The air in the cellar beneath the Seiryu-ji monastery was cold, damp, and ancient. It smelled of wet stone, moss, and the lingering sanctity of a thousand years of prayer, a sanctity now violated by the grim reality of war. Captain Jiang of the Imperial Guard was chained to the far wall, his wrists shackled in heavy, rusted iron. His wounded shoulder throbbed with a fiery, insistent pain, and a deep exhaustion clung to him like a shroud, but his mind was sharp, and his eyes, when they caught the flickering lamplight, were as hard and defiant as ever.
The heavy wooden door creaked open, and a man entered alone. He was of average height and build, dressed in a simple, dark kimono, and moved with a quiet, deliberate grace. But as he stepped into the light, Jiang felt an involuntary chill. It was the man from his interrogation in Pyongyang. The man with the eyes of a wolf.
"Greetings, Captain," the man said. His Mandarin was flawless, carrying the precise, unaccented tones of a scholar. "My name is Kuroda Makoto. I trust my men have treated you… adequately, under the circumstances."
Jiang worked his mouth, tasting the coppery tang of blood from a split lip. He spat a bloody glob onto the damp stone floor. "Your men are butchers who know nothing of honor," he rasped.
Kuroda smiled faintly, a fleeting expression that did not reach his cold eyes. "A fascinating observation, coming from a soldier of the man who burned the Suwa Shrine and fires on surrendered men. It seems we have that in common with your master." He pulled over a small wooden stool and sat down a few feet from Jiang, an act that was both casual and deeply intimidating. "But I am not here to debate the finer points of honor. I am here to learn. And you, Captain, are here to teach. I want to know about your Emperor."
This was it. The true battle. Not of swords and rifles, but of wills. Jiang steeled himself.
Kuroda began his interrogation not with threats or torture, but with a series of probing, almost academic questions. His voice was calm, reasonable, a surgeon's scalpel seeking a weakness.
"Your Emperor," he began. "He is a boy, is he not? I have read the reports. No older than twenty. How does a boy command such absolute loyalty from men like you? Men who are clearly professional soldiers. Does he use sorcery? Obscure drugs from the West? Or is he, as some in my government suspect, merely a puppet? A handsome face for the true masters of the Qing court, perhaps Prince Gong or that old fox Li Hongzhang?"
Jiang met his gaze without flinching. "He is the Son of Heaven," he said, his voice a low, gravelly statement of fact. "That is all a dog like you needs to know."
"The Son of Heaven," Kuroda repeated, savoring the title. "And yet this Son of Heaven sacrifices his own armies as a 'lesson.' He orders his admirals to commit acts that even we find barbaric. He holds your lives in such little regard, using you like disposable stones in his game of Go. Why do you worship a monster who treats you as nothing more than cattle for the slaughter?"
Jiang, to Kuroda's profound surprise, let out a dry, painful laugh that turned into a cough. He looked at the Japanese spymaster with an expression of genuine pity.
"You think he holds our lives in little regard?" Jiang said, shaking his head slowly. "You are a fool. You see a single battle, a single village, and you call it monstrous. He sees a war that will last a hundred years, a war for the soul of the entire world. He spent the lives of the arrogant Gongzi Army to save the lives of a million soldiers who will come after them, men who will now know not to underestimate their enemy. He traded their foolish pride for the survival and eventual victory of the Empire."
He leaned forward as much as his chains would allow, his eyes burning with a feverish intensity. "It was not a cruel act. It was a necessary one. A terrible, brilliant calculation that a man like you, a man hiding in the mountains and fighting a lost war for sentiment and nostalgia, could never possibly comprehend. You fight for the past. He fights for the future. His future."
The answer stunned Kuroda. He had expected to find the blind fanaticism of a zealot. Instead, he had found the cold, terrifying logic of a true believer. This was not the mindless loyalty of a brainwashed soldier; this was the reasoned devotion of a disciple. He realized with a jolt that the Emperor's men were not just following orders; they believed in the brutal calculus of their master.
Kuroda changed his tactics, attempting to find a personal crack in the armor. "And what of you, Captain? What of your family? Your home? Does your wife in Beijing not weep for a husband sent to die in a foreign land for this boy's grand ambition? Does your father not curse the Emperor who uses his son as a pawn?"
"I have no family but the Imperial Guard," Jiang replied instantly, his voice flat. "I have no home but the Empire. My life belongs to him. To his vision. It is a small price to pay to be a part of it."
Kuroda felt a growing sense of frustration, and with it, a sliver of fear. He had broken hundreds of men in his career. He had used pain, fear, drugs, and psychological torment to peel back their souls and extract their secrets. But this man… this man seemed to have no soul to peel back. It had been willingly offered up and forged into something else, something harder than steel.
In a final, desperate attempt, Kuroda asked the key question, the one that truly haunted him. "Who is he?" he hissed, his own calm facade beginning to crack. "No boy can have such knowledge of warfare, of industry, of the human heart. It is not possible. What is the source of his power? Tell me!"
Jiang looked at Kuroda, and for the first time, a genuine smile touched his lips. It was a strange, pitying smile, the look a sage might give a foolish child.
"You ask what he is?" Jiang whispered, his voice now hoarse. "You, a man of Japan, who believe in gods and spirits and the divinity of your own Emperor? I will tell you, spymaster. So you can understand the foolishness of your holy war."
He pulled against his chains, his eyes locking with Kuroda's. "He is older than your nation. He is the will that forged the mountains your ancestors crawled out of. He built a wall so great it can be seen from the moon, while your people were still living in huts. He is not a Son of Heaven, you blind fool."
Jiang's voice dropped to a conspiratorial, terrifying whisper that seemed to echo in the cold, damp cellar. "He is Heaven itself. He is the eternal first principle. He is the Dragon made flesh. And you, Kuroda Makoto, have declared war on the sky." He slumped back against the wall, exhausted but triumphant. "Now, kill me. It is the only victory you will ever have over me."
Kuroda stared at the captain, a profound chill, colder than any mountain winter, seeping into his bones. The man's words were the ravings of a lunatic, a madman. But the utter, unshakeable conviction with which he spoke them was absolute. It was not a lie. It was not a front. It was his truth.
Kuroda realized with sickening certainty that he was not dealing with a normal army led by a boy genius. He was dealing with the disciples of a new and terrifying faith, a faith centered on a being they believed to be eternal and all-powerful. How could his men, fighting for a symbolic god in a distant palace, ever hope to defeat men who fought for a god who walked among them, who commanded them personally, whose will was as tangible as the steel of their rifles?
He turned and walked out of the cell, his mind reeling, more unsettled and afraid than he had ever been in his entire life.