The villagers hadn't seen such a large group of soldiers before, so unlike their usual habits, this time they reported it to the county magistrate. At first he was shocked by the news the villagers had brought.
"Soldiers", he thought.
He was so entranced by the fact of soldiers appearing multiple times, that he almost missed the more frightening part. A single person killed them all? He knew there were powerful martial artists. These people created sects and pretty much governed themselves. The emperor, and the ministers of the court were very dissatisfied with this, but the combat ability of those sects were terrifying. Their strength was insurmountable compared to regular people.
However, their weakness was exactly that. Their individual combat ability was terrifying, but against a well trained army, they were nothing. Their numbers weren't nearly enough to stand against the armies of the empire, so although the emperor was wary of them, he knew that they could be contained. Unfortunately that only worked for regular martial artists. No matter where there are people, there will be the highs and lows of those groups. So, just as their are very weak members of this group, there are also geniuses.
Geniuses anywhere, are feared and respected, especially when it comes to combat. Now he heard some of the details from the villagers, and he already had a guess as to who this person was.
Many years before he was demoted to county magistrate, he held a position in the capital. He worked in the ministry of war, and it was his duty to transport the supplies necessary for the war.
He was still in the capital when the charges of treason were placed on the heads of the Dren family.
The Dren family had served as generals to the royal family since the founding of the current empire, Frest.
They have always been the backbone of the royal family, as long as a general of the Dren family sits at the border, than it will never fall to the enemy.
This belief has been rooted into the hearts of the people of the Frest empire. That belief, however, turned out to be the final nail in the coffin.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The current emperor, who is only thirteen years old, rose to the throne after the untimely deaths of his father and grandfather.
The emperors grandfather, who holds the title of the supreme emperor was a suspicious man. It is a well known fact, that an emperors suspicion is the most fearsome thing. If an emperor wants you to die, even if you don't want to, you still have to die.
Many meritorious ministers were executed and exiled under the supreme emperors suspicion. The Dren family was also one of them. Although most members of the Dren family fall in combat, which led the family to be scarcely populated, the supreme emperor still wasn't willing to let them go.
The last general of the Dren family was Siraya Dren. Apparently born to a sickly mother, because her father wasn't willing to take a concubine, nor would he allow his wife to give birth again, he chose to conceal Siraya's true gender, and raise her as a man. He was worried at first, that his daughter would not be able to handle the pressure that he had put on her. As a woman she was required to practice far harder than a man of the Dren family. She was cut off from contact with anyone that couldn't be trusted, and her father raised her exclusively in the barracks.
Siraya proved to be more talented than even her father, which made him very happy. He wondered if the Dren family would end in his hands, but luckily his daughter was more than capable of taking over the burden of the family. However the issue came with his actions afterwards. As his daughter won countless victories, he chose to inform the supreme emperor of the truth about Siraya. He had always been taught by the family about his undying loyalty to the emperor, so he didn't hesitate to mention it.
The supreme emperor listened to his confession and on the surface accepted it well, complimenting him on having such a talented descendant to continue on his lineage, but as soon as the general left, he immediately became suspicious.
A simple misunderstanding from the general, where he waited until Siraya was fifteen to report the truth, was all the evidence the suspicious supreme emperor needed to believe that the always loyal Dren family had ulterior motives. Add onto that, the whispers of the concubines born into the families that opposed the Dren family, and the emperor began to distrust and alienate his most loyal supporters.
The supreme emperor knew that Siraya being a woman wasn't enough to convict the Dren family of a capital crime, so with the help of a few powerful ministers that opposed the Dren's, evidence of their collusion with the enemy country was forged.
By the time Siraya had received the news of the charges, her family had already been executed. The men had been dragged in front of the public. They didn't cry, didn't mourn, didn't beg for mercy. Their backs were straight, showing their demeanour as soldiers, and under the cries of the common people, they were beheaded.
The female relatives of the family were intended to be sent to the official brothel, however they were members of the Dren family, same as the men. Their stoicism was no less than their male counterparts. Knowing that their future only held humiliation, they chose to seal the mansion they were kept in, before sealing themselves in a room together, and setting it alight.
And just like that Siraya was alone. Her family dead, labelled as traitors to the empire. She was heartbroken, and in a fit of rage, she slaughtered the imperial soldiers that had come to arrest her. She fled the border, and disappeared from the sight of everyone. She took to the forests, stuck with her own thoughts, she started to become filled with more and more anger. She wondered if it was her fault, was her deception the reason for her family's destruction? Or did her family not give enough for the empire?