The Human Emperor c1-2382

by Huangfu Qi (皇甫奇)

  “But will this strategy really be effective?”

  Hulayeg’s home had been raided by a party personally led by that Fourth Prince, and previous to the battle at Qixi Armory, this Fourth Prince had followed the Black Wolf Yabgu for a long period of time, listening to and carrying out his orders every day, so he definitely would not have a good impression of Hulayeg. In normal circumstances, it would be quite decent if he didn’t lunge at Hulayeg and bite off a piece of the traitor’s flesh. It would be almost impossible for Hulayeg to alter the prince’s impressions of him.

  “Why else would he have himself injured? Xu Keyi really did beat him, making no efforts to spare him any pain. And while Hulayeg was lying on the ground, his face pale from the pain and his forehead caked with sweat, he was still insisting that Xu Keyi should beat him a little harder. I have to admit that this Turkic horse merchant has some ability. The Turkic Fourth Prince has been imprisoned together with him for a few days, listening every day to him harp on about how he’s just a simple merchant who, for the sake of saving him, ended up getting savagely beaten. And that Fourth Prince actually believed him,” Xu Qiqin said, her hands covering the smile on her mouth.

  “Oh? If that really is the case, then this fellow is truly astounding! It seems like he’s putting everything on the line to get back to the Turkic steppe.”

  Wang Chong was gradually infected by Xu Qiqin’s melodious laughter, a smile slowly appearing in his eyes.

  “Forget it. I’ll just let him continue doing what he wants!”

  ……

  Meanwhile, on the distant Mount Sanmi, from the tent of the Western Turkic Khagan came a furious bellow that echoed through the heavens.

  “What? They’ve refused us again! Proposing such impossible conditions, do they really think we Western Turks will agree?”

  Within the massive golden tent, Ishbara Khagan was pacing back and forth like an enraged lion, all of Mount Sanmi trembling at his roars.

  “Khagan, we’ve already asked to negotiate three times, but they’ve stubbornly insisted on five hundred thousand of the best Turkic warhorses and nothing else. They’ve even said that if we don’t agree, they’ll send the Fourth Prince’s corpse to Mount Sanmi.”

  A scout was kneeling in the tent, trembling in fear, his head almost buried in the ground. He didn’t even dare to risk a glance upward.

  “Bastard! Then let them send the Fourth Prince’s corpse! Tell them that five hundred thousand of the best Turkic warhorses is simply out of the question!”

  Ishbara Khagan was fuming with rage, his incensed voice like peals of thunder over the skies of Mount Sanmi. Everyone who heard it shivered, their hearts thumping in fear. The kneeling scout pressed himself even lower against the ground, not daring to utter a word.

  “Why haven’t you gone!”

  Ishbara Khagan viciously glared.

  “Yes!”

  The scout shuddered and immediately got up and left. But he had only reached the entrance of the tent when, boom! Black energy suddenly rushed in, and a black curtain suddenly dropped down from the skies, shrouding the entire tent. The scout was so caught off guard that he thumped against this black barrier of energy and almost ended up falling to the ground.

  “Paying respects to the Venerable Priest!”

  Despite the suddenness of it all, the scout not only immediately got back up, but flung himself back on the ground in prostration, his head pressing against the ground in panic. Even the enraged Ishbara Khagan took in a deep breath when he saw the black curtain descend, his anger cooling.

  The entire tent fell quiet.

  Ishbara Khagan glanced outside and suddenly called out, “Blackwater Shaman!”

  “Khagan, quell your anger. The decisions regarding the Fourth Prince must be made after long consideration and cannot be guided by emotion.”

  Light and shadow began to twist and flicker at the entrance, and as an old and hoarse voice spoke, a hunched figure only around five feet tall walked in. He wore a black robe that reached the ground and gripped a black bone cane topped by a skull. With this black-robed man as the center, the shadows in the tent began to shift, forming countless savage beasts that seemed to surge out of the man.

  In addition to that, a strange odor began to fill the golden tent, pungent to the extreme. It seemed like the scent of a bear, and also like that of a leopard or tiger. In brief, it was like a throng of beasts had entered the tent.

  Only very special existences in the Western Turkic Khaganate could give off this sort of feeling and enter Ishbara Khagan’s tent whenever they pleased: the shaman priests.

  No one knew the origin of the shaman priests, only that when the Turkic people first emerged, the shaman priests already had a long history on the Turkic steppe and possessed an extremely revered status. The legends said that the shaman priests could communicate with all animals and even with the gods above. They knew the past and could see into the future. Their bodies were shrouded in mystifying fogs that concealed infinite secrets.

  Besides that, all shaman priests wielded an enigmatic and inexplicable strength. This strength was not a martial art, but it was even more terrifying and mysterious. The people of the steppe called it sorcery.

  The famous legend regarding the shaman priests originated more than one thousand years ago, when the Central Plains was governed by that most formidable Emperor Wu of Han. Cavalry from the Central Plains swept over the desert and steppe, time and time again pushing back the elite Turkic cavalry. In that age, the Turkic steppe was covered with corpses and irrigated by blood. In the most prosperous and most powerful period of the Turkic empire, it encountered the toughest sovereign of the Central Plains in a thousand years. After repeated wars, the Turkic empire rapidly waned to become unimaginably weak.

  Such an event was unprecedented on the steppe.

  And when that Emperor Wu of Han was ready to send one last expedition to the north to finally exterminate the threat of the Turks once and for all, everyone on the steppe was trembling in fear at the coming calamity. It was at that moment that the strongest shaman priest led the several hundred shaman priests of the steppe to cast a sorcery on a road the army of the Central Plains needed to take to reach the steppe. The shaman priests clashed with the arts practitioners of the Central Plains and inflicted grievous casualties and vile diseases on this most powerful army.

  Although the shaman priests also suffered terrible losses, with only a tiny number surviving, they succeeded in breaking this supreme cavalry army and saving the Turkic people from disaster. Afterwards, all the Turkic Khagans treated the shaman priests with great respect, with the most respected being the shamans that sprung from the branch of the shaman leader.

  The Blackwater Shaman was precisely a member of this illustrious branch!

  “Although five hundred thousand warhorses are precious, the worth of the Fourth Prince truly is comparable. He is tied to the destiny and future of our Western Turkic Khaganate. You know this, Khagan. You have seen the prophecies.”

  The Blackwater Shaman slowly ambled forward, taking a step, pausing, and then taking another step…

  Ishbara Khagan seemed to calm down at the word ‘prophecies’, but he quickly turned angry again. “But you can’t even find five hundred thousand of the best Turkic warhorses in the entire Western Turkic Khaganate! It’s just not a request that can be fulfilled!”

  The Turks were people that lived on horseback, and so what they had the most of was naturally horses. But those horses were differentiated by quality. They had as many ordinary warhorses as one could want, several million warhorses of good quality, but five hundred thousand of the best and rarest quality of warhorse? The entire Western Turkic Khaganate probably didn’t have that many, and would they really give them to a Han? Would this not be supporting the enemy?

  After all, the Western Turkic Khaganate and the Great Tang Empire were still enemies at war. He could not agree to this condition.

  “Five hundred thousand of the best Turkic
warhorses is naturally impossible, but we cannot not negotiate with the City of Steel, and we cannot not save the Fourth Prince. Those five hundred thousand warhorses are just a negotiation trick to get the best price from us. If they didn’t want to negotiate, the Fourth Prince would already be dead, and they would not have wasted so much time refusing Khagan’s entreaties. For the future of the Western Turkic Khaganate, Khagan, you must be calm.”

  The Blackwater Shaman continued to speak as he slowly moved forward. A roiling black fog covered his face, serving as a veil that concealed his true appearance.

  Ishbara Khagan’s face froze, and he was instantly speechless.

  Ishbara Khagan did not dote on the Fourth Prince for no reason. A terrible danger threatened the steppe, one that was more frightening and dreadful than any other peril in history, and the first to experience this dread had been the shaman priests of the steppe. They could hear the voices of the gods and knew the mysteries of past and future. This power had been proved countless times already.

  The steppe would one day be destroyed, and this day was not very far in the future!

  This was a prophecy Ishbara Khagan had heard when he was just a child.

  Very few people on the entire steppe knew this secret, and Ishbara Khagan only knew of it because he was a member of the imperial clan. From that moment onward, he had been plagued by a deep concern, until the day the Fourth Prince was born. ‘This child is the hope of the entire Turkic steppe.’ ‘His existence is tied to the future of all peoples.’ ‘When the moment comes, he will awaken to his mission and lead the Turkic people in escaping that dreadful disaster.’ The shaman priests’ predictions regarding that child were deeply branded in Ishbara Khagan’s mind.

  It was these predictions that made him so deeply cherish the Fourth Prince. Based on what the shaman priests had said, his worth was immeasurable.

  “Must I truly be threatened by a teenager who is still wet behind the ears?”

  Ishbara Khagan groaned, his heart filled with unwillingness. The resplendent sovereign of the steppe, Ishbara Khagan’s name echoed throughout all the countries of the world, and even the Protector-Generals and Great Generals of the Central Plains had to treat him cautiously. But now, some teenager in that City of Steel was demanding an absurd ransom from him and issuing brazen threats. How could someone of Ishbara Khagan’s status accept this?

  Chapter 842 - Lowly, Lowly Hulayeg!

  Chapter 842: Lowly, Lowly Hulayeg!

  Translated by: Hypersheep325

  Edited by: Michyrr

  “Khagan, hold on for a little longer. Say that we’ll give them one hundred thousand warhorses and see if they agree. If they persist with the demand for five hundred thousand, then we will discuss this again,” the Blackwater Shaman said.

  “Priest, I will do this for you, but this will be the last time!”

  Ishbara Khagan was boiling with rage, but he could only clamp it down.

  “Mm. Let us dispatch the emissary. If they truly won’t let go, Khagan will still have time to adopt another plan.”

  The Blackwater Shaman nodded.

  Ishbara Khagan angrily huffed, but he said nothing more.

  “In addition, I have a request that I hope Khagan can fulfill,” the Blackwater Shaman continued.

  “Oh? And what is that?” Ishbara Khagan said in surprise. He had originally believed that the Blackwater Shaman had appeared only to discuss the matter of the Fourth Prince, but it now appeared that this was not the case.

  “That youth in Wushang’s City of Steel who captured the Fourth Prince—I would like to meet him… When Khagan dispatches the emissaries this time, I would like one of my attendants to accompany the mission.”

  These last words were spoken in a mysterious and profound tone.

  Ishbara Khagan’s body shivered as if suddenly understanding something. He stared at the nearby Blackwater Shaman, unable to conceal the shock on his face.

  ……

  “Ayow! It really hurts!”

  In the underground prison cell of the City of Steel, Hulayeg’s cries of pain echoed across the walls. He was lying on the ground, his bare and plump back gruesomely lacerated, and in some places, one could even see bone.

  “Hulayeg, I was wrong about you. I didn’t think that they would beat you like this. Relax. If I can get back, I will return all your property to you.”

  A remorseful voice echoed within the room. The Turkic Fourth Prince was sitting next to Hulayeg, his eyes brimming with reluctance as he examined the numerous wounds.

  “Your Highness, there’s no need to blame yourself. It is my honor to be of service. I don’t believe that these bastards of the City of Steel would be so treacherous as to actually dare to kill me. Your Highness, be at ease. Even if this Hulayeg must put his life on the line, he will definitely get you out of here.”

  Hulayeg clenched his teeth and squeezed out these words, but then the pain from his wounds came surging back, and he couldn’t help but yelp.

  The Fourth Prince felt even more remorseful at this sight.

  “Wang Chong, you and your despicable and faithless subordinates, I won’t let you go for this! Fourth Prince! If any of them dare to touch a hair on your head, I, Hulayeg, will never let them go, even if I have to come back as a ghost!”

  Hulayeg bellowed and cursed.

  “Hulayeg, don’t be like this. They really might beat you to death.” The Fourth Prince was both moved and reluctant. “Just look at the wounds on your body. You can’t take any more beatings. If they come and find you again, endure it and lower your head, admit that you were wrong. If you’re able to leave, you can find my imperial father and have him come save me. That would be much better than the both of us dying here.”

  The Fourth Prince had no idea that in a certain place outside the cell, a group of people were on the verge of breaking into laughter.

  “But the Khagan will not believe me,” Hulayeg said.

  “It’s fine. Take this and he’ll believe you.”

  The Fourth Prince paused a moment before clenching his teeth and finally removing a black token carved from bone from the hiding place in his clothes.

  “This is my princely token. As long as you take this token to see my imperial father, he’ll definitely believe you.”

  “This… Your Highness, rest at ease. If I have a chance to leave, I will definitely save you. This Hulayeg’s word is his bond. Even if I must die, I will ensure Your Highness’s safety.”

  Hulayeg appeared to undergo a mental struggle before finally gritting his teeth and taking the token.

  Clangclangclang!

  At this moment, a metal clattering could be heard outside the cell.

  “Hulayeg, you Turkic pig who doesn’t know good from bad, Lord Marquis, in his kindness, has chosen to release you, but you insist on sticking together with this Fourth Prince. This is your last chance. If you continue to act rudely before Lord Marquis, you and this Fourth Prince will die together in this place!”

  An icy voice came from outside as the door to the cell was opened. Several fully-armored guards stalked in. After giving a single glance, they immediately picked up Hulayeg, two to a side, and carried him away like he was a slaughtered pig. Behind them, the door banged shut once more.

  “Hulayeg, don’t worry about me. Quickly admit your wrongs. First take care of yourself. Don’t make enemies of them anymore…”

  In the distance, the Turkic Fourth Prince had crawled up to the cell door and was worriedly shouting.

  “Hahaha…”

  “Hulayeg, you’re quite the performer. Look at that—the Fourth Prince is even crying.”

  “‘Don’t worry about me, quickly admit your wrongs’, hahaha… did all of you see what that Fourth Prince looked like while saying that?”

  “Hulayeg, you bastard, if that Fourth Prince knew the truth, he would probably flog off your flesh and eat you alive.”

  Once they left the hearing range of the Fourth Prince’s cell, the soldiers co
uldn’t help but break into laughter. All of these guards were very familiar with Hulayeg, accompanying him as he entered and exited, and they were not afraid to crack a few jokes.

  “Heheh, this isn’t anything. A person with small limits is no gentleman, and a man without a little viciousness in their blood can never be great. Isn’t that a saying of you Han? As long as I can regain my property, what does a minor matter like this count as? And once this Fourth Prince returns, I will rise to glorious heights and invite you all to a feast, and then what will today’s events count as?”

  Hulayeg took a silk robe from a guard and put it on as he carelessly replied.

  “Hulayeg, you truly are a shameless and lowly man,” the guards all teased.

  “Thank you for your praise.”

  Hulayeg chuckled.

  “Oh, by the way, where is Lord Marquis?”

  “Still in his residence. Do you need to see Lord Marquis?” a guard said with a smile, patting Hulayeg on the shoulder.

  “There’s no need for that. Just give this letter to Lord Marquis.”

  Hulayeg gave a mysterious smile as he took out a letter. This done, Hulayeg walked out of the prison alone as the flabbergasted guards looked on. He did not return to his usual residence, nor did he head toward Wang Chong’s residence. Instead, he made a circle, stopping beneath a transplanted plum blossom tree, where he mounted an excellent Turkic warhorse and rode out of the city.

  Moments after he left, a scout barged into Wang Chong’s residence. “Lord Marquis, Hulayeg just mounted a horse and left the City of Steel!” The City of Steel was still not fully open to outsiders, so every person who entered and exited was closely watched.

  “Oh?”

  Wang Chong was sitting at a sandalwood table. When he heard this news, his brows arched in surprise.

  A few moments later, a guard of the City of Steel strode in.