Chapter 3: The Protagonist Does Not Have to Die

This world, in broad terms, was a popular novel about a protagonist’s reversal of fortune and revenge.

The knight commander had been corrupted and transformed by dark forces for reasons unknown. He should have been executed at once, but someone high up had intervened behind closed doors and had him secretly transported to the prison, where he was subjected to torment without end.

And so the faith he had clung to began to crack, and the suffering that made death seem preferable brought with it endless doubt.

The knight commander who had once believed in the Holy Court without question died on the experimental table, and the shell that survived was filled to the brim with resentment and rage.

Even if 9653 were to evaluate this novel on its own terms, it would have to say that the protagonist seemed to have it rather rough.

But that was nothing compared to now.

[How are you going to save him?]

It asked in a state of dread, pulling the protagonist’s vital signs chart back to the center of its field of vision every now and then, doing its utmost to make the host understand that the situation was extremely critical, that one wrong step and tomorrow the reading would go straight to zero, and all of them would be resetting along with this world.

[If your beginner mission fails, it will have consequences far down the line,] 9653 pressed earnestly.

[A great deal is riding on you.]

At these words, Shan Yiqiu, who had been bent over writing something, set down his pen and looked up.

“The way you’re talking right now sounds a lot like a boss gaslighting me,” he remarked without much feeling.

“The emotional register is just a bit off.”

9653: […]

Sensing that the system was still wound tight, Shan Yiqiu softened his tone and said by way of reassurance, “Don’t be too anxious. I will save him, of course. He is not going to die.”

[Really?]

“Of course,” Shan Yiqiu said, as a matter of course.

“He is my mission target as well. I’m not going to stand by and watch him die.”

Hearing him say so, 9653 was put at ease.

And only once the murmuring voice in his mind had gone quiet did Shan Yiqiu pick up his pen again and go on writing.

The thick sheepskin parchment gave off a warm, mellow quality in the candlelight as the ink dried.

Shan Yiqiu left his signature at the very end of the letter, the brushwork fluid and elegant, and yet he did not mark a date anywhere on it.

When it was done, he folded the paper with care, placed it in a plain white envelope, dripped dark red wax onto the seal, and pressed his thumb down, leaving the emblem of the Chief Enforcement Officer.

Once everything was finished, Shan Yiqiu dropped the letter into the back of a desk drawer and stood up and left the desk.

The night had grown late and the world outside the window was utterly still.

There was a great deal to be done tomorrow, yet Shan Yiqiu had no intention whatsoever of going to bed.

He went around the simple, unadorned folding screen that served as a partial partition and made his way to the tall bookcase on the other side of the room. His fingertips skimmed across a row of spines and finally came to rest on a few volumes that looked particularly old.

Shan Yiqiu pulled out two at random and tossed them onto the small round table nearby.

At the same time, with a slight turn of thought, the screen 9653 had shown him reappeared in his mind. He opened the ancient texts to the marked chapters and set them beside the cold summary the system had provided, his gaze moving back and forth between the parchment and the words on the light display.

This world differed from an ordinary western fantasy novel in that its wars and conflicts did not arise from any clash between exterior forces of light and darkness, but from human beings themselves.

The Holy Court’s teachings held that the human heart was born pure as crystal, whole and possessed from birth of the capacity for self-preservation and an inclination toward virtue. Only when an individual’s inner self, willingly or otherwise, had taken in sufficient malice would these toxins congeal, attracting and incubating the force of darkness.

The process of transformation was like a cold venomous snake taking root at the heart, its poison traveling through the blood and spreading throughout the body, twisting flesh and soul from within.

People feared transformation and feared even more the killing it brought with it. The Holy Court was built upon this fear, disciplining people to follow virtue and restrain themselves.

As the two institutions with the deepest reach under the Holy Court, the enforcement officers were responsible for identifying problems and the holy knights for resolving them.

Shan Yiqiu’s gaze lingered for a long while on a hand-drawn illustration; a naked man coiled tightly in the grip of a ferocious python, his body already altered, skin covered in scales, twisted horns growing from the crown of his head.

[Why are you looking at this?] Asked 9653.

“Reviewing,” Shan Yiqiu answered.

“Making sure I haven’t missed anything.”

The small ring of light drifted around Shan Yiqiu.

[I don’t think you have.]

Shan Yiqiu smiled.

“Thank you; I’m deeply honored.”

9653 replied with perfect seriousness.

[Praising you is my duty, it is written in the system manual. No thanks necessary.]

This system seemed quite clever on the surface, but was actually rather simple-minded. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] It was genuinely a newcomer.

Shan Yiqiu said nothing more and returned his attention to the pages he had been studying.

……

Xie Hansheng was back in that banquet.

Occasions as relaxed and boisterous as this were rare within the Holy Court. The crystal lamps lit the great hall in shimmering brilliance, and the air was thick with the scent of wine and expensive spices.

Xie Hansheng could still feel the phantom weight of heavy armor pressing down on his shoulders, though in reality he was wearing a neatly pressed dress uniform, holding a half-full wine glass, standing like a statue that did not belong, wrapped in the rustle of fine clothes and perfume and hollow pleasantries.

He detested occasions like this. He always felt that behind the turn of the ornate curtains, in the gaps between the clinking glasses and laughter, he could make out the shadowed traces of power and desire entwined together, and catch a faint, elusive smell of moral rot.

But his position as knight commander left him nowhere to hide, and the gazes that followed him, some reverent, some probing, some carrying concealed calculation, never left him.

After forcing his way through a few rounds of obligatory socializing, Xie Hansheng finally found an opportunity to slip away. He withdrew quietly from the noise at the center of the room and made for the side door leading to the back garden.

He pushed open the heavy wooden door and the slightly cool air of a summer night wrapped around him at once, thinning out the stuffiness he had been breathing indoors. The garden was steeped in the deep darkness of night, and only a scattering of lamps under the distant eaves cast a faint amber glow, barely tracing the outlines of carefully trimmed shrubs and sleeping rose bushes.

The silence here held nothing but the rustle of wind through leaves and Xie Hansheng’s own breathing as it gradually steadied.

He had intended to spend a moment alone and let his stretched nerves loosen a little. But when his gaze swept across a dense canopy of wisteria on a trellis, he stopped.

The shadow cast by the trellis was heavier there, but enough to let him make out two figures.

One of them was wearing a black dress uniform of elegant cut, with a tall, upright bearing. It was the Chief Enforcement Officer, lauded above and below in the Holy Court for his mild temper and sense of justice. Shan Yiqiu.

The other person, Xie Hansheng narrowed his eyes and recognized by the deep purple sash that marked high clerical rank.

The two were standing close together and talking.

Shan Yiqiu had his head tilted slightly, as though listening with close attention, the line of his profile in the dim light calm and distinct, like a flawless mask. The bishop leaned slightly forward, his voice held very low and his gestures slightly hurried.

The distance and the wind blurred the specific words into fragments of syllables with no clear meaning.

There was nothing particularly unusual about the scene itself. Private conversation between colleagues was ordinary enough. Yet for some reason, in that darkness and stillness that had been deliberately sought out, the sight of it left a faint, indistinct sense of something off in Xie Hansheng’s mind.

He was not the sort of person who liked prying into other people’s affairs, and he quickly attributed that odd feeling to his general discomfort with the occasion as a whole.

He looked away, turned, and left the garden for the corridor, leaving that corner to the people whispering in the dark.

The following morning, Xie Hansheng was practicing swordsmanship on the training ground as usual. Sweat traced a path down from his temple and the morning light worked at dispersing the lingering heaviness left over from the night before.

It was then that a servant came rushing in, his face drained of color and his steps stumbling, and called out breathlessly:

“Commander, something has happened…! [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] Bishop Hawkins was found dead in his study last night!”

……

The sharp smell of blood hit like a cold cobweb, sudden and clinging, stopping Xie Hansheng’s mouth and nose and mind, pulling him back from the fraying edge of a fractured, drifting dream into reality.

He opened his eyes, breathing in short gasps, his heart striking heavily against his ribs.

The distinctive damp and mildew smell of the cell, blended with the reek of rust and festering blood, wrapped around him with absolute reality and the fading traces of the dream receded quickly, leaving behind only a sharp headache and the dull ache of wounds all over his body coming back to life.

And then, through the pain and the clouded senses, Xie Hansheng became aware of it.

In the corner of the cell, in the deepest patch of shadow, someone was sitting.

Shan Yiqiu was still wearing that neat black uniform. He was sitting at ease with his back against the cold stone wall, one hand resting on a bent knee, his fingertips clean, with none of yesterday’s blood on them.

No candles were lit in the cell. Only the thinnest thread of night light filtered down through the ventilation opening high up in the wall, barely enough to exist at all, tracing the quiet outline of his figure and half his profile.

Xie Hansheng’s breath caught, his muscles stinging with a sudden clench, and all the grogginess and the lingering residue of nightmares was replaced in an instant by alertness.

“…”

In the corner, Shan Yiqiu noticed him come awake and turned his face, meeting Xie Hansheng’s gaze.

His expression was impossible to read clearly in the dimness, but the curve at the corner of his mouth was real enough, as though Xie Hansheng were a spectacle of some bloody entertainment.

“Good morning,” he said, his voice light and easy, completely at odds with the dead silence of the cell.

“It seems you had a rather unpleasant dream.”

Xie Hansheng did not answer.

His gaze went first to the observation slot in the cell door, no bigger than a man’s palm, and after a moment’s silence he spoke.

“The execution time has already passed.”

In the shadow, Shan Yiqiu raised an eyebrow.

“Oh?”

He let out a short syllable.

“How do you know when the execution was scheduled? There is no hourglass in this cell.”

“A guess.”

Xie Hansheng said it simply and shifted his gaze back from the observation slot.

“The jailer’s manner yesterday was unusual.”

It was a manner that blended the faint loosening that comes before completing something of great significance with the final silence a person assumes in the presence of something that is about to die.

Xie Hansheng had seen too much death. He knew it well.

At these words, Shan Yiqiu laughed, the sound quiet and low, like a feather brushing against the curve of an ear.

“How gratifying,” he said when the laugh had passed.

“After everything the knight commander has been through, to still possess such sharp judgment. That is truly rare.”

Xie Hansheng heard something in those words that went beyond what they said on the surface.

He drew his brows together, which pulled at the unhealed split at his temple and brought a sharp stab of pain.

“What are you trying to do?” he asked.

Xie Hansheng was not like most people, who naively believed that anyone wearing an enforcement officer’s robes and possessing a mild face must represent something purely good.

He knew certain secrets that were meant to stay hidden forever, and so when he looked at Shan Yiqiu, his gaze always tried to pierce through that warm and pleasant exterior to glimpse the color underneath, which was not purely white.

Shan Yiqiu did not answer his question directly.

He kept his relaxed posture, only the fingers resting on his knee shifted slightly.

“You can leave the cell now,” he said, meeting the sudden contraction of Xie Hansheng’s pupils.

“You are not going to die.”