Chapter 336 — The Reformer

"On that night of wind and rain, the viscount crawled into his testing ground; he would keep demanding forbidden knowledge, to stuff his ever-hungering belly. But thank the gods they stopped him in time, sending a holy envoy to end the viscount's madness. A great fire descended from the heavens, and the flames of purification shone ten thousand fathoms bright!"

The verse-book most likely belonged to some audacious bard—and a bard that audacious had probably long since been hanged in some public square. Tracing its source further was impossible.

But Ropenny Glan still remembered what happened then:

"The rioters stormed the castle. They wore the clothes of mercenaries and commoners, mixed in among them knights and mages of extraordinary power. They charged up the hill, broke down the gates, and rushed into the inner halls. The knights and mages who should have been guarding the castle were nowhere to be found at the crucial moment, and my husband could only face those rioters alone... until the castle's magical core exploded," Ropenny said, her face icy. "And then the rioters suddenly stopped. The 'reinforcements' from several neighboring lords arrived 'just in time,' and after a clatter and clash of fighting, the rioters withdrew, my husband was dead, and my daughter was barely clinging to life..."

Gaoyang looked into Rebecca's eyes: "Because noble dignity must be preserved. A 'mob' may storm a castle, may kill nobles, but it must never take the castle, never wipe out a surname. So the people behind the scenes must leap out at the critical moment—once the mob has finished its storming, they appear in the guise of envoys of justice and purge every last disgraceful piece of evidence."

"Your eyes are indeed sharp as torches," Rebecca said with a cold smile. "Then do you know what happened afterward?"

"A reckoning and a bargain. You declared your wish to return to the righteous path; the nobles announced that Viscount Roman Glan had merely been cursed by a devil, which was why his nature had so changed; the mob that stormed the castle was found guilty, and several hundred were hanged from the walls of Glan Castle, their corpses dried in the wind and then flung off the cliff. Justice was done, order returned to its proper course—or so people believed."

The Viscountess Rebecca suddenly clenched her teeth, the muscles of her cheeks trembling uncontrollably: "Do you know who those people were—the ones who stormed the castle and were hanged?"

Gaoyang's face was blank: "Only ordinary folk without any transcendent power could be caught and convicted. The knights and mages who had mingled in the crowd, the ones who truly 'did the heavy lifting,' had fled at the very start. So the ones hanged were the serfs who had been granted land, the commoners permitted to trade, and the hunters and craftsmen who had grown prosperous after the new laws took effect. On the castle gates there were not only the gashes of swords and blades but the dents hammered out by pitchforks and hoes—that was the conclusive evidence."

"Those people were guilty!" Rebecca Glan ground her teeth. The composure she had struggled to maintain until now was broken at last; having learned that Gaoyang had investigated everything and was a man who knew the truth of those years, she no longer concealed anything. "Those who profited, those who gained their freedom—they were the mob! They deserved to be hanged. If only death came but once, I would wish them revived so I could hang them a second time!"