The night wind circled above the square, seeming to carry a mournful sob.
Ito Yūgorō's old face, smeared with filth and blood, twisted until it barely looked human.
He stared fixedly at the veterans in their ragged clothes, their bodies broken. Alongside the bone-deep terror in his eyes, a spark of crazed, hysterical defiance flared.
"Actors! They're all actors!"
He jerked his head up and mustered every ounce of strength to roar like a broken bellows.
"You little bastard! You think finding a few cripples and dressing them in rags from decades ago is enough to convict me? Enough to scare me, Ito Yūgorō?"
He pointed at Li Erniu, who stood on one leg, his body as straight and steadfast as a pine.
"You! And you! You're all extras! He paid you to come here!"
"I deny it! I will never admit guilt!"
He desperately tried to stand, to straighten the spine that terror had already bent, to preserve his laughable, so-called "glory of the Empire."
"War is war! The victors rule, and the losers are condemned! History is written by the winners!"
"Eastern Japan was defeated by Eagle Sauce, not by you!"
"What right do you have to judge me here?!"
Like a rabid dog, he barked out his last desperate defiance.
Yue Xiaofei stood on the steps, watching him coldly, without the slightest flicker in his eyes.
Reason was useless against a beast rotten to the bone.
Only blood and pain, in their most direct and primal forms, could remind him what he really was.
In the livestream.
The comments had shifted from their initial shock and fury to pure disgust and contempt.
[I'm going to puke. Does this old Japanese bastard really have no shame whatsoever?]
[The victors rule, and the losers are condemned? Who the fuck