Wen Zhong was still engrossed in the bamboo slips. Zi Shou seized the opportunity to begin the tiger's funeral procession.
Seventy-two Royal Guards raised flags, thirty-six led the way with funeral banners, and the remaining guards held their weapons high. The vast procession presented an imposing sight.
Unfortunately, Yang Ren had refused to cooperate. Otherwise, having him recite a funeral eulogy would surely have made the effect even better.
Once the tiger had been buried, Wen Zhong and the others stopped studying the bamboo slips, their expressions complicated.
Funeral rites were both a cultural tradition and a ritual honoring life, an expression of people's respect for life.
Even in modern society, although funeral rites had been simplified, some remained, both to treat the departed kindly and to comfort the living.
Yet King Zhou insisted on flouting convention, giving a tiger a grand funeral fit for a feudal king.
He had even inscribed "Tomb of the Heaven-Dominating Tiger" on its grave and posthumously crowned a tiger king.
Beyond absurdity lay only more absurdity.
How many feudal lords and nobles would submit memorials protesting as soon as they heard?
Even among the common people, he would become a laughingstock!
With the feudal lords throwing the government into turmoil and the reforms at a critical juncture, how could King Zhou act in such a perverse, backward fashion?
How was this any different from Xia Jie?
Still, Wen Zhong was in no hurry to hit him. He merely put away the excavated bamboo slips with care. Something about them seemed amiss, and Chong Houhu had repeatedly insisted that there was more to burying the tiger than met the eye.
He would study them properly after returning home today. If King Zhou really had changed his ways and developed a taste for grandiose achievements, there