Chapter 8: The Political Executioner
Chapter 8: The Official Executioner
An hour later.
The dungeon.
Outside a spacious, bright, clean, and tidy prison cell.
Qin Yuan was inside, observing the person he was to record today—Yu Xian, the former governor of Qingzhou.
A middle-aged man, fair-skinned and slightly plump, at first glance looked like an ordinary schoolteacher.
But in truth, he was a ruthless figure. Ten years ago, as the county magistrate of Caoxian, he had allied with local tyrants to slaughter over two thousand peasants within three months who could no longer pay taxes.
Someone from the Left History Institute had once summarized Yu Xian’s secret to advancement in one word: kill.
Qin Yuan stepped forward and respectfully saluted. “Greetings, Lord Yu.”
“Which office are you from?” Yu Xian looked up in surprise.
“The Left History Institute’s recorder,” Qin Yuan replied.
“Oh,” Yu Xian responded indifferently.
Others feared the pen of the historian, but he did not. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have killed so many already.
In his eyes, as long as wealth and power were in hand, he could endure whatever scorn or praise came his way.
When the jailer opened the cell and placed a table and chair inside, Qin Yuan asked his first question: “I heard that when you were magistrate in Caoxian, you killed over two thousand people in three months.”
“Just a couple thousand dirty peasants,” Yu Xian sneered disdainfully.
In his world, officials and peasants were two entirely different kinds of beings—one soaring in the clouds, the other lowly in the dirt.
If peasants disobeyed, they were to be killed until they obeyed.
Before coming, Qin Yuan had researched Yu Xian’s ancestry. His forefathers were peasants who had risen up under the great ancestor Qi Jin of the Great Hun Empire to become men above men.
With a slight smile, Qin Yuan moved on to his second question: “During the recent Qingzhou rebellion, Lord Yu, why did you suddenly change to a policy of pacification?”
Decades ago, when the Western Sea nations invaded, their national religion—the Western Faith—entered the Great Hun Empire.
In recent years, constant clashes had erupted between the Western Faith and the local sect, the Huanglian Faith.
The court did not want the conflict to escalate, consistently favoring the Western Faith.
Yu Xian’s approach was clearly defiant against the court’s stance.
Yu Xian’s eyes flickered as he defended himself: “The Qingzhou rebellion was all the fault of the Western Faith.”
Then he rattled off a series of examples.
In his words, the Western Faith was nearly a cannibalistic demon.
Qin Yuan asked several more detailed questions.
Yu Xian answered each in turn.
After leaving the dungeon, Qin Yuan kept pondering Yu Xian’s nature.
He was extraordinarily cruel to ordinary people, treating them as less than human and frequently resorting to slaughter.
Yet, when it came to external enemies, he showed a certain rebellious spirit.
A person’s character could never be summed up in a few words.
Back at the Left History Institute, Qin Yuan gathered the records of Yu Xian’s past. The man, nicknamed the “Butcher,” ruled through mass arrests, rampant torture, and wholesale slaughter of commoners. He frequently employed brutal torture methods such as whipping, beating with boards, crushing with rollers, dragging chains, kneeling on iron caltrops, standing on iron griddles, and the “breath frog”—forcing prisoners to lie on their backs while their abdomens were smashed with a lever.
Most atrocious of all was the “standing wooden cage.” Yu Xian had placed twelve wooden cages before the government office, each lined with iron spikes. Prisoners were hung inside, with bricks placed beneath their feet—just barely touching. If they moved, their flesh was pierced and bloodied; when a foot landed fully on a brick, a brick was immediately removed, leaving them suspended until they died by hanging. Such gruesome deaths in the wooden cages occurred almost daily.
Furthermore, during the Qingzhou rebellion, he first supported the local Huanglian Faith against the Western Faith.
After being summoned by the court, he turned heartlessly and slaughtered nearly a thousand, including Zhu Hongdeng, the grand protector of the Huanglian Faith.
He exemplified the ruthless nature of a politician who would turn on his allies without mercy.
One month later.
On a cold, bleak morning littered with withered yellow leaves.
At Doufu Diao Chan’s food stall.
Qin Yuan ate as usual.
One slow motion with his left hand, one slow motion with his right.
As if time itself had been slowed to half speed.
For others, eating was merely eating; for Qin Yuan, it was savoring life.
To others, time once lost would never return, and not a single second could be wasted.
To Qin Yuan, time was a scoundrel.
If it was gone today, it would just pop up again tomorrow.
“Let me tell you a funny story,” someone nearby said.
Qin Yuan looked over with the others.
“Everyone knows General Jiang of the Palace Guards, right?”
Everyone nodded.
Once a rebel leader, he later accepted amnesty and became the Grand General of the Palace Guards.
“General Jiang was suppressing bandits and caught the bandit leader. When he asked why the bandit rebelled, guess what the bandit said?”
“To rebel or wait to die,” someone whispered.
He quickly glanced around.
Seeing no one took it seriously, he relaxed.
“The bandit asked, ‘Why did you rebel in the first place?’”
The crowd was stunned, then burst into malicious laughter.
Gradually, the laughter died away.
At that moment, a sturdy man wearing a bamboo hat sat down nearby.
Qin Yuan had lost count of how many times he had encountered this man.
Soon after, a group of imposing men escorted a sedan chair past.
Each man’s temple bulged, filled with radiant energy.
They were obviously masters of an external martial art.
With so many masters providing protection, the person inside the sedan chair must be of considerable importance.
The wind stirred, lifting the thin sedan curtain.
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