Chapter 1

Prologue

The pitch-black space, devoid of even a single ray of light, created the illusion that it stretched on forever.

The scholar vaguely knew that the place was not actually that large, but it didn't matter.

He couldn't move anyway.

[Greetings.]

A voice suddenly echoed through the darkness.

There shouldn't have been anyone here.

Yet the scholar tried to answer. He was no longer in his right mind.

His reason had been shattered.

All he could do was cling to the faintest thread of consciousness.

"Cough... Cough..."

He wanted to ask, Who are you?

But that was physically impossible.

There was no way he could speak.

The scholar forced a bitter smile.

[It's fine. I can hear your voice.]

"How...?"

The scholar tried to form words, but his tongue—reduced to nothing but its root—could no longer produce sounds that anyone could understand.

Only grotesque, incomprehensible noises escaped his throat in agony.

[Now, now. There's no need to force yourself to speak. I've been watching ever since they tore out your tongue.]

The thought of How can this voice read my mind? never even occurred to him.

He was too broken for such thoughts.

Mentally... and physically.

[Mm... It was quite an unpleasant sight, to be honest. They heated those tongs until they glowed red, then gripped your tongue and ripped it clean out. You let out a scream that couldn't even be called human before passing out.]

Contrary to the horrifying words, the mysterious voice remained light and cheerful.

It wasn't mocking the scholar's suffering.

That simply seemed to be its natural manner of speaking.

"I... I can't see."

The scholar turned his head toward where the voice seemed to be coming from before realizing that he couldn't see anything at all.

In truth, he had probably realized it several times already.

And forgotten it just as many times.

The cave he was imprisoned in wasn't completely dark. Plenty of light seeped inside.

It was just that...

[Have you forgotten? Those eyes once filled with profound mystery were pierced through by red-hot iron spikes.]

"Did... that really happen...?"

The scholar tried to raise a hand to touch his eyes.

But he had no fingers.

His left hand wasn't even there past the wrist.

After staring blankly for a moment, he asked the voice,

"Do you happen to know... where my hands went?"

The deep voice answered with the same strangely pleasant tone.

[Those delicate fingers that had never known hard labor? They were snipped off one by one with shears. Don't worry, though. They used scissors heated until they were red-hot—for your sake, of course.]

He had no idea what he wasn't supposed to worry about.

"Thank you... for answering."

The scholar staggered, trying to stand.

But he had no legs.

After awkwardly lowering his gaze, he asked again,

"Do you know... what became of my legs?"

[Your slender legs were carried away by the executioner's blade. Since you can't remember, let me remind you. They cut off your toes one by one. Four days to reach the ankles. Three more to the knees. Nearly half a month before they finally reached your thighs.]

"I see..."

The scholar searched through his memories.

A splitting headache nearly shattered his mind.

Even so, there was one blessing.

Little by little, fragments of his memories began returning.

"...I think... I remember. Then... what became of my family?"

[Oh? You were so occupied with your torture that you never heard what happened to them. Come to think of it, you've spent quite a few years in that prison.]

Now that it was mentioned, he vaguely recalled being imprisoned for an unimaginably long time.

While the scholar silently searched through his fading memories, the voice continued.

[Your eldest sister was beaten to death by her husband's fists. He kept striking that beautiful face until it was nothing but ruined flesh.]

"What...?!"

The scholar was horrified.

"My brother-in-law may have a fierce temper, but he is the honorable head of a family renowned for its righteousness. How could such a man brutally beat his own wife to death?"

The voice clicked its tongue.

[How pitiful. If even you, the eldest son of the family, know nothing of what happened within your own household, then who could?]

The scholar hurriedly asked,

"Then... my second sister? What happened to her?"

[She was violated by bandits and bit off her own tongue to end her life.]

"What are you saying?"

The scholar couldn't comprehend it.

"My second sister was one of the finest young swordsmen of her generation. How could mere bandits possibly defeat her?"

[How pitiful. Her dantian had long since been destroyed. What use were decades of internal cultivation and refined swordsmanship after that?]

The scholar shook his head violently.

"Even so... my family! Even if my second sister lost her cultivation, my family would never have failed to protect her."

He desperately grasped at the memories returning to him.

"My family was one of the greatest clans in all the Central Plains, without equal. How could the second daughter of such a family possibly fall to common bandits?"

The voice fell silent. Not another word came.

[How pitiful. Are you saying you did not even know that? How long has it been since your family was utterly destroyed? What family was left to protect her?]

"...Annihilated?"

What did that mean?

The scholar tried to clutch his head as dizziness washed over him.

But he had no hands.

"I may have been nothing more than a scholar who shut himself away in a small room, living day by day for the pleasure of reading books, but my family had younger brothers whose brilliant intellect and magnificent martial prowess were known throughout the continent. And behind those brothers stood peerless warriors like a folding screen. How could such a thing have happened?"

[How frustrating. Truly, how frustrating. How can you, the eldest son of the family, pretend not to know what happened after you left to become a son-in-law?]

And this torture too?

He had merely lived peacefully, taking virtue as the foundation of his life.

[A prodigy of your caliber did not know what was happening in your family while you were there? Nor what would happen to your family after you left? Are you saying you did not know what the final result would be?]

Only now did the voice openly mock the scholar.

The scholar protested his innocence.

"I truly did not know. I swear it. How could a mere commoner like me possibly have known such things?"

Something seemed to flicker at the edge of his mind, but it would not surface.

Who had he been?

How had he lived?

Faint memories brushed past him, but whenever the scholar tried to seize them, they vanished like phantoms.

The scholar's brain, with death already seeping into its marrow, no longer worked as sharply as it once had.

[Is that so?]

The voice sank low and cold.

It pressed him fiercely.

[Do you truly not know that those younger brothers you praised fought one another in a bloody struggle over the position of family head?]

"I did not know. I knew nothing of it."

The scholar shook his head violently.

[Truly? You truly did not know?]

The voice asked again, loaded with meaning.

The scholar could not understand.

He was only an ordinary scholar.

All he had done was pass each day reading books in a small room.

Sometimes he tended the garden, painted, or played instruments. Those had been his only pleasures.

[Truly?]

The voice asked again, as though it did not believe a single thought in the scholar's mind.

"...Of course."

He could not even understand why someone as kindhearted as himself had been imprisoned in a place like this.

As though it could see through every lie he spoke, as though it could see every moment of his life, the voice cornered him with relentless persistence.

[Is that truly so? You, who could see a thousand li ahead without clairvoyance. You, who could look a thousand days into the future without divine powers. Are you truly saying you did not know?]

"I did not know. I did not know, I said!"

The scholar was confused.

How could anyone possibly do such a thing?

To sit in one place and know the workings of the world as though watching the palm of one's hand?

Was that not an absurd ability?

It was a talent only an unparalleled prodigy with divine calculation and miraculous intellect could possess.

The voice spoke quietly once more.

[Was that not you?]

"That cannot be. Are you not mistaking me for men like Zizhang or Changqing?"

Zizhang and Changqing were the courtesy names of none other than Sima Qian and Sun Wu.

[Zizhang and Changqing?]

The voice laughed heartily.

[Do you not know that compared to you, Sima Qian and Sun Wu were nothing more than a mere historian and a mere strategist?]

At those words, the scholar felt his mind go distant for a moment.

Sima Qian was the great man who left behind the Records of the Grand Historian, known as Shiji, and was called the Father of History in the Central Plains.

Sun Wu was the great man who dominated the Spring and Autumn period, defeated the mighty state of Chu, and raised the vision of all who practiced military strategy to a higher level.

Perhaps it was because he was speaking after so long.

"You place a mere commoner like me above such great men?"

The scholar's mind slowly began to clear.

[Then answer me.]

The more they spoke, little by little...

[When did you help your mother organize and condense hundreds of medical texts, compiling them into twenty-five volumes?]

The scholar calmly recalled the memory.

"...That was probably when I was four."

[When did you submit a written remonstrance to the emperor and cause him to promulgate a new farming method?]

"When I was five."

[When did you read the heavens and observe the weather, predict that a great drought would come, and have grain stored in advance for relief, preventing the deaths of millions of people?]

"That was when I was six."

The longer the conversation continued, the more the scholar's hazy memories began to return.

With each passing moment, those memories grew clearer.

After a while, the voice asked again.

[Do you remember now?]

The scholar admitted it.

"I do."

In truth...

Ordinary people knew that a struggle of blood against blood would occur, but they did not know its outcome.

He, however, had known the outcome of it all.

Everything.

Every last detail.

Without missing a single thing.

That everyone would meet a miserable end.

That the vast and powerful family would collapse.

He had known all of it.

And yet...

He had left it all alone.