Firmament Sword

”He was roaring, spitting out a mouthful of blood with every word. He cried, ’My mother...’ He only managed to say those two words before a Black-Feathered Iron Arrow pinned his hand to his chest.”

”Until the moment he died, he was looking at us, his eyes pleading...”

”Huang Dashua died later in the battle. By the time he fell, he had over a dozen wounds. He fought to the very end. He had no weapon, and he’d lost so much blood he had no strength left, but he still clung desperately to an enemy. He sank his teeth into the man’s neck and literally bit him to death!”

”The enemy’s comrades, trying to save their friend, nearly hacked Huang Dashua’s head off, but he never let go, not even in death...”

”When we crawled out of the tall grass later and found Huang Dashua, his eyes were still open. Damn it! Wide open! He couldn’t rest in peace! He died so full of regret! In the end, he never got to hear his own son call him ’Dad,’ never got to kiss his son’s cheek, never got to drink his son’s virgin-boy urine... *sob*... He never got to hear it!”

Li Yu wailed, his face a mask of utter agony. Beside him, the burly Tang Yong was also drenched in tears, choking on his sobs.

”Three hundred Death Warriors, plus three thousand reinforcements and the vanguard under General Wu, were almost completely wiped out. The few of us brothers were all seriously wounded and fell into a deep, overgrown ditch. That’s the only reason we were lucky enough to survive!”

”Later, after our wounds healed, we came to the Imperial Capital. We wanted to find the Grand General and demand an explanation. Why... why send us to our deaths when he knew it was a trap? We refuse to believe the Grand General wouldn’t have received any intelligence about a massive enemy troop movement!”

”But the result... you already know what happened.”

Tang Yong took over for Li Yu, who was too choked up to speak. His account of the events was mostly consistent with what Xu Luo had uncovered in his secret investigation, with one single discrepancy: Yuan Zhi.

Because both Grand General Xu Ji and Yuan Zhi, who was the Divine Soldier liaison officer at the time, insisted on one point: the military order issued back then read, ”Change of plans. Hold your position!”

”What did Yuan Zhi say to you all when he found you back then?” Xu Luo asked.

”What else could he say? He blamed us, of course! Heh, that guy actually claimed the secret order he had said, ’Change of plans. Hold your position!’ What a joke! The order we received clearly said, ’Attack immediately!’ What, does he think we can’t read? Or was Yuan Zhi, one of the Six Divine Soldiers, a traitor? And wasn’t that the Grand General’s Seal stamped on it?!”

Tang Yong said, his face contorted with fury.

”We had a huge argument when we met and parted on bad terms. But we never expected that not long after Yuan Zhi left us, he was assassinated. A few of us brothers sensed something was wrong. Disheartened, we immediately prepared to leave.”

Tang Yong gritted his teeth and said, ”But Li Yu and I couldn’t accept it. We just wanted to one day ask the Grand General to his face why he gave such an order!”

At this, Li Yu, gasping for breath at the side, roared, ”For all these years, we’ve wanted to ask the Grand General one thing to his face: Why? Why?!”

”The vanguard, General Wu, was surrounded the moment he charged in. In the blink of an eye, both he and his horse were turned into porcupines. His personal guards desperately threw themselves on top of him, trying to shield him with their bodies, but... they all just became one giant porcupine...”

”Have you ever seen a man riddled with dozens of arrows in an instant? HUH?! HAVE YOU?!” Li Yu roared hysterically.

”To this day, I still remember General Wu’s bloodcurdling scream before he died: ’Why? Why?!’”

Li Yu gritted his teeth, tears streaming down his face. ”That one word has been screaming in my heart for all these years. Every night, when I can’t sleep, I just ask myself in my head: Why? Why?...”

”And every time I ask, my hatred grows stronger! Second Young Master, you tell me, why? WHY?!”

He screamed at Xu Luo, his expression savage, just like General Wu screaming as a thousand arrows flew at him.

”For all these years, we’ve wanted to ask the Grand General one thing to his face: Why? Why?!”

”So many years have passed. The glint of swords and the shadows of blades are gone, the clamor of war drums and horns has faded, but those faces, so vivid... Twenty-five-year-old Xiaoshunzi, a poor bachelor who just wanted to marry a woman with a big butt to bear him sons... Song the Third, who wanted to cure his old mother’s rheumatism... Huang Dashua, who wanted to drink his son’s virgin-boy urine and hear him call him ’Dad’...”

”And so many other brothers-in-arms... their faces are seared into my mind. I’ve never forgotten! I can’t forget! I don’t dare forget! They... they died such wrongful deaths!”

By the end, Li Yu’s voice was completely hoarse and ravaged. His agonized face was awash with tears and snot.

Xu Luo took a deep breath, his eyes red as he remained silent. Whatever the truth of the matter was, faced with Li Yu’s blood-soaked anguish, he could not remain indifferent, could not remain unmoved.

Even someone with a heart of stone would feel sorrow and pain for the tragic fate of these iron-willed men.

”Alright... we’ve kept this buried in our hearts for too many years. The torment made life worse than death. Now that we’ve said it, I finally feel... a lot better.”

Li Yu spoke slowly, his voice raspy, but tears still streamed from the corners of his eyes.

”I just remembered something...”

Tang Yong sniffled loudly, his brow furrowed slightly as he looked at Li Yu. ”That guy, Yuan Zhi... after our big fight back then, right before he left, he seemed dazed and muttered something. Did you hear it?”

Li Yu thought for a moment, then said in his hoarse voice, ”I remember now. He was in a trance, barely coherent. He said, ’Could the secret order have been swapped?’”

Tang Yong said, ”That’s right, that was it...”

As he spoke, Tang Yong suddenly looked dumbfounded. He mumbled, ”This... this couldn’t be the truth, could it? How is that possible?”

Li Yu was also stunned, muttering, ”I don’t believe it. Yuan Zhi was one of the Six Divine Soldiers, one of the Grand General’s most trusted men! And his skills were far better than ours! Besides, the route Yuan Zhi took back then was through enemy territory. Getting ambushed would have been completely normal!”

”How could the enemy have had the opportunity to do something like that? Would the enemy know the Grand General’s handwriting? Would they know what the Grand General’s Seal looked like? Could there have been a spy in our own army? I don’t believe it!”

Hearing this, a clear thread of an idea began to form in Xu Luo’s mind. He looked at Tang Yong and Li Yu and couldn’t help but sigh softly. ’A chain of misunderstandings led to such a catastrophic outcome,’ he thought. ’It’s left those iron-blooded warriors unable to rest in peace and forced the near-death survivors, Tang Yong and Li Yu, to live under this heavy burden to this day...’

Xu Luo’s thoughts continued: ’Back then, the frontline army was defeated, and the losses were devastating. My father was severely criticized, with countless people calling for his impeachment. In that whole affair, Prime Minister Wei Feng benefited the most. And then there’s the Wei Family’s attitude toward my own family... Yuan Zhi’s death, and Wei Ziting deliberately targeting me...’

’All of it, every single piece, seems to indicate that the Wei Family very likely played an extremely disgraceful role in that incident back then!’

’A secret military order—how could the enemy have gotten their hands on it? My father isn’t a famous calligrapher, so who would be bored enough to study his handwriting?’

’Tampering with a secret order, forging the handwriting, and ultimately reaping enormous benefits!’

’No matter how you look at it, this seems like the handiwork of a Civil Servant!’

The thought sent a chill down Xu Luo’s spine. ’For his own selfish desires, would Wei Feng... would he really dare to do something so utterly depraved?’ He found it hard to believe it could be true.

’But I will get to the bottom of this! Even if it’s not for my father’s name, just for those iron-willed soldiers who died such wrongful deaths, I will absolutely uncover the truth and give them justice!’

Xu Luo swore an oath in his heart: ’If I really find out who did this... even if he’s the son of Heaven himself, I will never compromise, and I will never let him go!’

Just then, Li Yu and Tang Yong exchanged a look, communicating with their eyes. Then, Tang Yong gritted his teeth and said, ”Second Young Master, the real reason we wanted to find the Grand General’s handwriting is because that secret order from back then... we never managed to destroy it. We kept it!”

Xu Luo froze for a second, then his face lit up with joy. He couldn’t help but exclaim, ”What? That secret order from all those years ago... you still have it?”

This was absolutely crucial for investigating the old case. Possessing this secret order was like holding a piece of ironclad evidence!

Li Yu nodded. ”That’s right. We always wanted to take this to the Emperor and file a complaint, to clear the names of our brothers who died. We don’t want anything else, just for our fallen brothers to be able to rest in peace! But the more we learned over the years, the more disappointed we became. Expecting that bunch of Civil Servants to give us justice... it’s probably impossible!”

Tang Yong said, ”Today, we’re entrusting this to you, Second Young Master. I, Old Tang, have always been a decent judge of character. If you’re tricking us, then we’ll just have to accept it. If you want to kill us, just make it quick. The money we’ve earned over the years is enough for the orphans and elders to live on. And even though we’d still die with regrets, at least we could finally go down and reunite with our brothers!”

Li Yu added, ”That’s right. Carrying this burden for all these years... it’s just been too exhausting!”

”Rest assured. Since you’re willing to trust me, I’ll give you my promise right here and now. I will see to it that you get justice for this!”

Xu Luo looked at the two brothers with a solemn expression, then said, ”But until this matter is cleared up, you’ll have to endure some hardship. After all...”

”No need to say more, Second Young Master. You think we’re afraid of a little hardship like this? Heh, we crawled out of a pile of corpses back then. What kind of suffering haven’t we seen? If you really want to help us, Second Young Master, then just find out the truth of this matter as fast as you can!”

With that, Tang Yong told Xu Luo where the secret order was hidden. Xu Luo then hurried away.

A short while later, someone came in, bringing a spread of fine food and two jars of wine.

The person then untied the ropes binding the two men to the pillars, said nothing more, and left, showing no fear that they might try to escape.

In the dungeon, Tang Yong and Li Yu, two men who had wept until they were a mess, looked at each other with wry smiles.

Now, they finally, almost completely, believed that the Second Young Master truly intended to uncover the truth, and wasn’t just deceiving or placating them.