The Nation Falls: I Aim My Gun at the Governor’s Residence and Demand My Adoptive Father’s Death!

On the twenty-ninth day of the twelfth lunar month, I poured three cups of wine for my adoptive father with my own hands.

The first was to thank him for raising me for ten years. The second was to thank him for promoting me.

The third was for the fire ten years ago, when he wiped out my entire family, all twenty-three of them.

My name is Shen Jinglan, the sharpest blade of Shen Shixiong, the military governor of the Northern Frontier.

For ten years, I kept my head down and served him as his most loyal dog. I bit whomever he ordered, guarded his cities, and helped him build this vast estate.

Everyone said Marshal Shen was a righteous man, and that taking in an orphan like me was a great act of kindness.

Until I shot him through the brow in front of his comrades from three provinces, his concubines, and his own son.

Later, the histories recorded that I “rose to power by patricide, slaughtered my brothers to seize their estate, and stole the country.”

They wrote that I “used my army to defy the court, carved out territory for myself, and deserved to die by a thousand cuts.”

But they also wrote:

“In the winter of the Bingwu year, Shen Jinglan settled the Northern Frontier with a single shot. Ten years of war ended that day.”

“Millions across the three provinces beyond the passes lived because of him.”

I don’t care what they write.

I only know that if I hadn’t fired that night, more than the twenty-three members of the Shen family would have died.