Cthulhu Gonfalon

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Looking at the remainder of the list, Sui Xiong couldn't help feeling a little vexed.

He'd never thought such a situation as there being too many damn people to kill was even possible.

But that was exactly what had happened—that was what he was facing right now.

Unless he turned around and tried going through the Orc Empire north-to-south this time, those remaining twenty-thousand people would have to be killed right here, wouldn't they?

After running some basic math, he decided to give up on this idea.

The guillotine could execute ten people at a time. As they needed to announce each person's crimes, the executions couldn't go very quickly, taking about ten minutes a batch at most. In reality, though, he usually took about twenty minutes to kill each batch. If this were on Earth, this would be akin to treating human lives like weeds. A certain Mister Sui would have been a peerless evil comparable to a certain mustached German.

Even if he killed ten people in ten minutes, that would be sixty people an hour; in a ten-hour work week, he'd be able to kill six hundred.

How long would it take to kill twenty thousand?

Even an elementary schooler could figure that out—a little over thirty-three days. If he started now, then he'd be able to finish around noon after a month and four days.

As if! What kind of person would sit down at this border and diligently kill a month's worth of people!

That would be mental trauma right there!

Sui Xiong shook his head, giving up on this improbable notion. So then how should he deal with these guys? Dig a hole and straight-up bury them?

It was said that in the late Warring States period, during the Battle of Changping, General Bai Qi of the Qin army had 400,000 people buried in a pit. This lead to him gaining eternal fame with the brutal nickname "King of Killers." Compared to the glorious records of his senior homicidal maniacs from past generations, burying twenty thousand people in one go didn't really count as all that outrageous.

Sui Xiong remembered an old professor back in the day who always wore a cheongsam and highly revered the "last of the Confucian scholars" Zeng Guofan. Later on, the man had been criticized by the history-loving Professor Cheng, saying, "Why does a perfectly good person like you insist on worshipping a deranged homicidal maniac? Just in the city of Nanjing, I'd estimate that baldy Zeng killed around 500,000 people."

At the time, those words had made everyone's blood run cold. Afterwards, someone had asked Professor Cheng if he was joking, but he answered very seriously. Following the most generous assessment, when Zeng Guofan was suppressing insurrection from the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, he'd killed over a million people at the very least.

To think he could become as famous as Zeng Guofan… That made Sui Xiong feel a little depressed.

But it was much too embarrassing to go and say something like, "Oh dear, I feel that killing too many might be rather bad." After having killed tens of thousands of Isis members over the past few months, he really had no place to be saying such things.

In a difficult-to-manage situation like this, he had no choice but to go to a friend for help.

"Hahahaha!" After hearing his worries, the God of Pleasure let out a hearty laugh before saying, "Is this what it means to kill until your hands go limp with exhaustion? But your hands were limp to begin with! You're a jellyfish!"

Sui Xiong rolled his eyes, inwardly grumbling to himself about how he shouldn't have come to this guy for advice.

"If you're sick of killing then just don't kill. In any case, whether you kill them or not doesn't really matter, it's all up to you." Manissy, the Goddess of Wealth, said in an off-handed manner, "Two hundred thousand people isn't all that big a deal anyway; if you think killing them would be bothersome, you could also just throw them straight into hell while still alive."

"That's not a bad idea! And if the judges of Hell decide they don't deserve to die, they can just kick them back out." Wall nodded his head and said, "Your Majesty, I believe this is a very appropriate solution."

Sui Xiong laughed bitterly. This certainly was an appropriate solution, but it also caused trouble for hell.

"If you ask me, once you've started, you should make sure you finish it cleanly," Morani advised him. "You've already killed tens of thousands; twenty thousand more shouldn't be a problem. If you stop now, this matter ultimately won't be properly taken care of, and that wouldn't be good at all."

Sui Xiong was thrown off by that and stared at him suspiciously.

"Shouldn't you be telling me not to kill them?" he asked.

Morani laughed and shook his head. "If you hadn't begun to kill them, then, of course, I would have suggested you refrain from doing so. But since you've already killed so many, regardless of what you feel or think, you have a responsibility now to see the matter through to its conclusion, finishing it properly and neatly."

Sui Xiong was silent for a moment; then he quietly let out a sigh.

True, dealing with Isis was his responsibility. If he spared a few of them just because he'd gotten a little reluctant, wouldn't those earlier people have died a little too unfairly, especially those who hadn't committed any crimes worth dying for?

"Your Majesty, if you find it inconvenient, let me help!" The God of Medicine, Arcaian, volunteered himself after seeing Sui Xiong so depressed. "I can seal them all away; then whenever they need killing, you can pull them out to kill."

Sui Xiong shook his head, saying, "People aren't goods, you can't treat them like that."

Just then, Yorgaardman—who'd been silent all this time—suddenly spoke up, "Well then, how about I plead leniency on their behalf?"

He smiled under everyone's astonished gazes and continued, "Brother, you've already killed so many; those with a heavy blood debt were killed long ago, and all that's left now are accomplices and the like. Just speaking from a legal point of view, between killable and un-killable, is there really a need to kill every last one of them? Consider giving them a way out, on my behalf."

Sui Xiong was a little bewildered as he asked, "Elder Brother, following your personality, shouldn't you be cheering me on to kill them?"

Yorgaardman let out a bitter laugh, "Don't make fun of me, I really did cheer you on at first. But after a while, the people you killed had lighter and lighter crimes, and I slowly started to feel that something wasn't quite right. Now, here you are discussing how to execute twenty thousand people who really don't deserve execution. The more I listened, the more inappropriate this felt to me, and now I've finally figured out where the problem is."

"Where is it?" asked Sui Xiong.

"Justice shouldn't be limitless," Yorgaardman said. "For instance, let's say someone bands together with some henchmen, slanders a young girl by saying she's a demon who brings disaster, and then burns her to death. This person would, of course, deserve to die, as would those who helped him forge the evidence, excite the populace, and build the wood pile on which to burn her. But as for those surrounding people who cheered on the proceedings, would they really deserve to die?"

Sui Xiong thought on this, then said, "From the point of view of the victim, they deserve to die, because they're accomplices as well. But from the point of view of an unrelated third party, they don't deserve to die, because they didn't actually do anything."

"That's right, an overwhelming majority of those twenty thousand leftover people are also no more than supporters, or people who helped add to the noise. Though they may have participated in a good many acts of persecution, they ultimately never actually killed anyone. The way I see it, their crimes aren't deserving of death."

Sui Xiong nodded slightly, then spoke again, "But if they don't die, then how can I console those lost souls who were persecuted to death? If 'crimes not deserving of death' is enough to leave them alive, then what can we say about those who were killed without any crimes at all?"

Yorgaardman let out a heavy sigh, "That's why I said I was 'pleading leniency.' It's all well and good as long as you spare their lives, there's no problem with other forms of punishment… anything is fine, just try not to kill them."

Sui Xiong thought for a long while, before finally sighing.

"I now understand why you're so good at fighting. You have such brains, yet you managed to muddle your way to being all alone in the world."

Yorgaardman of course had understood this long ago and smiled bitterly without a reply.

Sui Xiong laughed, speaking no more on that subject. Then he began discussing with everyone the best way to enforce punishment.

After a while, his voice resounded before the chief seat, "As the God of Justice, His Majesty Yorgaardman, has pleaded leniency, I've decided to cease execution of the remaining lower-level Isis members ahead of schedule. But though they are exempted from capital punishment, they cannot escape punishment entirely; I will have these people sent to the Kingdom of Dwarfs in the Mountain of Broken Cloud, where the dwarves will see them reeducated through hard labor!"