feet.

However, he lacked the audacity to stand upright. Shrewdly reading the situation, he settled into a proper, orderly kneel right where he was.

"This lowly one is indeed Zheng Xing. May I crave your esteemed name, my lord?"

"I am no longer of the Jinyiwei. There is no need to call me lord."

Li Jun tossed another stack of banknotes into the brazier, speaking in a flat tone. "Do you recognize the name on this tablet?"

"Replying to my lord, this lowly one does not."

Zheng Xing was now drenched in sweat. It felt as though the leaping flames in the brazier had baked the air within the room into a scalding furnace, making even breathing an immense chore.

"Lin Liaoyuan. It is only natural that you do not know this name. But you ought to have heard of his other moniker."

Li Jun turned his head slightly, softly uttering a title: "He was called Yaksha."

Zheng Xing’s pupils instantly contracted to the size of pinpricks. Though he had long harbored a faint suspicion regarding the identity of the man before him, the stark confirmation still sent him plummeting into a state of horrified shock.

"Master Li, those matters have absolutely nothing to do with this lowly one!"

Snapping out of his brief stupor, Zheng Xing turned pale as death. He slammed his forehead against the floor, the heavy thuds resounding through the room.

"I have looked through Yaksha's file," Li Jun said. "The lad came from a bitter life. His father died on a workshop assembly line when he was a boy, leaving behind a mother whose internal organs were failing due to a poorly implanted, low-grade cybernetic chassis, and a naive little sister who wasn't even ten years old. The three of them depended on one another to survive."

"To make ends meet, Yaksha chose to join the gangs of Fenghua Prefecture, working as a debt collector and lookout in gambling dens, handling petty, trivial chores. Later, to earn the money needed for his mother’s organ transplants, he followed others in taking up blades and guns, fighting for territory for his syndicate. According to the gang’s rules, seizing a territory meant a handsome cut of the profits."

"Relying on the raw ferocity in his bones, he managed to carve out a bit of a name for himself in the underworld. Luck seemed to favor Yaksha for a time; he actually managed to break his lock and ascend the sequence, becoming a Soldier Nine."

"Unfortunately, this wretched world seems entirely loath to see the poor turn their fortunes around. Every time you feel life is getting better, it throws a mountain of hardship at you, making you realize what it means to be entirely at the mercy of fate, with nothing left to your own choosing."

Stack after stack of banknotes burned in the fire, as layer upon layer of cold sweat poured from Zheng Xing.

"During a turf war, Yaksha's gang was targeted by a coalition because their rapid rise had provoked envy. They were ambushed and surrounded. Nearly all the leaders were slaughtered on the spot, and only Yaksha miraculously managed to escape with his life."

"Yet, when he dragged his heavily wounded body back home, he found his mother already dead, lying in a pool of blood. Those people had even sliced her body open to harvest the healthy kidney she had only just received. Though his sister survived, she had been abducted. Knowing the ways of the gangs, one wouldn't even need to think to know she was bound to be sold into a brothel for coin."

"At that time, Yaksha had only just reached his capping ceremony, barely a man. Children of the poor are often stubborn, and he was the fiercest among them."

The bright flames illuminated their eyes, yet not a shred of warmth could be heard in Li Jun's tone.

"Yaksha cremated his mother's body with his own hands. Taking all the money he had saved to replace her next failing organ, he spent it entirely on weapons and ammunition. Alone, he stormed the gang that had taken his sister, risking his life to tear her away from them."

Zheng Xing continued to kowtow incessantly. The skin on his forehead had split open, and crimson blood streamed across his face, making him look utterly pitiful.

"Master Li, these matters truly have nothing to do with me!"

Li Jun remained deaf to his wails, keeping his eyes tilted upward toward the tablet on the altar.

It seemed these words were not meant for Zheng Xing, but were being spoken to Yaksha himself.

"Though Yaksha rescued his sister, how could a mere Soldier Nine contend against an entire syndicate? He did not fear death, but he refused to watch his young sister fall back into the clutches of those monsters."

"Perhaps fate deemed his time was not yet up, for by sheer coincidence, he crossed paths with Ghost King Da, who was returning to his hometown to escort disabled subordinates. Old Ghost saved him and casually wiped out the gang hunting him down. To repay this debt of gratitude, Yaksha chose to join the Jinyiwei of the Japanese Sector, leaving his sister behind in Fenghua. For Old Ghost had assured him that the families of the Japanese Sector Jinyiwei would be looked after here, and no one would dare bully her."

The mountain of banknotes was completely consumed by the fire, and the fading glow revealed a basin brimming with ash.

"During the battle of Edo, in order to shield Old Ghost, Yaksha had every inch of his remaining flesh shredded by bullets. His cyber-heart was pierced and shattered into pieces. Before he could even upload his consciousness into the Huangliang dreamscape, he perished on the battlefield."

"Just the night before that, he was telling me that once the Japanese Sector Jinyiwei was disbanded, he didn't want to be a Jinyiwei anymore. For those very words, Fan Wujiu slapped him twice across the face, drawing blood from his ears and nose, cursing him until he was utterly humiliated."

Standing in the corner of the room, Fan Wujiu kept his head lowered. The hands hanging by his thighs clenched tightly into fists, the split biomimetic flesh revealing the cold glint of cybernetic bones beneath.

"But Yaksha told me that he wasn't afraid of dying. He merely wanted to go back and take care of his sister."

Li Jun slowly rose to his feet and turned to face the tablet on the altar.

He gently drew out the burnt incense stems from the ash, relighted three new sticks, held them with both hands aligned with his forehead, and bowed in deep reverence.

"I know Yaksha spoke the truth, because as a fellow Jinyiwei Ensign, he was perhaps the most frugal person in the entire Japanese Sector toward himself. Even after completing missions, when the other brothers would spend coin to find some pleasure to vent their stress, he would at most buy a low-grade Huangliang dreamscape to make do."

"He said his sister had been dim-witted since childhood, so she certainly wouldn't grow up to be clever. Therefore, he wanted to save all his money for her. Even if he had to pave her path with gold, he would force her into becoming a Sequencer. Only then would his sister have the chance to step out of Fenghua Prefecture, to see the world, so she wouldn't be easily deceived and lured away in the future."

"Yaksha lived his whole life for just two things: one was to repay gratitude, and the other was family. He achieved both. A man like him is truly no coward."

Li Jun inserted the incense into the burner, then turned around to fix a steady gaze upon the kneeling Zheng Xing, enunciating every syllable: "But now that I have brought Yaksha home, I cannot find his sister. How do you expect me to account to him?"

"Master Li, I truly do not know! Please, spare me..."

Pfft!

A long blade impaled Zheng Xing's right chest from behind, pinning his body directly to the floor.

"It matters not if you refuse to speak. Now that I have arrived in Fenghua, I will unearth the truth sooner or later."

Li Jun's expression was indifferent as he looked down at Zheng Xing's twitching form. "You certainly will not survive today, so there is no need for futile pleas for mercy. But if I were you, I would name the person who dragged me into this mire, so he might accompany me to the grave."

Fan Wujiu twisted the hilt of the blade, the turning edge churning a bloody, mangled crater within the wound.

"The main culprit is the Lu Family of Fenghua!"

As a Jinyiwei who had lived through a long era of peace, accustomed to being summoned and dismissed at a whim by the Confucian Sequence and long used to living with his tail tucked between his legs, when had Zheng Xing ever experienced such brutality?

Without a shred of hesitation, he spilled everything he knew.

"It is Lu Yuzhang! He used the Lu Family's influence in Fenghua to extort and seize all the compensation and monthly stipends dispatched by the Japanese Sector's Thousand-Household Office. He is devouring the livelihoods of the deceased! It truly has nothing to do with this lowly one!"

"Lu Yuzhang? What is his relation to Lu Chengjiang?"

"They are brothers of the same clan and lineage. They work hand in glove, conspiring together. Lu Chengjiang confirms the amount and dispatch times of the funds in the Japanese Sector, and immediately afterward, Lu Yuzhang sends men door-to-door to collect the coin."

"How long have they been doing this?"

"Ever since Lu Chengjiang became the Vice Thousand-Commander, it began."

"For such a long time, why did the Thousand-Household Office remain entirely in the dark?"

"They always demanded the other party withdraw the funds in cash to hand over to them, never transferring through banking houses. Furthermore..."

Merely because his cadence slowed by a fraction, the long blade buried within Zheng Xing’s body was withdrawn with a sharp 'pfft', only to plunge into his abdomen once more.

"Lu Yuzhang placed a Confucian Sequence Seal upon everyone! Therefore, no one could ever leak the secret. Even if someone came from the Japanese Sector, they wouldn't be able to spot the slightest problem!"

Perhaps broken into a savage pride by the agony, Zheng Xing lay in the pool of blood, straining to lift his head, his face contorted in a hideous grimace. "I admit I took their dirty money, but what choice did I have? This is Fenghua, this is Liaodong, the domain of the Confucian cliques. Could a mere centurion of the Embroidered Uniform Guard like me stop whatever they pleased to do? I know I won’t survive today, but do you think you, Li Jun, can actually avenge them? Do you think you have the power to tear the Lu family out by its roots?! You don't have the stomach for it. You bastards are nothing but cowards who bully the weak and fear the strong!"

"The entirety of Fenghua is thick with the Lu family's spies, and Lu Yuzhang has long since woven a dragnet, just waiting for you to show your faces. Now that you’ve taken me and Chen Shuo, you are the ones who will die next—"

Clang!

The long blade embedded in the earth swept forward, shearing Zheng Xing’s upper torso cleanly into two.

The mechanical heart that rolled out from the wound was instantly crushed into paste under Fan Wujiu’s boot. He ground his heel into the dirt and spat fiercely.

"Sister Yuan, drag this official into your Buddha-realm. Let's see if Zheng Xing left anything out of his confession."

Li Jun did not bestow even a single glance upon the corpse on the ground as he turned to speak to Yuan Mingfei.

Yuan Mingfei nodded gently, and the body of Chen Shuo lying on the earth suddenly began to convulse, blood leaking from his seven facial orifices.

With a crisp, sharp cracking sound from within Chen Shuo’s body, his tightly shut eyes flew open, a tiny speck of gold slowly igniting deep within his pupils.

By the time that sliver of gold entirely possessed Chen Shuo’s eyes, the cybernetic aperture behind his skull began to billow with a foul, acrid black smoke, immediately followed by a burst of flame that enveloped his body in an instant.

A heart-wrenching scream tore from Chen Shuo’s throat, his golden eyes reflecting a hellish landscape of mountains of corpses and seas of blood.

"It is indeed the Lu family."

"The Lu family already knows its mistake. I wonder if Your Excellency might stay your hand and grant them a reprieve?"

The moment Yuan Mingfei’s voice faded, a smooth, refined voice followed closely from outside the door.

Clad in a luxurious silk robe, Lu Quan stepped over the threshold and walked into the old, dilapidated courtyard.

His gaze swept briefly over the mangled corpse and the charred skeleton on the ground before settling upon Li Jun.

"Lu Quan, Chief of External Affairs for the Lu Clan, a first-class clique of Liaodong, greets Centurion Li."

Li Jun arched an eyebrow. "It seems that besides the Lu family, your Lu clan is also a party to this affair?"

"The Lu clan has absolutely nothing to do with this matter. On the contrary, had the Lu clan known earlier of the Lu family's actions, we would never have stood idly by. We would surely have intervened to prevent the Lu family from committing such a grievous error."

Lu Quan assumed an expression of righteous indignation, but then his tone shifted, growing deep and resonant. "Things having reached this pass, the Lu family also knows its sins are unforgivable. Therefore, they are willing to compensate all the victims with the lives of their direct descendants—a life for a life. Not only that, they are willing to offer up their entire family fortune with both hands, hoping only to appease your wrath, Centurion Li."

"Lu Yuzhang. Is this man included in that life-for-a-life arrangement?"

Lu Quan shook his head. "Anyone in the Lu family may be included, save for him."

As expected.

Li Jun let out a disdainful laugh. "Using the lives of others to pay for his own sins; he certainly knows how to balance his ledgers. Your name is Lu Quan, correct? Do you truly believe I would accept such terms?"

Seeing Li Jun so arrogant, Lu Quan could not help but furrow his brow. Suppressing his impatience, he said, "Whether you accept or not, Centurion Li, I cannot say. But as the old proverb goes, a feud is better dissolved than preserved. If you feel the sincerity shown by the Lu family is insufficient, we might as well lay our cards on the table and speak openly. After all, this is Liaodong. With the Lu clan presiding over justice, we will certainly not allow those innocent souls to die with their grievances unavenged."

A faint smile appeared on Lu Quan’s face. "Furthermore, I believe Centurion Li is also disinclined to stir up a grand storm at this moment, no? After all, the affair in the Japanese District has only seen the rain stop, but the clouds have yet to disperse. Courting complications at a juncture like this would likely prove troublesome for you, Centurion Li."

Lu Quan’s words carried a thinly veiled threat, making it explicitly clear that Li Jun was currently in Liaodong, and that the Lu clan could well choose to ignore his existence.

If Li Jun wished for vengeance, he would have to play by the rules of the Lu clan.

Moreover, from Lu Quan’s own perspective, although the Lu family was at fault in the beginning, their display of apology and contrition was already grand enough.

When all was said and done, those who died were merely a pack of worthless, crippled veteran soldiers of the Guard and ordinary commoners who had not even entered the ranks. For Lu Yuzhang to allow his own kin to forfeit their lives was already giving Li Jun immense face.

In fact, Lu Quan believed that Lu Yuzhang’s compliance was not born out of sheer terror toward Li Jun and his companions' retribution. They were but a band of desperate outlaws whose lives hung by a thread, bound to be annihilated by some faction sooner or later.

Lu Yuzhang was likely using this opportunity to sever all ties with the Guard of the Japanese District, lest someone seize upon this vulnerability and turn him into a blind weapon, dragging him into an even greater morass.

To see the development of the situation so clearly, and to execute such a resolute amputation of a limb, one had to admit that Lu Yuzhang was indeed a rare talent.

As for the forfeiture of the entire family fortune, it was nothing more than a pleasing euphemism.

In order to marry their daughter into the Lu clan and ascend to the status of a second-class clique, the Lu family had long since offered up the majority of their assets to the Lu clan as a dowry. How much script could they possibly produce now?

"So, you have come to stick your neck out for the Lu family?"

A cold, grim voice interrupted Lu Quan’s train of thought. He gave an noncommittal smile and said, "A life for a life, and a debt paid in coin. The Lu family has fulfilled both conditions. Surely you cannot insist on an absolute slaughter, Centurion Li?"

"Moreover, this is not a savage wasteland like the Japanese District. Here, everything must abide by the rules—"

A massive, ink-black shadow materialized before Lu Quan’s eyes, enveloping his body like a dark cloud. A gale as sharp as a blade shredded the remaining words in his throat, and cleaved along with them was the upper half of Lu Quan’s head.

Lu Quan’s mouth continued to open and close mindlessly, but everything above it was already gone, blood and brain matter erupting continuously from the massive cavern.

Li Jun held the corpse by its collar, slowly wiping his blood-stained long blade clean against the dead man's shoulder.

"It seems life in the heart of the Empire is truly too comfortable. A worthless piece of trash who amounts to nothing, cloaked in a layer of fine skin, dares come and lecture me about rules?"

Thud!

Only when Lu Quan’s corpse collapsed to the ground did a scattering of belated figures appear along the crest of the courtyard wall.

These men were the private soldiers of the Lu clan who had followed Lu Quan.

"My Lord!"

A guard had barely cried out in alarm when half of his body was blasted to pieces by a gun fired by the companion beside him.

He turned his head in utter shock, his bewildered gaze falling upon the twisted, ferocious face of his comrade, and upon the character for 'Zou' slowly manifesting within those wide, angry eyes.

Before he could comprehend what was happening, his entire field of vision was utterly swallowed by a cluster of blinding muzzle flash.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The thunder of gunfire roared, bodies falling like rain, blood splashing across the walls.

"This is your domain? To hell with that. I want to see if you cliques of Liaodong can truly withstand us outlaws from the Japanese District!" Li Jun strode forward amidst the thunder of gunfire, walking straight into the night.

Behind him, the black-clad men and women moved in silent unison, like a host of life-reaping deities emerging from the depths of the underworld.

At that moment, a sudden wind arose, swirling the embers within the brazier, scattering them far and wide to blanket the two corpses on the earth.

The candles flickered out and the incense burned away. The ancestral tablets swayed back and forth, as though someone were clutching their stomach, doubled over in roaring laughter.