Chapter 30

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Looking out from the carriage, the village was surrounded by an extremely high wall with towers at the corners, and the only entrance available for communication was the one they just walked through, which, at a glance, made it look like a small, heavily fortified city.

“This is where the dragon slayers live, so naturally the Imperial Capital will have armed troops to guard them.” The steward sat beside the coachman and said casually, “Especially with the recent ruckus of the Restoration Army, the vigilance over here looks like it’s been upgraded a lot recently.”

“Dragon Slayers? Is their status very prestigious?” Zhu Yan had already heard this name a number of times and could no longer hold back the question in her mind, “What exactly are they doing?”

“So it’s true that the Princess has never heard of it.” The steward was stunned for a moment and couldn’t help but laugh, “Dragon Slayer is actually a title given to these fishermen who have inherited their ancestral craft in the Imperial Capital – the people in this village don’t have to pay taxes or serve forced military service; this village has been around for thousands of years… since there were shark slaves on the land of Yunhuang, there have been Dragon Slayers as well.” He smiled and added, “Of course, what they were slaying was not dragons.”

Zhu Yan was listening in wonder and couldn’t help but ask, “If they don’t slay dragons, then what do they slay? If they are fishermen, why are they called dragon slayers? And what is the ancestral craft?”

The steward smiled, “It’s a long story, the Princess will know when she sees it…”

As he spoke, the carriage stopped at the roadside. Zhu Yan lifted the curtain and peeped around: this was not the East Market; it was a small fishing village by the sea. The place was full of cheap houses with wooden pillars and mud walls, not one with more than three storeys, the roads were covered in potholes, and there was none of the noises and bustle of Yecheng around. It was so quiet that there could hardly be heard any human noises, there was not a single person on the streets.

The whole village was built on the outskirts of Yecheng, with the city walls on one side. The sea water was brought in from the ditches under the walls, densely netted around each of the small houses, bringing in a strong smell of the sea – the pattern was similar to that of the twelve counties of Dongze, but Dongze is a natural water system, not sure why this village was so deliberately set up in this way.

She lifted the curtain and jumped down, but stepped into a pool of muddy water and couldn’t help but let out an involuntary “ah”.

“Be careful, Your Highness,” the housekeeper rushed over to assist her, explaining quietly, “This place is really a bit shabby. Why don’t you sit in the carriage first and wait for me to go in and invite the doctor to come out?”

However, before the words left his mouth, a heart-wrenching scream suddenly emerged from the silent and empty village, as if it was the cry of a dying man using all his strength, it sounded terrifying to the ears.

“What’s going on?” Zhu Yan was startled, “What’s happening in there? Are they killing people?”

“Don’t panic, Your Highness,” the housekeeper said hastily. “It’s everything alright. All the people living in here are good people.”

“Good people?” Before the words left his mouth, however, Zhu Yan took a step backwards, holding the child in her arms, and her face changed suddenly as she stared blankly in front of her – on both sides of the roadside there was originally a ditch that led the seawater from outside the city, into and around each of the houses, through and into the households. At this moment, the water into the ditch suddenly turned blood red!

In front of her there was a grey masonry house, surrounded by gutters, and at that moment she saw a large amount of blood pouring out from the gutters of the building, accompanied by a heart-wrenching scream from the inside – it was clearly someone killing people in there!

“Open the door!” Zhu Yan no longer cared about anything, holding the child, she went forward and kicked the door open, shouting angrily, “Who is killing people here? Stop it right now!”

The moment the door opened, an overpowering smell of blood poured out from the room, smothering her and almost causing her to faint. The few men inside turned around at the sound of her voice and stared at her in awe, their hands covered in blood.

The room had no windows and was extremely enclosed and dreary, but huge candles were lit everywhere, illuminating the room so brightly that it was shinier than the light of sun outside. In the blinding light, she saw the table in the center – there was a bleeding man lying on it, his limbs fastened to the four corners of the table, his whole body cut open, blood flowing like a waterfall down the perimeter of the table, turning the floor crimson. A groove for blood was dug into the ground and the pool of blood was instantly washed back into the ditch.

This… this place, it’s a custom-built slaughterhouse!

“What is this place?!” Zhu Yan’s face turned white, with a slight gesture of her finger, the Jade Bone on her head leapt out in a flash, turning into a stream of light that surrounded her, ready to strike at any moment, “What are you all doing here?!”

“Princess, please don’t be nervous!” The steward rushed in and pulled her back trying to calm her down, and hastily said, “They’re breaking the shark’s body! Don’t stand in the way, if they don’t stitch him up to stop the bleeding, the shark on this platform is going to die!”

“What?” Zhu Yan looked at the men busy around the platform and couldn’t help but freeze, “Breaking the body?”

The man on the platform, who had been cut open, was struggling so hard that he looked like he was going to die any second; but the men quickly held his limbs down, one of them took a bowl of medicine and poured it into his body, while the other quickly rinsed the blood off with water, then used a special brush with thick, viscous liquid to brush his entire body.

It did not look like killing, but rather like saving.

Zhu Yan looked a little perplexed and muttered, “What exactly are they… doing?”

“They are breaking the shark’s body… which means that the shark, who has a fish tail, becomes able to walk upright on two legs like any human on land.”

Probably overwhelmed by the smell of blood in the room, the housekeeper pulled her back to the door and, catching a quick breath, said, “It’s a very complicated and delicate job, very risky – you see, they’ve just removed this shark’s tail vertebrae and dismantled both lower fins to fix them into leg bones.”

Zhu Yan looked at the naked shark that was fixed on the platform and felt nothing but shock.

The shark on the platform was impossible to tell if it was a male or a female, all covered in blood, his white, jade-like skin was trembling slightly as he breathed in low and rapid breaths. A piece of bloody flesh was indeed discarded under the platform; it was clearly a fish tail, still bouncing around aimlessly and flapping weakly.

The scream she heard just outside the door must have originated from this shark’s fish tail being chopped off with a single blow, right?

The men inside the room had only stopped to look at her when she had barged in, but now they had already regrouped around the table and resumed their work.

Someone fed, someone administered medicine, someone bandaged… and soon the shark was coated all over with ointment, wrapped in layers of gauze, his mouth filled with medicine, his breathing stabilized and he fell into a deep coma, without uttering another sound.

Everything was done so quickly and skillfully that it seemed like they had practiced it a thousand times.

Before Zhu Yan could recover from the shock, she saw a few more people carrying over a soft bed and carefully moved the shark onto it, carrying him to another courtyard. The other men dispersed and took off their aprons, stretched their blood-stained hands into the sink and carefully scrubbed away the thin layer of pale blue transparent scales that stuck to their skin.

“Is Master Shen Tu here?” The steward saw that it was over, and only then did he cover his nose and walk through the door, taking out the waist plate of the Red King’s Clan, “I am the Chief Steward of the Red King’s Palace, and I have an important request to ask to him.”

The men stopped to look at him, but their faces were expressionless, seemingly wearing masks of indifference.

Zhu Yan frowned, these people even had blank eyes, they seemed to be somewhat crippled in their brains, their mental capacity was below that of the ordinary people. It wasn’t until the steward repeated himself a second time that one of them said, “Master Shen Tu is still in there.” He slowly flexed three fingers and slurred, “And… three more to be cut! There’s… a lot of medicine to be made!”

The other one looked at them and then at Zhu Yan and said, “Was she the one who kicked the door just now? This time if the broken body is messed up, you… you’ll have to pay for the shipper’s money!”

“Got it.” The steward frowned, “If that shark dies, we’ll pay for it.”

“…” At that moment, Zhu Yan finally understood – the so-called dragon slayers, was their job to fish out the sharks from the sea and transform them into humans? She had known for a long time that sharks were born on the sea and could swim as freely as the fishes, yet in fact all the sharks she had encountered had long, slender legs like humans. How the transition was made, however, she had never thought about… turned out to be unexpectedly a heartbreaking butchering job!

When she saw the fishtail on the ground that was gradually losing its vitality, she got a chill down her spine and couldn’t help but take a deep breath of cold air, subconsciously hugging the child in her arms – fortunately, this little brat had been in a coma, otherwise, seeing this scene would have left a shadow in his heart, right?

In the background, she heard the steward’s voice rising and saying in a stern voice, “The Princess of the Red King’s Palace has come in person, and you dare not go and call physician Shen Tu to come out? Be careful or you’ll have your salary deducted for three months!”

At the word “salary”, the dumb face of the man shook in fear and he hastily wiped his hands clean and stammered, “Wait, one moment, I… I’ll go get him!”

The man pulled open the door and walked into the back room.

The room fell silent as Zhu Yan stood in the doorway with the child in her arms and the housekeeper next to her, watching the rest of the men as they began to wash the room away. The sea water in the gutter on the floor flowed slowly, taking away the blood left behind by the shark – the blood from the sea was finally returning to the sea.

“That’s so tragic…” She stared at the crimson floor and only felt anger, “Is this a human thing to do?”

“The Princess shouldn’t have barged in,” the steward sighed, “a scene like this is a bit too gory for outsiders to bear at first glance, unlike for the dragon slayers.”

Zhu Yan asked a little incredulously, “So, every shark in Yunhuang that can walk, comes from this?”

“Actually, it’s for the good of these sharks.” The housekeeper was unimpressed and said, “If they don’t have legs, they won’t survive half a year in Yunhuang and will only end up worse – but that shark must be over a hundred years old, probably a new wild shark caught from the Blue Sea. It’s a bit old, so it takes a lot of effort to cut him up, and nine times out of ten they will die.”

He turned his head to look at the child in Zhu Yan’s arms and said, “Like this little one, it should be a domesticated shark born in Yunhuang; both parents were slaves, so his body was broken and his legs split at birth – and because he was young, he probably suffered much less.”

As he spoke, the child suddenly trembled slightly in her arms. What, did he wake up? Zhu Yan glanced down and found that the child’s eyes were still closed. With a pale, thin face and long, tightly closed eyelashes that trembled slightly, she couldn’t resist caressing the child’s soft hair gently and sighed, “This poor little brat, how much suffering he must have endured before…”

“Now that he has met such a good master as the Princess, he has come to the end of his sufferings.” The steward paused and said, “I’ll go to the Governor’s residence tomorrow and get this little one’s Danshu* deed done – in the streets of Yecheng, the sharks are often spotted by the government, and if they don’t have the Danshu with them, they will most likely be arrested as part of the Restoration Army.”

“Is that Bai Fenglin so strict?” She responded casually, yet she felt her chest constricting as she looked at the scene before her and changed the subject, “So, the whole village here, is inhabited by dragon slayers?”

The housekeeper nodded, “Yes. There are over three hundred households in all.”

“There are so many… it’s incredible.” Zhu Yan sighed, “Then how many sharks must be sent here in a year…”

“It is said that when the Sea Kingdom was destroyed seven thousand years ago, a total of half a million sharks were captured as slaves and brought back to Yunhuang.” The steward said, “These sharks were pleasing the hearts of many powerful noblemen because of their beautiful appearance and ability to sing and dance… however, dragging a fish tail behind them was always very inconvenient.”

Very inconvenient? Zhu Yan sneered: it was inconvenient for those fellows looking for pleasure, right?

“So, a skilled craftsman came up with this solution that could transform a shark’s fins into legs,” the housekeeper described while the physician Shen Tu was taking his time to arrive, “and after cutting up a dozen sharks, one finally survived and grew legs that could walk upright; The emperor at the time was overjoyed and gave this artisan the title of Dragon Slayer, and a plot of land in Yecheng where he could set up a workshop, with salary provided by the Imperial Capital, then he began to transform the sharks in large quantities.”

Zhu Yan took another deep breath – this village was built on a sea of blood!

“But this craft is so delicate and complex that very few people can learn it, and it can only be passed down from generation to generation.” The steward said, “The man I am talking about, doctor Shen Tu, is one of the best, he has been doing this for fifty years and has cut up thousands of sharks – sometimes the owners have to give Dr. Shen Tu a big red envelope in advance to get a shark slave with perfect legs!”

*Danshu – 丹书 is a Chinese word with pinyin dān shū, which means a document (book) containing the ID information of a person.

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