Chapter 54: He Brought Their Voices
“Grass! Mother! Donkey?”
Old Zhu suppressed his anger and killing intent, repeating the three words clearly, his tone so calm that not a ripple could be detected, as if discussing the weather.
“Zhang Biao, tell Us…”
His icy gaze, like an ice pick, precisely impaled Zhang Biao’s face, the corner of his mouth even curling into a chilling arc: “Are you cursing Us, this tiger and leopard that devours people without spitting out bones?”
“Or.”
His gaze slowly swept over Liu Sanwu’s ashen old face, over Mei Yin’s face stiff with extreme shock and fear, and finally returned to Zhang Biao:
“These jackals dressed in human skin, eating imperial rations, drinking soldiers’ blood, treading on withered bones, yet letting Our censors starve to death on their kangs?”
Old Zhu paused, and in his cold eyes, for the first time, a substantial malevolence, like hellfire, ignited, yet his voice remained terrifyingly calm: “Jackals?!!”
Whoosh!
Liu Sanwu, Mei Yin, and Jiang Huan’s scalps instantly tingled.
The wild laughter on Zhang Biao’s face froze.
He hadn’t expected Old Zhu, in his most extreme anger, not to lose his reason, but to forge such terrifying calmness.
He had also instantly elevated and twisted Zhang Biao’s common vulgarity into a heart-piercing accusation aimed at the entire court.
This counterattack was too fast! Too venomous!
Old Zhu gave no one a chance to breathe.
His icy eyes pierced through Zhang Biao’s feigned composure: “You want to die? By using common vulgarity to enrage Us, so We can chop you down with one stroke?”
“And then what?”
Old Zhu’s voice carried a hint of all-knowing mockery: “Achieve your reputation for dying for a cause? Let the world point at Our spine and call Us an incompetent ruler who cannot bear to hear the truth and slaughters censors?”
“Give those poor scholars you incited more reason to call Us cruel and ungenerous? Have Wang Zhong’s death by starvation be completely counted against Us?”
“Leave a stain on the history of Our Hongwu Dynasty that can never be washed away because of your two words, Zhang Biao?”
With each question, Old Zhu’s voice grew lower, the pressure beneath his calmness accumulating like a mountain.
“Zhang Biao.”
Old Zhu let out an extremely light, extremely cold sneer, pronouncing his name word by word, his voice like a sentence: “You think too highly of yourself! And too little of Us!”
“We have killed more people than you have seen alive!”
“Do you want to use your death to force Us to admit fault? To tarnish Our name?”
“You.”
Old Zhu’s gaze suddenly became like a tangible blade, carrying a contempt that looked down upon the world and a coldness that controlled everything: “Are not worthy!”
Boom!
Hearing this, Zhang Biao was struck as if by lightning.
But Old Zhu no longer looked at him, and calmly called out, “Jiang Huan!”
“Your servant is here!”
Jiang Huan immediately bowed, gripping his hilt.
“This person.”
Old Zhu’s gaze swept over Zhang Biao, as if looking at a piece of trash to be dealt with, his tone extremely indifferent: “Roared before the emperor, insulted superiors with vulgar language, presumptuous and disrespectful, his crime is unforgivable!”
“Imprison him in the deepest level of the Imperial Prison! Guard him strictly! Without Our decree, no one is to see him! No one is to speak to him! Those who violate this.”
Old Zhu’s eyes swept over Liu Sanwu, Mei Yin, and all the palace maids and eunuchs holding their breath, his cold warning making everyone feel as if they had fallen into an ice cellar: “Shall be punished as guilty! Kill without mercy!”
“Your servant obeys the decree!”
Jiang Huan’s voice was resonant, carrying a sharp killing intent.
He knew that the Emperor intended to seal Zhang Biao completely in a living coffin.
More terrifying than death was complete, silent isolation and oblivion.
However, Old Zhu had not finished speaking.
His cold, sharp eyes fell back on the pale-faced Zhang Biao: “As for the unpaid salary he keeps harping on?”
Old Zhu’s voice suddenly carried an extremely cutting, extremely heart-piercing mockery: “Jiang Huan, go get ten coins! In front of Us! Pay him!”
Boom!
Zhang Biao’s head shot up, looking at Old Zhu in disbelief!
Settle the bill?!
At this time? In this manner?!
This was clearly public, extreme humiliation!
It was to pin him, Zhang Biao, on the pillar of shame, proclaiming to the world:
You want money? We’ll give it to you! But you, along with your bones, your reputation, your dying for a cause…
In Our eyes, you are only worth these ten coins!
Not even as much as a pig’s head!
This was more heart-piercing! More terrifying than killing him!
And he was going to imprison himself?
Damn your mother!
Brother Biao is furious!
“Your Majesty! Look at this account book again!”
Zhang Biao lunged forward, holding up the tattered book in his hand, his voice hoarse but full of power:
“What is recorded here is not numbers! It is blood! It is tears! It is the wails of those pushed to desperation! It is the countless white bones and immense resentment hidden beneath these Great Ming official robes!”
“For me to instigate those low-ranking capital officials, to disrupt the Imperial Court, to stuff account books, and draw pig’s heads, was absurd! It was rebellious! But I definitely didn’t do it for fame in the history books!!”
“I only wanted, before I die, to speak for the old censor Wang Zhong! For the editor Li Mo! For my colleagues in the Hall of Supreme Harmony who held account books and demanded justice on empty stomachs! For all suffering common people in the world! To ask Your Majesty—”
He took a deep breath, and with all his strength, roared the earth-shattering, ear-opening ultimate question:
“Is the empire of Great Ming built upon the flesh and bones of honest officials?!”
“You, Zhu Yuanzhang, will you truly become the eternal incompetent ruler, infamous throughout history, nailed to the pillar of shame?!”
“Did Zhu Chongba, who barely survived in Huang Jue Temple and begged on the streets, starve to death with his parents!?”
Rumble—!!
These questions, like thunder from the heavens, exploded in the bedroom.
Like the heaviest funeral bell, they struck deep into Old Zhu’s soul.
“Pfft—!”
Old Zhu’s eyes widened instantly, and he couldn’t help but spit out a mouthful of blood.
The blood didn’t spray onto the brocade quilt, but onto the opened 《 Blood and Tears Salary Demand Record 》.
The crimson blood instantly soaked the rough paper, staining the Q-version 《 Emperor Eating Pig’s Head 》 cartoon and the small text ‘Friendly Reminder from Zhang Biao’ next to it, a shocking sight.
Blood drops dripped down the pages, blooming into desolate flowers on the cold floor tiles.
“Your Majesty!!”
Jiang Huan cried out in alarm, rushing forward to support the weakening Old Zhu.
“Someone! Quickly send for the imperial physician!!”
“Your Majesty!! Quickly save His Majesty!!”
Liu Sanwu and Mei Yin screamed, their voices distorted.
They could no longer concern themselves with Zhang Biao’s mad words and actions.
The bedroom instantly descended into chaos.
The imperial physician scrambled in.
Eunuchs and palace maids were panicked.
Only Zhang Biao remained standing straight.
He tightly clutched the tattered account book, stained with his own saliva and Old Zhu’s blood, his face expressionless.
There was only a near-liberated calmness, and a deep, indescribable sorrow in his eyes.
He looked at the Emperor, who was as majestic as a god but now gasping for breath with a face like pale gold, at the blood-stained evidence, and at the chaotic bedroom.
He knew that this time, he had truly stirred up a hornet’s nest.
Either he would be the spark that ignited a prairie fire.
Or he would be the ashes completely consumed by this furious inferno.
But no matter what.
The blood and tears on those account books, the dead old censor, the editor who pawned his books, the colleagues who demanded their salaries while holding account books…
Their voices, he had brought them.
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