Volume 1 Chapter 1 – Prologue

===================

Translated by Rain

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

===================

In the beginning, there was a meeting.

“Exit light, Enter night.”

Metallica, Enter Sandman.

[TL Note – Author used the Metallica song as inspiration.]

The dark space, completely devoid of even a single speck of light, created the illusion of extending infinitely.

Although the Scholar vaguely knew that the space was not actually that wide, it did not matter.

In any case, he could not move.

[Hello there.]

Out of nowhere in the darkness, a voice was heard.

There was no way a person could be in this place.

Yet the Scholar tried to answer. He was currently not in his right mind.

His reason was lost.

Maintaining a faint consciousness was all he could do.

“Cough, cough.”

He wanted to ask who it was. However, that was physically impossible. There was no way he could answer.

The Scholar smiled bitterly.

[It is fine. I can hear your voice.]

‘How?’

The Scholar tried to form words, but his tongue, of which only the root remained, unfortunately could not produce speech with satisfactory clarity.

Only a painful, strange sound that no one could possibly understand leaked out.

[Oh dear, there is no need to force yourself to make a sound. I have been watching you since the moment they pulled out your tongue.]

He did not wonder how the voice read his mind.

To engage in such thinking, he was too broken. Mentally, and physically.

[Hmm, it was indeed a sight hard to watch with pleasure. The red-hot tongs dug in and pulled your tongue right out. You fainted after screaming some strange cry.]

Unlike those words, the mysterious voice was light and cheerful.

It was not in a manner of enjoying the Scholar’s pain.

It just seemed that its original way of speaking was like that.

‘I cannot see. I cannot see ahead.’

The Scholar looked around toward the direction the voice came from, only to realize that he could not see ahead.

In fact, the Scholar must have realized that fact several times before.

And he must have forgotten that fact again several times.

The place where he was located was a deep cave, but enough light was entering. It was just…

[Did you forget? Your two eyeballs, which used to be full of mysterious energy, were pierced and taken away by a heated iron skewer.]

‘Was it… so?’

The Scholar tried to raise his hand to grope around his eyes.

But he had no fingers.

Even his left hand was missing up to the wrist.

Being curious, he asked the voice.

‘Did you happen to see where my hands went?’

The voice replied with a still deep, yet cheerful resonance.

[Your pretty fingers, which knew nothing of rough work, were snipped off by scissors. Do not worry. For your sake, they used red-hot scissors.]

He did not know what it was he was not supposed to worry about.

‘Thank you for answering.’

The Scholar stumbled and tried to stand up from his spot.

But he had no legs.

Tilting his head with difficulty, the Scholar asked the voice.

‘Did you happen to see what took my legs?’

[Your thin legs were carried away by a straw cutter. To tell you who do not remember, they cut them off step by step, starting from the toes. It took three days for the ankles to be cut. Ten days for the knees to be cut. It took fifteen days to reach the thighs.]

‘Did they?’

The Scholar tried to recall the memories of the past, and felt his head beginning to hurt as if it would burst.

Even so, it was fortunate that he could revive his memories, even if only faintly.

‘…I think I might remember. Then, do you by any chance know what happened to my family?’

[Oh dear. You were too busy being tortured that you did not even hear the news of your family. Come to think of it, you have lived in the dungeon for quite a long time.]

Come to think of it, it seemed he could faintly recall that he had been imprisoned for a very long time.

While the Scholar was quietly groping his thoughts, the voice continued the story.

[Your eldest sister was beaten to death by her husband’s fists until her pretty face became a mush.]

‘Such a…?!’

The Scholar was startled.

‘My brother-in-law’s temperament is famous for being fierce, but he is the head of a family renowned for being fair and honorable. How could such a man beat his wife to death so brutally?’

The voice clicked its tongue.

[How foolish. If you, the eldest son of the family, claim not to know, then who on earth would know the affairs of your family?]

The Scholar asked in a hurry.

‘Then, what about my second sister? What happened to my second sister?’

[She was raped by licentious bandits, bit her tongue, and took her own life.]

‘What do you mean by that?’

The Scholar could not understand.

‘My second sister was a swordsman who would be sad to be called second among the rising stars. How could such a sister be done in by mere licentious bandits?’

[How foolish. How long has it been since her dantian was ruined, so what use are her sixty years of internal energy and her polished sword techniques?]

The Scholar shook his head roughly once more.

‘Moreover, what about my family? No matter if my second sister lost her internal energy, there is no way the family would not have protected her.’

He laboriously held onto the rising memories.

‘My family is a great family that none dared to follow in this land of the Central Plains. How could the second daughter of such a family be done in by mere bandits?’

The voice did not budge.

[How foolish. Did you not even know that? How long has it been since your family was ruined and scattered to the winds, so where is the family that could protect her?]

‘…Ruined?’

What did that mean? The Scholar tried to hold his head, where dizziness was invading.

But he had no hands.

‘Although I am merely a scholar who lived making it a pleasure to read books day after day while confined in a small room, in the family there were younger brothers who spread their outstanding intellect and excellent valor throughout the entire continent. And there were leading warriors following those brothers like a folding screen, so what on earth is the reason for this?’

[Frustrating, indeed frustrating. Why do you pretend not to know what happened after you left to become a matrilocal son-in-law?]

The voice scolded the Scholar fiercely.

[Do you truly not know the fact that those younger brothers you praised fought a fratricidal war to take the position of the family head?]

‘I did not know. I did not know at all.’

The Scholar shook his head wildly.

[Is that true? Did you really not know?]

The voice asked the Scholar back in a meaningful tone.

The Scholar could not understand.

He was just an ordinary scholar.

It was everything to live day by day, making it a daily chore to read books in a small room.

Gardening, drawing, or playing instruments from time to time were merely his pleasures.

[Is that true?]

The voice asked back in a tone that did not agree with the Scholar’s thoughts in the least.

‘…Of course.’

He did not know why he, who had lived so virtuously, ended up locked in such a place either.

And such torture?

He had just lived making it a virtue to live peacefully.

[Did a prodigy of your caliber really not know what was happening when you were in the family, and what would happen to the family after you left? And that you did not know what kind of result would eventually come out?]

The voice was now openly mocking the Scholar.

The Scholar pleaded his innocence.

‘I truly did not know. It is true. How could an ordinary man like me know such a fact?’

Something seemed about to come to mind, but did not surface.

Who was he?

What had he lived doing?

Faint memories passed by, but they were like illusions that disappeared when the Scholar tried to catch them.

The head of the Scholar, whose death had already reached the very marrow of his bones, did not spin as cleverly as before.

[Is that so?]

The voice became low and chilly.

As if peering through everything that the Scholar was telling a lie, as if looking into his life in detail, the voice tenaciously and persistently backed the Scholar into a corner.

[Is it truly so? You who could look ahead a thousand li without a thousand-li eye, you who could look ahead a thousand days without divine powers. Did you really not know?]

‘I did not know. I did not know. I said I did not know!’

The Scholar was confused.

How could there be any person who could do such a thing?

To know how the world turned while sitting down, as if looking at the palm of one’s hand.

Was that not an absurd ability?

It was a talent possessed only by a once-in-an-age genius with the intellect of divine calculation.

The voice said in a low tone once more.

[Is that not you?]

‘That cannot be. Have you not mistaken me for someone like Zizhang or Changqing?’

Zizhang and Changqing referred to the courtesy names of Sima Qian and Sun Wu respectively.

[Zizhang and Changqing?]

The voice burst into laughter.

[Do you not know that compared to you, Sima Qian and Sun Wu are merely a historian and a military strategist?]

Hearing those words, the Scholar felt his mind suddenly go blank.

Sima Qian was the figure who left the Records of the Grand Historian, also called Taishigong Zixu, a great man called the ‘father of history’ in this Central Plains.

Sun Wu was the great man who dominated the Spring and Autumn period, crushed the powerful State of Chu, and caused those who used military tactics to raise their perspective of military strategy by one level.

Was it because they had been conversing after a long time?

‘To value me, who is nothing but a commoner, higher than such great figures?’

The Scholar’s head was slowly clearing up.

[I shall ask you.]

Gradually, as the conversation repeated.

[When was it that you helped your mother organize and summarize hundreds of medical texts, publishing them in twenty-five volumes?]

The Scholar quietly recalled the memory.

‘…Perhaps, that was when I was four years old.’

[When was it that you remonstrated with the Emperor through pen and paper, causing a new agricultural method to be promulgated?]

‘It was when I was five years old.’

[When was it that you read the astronomy and observed the weather, predicted a great drought, and had relief food stockpiled in advance, preventing the starvation of millions of citizens?]

‘That was when I was six years old.’

As the conversation repeated, the Scholar’s faint memories began to revive, and as time passed little by little, the memories became clearer.

After a while of conversation, the voice asked once more.

[Do you remember now?]

The Scholar admitted it.

‘Yes.’

He, in fact,

Knew everything.

Since he left the main family to become a matrilocal son-in-law, he had never once lent his ears to the news of the main family.

Yet he knew everything as if looking at the palm of his hand.

Commoners knew that a fratricidal war would break out, but they did not know its result.

However, he knew all of those results.

All of them. In detail.

Without missing a single one.

That everyone would meet a miserable end.

That the giant and powerful family would collapse.

He knew all of that, but

He left it all alone.