Chapter Six: This So-called Joy, Named Brutality

That night was not a sleepless one for Liu Ru. She was simply too exhausted, and even on the next morning, when Su Ziye woke her, she could not recall a single dream from the night before. Even if her dreams had been stained red with blood, nothing remained in her memory.

Breakfast the next day was once again prepared by Su Ziye. Though Liu Ru meant to help, she truly could not get out of bed. The only regret was that, this time, breakfast was not beef soup.

Freshly baked flatbreads came with golden, steaming fried eggs. Aromatic slices of smoked pork were arranged on a plate, and beside them, a transparent cup offered snow-white, warm milk.

A simple, yet delightful breakfast.

Liu Ru watched Su Ziye, who was munching on a flatbread. “Why isn’t it beef soup?”

“No matter how delicious, you can’t have it every day.” Su Ziye looked up and smiled. “Eat up. We’ll set out after breakfast.”

“If it’s delicious, why not have it every day?” Liu Ru retorted.

She did want to eat it every day.

To eat it until she could not bear the thought of it anymore.

“Because there are so many delicious things in the world. No matter how good something is, you’ll grow tired of it. When that day comes, you’ll regret it, won’t you?” Su Ziye smiled faintly. “Eat. We’ll leave once you’ve finished.”

Su Ziye did not say where they were going.

But Liu Ru had not forgotten.

She sat across from Su Ziye, picked up the still-warm flatbread, and took a bite.

...

After breakfast, they departed. Su Ziye had nothing to pack, and Liu Ru had arrived with nothing but herself. So, they left the inn just as they had come.

Su Ziye seemed unchanged, but Liu Ru was a different person altogether.

Liujia Hamlet was not far from this small town—some forty or fifty li at most. In the heart of the Empire, such a distance was nothing. But here, at the Empire’s borderlands, with the throne far removed and the wilderness unbroken for miles, it was a different story.

This frontier town existed only because it was the station for the Empire’s garrison.

The mountain road was rugged.

They walked in silence.

Su Ziye walked quickly, more adept at traversing the treacherous paths than Liu Ru, who had grown up on them. At the mountain’s end, the small village appeared in the distance.

“Have you ever heard of the Green Mountain Bandits?” Su Ziye suddenly asked, glancing back.

“The Green Mountain Bandits?” Liu Ru was taken aback. “You mean those mountain bandits? They visited our village a few times, trading for food, pigs, and ducks.”

“As I thought.” Su Ziye nodded. “That was the first place I went last night.”

“Were there any survivors in the village?” Liu Ru asked, hope flickering in her voice.

“None.” Su Ziye shook his head. “Then I went to find that man, Tang En.”

“Tang En?” Liu Ru did not recognize the name.

“The slave trader,” Su Ziye explained. “He bought you and the other women from the Empire’s border troops for a silver coin each. They couldn’t use women’s heads to pad their numbers.”

Liu Ru murmured her understanding and said nothing more.

“Go down and have a look,” Su Ziye said softly. “Walk through the village, visit your home. This is your farewell. I won’t accompany you.”

Liu Ru did not want to go.

But she had promised Su Ziye she would treat this as a task to complete.

She pressed her lips together and walked down the familiar path.

The stream that ran through the village was still clear, but amid the moist scent of waterside grasses, Liu Ru could still smell the unmistakable tang of blood.

She followed the water forward.

Then she stopped.

She saw a wooden stake.

A stake pinning a man.

A headless male corpse was impaled on the stake, which pierced him from groin to broken neck. At the top, a straw hat dangled in the wind, swaying lightly.

Liu Ru bit her lip and pressed her hand tightly to her mouth.

She stepped closer, trying to recognize who it was, but found nothing. Without a head, it was nearly impossible to identify the dead.

She walked on.

She saw more stakes.

Every house, every hut, had a stake outside, each bearing a headless corpse, a straw hat resting atop, absurd and cruel.

Liu Ru kept her hand over her mouth, walking through this forest of wooden stakes.

At last, she reached the door of her own home and saw another stake.

Her father, too, was impaled there, his body hanging limp, his skin frozen to a pale translucence. She went forward and gently took his hand.

There was no grief or anger in the girl's pale blue eyes.

Only the calm of the deep sea, buried beneath the surface.

She had guessed, vaguely, what fate had befallen her home, but never imagined it would be this.

These dead men had not even been granted a burial. They were left, humiliated, impaled from end to end, to freeze, to rot, to be weathered by wind and rain, and pecked by birds.

“This is how the Empire deals with rebels. No one dares remove these corpses. They will stand here for decades, perhaps centuries, until the stakes themselves rot away. These bodies are left as a warning, to show the price and fate that await those who oppose the Empire,” Su Ziye’s lonely, steady voice sounded in Liu Ru’s ear.

She gritted her teeth. “Can I bury my father?”

“You can, but there’s no need,” Su Ziye replied quietly. “You should continue on, engrave this village in your memory. Only by remembering can you understand one of the greatest reasons for your existence in this world: to prevent such foolish and cruel things from happening again and again.”

Liu Ru stood there, then reached out and took the straw hat that rested atop her father’s head.

She placed it on her own.

The girl continued forward.

Ahead lay a monotonous repetition.

The same stakes, the same corpses, the same straw hats, the same sorrow.

Until she reached the edge of the village.

There, at last, she saw something different.

A soldier knelt in the field.

He wore the dark gray armor Liu Ru knew so well. He knelt in the spring-green wheat, like a dead statue.

Liu Ru looked at him and moved forward, saying nothing.

Behind the first soldier, she saw more.

They knelt in perfect order, forming a triangle stamped into the wheat field.

A contemptuous smile flickered on Liu Ru’s lips.

If kneeling could erase all sins, then let me kneel again and again.

But her smile froze as she drew closer.

She stood before the first soldier.

The earth beneath him was soaked in blood.

Two stakes pierced his calves, pinning him in a kneeling posture, but the fatal wound was the third stake, driven precisely from the back of his head, down his spine, pinning his torso upright.

Liu Ru said nothing, moving on.

The second corpse, the third, the fourth…

One by one, she examined them. The killer’s method was both brutal and precise: every soldier was nailed to the field, kneeling toward the village they had slaughtered.

“Did you do all this?” Liu Ru murmured.

Her heart was a tangle of complicated feelings.

A surge of satisfaction at vengeance fulfilled, and yet also a hollowness, as though someone had stolen her reason for living.

She had just set a goal for herself, and already, it was accomplished in a way she could never have imagined.

“This violent joy must end in violence,” Su Ziye’s voice came quietly as he stepped from the shade of the trees toward Liu Ru.

“If I gave you time for revenge, you might return in five years and do what I have done here today. But what would it mean? The seed of hatred would take root in your heart, gripping you ever tighter. A life devoted solely to vengeance is a wasted life. They say revenge can wait ten years, but true revenge is best concluded swiftly.

“I have avenged you. That is both mercy and theft.

“I told you this would be a farewell.

“A true farewell leaves not a single cloud behind. I don’t want you to leave carrying hatred.

“All is settled here. From this day on, your life belongs wholly to yourself.”

Su Ziye now stood before Liu Ru.

The black-haired youth’s face was utterly without expression.

He merely looked at her, face to face.

Liu Ru gazed at him. “Should I kneel to you as well?”

“If you think it fitting,” Su Ziye replied softly.

Liu Ru did not kneel. She walked forward.

As she brushed past him, she reached out and took his hand, pulling him along.

“Aren’t you going to Nightleaf Academy?” she said quietly, the straw hat shading her eyes.

“I’ll go with you.”