Everyone forgot to breathe. At the sight before them, their minds went blank, as though they were young children witnessing the horror of death.
Outside, the raindrops grew heavier, pattering against the wooden window with a soft whisper, delicate and gentle, like a woman blowing softly beside one's ear.
Prompted by that sound, someone finally snapped out of his daze and cried, "Good heavens!"
More voices followed:
"This can't be real!"
"How is that possible?"
"Oh! I must be seeing things..."
After these cries rang out one after another, the atmosphere in the room returned to normal.
The generals stepped forward, eyes wide, staring at Chu Zilian's severed head and body, at the expression frozen on his face, then at the red blood on the door. In the candlelight from the stone walls, faint dark streaks shimmered across the door, seemingly still giving off his body heat. A raw, potent smell, metallic and sweet, spread through the air.
"Qin Zihui!" someone finally shouted in anger.
He turned to Qin Zihui, who had calmly settled back into the wicker chair, and demanded in a roar, "Do you know what you've done?"
Beside him, Han Ling could no longer remain seated. He hurriedly rose, looking neither left nor right, fixing his gaze instead on the wooden, paper-covered window in the stone wall ahead, where rain pattered softly.
Under the five generals' icy stares, Qin Zihui spoke in an unusually gentle voice. "Calm yourself, General. Look, it's only a trivial matter. There's no reason to get so worked up."
"A trivial matter?! General Qin, surely you must be joking!" someone said furiously.
"You all heard him perfectly clearly just now. He told me to kill him, didn't he?" He tilted his head toward them, his expression as cold as a sword's edge, making