Chapter 574 (2/2)

“If you ask me, once you’ve started, you should make sure you finish it cleanly,” Morani advised him. “You’ve already killed tens of thousands; twenty thousand more shouldn’t be a problem. If you stop now, this matter ultimately won’t be properly taken care of, and that wouldn’t be good at all.”

Sui Xiong was thrown off by that and stared at him suspiciously.

“Shouldn’t you be telling me not to kill them?” he asked.

Morani laughed and shook his head. “If you hadn’t begun to kill them, then, of course, I would have suggested you refrain from doing so. But since you’ve already killed so many, regardless of what you feel or think, you have a responsibility now to see the matter through to its conclusion, finishing it properly and neatly.”

Sui Xiong was silent for a moment; then he quietly let out a sigh.

True, dealing with Isis was his responsibility. If he spared a few of them just because he’d gotten a little reluctant, wouldn’t those earlier people have died a little too unfairly, especially those who hadn’t committed any crimes worth dying for?

“Your Majesty, if you find it inconvenient, let me help!” The God of Medicine, Arcaian, volunteered himself after seeing Sui Xiong so depressed. “I can seal them all away; then whenever they need killing, you can pull them out to kill.”

Sui Xiong shook his head, saying, “People aren’t goods, you can’t treat them like that.”

Just then, Yorgaardman—who’d been silent all this time—suddenly spoke up, “Well then, how about I plead leniency on their behalf?”

He smiled under everyone’s astonished gazes and continued, “Brother, you’ve already killed so many; those with a heavy blood debt were killed long ago, and all that’s left now are accomplices and the like. Just speaking from a legal point of view, between killable and un-killable, is there really a need to kill every last one of them? Consider giving them a way out, on my behalf.”

Sui Xiong was a little bewildered as he asked, “Elder Brother, following your personality, shouldn’t you be cheering me on to kill them?”

Yorgaardman let out a bitter laugh, “Don’t make fun of me, I really did cheer you on at first. But after a while, the people you killed had lighter and lighter crimes, and I slowly started to feel that something wasn’t quite right. Now, here you are discussing how to execute twenty thousand people who really don’t deserve execution. The more I listened, the more inappropriate this felt to me, and now I’ve finally figured out where the problem is.”

“Where is it?” asked Sui Xiong.

“Justice shouldn’t be limitless,” Yorgaardman said. “For instance, let’s say someone bands together with some henchmen, slanders a young girl by saying she’s a demon who brings disaster, and then burns her to death. This person would, of course, deserve to die, as would those who helped him forge the evidence, excite the populace, and build the wood pile on which to burn her. But as for those surrounding people who cheered on the proceedings, would they really deserve to die?”

Sui Xiong thought on this, then said, “From the point of view of the victim, they deserve to die, because they’re accomplices as well. But from the point of view of an unrelated third party, they don’t deserve to die, because they didn’t actually do anything.”

“That’s right, an overwhelming majority of those twenty thousand leftover people are also no more than supporters, or people who helped add to the noise. Though they may have participated in a good many acts of persecution, they ultimately never actually killed anyone. The way I see it, their crimes aren’t deserving of death.”

Sui Xiong nodded slightly, then spoke again, “But if they don’t die, then how can I console those lost souls who were persecuted to death? If ‘crimes not deserving of death’ is enough to leave them alive, then what can we say about those who were killed without any crimes at all?”

Yorgaardman let out a heavy sigh, “That’s why I said I was ‘pleading leniency.’ It’s all well and good as long as you spare their lives, there’s no problem with other forms of punishment… anything is fine, just try not to kill them.”

Sui Xiong thought for a long while, before finally sighing.

“I now understand why you’re so good at fighting. You have such brains, yet you managed to muddle your way to being all alone in the world.”

Yorgaardman of course had understood this long ago and smiled bitterly without a reply.

Sui Xiong laughed, speaking no more on that subject. Then he began discussing with everyone the best way to enforce punishment.

After a while, his voice resounded before the chief seat, “As the God of Justice, His Majesty Yorgaardman, has pleaded leniency, I’ve decided to cease execution of the remaining lower-level Isis members ahead of schedule. But though they are exempted from capital punishment, they cannot escape punishment entirely; I will have these people sent to the Kingdom of Dwarfs in the Mountain of Broken Cloud, where the dwarves will see them reeducated through hard labor!”