knife

Chapter 115 Never Regretted

Wu De stood at the gate of the He residence, his heart filled with emotion.

Once upon a time, this street was bustling with traffic, and the constant stream of visitors used to make the wide street completely congested.

Now, the red paint on the gate is peeling, the bronze animal heads have turned black, and the steps are covered with moss.

Looking up, a few withered thatch swayed slightly in the remaining snow on the gate tower. A wild cat, which seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, poked its head out from behind a plaque with a large hole in it, its green eyes fixed on Wu De.

This is the former residence of the meritorious veteran general He Qiku, the former commander of 80,000 southern garrison troops.

And now, although he is still alive,

In fact, he could be considered dead.

A junior officer holding a spear at the entrance seemed to recognize Wu De.

"Chief Wu, it's been a long time since I've seen you interrogate this old scoundrel!" The captain greeted him with a smile. Wu De was ostensibly the chief judge of the Court of Judicial Review, but he had visited the He residence several times before when he was ordered to investigate the defeat at Xiangcheng.

The soldiers guarding the He residence were all carefully selected. As far as Wu De knew, without exception, all of them had family members who died in battle in Xiangcheng.

It is common for soldiers to die on the battlefield, and no one can be blamed for it.

The problem was that the Imperial Guards who returned afterwards placed all the blame on He Qiku, leading everyone in Chang'an to believe that the defeat at Xiangcheng was entirely due to He Qiku's old age, incompetence, and command errors, which turned what should have been a great victory into a crushing defeat.

To be too old to die is to be a thief!

The people of Chang'an who lost their loved ones wished they could immediately take the culprit to the execution ground and tear him apart by five horses.

"I went on a long trip a while ago!" Wu De laughed. "Has it been quiet lately?"

"Quiet!" the captain said. "But there are always people running over and throwing tiles, bricks, dead dogs, dead cats, and stuff like that. We have limited manpower, and sometimes we can't catch them all!"

Perhaps it's not that they can't catch up, but rather that they never care and even indulge them!

Wu De nodded, took out a document from his pocket, and handed it to the soldier. "On official business!"

The captain said they were all old acquaintances, but he opened the document and carefully read it before returning it to Wu De.

He turned around to signal, and only then did the soldier at the door reach out and push open the gate.

The door, which hadn't been opened for who knows how long, creaked loudly.

Wu De walked inside.

From behind came the captain's voice: "Chief Wu, this matter is perfectly clear. You've been interrogating and investigating for over a year now. When will you get a result?"

Wu De turned around and looked at the young captain's face.

He really wanted to tell the child that the old man inside was not his enemy.

But he couldn't say.

He simply nodded vigorously. "It will be soon, very soon. All those who have committed crimes will receive their due punishment! The net of justice is vast, and though its meshes are wide, nothing escapes it; no one can evade it!"

The captain's face showed a look of relief.

His two elder brothers both perished in the Battle of Xiangcheng.

The door closed behind Wu De.

He strode forward.

Yes, all criminals will receive the punishment they deserve.

A few days ago, when Wu De left the fifth basement level of the Black Ice Platform, Grand Yin Kou Zhong coldly told him that he could go and kill a few people.

The names that Da Yin uttered were not publicly known.

But Wu De knew that these people were the main culprits behind the defeat at Xiangcheng.

Of course, calling them the masterminds is an overstatement; they were merely the executors, and even Da Yin, the mastermind, is powerless to stop them now.

But these enforcers can still be killed.

If you can't kill openly, then kill secretly.

No one can treat the Black Ice Platform like a fool.
Even though the Black Ice Platform is no longer as powerful as it once was.

But as long as Da Yin is still alive, the Black Ice Platform will never fall.

This killing was a warning from Da Yin to those people.

Don't forget, when the law can't punish you...
There was also the Black Ice Platform. After passing the screen wall, Wu De saw a huge sand table.

The entire front yard was transformed into a drill simulation.

An elderly man with white hair and beard walked unsteadily among the miniature mountains, rivers, and cities. He pulled out small flags from his hands, planted them, and muttered to himself.

"General!" Wu De's eyes welled up with tears, and he strode over.

The old man looked up and saw Wu De. His eyes lit up with joy. Apart from a few family members, Wu De was the outsider he had seen the most in the past year.

Moreover, he was an outsider with whom he could discuss battlefield gains and losses, and command techniques.

"Wu the Inspector is here! It's been so long since I've seen you. Come on, come on! I've found a few more flaws and written them down. If I ever have the chance to fight on the battlefield again, I will never make such a mistake again." He Qiku pulled out a thick stack of papers sewn together from his pocket, flipped to the last few pages, and warmly invited Wu De to discuss them.

"General!" Wu De reached out and grasped the other's hands, his eyes filled with sorrow: "In fact, you finally realized that no matter what you did, no matter how superb your command skills were, this battle was destined to be lost, wasn't it?"

He Qiku's smile froze instantly, and he stood there completely still.

"No, no, it's my fault, it's my mistake in command!"

"This is not a mistake in your command; it's that some people want this battle to fail, wanting to push Great Qin to the brink of annihilation. General, if it weren't for you, the 80,000 southern garrison troops would likely have been completely wiped out. Now, no matter what, this vital force still exists!" Wu De said.

"Without Xiangcheng, we will lose the strategic initiative, and the Southern Garrison will only get weaker and weaker!" He Qiku slumped to the ground, flattening a mountain.

“You shouldn’t have gone back to Chang’an!” Wu De squatted down beside him. “You should have stayed in the south and not come back.”

He Qiku glanced at Wu De, "Make me like Linghu Ye?"

“You are different from him. We know you are a loyal minister,” Wu De sighed. “Moreover, these words were not spoken by me, but by the Grand Magistrate. The Grand Magistrate said that he had already sent someone to deliver a letter to you, telling you not to come back. But you still came back. Not only did you come back, but you also brought General He Zudao back with you. If General He Zudao were still in the south, the southern garrison would have a backbone!”

"If I do not return, I will be seen as holding military power and coercing the court and His Majesty. How am I any different from a treacherous minister?"

"You've returned, fulfilling your reputation for loyalty and righteousness, but what about the 80,000 Southern Garrison troops? What about the entire Southern defense line? Do you know how many people are now coveting them, wanting to carve them up completely?" Wu De's tone was filled with endless complaints.

Meanwhile, on the fifth underground level, the Grand Magistrate Kou Zhong was cursing and swearing at the heavens.

He said that the Qin dynasty was on the verge of collapse, and his sins were unforgivable.

He Qi sat there blankly for a long time, then shook his head: "I am different from Kou Zhong. What he can do, I cannot do. I have devoted half my life to this, and all that is left for me is my innocence."

Wu De sneered: "If those people win in the end, history will be painted by them at will. General, I'm afraid you will have a hard time leaving behind a clean record."

“What more can I say now that things have come to this! Wu, you didn’t come here today just to scold me, did you?” He Qiku said bitterly.

Wu De shook his head. "Some time ago, I went to the area outside the Great Wall. There, I met an old acquaintance of yours, and he asked me to pass on a few words to you."

"Outside the Great Wall? I have no friends outside the Great Wall!"

“Perhaps we’re not friends!” Wu De said. “That person asked me to ask you this: now that you’re here, do you regret the choice you made twenty-five years ago?”

He Qiku suddenly stood up and reached out to press down on Wu De's shoulders.

Wu De tried to stand up, but when he tried to push himself up, the hands on his shoulders felt as heavy as mountains, and he couldn't move them even a fraction of an inch.

It was only then that Wu Decai realized that the person in front of him was indeed an elderly man nearing eighty, a criminal under house arrest awaiting punishment by the imperial court, but at the same time, he was also a martial arts master at the peak of the ninth rank.

"Who? What's that person's name? How did someone from that incident twenty-five years ago still survive?" He Qiku's voice was sharp and hoarse, and the tense look on his face puzzled Wu De.

“That man’s name is Zhou Zhi, and he is a master of the Innate Realm!” Wu De said. “He said he was an old friend of yours.”

Zhou Zhi, Zhou Zhi!
He Qiku muttered to himself for a long time before shaking his head: "I have no recollection of him at all. In my memory, there is a man surnamed Zhou, but his martial arts cultivation was only at the eighth rank back then."

Wu De stared at He Qiku and asked, "General, can you tell me what choice you made back then? I checked the Black Ice Guard's archives, but I didn't find anything. I only know that twenty-five years ago, you were the commander of the Left Battalion of the Chang'an Imperial Guard. The following year, you were transferred to the Southern Garrison Army as its deputy commander, and then you stayed there for more than twenty years."

He slowly released his grip, sat down cross-legged again, and smiled wryly.

"Whoever that person is, it's clear he knows something about what happened back then. If you see him again, tell him I don't regret it. At least my choice back then won another twenty-five years of peace for the Great Qin."

"If you had made a different choice back then, would the Qin Dynasty have been shaken?"

“I don’t know, but there will definitely be rivers of blood!” He Qiku lowered his head. “Some people are born noble, and what they see is never the same as what people like us see. I’d rather be a dog in times of peace than a human in times of chaos. I don’t regret it; at least I’ve ensured that this generation has basically lived in a peaceful environment.”

"Was the Grand Magistrate involved in this matter back then?" Wu De asked tentatively.

Why don't you just ask Kou Zhong?

"I dare not!" Wu De said honestly.

"It wasn't just him. Back then, the four innate masters of Chang'an City mobilized together. Kou Zhong even had one foot in the Divine Travel realm. Unfortunately, in that battle, apart from Kou Zhong, the other three all died!"

(End of this chapter)