I silently turned my face away, gazing at the blood-stained waves in the distance.
Waves crashed against the black reefs, sending spray flying high into the air. When the spray fell back down, the seawater turned a dark red, flowing down the cracks in the rocks like blood.
I held back the blinding crimson before my eyes, my fingertips unconsciously stroking the cold tip of the spear.
It felt like there was a blood-soaked cotton ball stuck in my throat, making it painful and suffocating, and even my breathing was trembling.
Three days later, the Ministry of War drafted a battle report, and the Vice Minister brought bamboo slips filled with writing to the central military tent.
His fingertips traced over the words "3,726 enemies killed, 318 women and children killed" repeatedly.
The ink on the paper had been rubbed off and faded, and even the fingertips were stained with ink, turning bluish-black.
His voice was hoarse, with a slight, almost imperceptible tremor: "General Mu, in this battle, King Jinrui Zhao... did not even spare women and children."
The Censorate has already submitted three impeachment memorials, saying that she has "lost her benevolence and violated the harmony of Heaven," and some people even suggested that His Majesty should revoke her title and demote her to a commoner.
How should this battle report be worded?
I was staring blankly at the map on the table, my fingertips hovering over the small black dot on the Japanese island, rubbing it repeatedly with my fingertips. This place held her hatred and her pain.
Hearing the Vice Minister's words, I looked out the window: a light snow had fallen last night, and a thin layer of white had accumulated on the branches of the old plum tree outside the tent.
But the morning wind swept away a few petals, revealing the bright red buds on the branches, like blood splattered on snow, dazzlingly beautiful.
Suddenly, she remembered the imperial garden of Tianxuan Palace last late spring. Qin Qianluo squatted on the blue stone beside the artificial hill, whispering softly to a gray sparrow with a bleeding wing.
She held a torn piece of plain white handkerchief between her fingertips, her movements as gentle as if afraid of shattering glass, and carefully wrapped it around the sparrow's bleeding wing.
He gently blew on the sparrow's wound, his brows furrowing slightly: "Does it hurt? Just bear with it, and once it heals, you'll be able to fly again."
When her eyebrows arched, even the spring breeze seemed to sway around her, and the warmth in her eyes was gentler than the peonies in full bloom in the garden.
How can such a person be branded as "bloodthirsty" in history books?
I looked away and took a purple-haired brush from the brush holder. The brush handle was a birthday gift from her last year. She said it was made from purple bamboo from Jiangnan soaked in pine soot ink and felt comfortable to hold.
The fingertips dipped into the inkstone, and the ink dripped down the tip of the brush, spreading into tiny black dots on the paper.
The pen tip hovered above the line “318 women and children”, pausing and then slowing down, the wrist sinking slightly.
In the end, only eight words remained: "Stubborn to the end, we had no choice but to exterminate them all."
The word "helplessness" isn't just ink; it's the only source of confidence I have to shield her from the scorn of a thousand men.
This was never just my personal thought.
It was the shared thought of all the officials and the people of the land.
On the morning of the third day after the surrender of the Japanese islands, I followed the morning mist in the mountains toward Wanghai Peak.
Last night, Qin Qianluo went up the mountain with two personal guards. Old Zhang, the cook in the camp, said that she was carrying an indigo-blue coarse cloth bundle, with a bit of red cloth peeking out from the corner of the bundle.
He left without even wearing a fox fur cloak to keep warm, only a plain cotton robe, and his figure looked very thin in the snowy night.
Just as we reached the mountainside, a sea breeze suddenly swept over us, carrying thick fog that was so cold it made our bones ache, and even our eyelashes were covered in a layer of frost.
I raised my hand to clear the fog from my eyes, and a sliver of glaring red seeped through my fingers. The moment I looked up, my breath caught in my throat, and even my heartbeat slowed.
On the dark, massive rock at the summit of the volcano, stands a ten-foot-tall ebony flagpole.
The flagpole was newly whittled, still showing the texture of the bark, and the top was wrapped with several circles of shiny silver wire whose material was indistinguishable, probably to prevent it from being broken by the wind.
Four nails of unknown material firmly rivet a crimson flag to the top of the flagpole, the nail heads hammered into the wood, revealing half of the shiny silver nail shafts.
That red was not the "vermilion inlaid with gold" of the Tianxuan Army Flag, it had no five-clawed dragon pattern, no sun and moon totem, it was a pure red, like the red of burning charcoal.
It was so red it was dazzling, so hot it burned your hands, that even the surrounding mist seemed to be dyed red, tinged with a faint crimson.
The sea breeze swept by, and that red hue stretched out in the clouds, its edges stretched straight by the wind, the whistling sound like an inextinguishable fire.
It drifted down with the wind and landed on the mountainside, making my eardrums go numb.
It overlooks the entire island: fishermen drying their nets in the fishing village at the foot of the mountain are stiff, unaware that their nets have fallen to the ground, their eyes fixed on the summit.
The soldiers in the seaside military camp stood with their heads bowed, their hat brims pulled low, and their hands pressed against the seams of their trousers.
The Japanese in the streets and alleys hunched their shoulders, their heads almost touching their chests, not daring to even look up at the mountain peak.
Even the slight rise and fall of their shoulders as they breathed seemed to be nailed down under the watchful gaze of this flag, not daring to move an inch.
This flag is not a symbol of protecting the territory; rather, it is like a pair of open eyes, coldly watching everyone on the island, guarding against any lingering thoughts of "restoring the Japanese" that might creep out from the very marrow of their bones.
What she was trying to prevent was that a hundred years from now, some people would forget the blood that had stained this land, forget the homes that had been trampled, and forget why she had to hold a knife and walk through mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
My heart jolted, as if struck by a heavy hammer, and even my fingertips began to tremble.
I walked up the stone steps on the thin layer of unmelted snow. The snow water seeped into the soles of my boots, chilling me to the bone, but it couldn't compare to the warmth surging in my heart.
Her footprints were still on the stone steps, shallow and a little muddy. She must have come up the wet, slippery steps last night. I wonder if she fell.
It wasn't until I stood under the flagpole that I could see the flag clearly. I raised my hand slightly, trying to touch the flag with my fingertips, but I couldn't reach it.
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