Gray’s reaction was too faithful to Lang’s imagination, which instead made Lang relax.
“Alright, come with me quickly. You too.”
He grabbed Gray and walked off, tilting his head to signal the other werewolves to follow.
“Let go of me, you coward! You bastard! You human-raised dog!”
Gray tried to struggle free from Lang’s grip, but the more he struggled, the more he realized Lang’s strength far exceeded his own. The Lang from his memories, whom he could casually knock down, seemed like nothing more than a dream.
“Curse all you want.”
Lang did not look back; he showed no intention of letting go of Gray.
Enraged, Gray wanted to slash at Lang’s arm with his claws, but as soon as his claws emerged from his paw pads, they tugged at the burns on his body, making him grimace in pain.
“Gray!”
Lang dragged Gray away by force, and beyond the wooden hut lay the human world. Gray’s companions had no idea what Lang intended, and their hearts were suspended in anxiety. Having witnessed the potency of the humans’ paralyzing drugs, the werewolves could not suppress their fear of the human world. They did not want to leave the hut, yet after Lang and Gray vanished through the door, they stood up and chased after them.
Lem Town’s streets were deserted, every shop with its doors tightly locked. The usual clamor of human voices had been replaced by the whistling of the wind. The werewolves walked the streets, every one of them dumbfounded. They nearly lost sight of Lang and Gray.
Fortunately, Lang, burdened by dragging Gray, did not move quickly. The werewolves caught up to him and were horrified to discover over a thousand humans gathered ahead.
Their ears flattened back like airplane wings. The werewolves, who instinctively wanted to retreat at the sight of humans, had barely taken half a step back when they heard Lang say, “Lift your heads and look carefully. Do you see it? That man on the platform—”
Looking in the direction Lang pointed, the werewolves were astonished to see that the man kneeling on the platform was none other than Tobias Gordonworth, who seemed stupid and clumsy enough to deal with easily but had actually given them great trouble.
Tobias, kneeling on the execution platform, trembled as if trying to wring out every bit of fat from his body. Seated beside him was the beautiful young earl.
Today’s Earl Ulysses Grant wore formal ceremonial attire, which clearly proclaimed his status as a noble soldier. Medals covered the left side of his uniform, and beneath the epaulets embroidered with his family crest and the royal emblem, three tasseled sashes draped from Ulysses’s back around to his right arm.
The young earl had one leg crossed over the other, casually propping his chin, his lake-green eyes like cold, inorganic gems.
Beside Ulysses, the captain of the guards, also in ceremonial attire but far less ornate, stood ramrod straight. With his military cap on, hands clasped behind his back, he bellowed sternly, “Tobias Gordonworth, do you admit to your crimes!?”
Tobias’s teeth chattered in his mouth; of course, he did not want to admit his crimes. The executioner stood right beside him—once he confessed, his head would roll.
The beautiful young earl was too lazy to waste words. He had little patience for obstinate criminals.
He had made a deal with someone, however; that person was willing to trade her wisdom for Tobias’s trial, so he had not immediately taken Tobias’s life.
Otherwise, per his usual practice, he would have personally killed the criminal noble and then announced to the public that the deceased noble had met with “misfortune.” Nobles were the queen’s subordinates in the eyes of the people; any noble’s actions that damaged the noble reputation smeared the queen’s face. To prevent nobles’ crimes from becoming known to the commoners—and thus harming the queen’s reputation—nobles who died in “accidents” were far more common than those arrested, tried, or executed.
As a loyal queen’s man, Ulysses’s decision to publicly try Tobias stunned his close aides. They all knew, though, that given the queen’s favor toward Ulysses, trying and executing a mere local noble with an empty title in Lem Town was no big deal.
Ulysses crooked a finger, and immediately, military police brought torture devices to Tobias.
It was a small gadget, looking like a harmless toy. But once it was fitted onto Tobias’s thumbs and the military police began tightening it, Tobias screamed like a stuck pig.
It was a device called the Thumb Crusher; once the executioner turned the spring mechanism, it gradually crushed the victim’s fingers.
Tears and snot streaming down his face, Tobias might have had a tough mouth, but his finger bones were no softer or harder than anyone else’s.
“I’ll talk! I admit it! It was me! All of it was me! I heard the earl was interested in investing in the mine, so I sent people to survey Lem Forest, where werewolves lived! To quickly turn Lem Forest into Lem Mine, I led people to kill the werewolves! I burned down the werewolves’ village!! I-I even tried to assassinate the earl! I wanted to burn down the manor and frame the werewolves for killing the earl! I—”
Hisses filled the air. The townsfolk of Lem Town were stunned, terrified, disbelieving, or outright hurling tomatoes from their baskets at Tobias’s face.
People had always been afraid of werewolves upon sight, but not to the point of fleeing for their lives. Werewolves and humans had always followed “live and let live.” But what had Tobias done? He had turned the werewolves into humanity’s enemies! What if the werewolves decided to retaliate indiscriminately against humans? Tobias could hole up in his mansion, but could the commoners stop working and living?
One person led the way, and countless townsfolk, once oppressed and exploited by Tobias, recalled his “good deeds.” Tomatoes were no longer enough to express the crowd’s fury. Some picked up stones, some bricks, some shoveled cow dung, and others fetched a bucket of sewage from the ditch and splashed it on Tobias. Even the poor military police carrying out the punishment got splattered, half their uniforms soiled.
The once-glorious town chief instantly became a pariah. Tobias pleadingly looked to Ulysses, saw no mercy there, then tearfully turned his begging gaze to Ye Tang, who stood on Ulysses’s other side in her formal dress.
“Putting an end to Tobias’s ugly, filthy life would be simple. But then, no one would know what Tobias did to the werewolves, would they?”
“I hope everyone learns that it was Tobias who first broke the peace treaty between humans and werewolves. And Earl, I hope you can relay to Her Majesty the Queen: ‘We humans should first express our apologies to the werewolves. And as a show of sincerity, we humans will give Tobias Gordonworth, a human noble, the most miserable death to warn other humans.’—You wouldn’t want the werewolves to be the vanguard igniting the beastmen’s counterattack, rallying other beastmen against humanity, would you, Earl? I believe Her Majesty feels the same.”
Ye Tang spoke softly and gently, her brows and eyes radiating saintly compassion.
Yet her words cut sharp as knives, each one stabbing at the heart.
“Otherwise, if beastmen and humans went to full-scale war, wouldn’t you and Her Majesty become infamous sinners in human history?”
Thanks to Ye Tang’s “threat”—er, persuasion—of the androgynous young earl, Tobias endured a punishment far more terrifying than death.
If Tobias could think of anyone to save him at that moment, it was Ye Tang. He prayed this strange woman, who spoke up for the werewolves, would show mercy for the sake of their shared humanity, believing the one who convinced the earl could dissuade him once more—
Ye Tang read the plea in Tobias’s eyes, but she merely gave a gentle smile.
She did not consider Tobias human at all.
A human without a human bottom line, taking lives for personal gain, destroying homes, committing every evil and thinking playing the victim would earn sympathy. Such a thing could hardly be called human.
“Earl, shouldn’t we call the witnesses now?”
Ye Tang’s words utterly shattered Tobias’s lingering illusions. The maids, nearly burned to death in the manor, ascended the platform supporting each other, injured and weary.
“We swear to God, to the Son, Father, and Holy Mother, to Her Majesty the Queen, that everything we say is true—”
“Tobias Gordonworth hired our fathers and brothers to slaughter werewolves. He even planned to burn us alive in his manor, so Her Majesty the Queen would see him as an innocent victim, a good noble avenging his loyal servants!”
Thinking of their fathers and brothers being shackled and sent to Lem Mine as unpaid laborers until death, the maids wept bitterly. But they knew if they did not confess, they would break their deal with Ye Tang—and face their fathers’ and brothers’ execution along with imprisonment themselves. That was the exquisitely doll-like young earl’s order.
By confessing now, they could at least be victims, not Tobias’s accomplices.
“I testify as well. My husband, Tobias Gordonworth, is a devil. Ten years ago, he used underhanded means to kill Lauren Walker, another candidate for town chief. Eight years ago, he drove the Walker family to death. Five years ago, he annexed several surrounding villages and forced many to their deaths. I couldn’t stop him…”
“Lately, he forcibly raised prices in Lem Town; his shops raked in profits while the townsfolk starved everywhere! Lem Mine is a living hell—miners too weak from hunger get beaten, and under beatings, forced to sign contracts for unpaid, indefinite labor—”
Dressed in black, Lorena had not yet lost her husband, but everyone could see she already treated him as dead.
“Yes, I am… Lord Tobias Gordonworth’s butler. My name is Hans. I have served the lord for fourteen years. I often sourced people for him to brew werewolf-specific paralytics, and six years ago, I tested that paralytic on five werewolves for him. When the lord sold those five werewolves, I found the buyers for him. I helped with nearly all the lord’s evils… I feel my sins are deep.”
Butler Hans did not look back at Lorena; he merely bowed his head and said sincerely, “Whatever punishment, I accept… Please hang me.”
“Wait…”
Hans’s death wish meant nothing to Gray, but one phrase he could not ignore.
“The five werewolves from six years ago—what happened to them!?”