Chapter 157

"The second month of the fourteenth year of Chongzhen."

"After Xiangyang City was captured, what did you do?"

Inside the interrogation room, the spiritless Zhang Xianzhong, tied to a chair, shook his head. "I don't remember."

His hair was yanked up, and a strong light shone on his face.

"If you don't remember, then think hard." The interrogator was not anxious. "Speak when you remember."

At this moment, Zhang Xianzhong was exhausted to the extreme, yet under the strong light he could not sleep at all.

"If you want to kill me, just kill me. Why go to such lengths to torment a person?"

"I only ask for a quick death~~~"

The interrogator still replied calmly, "You can die, but the matters must be explained clearly."

What deeds you have done, what people you have harmed, what wealth you have plundered, what people you have bullied — all must be explained.

It is only because his Eight Great Kings' face is great.

Lin Dao gave them an opportunity to confess their crimes.

If it were anyone else, they would have been disposed of directly long ago.

This interrogation method, different from physical punishment, made even a veteran bandit like Zhang Xianzhong unable to endure.

In his daze, his brain operated at high speed; everything he could recall, he confessed.

Even the matter of peeking at which family's eldest daughter-in-law or young widow bathing in his hometown of Dingbian County when he was a child, he confessed.

He truly could not take it anymore; he only wanted to hurry up and die.

In the interrogation room not far away, the heroes who previously shouted about living and dying together.

At this moment, they had all become wilted cabbages.

Strong light interrogation; under mental exhaustion, they said whatever was asked.

Sun Kewang: "It was all Father Marshal's orders; we merely acted on command."

Interrogator: "If your Father Marshal told you to die, would you go die?"

Sun Kewang fell silent.

Li Dingguo: "Father Marshal ordered the massacre; what could we do? We couldn't disobey Father Marshal's military order."

Interrogator: "You call yourselves a righteous army, yet you raise butcher knives against innocent commoners, sparing no one from the old down to infants, and you still have the face to bark and yap before the Grand Marshal?"

Li Dingguo closed his eyes, only seeking a quick death.

Liu Wenxiu: "If we don't seize their grain, what do we eat? If we don't forcibly conscript men, who will go fight?"

Interrogator: "Seizing grain is seizing lives; abducting people is uprooting roots. You cut off the people's livelihood, then make them cannon fodder. How do you have the face to call yourselves a righteous army? You are just a bunch of bandits!"

Liu Wenxiu was speechless.

Ai Nengqi: "The world is in chaos; our taking in those women was actually saving their lives."

Interrogator: "You kill their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons, violate women, and can still speak so righteously. Why don't you offer up all the women of your own household?"

Ai Nengqi lowered his head and muttered, "They all died long ago."

When thrown back into the prison cell, Zhang Xianzhong immediately lay prone on the grass pile and fell asleep, his snoring shaking the heavens.

Huang Degong, in the cell opposite, seeing this scene, also felt a pang in his heart.

What the Eight Great Kings suffered, he had already tasted some days prior.

That bandit Lin had people treat his injuries, even using the best medicinal powder.

Yet the interrogations that should happen, the questions that should be asked, did not stop.

"King of Chu, sigh~~~"

Huang Degong's expression was inscrutable.

In the opposite cell, the previous occupant was the King of Chu.

After undergoing interrogation, the King of Chu soon confessed everything he could still remember.

He even dropped an earth-shattering bombshell.

King of Chu Zhu Huakui was actually not the son of King Gong of Chu!

When King Gong of Chu died without issue, by law the fief would either be abolished or a cadet branch member chosen to succeed.

Without doubt, either outcome directly harmed the interests of Queen of Chu Wang.

The Queen of Chu claimed the late King had a posthumous son, and produced four at once.

King Gong of Chu, who left no children in thirty years of life, upon death produced four bastard sons.

The eldest was Zhu Huakui, who inherited the King of Chu title.

In the thirty-first year of Wanli, the Fake King of Chu Case once broke out, but later came to nothing.

Unexpectedly, under interrogation, Zhu Huakui personally confessed that before the Queen Mother died, she told him he was indeed not the late King's son, but the illegitimate son of the Queen's brother.

This secret was meant to be kept until death, never confessed.

Yet under interrogation, Zhu Huakui truly said everything.

Huang Degong still remembers, at that time the bandit Lin arranged people holding strange objects, drew the Fake King of Chu's blood, and also the blood of several uncles of the Chu King's Mansion.

He did not know what they were taken for.

The one he desperately protected turned out to be a fake.

Huang Degong did not know whether to cry or laugh.

Now the opposite cell has a new occupant, replaced by his former old rival Zhang Xianzhong.

Huang Degong himself also underwent interrogation; from childhood to adulthood, matters large and small were all asked.

Not speaking was fine; they just wouldn't let you sleep.

Strong light shone directly in the face; that kind of mental anguish, even now thinking of it makes one's hair stand on end.

After an unknown amount of time, the soldiers came in, opened the various cells, bound everyone up, and took them away.

"Is it time?"

Leaving the great prison, Huang Degong narrowed his eyes and looked up at the sky.

The sunlight was bright, but the sun was not yet at its noon position.

Everyone thought they were being taken to the execution ground, but instead they were all loaded into prison carts and set off on the road following the great army, not knowing where they were going.

After marching like this for many days, they finally arrived at a large city.

In the prison cart beside them, one of the bandit chiefs cried out in alarm, "How did we end up in Xiangyang?"

Outside the city gate, countless commoners had gathered.

Huang Degong finally saw Bandit Lin again.

He was still riding a horse, his figure imposing and his bearing extraordinary.

Back when he was bored in the cell, Huang Degong would also reminisce.

Although this man was a rebel, observing him he truly had great bearing; his every gesture showed confidence.

Compared to the Son of Heaven who frowned with worry all day long.

He dared not think further — he actually compared a bandit chief with the Son of Heaven?!

"You all speak."

Lin Dao looked at Zhang Xianzhong and the others in the cage: "You are righteous armies just like me; I have no qualification to interrogate you."

"Then good."

He raised his horse whip and pointed at the commoners not far away: "Since you are righteous armies, you ought to seek welfare for the commoners, rescuing the suffering commoners from fire and water."

"If the commoners are willing to forgive you, I will let you go."

Calling oneself a righteous army is different from calling oneself a bandit.

A righteous army still has a thread of survival; a bandit is just a mountain bandit or river bandit, someone everyone has the right to kill.

The cage was opened, and Zhang Xianzhong and the others were pushed toward the crowd.

"This is the Eight Great Kings!"

Lin Dao shouted in a loud voice: "And his heart-and-belly old bandits."

"If you all feel they are innocent, then each of you disperse!"

"If you have a blood-sea deep hatred, then dispose of them as you wish!"

"I absolutely will not interfere!"

The commoners gradually stirred, but still some feared and dared not step forward.

Lin Dao turned and left, and the armored soldiers also departed with him.

Huang Degong, still locked in the prison cart, strained to turn his head and look.

In the end he saw countless commoners, like a tide, rush forward and engulf Zhang Xianzhong and the others.

"Ah~~~"

Huang Degong sighed: "Eight Great Kings, you massacred cities; how could the commoners possibly spare you!"

The commoners are simple.

If they have a grudge, they will repay it!

Zhang Xianzhong massacred cities and plundered all along his way, harming countless people.

With the butcher's knife in hand, the harmed commoners could only dare to be angry but not speak.

But given the chance for revenge, they would absolutely not hold back!

Huang Degong in the prison cart was also puzzled and uncomprehending.

Why hasn't Bandit Lin killed me yet?

The great army marched southward all the way, passing Chengtian Prefecture, entering Yuezhou via Jingzhou Prefecture, and arriving straight at the shores of Dongting Lake.

"Water and sky one color, wind and moon boundless."

Before Yueyang Tower, Lin Dao gazed at Li Bai's couplet on the pillars, smiling as he stepped into the tower.

Huang Degong, whose injuries had improved, also went upstairs under the watch of his bodyguards.

Reaching the upper floor and gazing afar at Dongting Lake, Junshan was faintly visible in the distance.

Huang Degong, who had been conflicted all along the way, couldn't help but speak: "No matter what, I will never betray the Son of Heaven!"

Lin Dao, who was admiring the scenery, turned in surprise: "You're overthinking."

"I have no intention of using anyone from the Ming Court, top to bottom."

Huang Degong breathed a sigh of relief, but in his heart he couldn't help but feel a trace of loss.

He voiced the doubt in his heart: "Why didn't you kill me?"

"Because you never massacred commoners."

Lin Dao smiled: "In the Ming Court, you count as an anomaly."

"Although you killed and wounded many peasant army soldiers, that was battlefield killing; once you're on the battlefield, you should have that awareness."

"After the battle, you captured men, women, and others; not only did you not kill them, you even arranged for them to return home."

"I call myself a righteous army, so naturally I speak and act for the commoners."

"You never harmed commoners, so naturally I won't kill you."

The Ming civil and military officials kill at the drop of a hat, viewing commoners like pigs and dogs.

Huang Degong among them is truly an anomaly.

It's just that he can fight; otherwise he would have been done in by his own people long ago.

If we're talking about who treats commoners ruthlessly, it has to be the Wild Boar Skin officials.

In the late Qing years, many local officials realized that all kinds of social problems stemmed from there being too many people.

Their response was to kill people.

With a pretext they killed, without a pretext they also killed.

Many prefectural and county yamen executed commoners by the thousands every year, heads piled like mountains.

This was all planned, organized elimination of the population.

"This world should not be like this."

Lin Dao gazed into the distance at Dongting Lake. "The officials, the Tartars, the bandits, the local gentry — all acting together."

"Robbing the commoners of their goods, killing the commoners' kin."

"Yet the commoners have grievances they cannot appeal, hatreds they cannot avenge."

"No one speaks for them, no one avenges them."

"What they rely on is nothing but blades and soldiers."

"I have come. I speak for the commoners, and I too have blades and soldiers."

A flash of green Qi crossed Lin Dao's face.

"The Imperial Court, the Tartars, the bandits, the local gentry."

"However they harm the commoners, I will return it exactly in kind."

"Leaving you alive is to let you see with your own eyes just what kind of thing the Imperial Court you serve truly is."

"Let you see how good the commoners' lives can be once these scourges are gone."

"Yuezhou is distributing land. You can go see for yourself."

Under the watch of a squad of personal guards, Huang Degong walked through many places in Yuezhou.

Only then did he realize that locally there were no longer any self-cultivating farmers or small landlords.

All land was highly concentrated in the hands of the local gentry and princely powerful nobles.

The commoners had been reduced to tenant farmers in name, actual serfs in substance.

He even saw many commoners working in the fields with bodies not covered by clothes.

The commoners toiled for a year, almost all harvest robbed away; what remained, never mind making clothes to wear, was barely enough to keep themselves from starving to death.

The Northern Regions had things even more miserable than this, but that was caused by natural disasters and war calamities.

The Southern Land had always been stable, yet it was this miserable.

Without a doubt, this was man-made disaster.

Huang Degong's heart was in chaos; was this the Great Ming he had fought to the death to protect?

End of Chapter