Chapter 537: Hei Drinks
Day slowly broke. After a night of snow, the ground was buried under a thick white layer.
The weather was bitterly cold, but the people of Kyoto felt warm inside, because today was the day every demon on Peach Blossom Mountain would finally meet its end.
More than three thousand elite samurai had gathered in the barbican. They were only waiting for the bravest man in the realm, Lord Minamoto, to arrive, and then they'd march straight out and up Peach Blossom Mountain.
Meanwhile, in a garden in the Son of Heaven's main palace stood an enormous snowman.
Suddenly, the snowman's eyes popped open and darted around, taking in the surroundings.
"Damn it, why are there so many guards?!"
Kian cursed silently. He was simply too big to find anywhere to hide. Luckily it had snowed last night, so he'd packed snow around himself and turned himself into a snowman.
Fortunately his body was strong and his core burned like a furnace. He wasn't bothered by cold or heat at all, and he'd spent the whole night cosplaying a snowman in a snowdrift without the slightest discomfort.
Kian had figured that once Hei led the troops out this morning, all of Kyoto's attention would be on the battlefield.
The Son of Heaven might even go up on the walls himself to watch, and the palace guards would have to go with him.
With the palace emptied out, Kian would have his chance to slip into the castle keep and look into its secrets.
But now it was full daylight, and Hei had probably already marched out, yet the palace guards had increased instead of decreasing. There was a sentry nearly every ten paces, and patrolling samurai coming and going everywhere.
Kian was puzzled. What the hell is the Son of Heaven playing at?
They were about to march out and take on the Big Yōkai. Why keep so many troops at home on guard?
Shouldn't every bit of strength be sent to the front for the attack at a time like this? Who did he need all these troops at home to guard against?
From inside the snowman, Kian swept his Warp-sight over the castle keep, and he did find something odd.
Warp-sight could pick up some of the disturbances from psychic power being used, or objects with psychic properties.
The Navigators, with their third eye, had something like an astronomical telescope and could see anomalies in the castle keep from far away.
Kian didn't have that ability, but he was only a few hundred paces from the castle keep now, and with his Warp-sight open he could faintly make out a mass of chaotic disturbance inside it.
That strengthened Kian's resolve to investigate the castle keep, but not now.
There were too many guards in the palace right now, and he couldn't act rashly.
It wasn't that he feared for his own life. He was afraid of dragging Hei's family into it.
He'd been seen with the Minamotos. If he caused an uproar in the castle keep, then when the Son of Heaven came looking for someone to blame, Kian could just run, but Hei's family couldn't.
With that in mind, Kian decided to pull back for now and find another chance to investigate the castle keep.
He began watching the guards' patrol patterns and noticed a gap at a certain point in the rotation, when he could slip over the wall and out the back courtyard.
A squad of samurai patrolled the edge of the garden. Once they'd walked from one end of the garden to the other, there'd be a three-minute gap.
Kian watched the squad, ready to burst out of the snowman and make a run for it as soon as the gap opened.
Just then, a peal of silvery laughter rang out, and a few little girls came into the garden. From their clothes, they were probably princesses or something like that.
The moment they entered the garden, they were drawn to the big snowman in the middle.
"Wow! What a big snowman!!"
They gathered around and started piling more snow onto the snowman to make it even bigger.
Kian saw the patrol leave and the escape window open, so he whispered to the girls in front of him:
"Children, have you ever heard the story of the Yuki-onna, the Snow Woman?"
The girls building the snowman went wide-eyed.
"Who! Who's talking?"
"It's the snowman! The snowman's talking!"
"Are... are you a Snow Woman?"
Kian said, "No! I'm the Abominable Snowman!"
BOOM!!
The snowman burst apart, and Kian shot up onto the rooftops like a bottle rocket and vanished.
The little girls stared, starry-eyed, at the spot where Kian had blinked out of sight.
And from then on, the Eastrise Dynasty had a legend of the Abominable Snowman.
Kian bounded and leapt his way out of the garden, ran to a corner of the palace, straightened his clothes, and strolled out onto the main road toward Hei's house.
He figured Hei was out leading the troops in battle by now, and only his wife and son would be at home.
But when he pushed the gate open, he looked across the snow-covered courtyard and immediately saw Hei sitting cross-legged in the main room, with his wife and Tarō beside him, frantic.
Hei raised his head and gave Kian an extremely weak look. A thin trickle of blood showed at the corner of his mouth.
When Kian saw this, his eyes hardened, and he strode into the main room.
"Hei, what's wrong?"
Hei was terribly weak, and pain flickered across his brow.
It looked as if he'd been dealt a severe blow, not just to his body but to his spirit.
When Kian asked, Tarō answered from the side, choking back sobs:
"Last night the Son of Heaven sent someone with jade wine and told my father to drink it. My father did as he was told. This morning he woke up weak all over, with a salty, bloody taste in his mouth. He's been poisoned!
"My father was supposed to lead the troops out this morning. He forced himself up so the soldiers would see him.
"But when he got to the barbican, it was empty. The soldiers had left a little while earlier..."
Kian looked down. A flask of jade wine sat in front of Hei. That had to be the poisoned wine the Son of Heaven had bestowed.
He pieced it together at once. Hei had wounded the Giant Yōkai, the Son of Heaven was afraid his achievements would overshadow the throne, and so he'd bestowed poisoned wine to kill him!
To a political animal like the Son of Heaven, Hei had probably become a bigger threat than the Giant Yōkai. That was why he'd kill a man of merit before dealing with the threat from outside!
Kian sighed and sat down cross-legged, looking at Hei, who even poisoned was still kneeling properly on the tatami, and asked:
"Has a doctor seen you?"
Hei shook his head.
"There's no need for a doctor. If it's the Son of Heaven who wants your subject's life, then your subject will give it up."
Kian thought to himself, blind loyalty. But considering this world's medicine, someone who'd been poisoned probably couldn't be saved by herbal remedies, so he didn't say it out loud.
Instead he asked:
"Hei, the ruler you wanted to serve your whole life turns out to be like this. How do you feel about it now?"
Hei closed his eyes.
"I feel many things.
"I, Minamoto no Hei, trained in arms for thirty years only to serve the Son of Heaven. I believed my sword was the keenest in the realm.
"I could cut through metal and stone. I could cut down demons. But I cannot cut through the way of this world. I cannot cut through the bond between lord and subject."
He leaned forward, picked up the flask before him, raised it high, and toasted toward where the Son of Heaven was.
"If the lord wills his subject's death, the subject must die!
"Only, Your Majesty, why go to such lengths to kill your subject? A single word from you, and your subject would gladly have gone to his death!"
With that, he drank every last drop of the jade wine in the flask.
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