Chapter 5: Insult and Run

The moment the deputy commander saw Shan Yiqiu come out, a smile assembled itself quickly on his face and he went forward to meet him in two strides.

“Your Excellency, you’ve finally come out.”

“Good evening, Deputy Commander,” Shan Yiqiu stopped walking and let his gaze pass over the knights one by one.

“Is there something urgent that requires my attention?”

There was no other way to explain why the Holy Knights kept turning up at his side of their own accord, like flies that couldn’t be shooed away.

“Nothing urgent,” the deputy commander said quickly, seeing the misunderstanding.

“You know how it is. The situation has been very complicated lately, and the Holy Knights have a duty to protect your safety. The area around the Silent Chamber is not safe, so…”

Shan Yiqiu raised one hand, his index finger bent slightly inward. It was a mild but unambiguous gesture to stop.

“I appreciate the concern. However, today is a private matter and not an official inspection. There is no need to trouble the members of the Knights.”

“You are always so considerate,” the deputy commander said, his smile undiminished, words tumbling out one after another in a manner that was nothing short of presumptuous.

“But it is precisely because this is your personal matter that we feel all the more obligated. Your safety bears on the dignity of the Holy Court’s law and admits no lapse whatsoever. Forgive me for speaking plainly, Your Excellency, but you sometimes place rather too much trust in the guards of certain establishments.”

He went on and on without end, pledging his loyalty one moment and hinting at the dangers of the Silent Chamber the next, the whole of it amounting to nothing more than an attempt to justify his having brought men here and to gild himself with a veneer of foresight.

Shan Yiqiu’s smile did not waver, but his mind was not on the conversation. He was looking down, studying the bloodstain on his cuff.

When the other man’s words slowed at last, he looked up and said mildly, “The deputy commander worries too much. The security protocols of the Silent Chamber were established by the Holy Court itself. If we need to worry additionally about a place like this, then what is to be done about everywhere else? Is there anywhere safe left in the world?”

The words were gentle in phrasing but carried no small weight, and they lodged whatever the deputy commander meant to say next firmly in his throat.

The warmth in the deputy commander’s smile faltered and he said, a little awkwardly, “Yes, I was overthinking it. Only…”

His eyes shifted and in the end he could not suppress his overstepping curiosity. He lowered his voice and ventured a probe.

“That said, I wonder what brings Your Excellency here in person?”

By either seniority or authority, he had no right to ask the Chief Enforcement Officer directly about the purpose of his movements, but he had calculated that Shan Yiqiu had a good temper and would not take offense at a little concern.

Shan Yiqiu did not take offense, as expected. He did not so much as move an eyebrow, only let his smile deepen slightly as his gaze reflected the distant flicker of a wind lantern.

“To collect someone,” he said.

“Collect someone?”

The deputy commander was genuinely taken aback this time, then relaxed into a dismissive laugh, as though he had just heard a joke taken too far.

“This place… forgive my slow understanding, Your Excellency. There are surely only sinners awaiting purification here. What kind of guest would require your personal reception?”

“There is one,” Shan Yiqiu said with a smile, his gaze drifting toward the heavy door behind him, his tone carrying something playful.

“Quite an important figure.”

An important figure?

What important figure could the Silent Chamber be holding?

The deputy commander turned this over inwardly while keeping up the appearance of a smile, assuming the enforcement officer was putting him off. But when he studied Shan Yiqiu’s face more carefully, he found the expression there was entirely earnest. It was not a joke.

At that, a jolt went through him and his mind raced through the list of serious offenders recently held in the Silent Chamber, until a name that had long since been written off as turning to dust suddenly leapt forward.

The smile on his face froze and his pupils widened fractionally with shock.

Just then, the sound of slow, heavy footsteps came from the direction of the Silent Chamber’s great door.

The deputy commander snapped his head around to look.

From within that door that opened onto darkness, a figure emerged, bent slightly as he came through.

The once glorious knight commander, reduced in a single stroke to a prison inmate. Even now that he had seen daylight again, the sixty days that had passed had left marks on him that could not be erased.

His skin had gone very pale, and in the dim light it carried an unhealthy blue-grey cast. Coming closer, the deputy commander could make out near the side of his neck, just below the ear, several faintly visible darkened protrusions, as though something hard had been embedded beneath the skin, or as though scales were beginning to form.

Xie Hansheng had changed out of the blood-soaked prison clothes and was wearing the simple dark jacket and trousers Shan Yiqiu had brought. The faint light from the corridor barely traced his outline and did not reach his eyes.

The deputy commander held his breath without thinking.

Strictly speaking, Xie Hansheng’s transformation was far less fearsome than the rumors had described. On the surface, at least, he still maintained a basic human shape.

No horns, no tail, no swollen or twisted limbs.

But when the deputy commander’s gaze finally landed on his face, a chill rose unbidden from the base of his spine.

It was not the instinctive wariness one feels before a snarling beast. It was a subtler, more unsettling dread, as though what he was looking at was not the beast itself but the wound on the beast that his own hand had made.

He had wounded it and had not managed to kill it.

Xie Hansheng came to a stop a few steps away.

The night wind passed through and stirred his loose-fitting clothes. His gaze swept across the deputy commander and the knights behind him, whose fingers had quietly found their sword hilts, and then settled on Shan Yiqiu, waiting in silence.

Shan Yiqiu appeared entirely unaware of the turmoil running through the deputy commander at that moment. He turned slightly and raised a hand in Xie Hansheng’s direction, making the introduction with a smile.

“This is the important figure I mentioned.”

The deputy commander’s jaw twitched despite himself and he forced out words with difficulty.

“Is Your Excellency joking? He has already transformed.”

“I know he has transformed,” Shan Yiqiu said readily, “but he has not harmed anyone of his own will, up to this moment.”

Whatever he had said to Xie Hansheng inside the prison was one thing. Out here, he was the Chief Enforcement Officer and his decisions were not subject to question.

With that, Shan Yiqiu gave a slight nod.

“Good night.”

When the words fell, he gestured toward the carriage.

Xie Hansheng read the instruction and followed Shan Yiqiu’s pace in silence, like an obedient shadow.

“Wait!”

The deputy commander finally snapped back from his shock and stepped forward, planting himself in front of Xie Hansheng. He pushed a stiff and ingratiating smile onto his face but his gaze was sharp as a blade as it raked up and down Xie Hansheng.

“Xie… Former Commander? This is truly unexpected. Where exactly is Your Excellency taking him? He is a serious offender. Even if the execution has been postponed, it is still necessary to…”

“The transfer paperwork is complete. He is now under the supervision of the enforcement corps.”

Shan Yiqiu had already reached the carriage and stopped at these words, turning to one side.

The wind lantern’s light fell across half his face, still the same mild and composed lines, and it cut across the deputy commander’s unfinished sentence.

“If the deputy commander has questions about the full procedure, he is welcome to review the documents tomorrow.”

“I have no intention of questioning Your Excellency,” the deputy commander said quickly, turning toward Shan Yiqiu and softening his tone, though he held his ground.

“Only, his transformation is severe. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] He is extremely dangerous. Shouldn’t this be given a little more consideration?”

An electronic voice sounded, audible to Shan Yiqiu alone and well-timed.

[He is so annoying!]

The system had no grasp of social dealings and simply found it incomprehensible that this deputy commander kept going like a fly with no end to it. The host had already sorted everything out, and now they just needed to get the man back, treat the wounds, take the medicine, and all would be well. Instead this person had to come and start something.

Shan Yiqiu agreed inwardly. He is indeed insufferable.

Before he could open his mouth to respond, however, Xie Hansheng, who had been silent throughout, suddenly let out a low laugh. It was short, and full of cold contempt, and it broke the slightly frozen atmosphere.

The expression the deputy commander had been holding together by sheer effort collapsed at once and the fingers pressing against his sword hilt trembled faintly.

He pretended not to have heard it and kept his eyes on Shan Yiqiu, pressing on with a show of sincerity.

“Your Excellency, a person eroded by darkness is no longer one of us. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] There may be nothing wrong now, but who can guarantee what comes later? Taking a risk for such an existence is not wise.”

With things said so plainly, the deputy commander’s revulsion and rejection of Xie Hansheng could not have been more evident.

Shan Yiqiu tapped his fingers lightly against the carriage door frame, producing a faint sound.

He raised an eyebrow.

“If I’m not mistaken, Commander Xie served in the Knights for ten years, which is three more than the deputy commander, meaning you served under his command the entire time. Now that something has happened, how can you be so cold toward him? That hardly seems like the feeling one has for a colleague.”

The deputy commander had invoked the erosion of darkness. Shan Yiqiu came back with the bond between human beings.

The deputy commander’s expression stiffened and he was just about to respond when Xie Hansheng raised his eyes at that moment and let out another contemptuous sound.

If the first could still just barely be explained away as unintentional, this was pure provocation.

“Zuowen Te,” he addressed him by name, his tone dismissive, “this is as far as you’ll ever go.”

The deputy commander’s composure ignited on the spot. The rage he had been holding back and some acute, punctured humiliation burst out together.

“What did you say?! You freak—”

“Deputy Commander, mind your words.”

Shan Yiqiu cut in at the right moment, stopping the insult before it could land, and at the same time shot Xie Hansheng a sidelong glare.

Always stirring up trouble with his mouth. Where was all this backbone when he was getting thrown in prison?

“Get in the carriage,” he said to Xie Hansheng.

Xie Hansheng looked at Shan Yiqiu, then swept his gaze over the deputy commander, whose face had gone iron-grey and whose chest was heaving.

There was a document transferring him to the enforcement bureau, yes, but Xie Hansheng had already transformed and was not considered human, which meant he was perfectly entitled to ignore Shan Yiqiu’s orders. Yet at this particular moment he did the opposite of what might be expected and climbed into the carriage without argument, with every air of someone who had delivered his insult and was making a clean getaway.

He left the deputy commander standing there rigid, a breath stopped in his chest, watching helplessly as Shan Yiqiu also stepped up into the carriage.

The door closed, sealing inside from out, and the carriage moved off quickly and was swallowed by the night.

When it had gone far enough, the deputy commander spun around sharply and drove his boot into a half-buried stone at the side of the road with a dull, heavy impact.

Fragments flew and startled a young knight nearby into an involuntary step backward.

He turned in place twice in agitation, his clenched fist opening and tightening again, his nails pressing deep into his palm.

The darkness covered whatever his face was doing under the anger and the humiliation, and only his rough, heavy breathing gave away the churning within.

“…A transformed piece of trash.”

The deputy commander finally pushed the words out through his teeth, each one ground out and spat forth, soaked in cold hatred and contempt.

“So what if he used to be Knight Commander? Did he really think getting in with the enforcement officer would wash him clean?”

He let out a cold laugh, his voice held low but clear enough for the few trusted men around him to catch.

“Just wait…”