Chapter 37: The Night the King Died
More than ten years ago, a severe famine struck the country.
At the time, the Crown Prince discovered that relief grain meant for the people was disappearing before reaching them.
He pushed for an investigation.
Soon, the names of the Chief State Councilor and several ministers loyal to him appeared.
Cornered, the Chief State Councilor fabricated a treason case accusing the Crown Prince's followers of plotting to remove the King.
Those who had been investigating the missing relief grain suddenly became traitors.
Before torture, their testimonies contained only references to warehouses and grain.
After torture, their written confessions suddenly included claims that they'd planned to depose the King.
One low-ranking official involved in the investigation noticed that the two sets of testimony didn't match.
The dates on the confessions and even the signatures of the officials in charge were inconsistent.
He submitted a report claiming the investigation records had been fabricated.
The report was buried.
The official was accused of disobeying orders and obstructing the investigation.
He was dismissed, imprisoned, and died in prison before an official judgment could be given.
His son later became a military officer guarding the royal palace.
Because his father had never officially been declared a traitor, the son was still permitted to enter government service.
Even so, his father's past constantly blocked his advancement.
The military officer hated the Chief State Councilor who had fabricated the case.
He also couldn't forgive the King, who knew the case had suspicious elements yet refused to order another investigation.
At the time, the King had feared the Crown Prince's growing power.
He feared the court would split in two and the throne itself would become unstable.
In the end, he refused to reopen the case.
The Crown Prince was deposed.
Those who followed him were killed or sent into exile.
The Chief State Councilor survived.
More than ten years later, another famine struck.
The King ordered grain from the royal warehouses to be sent to the provinces.
But the amount that left the warehouses didn't match the amount that reached the people.
The Chief State Councilor reported it as ordinary transportation loss.
The King did not believe him.
Without informing the Chief State Councilor, he ordered a secret audit.
Investigators found a warehouse belonging to merchants who had traded with the Chief State Councilor's family for years.
Inside, they discovered not only current ledgers but another set of double books from more than a decade earlier.
The merchants had kept them because they needed records to settle illegal transactions.
The books revealed that both the old and current relief grain had disappeared through the same warehouses and transportation network.
The King ordered the files from the old treason case brought to him as well.
When the ledger dates were compared with the old investigation records, the sequence became clear.
The treason case began while the Crown Prince was investigating stolen relief grain.
The ministers under investigation escaped punishment.
Instead, the people investigating them were declared traitors.
The King also found the report written by the military officer's father, which had been categorized as a discarded document.
The evidence alone couldn't prove every crime committed by the Chief State Councilor.
But it was enough to suspend the authority of the ministers involved and reopen both the old treason case and the current relief-grain theft.
The King decided to announce a royal decree at the dawn court assembly the following morning.
The Chief State Councilor and the ministers connected to him would be suspended from duty.
Both cases would be reinvestigated.
The King also intended to summon the deposed Crown Prince back to the palace and have him personally testify about what happened.
There was a reason he didn't immediately arrest the Chief State Councilor in the middle of the night.
For years, the Chief State Councilor had planted loyal men throughout the court and the palace guard.
If the King secretly arrested him before revealing the evidence, his faction could resist and launch a coup.
So the King planned to reveal the decree first at the dawn court assembly, where ministers and military commanders would all be gathered.
At the same time, troops loyal to the King would wait outside the palace.
The King entrusted his eldest daughter, the Princess, with bringing the deposed Crown Prince back.
The Princess was the deposed Crown Prince's half-sister and the young Prince's biological sister.
She went to the private residence where the deposed Crown Prince lived, carrying the King's sealed letter and an official order permitting him to enter the palace.
But the deposed Crown Prince didn't trust the King.
The Princess told him she hadn't come to promise his restoration.
"His Majesty is reopening the old case. He wants you to personally testify about what happened."
The deposed Crown Prince eventually returned to the palace with her.
Royal guards chosen by the King and the Princess's attendants escorted them.
After curfew, the group entered through the western gate by presenting the sealed order.
The deposed Crown Prince and the Princess waited for the King's summons in a detached palace building in the western district.
The King's plan was secret.
But not every trace of its execution could be hidden.
Orders to retrieve records from the old treason case.
A historian summoned in the middle of the night.
The royal seal being moved to the King's side hall.
And the record showing the Princess's procession passing through the western gate after curfew.
A low-ranking official in the Royal Secretariat who had been bribed by the Chief State Councilor reported these movements.
The Chief State Councilor connected the pieces one by one.
The King had reopened an old treason case.
He had summoned a historian and the royal seal late at night.
The Princess had even brought an unidentified man into the palace.
The Chief State Councilor concluded that the King planned to announce measures against him the next morning.
The unidentified man brought by the Princess was most likely the deposed Crown Prince.
He didn't know exactly what the decree said.
But he moved first.
He threatened an official from the Royal Medical Office using the man's family.
Then he ordered a palace-guard commander allied with him to transfer part of the night guard toward the King's side hall and the palace gates.
If the King suddenly collapsed, they were to seal the palace and secure everyone who had been near him.
The Chief State Councilor believed he could remove the King before the decree was finished.
But he was one step too late.
The King was already dictating the decree to a young historian inside a small side hall beside his bedchamber.
Inside were the King, the historian, the Chief Eunuch, and an official responsible for the royal seal.
The King didn't only record the Chief State Councilor's crimes.
He also ordered the historian to write down his own responsibility.
More than ten years earlier, he had received reports that the case might have been fabricated.
But in the name of maintaining stability in the court, he had refused to reopen the investigation.
He ordered the cases of those unjustly punished, including the military officer's father, to be reviewed.
The historian finished the decree.
The King pressed the royal seal onto it.
Immediately afterward, poisoned medicine entered the room.
The King drank it and collapsed.
The Chief Eunuch ordered a eunuch outside to call the Royal Medical Office.
But armed soldiers reached the side hall before any physician.
They were soldiers transferred in advance by the palace-guard commander allied with the Chief State Councilor.
Claiming they needed to protect the King, they demanded that the door be opened.
They also demanded that the historian and all documents written inside be handed over.
The Chief Eunuch refused.
People claiming to have come to save the King were more interested in the documents and the historian than in the King's condition.
He locked the front door from inside.
As the soldiers began breaking it down, the Chief Eunuch placed the royal decree, copies of the ledgers, and the military officer's father's report inside a document pouch.
He handed it to the historian.
The historian escaped through a service door at the back of the side hall.
The Chief Eunuch and the official responsible for the royal seal shoved furniture against the front entrance.
By the time the Chief State Councilor's soldiers broke through the door, the historian was already gone.
The Chief Eunuch refused to reveal which direction he'd fled.
He was killed inside the hall.
The King died soon afterward.
The royal-seal official was captured.
The Chief State Councilor's men searched the hall but couldn't find the newly completed document.
All they managed to learn from the captured official was that the King had stamped one document with the royal seal.
The official himself had not read its contents.
Only then did the Chief State Councilor realize that a completed royal document existed and that the historian had escaped with it.
He still didn't know what had been written inside.
Using the excuse that the King was critically ill, the Chief State Councilor ordered every palace gate closed.
He did not announce the King's death.
Instead, he declared that the historian had stolen a royal document and fled.
He ordered the palace searched for both the historian and everything he carried.
If the man who had entered with the Princess really was the deposed Crown Prince, he needed to be eliminated as well.
But the Chief State Councilor didn't know exactly which detached palace the deposed Crown Prince was staying in.
He ordered the entire western district sealed and the detached palaces searched one by one.
Meanwhile, the historian escaped toward the western district.
But guards had already multiplied at every path through the palace.
The military officer patrolling the western district spotted him.
The two weren't strangers.
In the past, the military officer had visited the Office of Royal Historians searching for records connected to his father's case.
The historian had refused because the rules prohibited him from revealing them.
The military officer remembered him as someone who blindly followed rules without understanding reality.
The historian knew that the officer had never given up on his father's case.
Now the officer had received orders to capture the historian accused of stealing the King's document.
The historian told him that if he was dragged before the Chief State Councilor, he would die and the document would disappear.
The military officer didn't believe him.
So the historian finally opened the document pouch.
Inside the material attached to the decree, the officer found his father's name and handwriting.
The documents stated that his father wasn't a criminal who had interfered with the investigation.
He had been trying to expose fabrication.
The decree also recorded that the King had received his report but had refused to order a reinvestigation.
The military officer wasn't moved by the King's late confession.
The King had known.
And for more than ten years, he'd done nothing.
But if this document disappeared too, his father would remain a criminal forever.
The military officer released the historian.
Not for the King.
He did it to finish the work his father couldn't.
At the same time, the Princess noticed that the guards around the detached palace had changed.
Unknown palace-guard soldiers were entering the western district instead of the royal guards the King had assigned.
One royal guard she had sent out returned.
He reported that the path toward the King's side hall had been blocked and that soldiers were searching the detached palaces.
The Princess realized something had happened to the King.
Before the soldiers arrived, she led the deposed Crown Prince out through a servants' passage behind the detached palace.
Some of the royal guards remained behind to delay the search party.
The historian and the military officer met the Princess and the deposed Crown Prince along a western corridor.
The historian told them that the King had died after drinking poisoned medicine.
Then he showed them the completed decree.
The deposed Crown Prince read it.
