Rat Imperial Guard#

Yin prevails, yang's essence fades, Adorned in finery, blades parade. Once malice stirs within the heart, Words become weapons, tearing apart.

Since the Yellow Wind King had sequestered himself within the valley, his hoarded treasures were left to the care of his trusted minions. One day, when a purple-gold incensory vanished from the half-emptied storeroom, the rumor of theft, once a mere murmur, built into a raucous clamor, until the rat guai who guarded the storeroom was finally accused of pilfering from his own charge.

The tale reached the ears of the Rat Imperial Guards. Clad in crimson, they were the secret imperial enforcers. They went to interrogate the rat guard, hoping for a share of the spoils; but the humiliated guard was found lifeless, his neck wedged in a noose, dangling in his cell.

With his death, the gossipmongers painted the Imperial Guards as vilifiers of the innocent, coercing false confessions. With no means to defend themselves, the Imperial Guards launched a thorough inquiry, desperate to clear their names. Fortune struck when they unearthed the incensory within the nest of the rat guard's apprentice. The crowd's scorn shifted, branding the young apprentice a betrayer and avaricious soul.

Yet, in the face of the Imperial Guards' iron grip, the apprentice unfurled a new thread of the story; the incensory had been pilfered by the Civet Sergeant, as a tribute to the Tiger Vanguard. It was the apprentice who, learning of his master's unjust fate, dared to retrieve it in secret. Verified by the Imperial Guards, the tale swayed public sentiment once more, from jeers to praise. But whispers are like a fickle breeze. Soon, it was murmured that the thieving Chief acted not out of greed, but out of a son's duty; to rescue his mother from the bowels of the Tiger Temple. The crowds murmured anew, their judgment as shifting as the sands.

Alas, what is a grain of truth in a desert of tales? Actions taken in the cloak of shadows are often proclaimed in light as something else entirely.

Perhaps it is the angle from which we plead our cause that crafts a different truth. And when a truth finds the light, it is often because some prefer an audience blind to the rest of the story.