Chapter 256: Side Story 16 – An Opening Gambit

"Peasant filth should remain content to serve their betters! Only those who had proven their nobility, be it by blood or deeds, should have the right to command others! Placing a filthy peasant above a born noble is an affront to the natural order itself!" - From a petition of Wang Chang-Hui, High Magistrate of Tian-Mao Isle in Al-Shan Empire, circa FP 628.

By the spring of the new year, a mere after the tournament and her official induction into the Empire's military - directly as an officer, no less - Rafiqa bey Leung had seen enough schemers, sycophants, and bootlickers to sicken her to the core.

 

To be fair, they were but a tiny minority in the military hierarchy. The vast majority of the military were just simple, honest folks who held their position - no matter how lowly - with pride and did their best. Sadly, that minority also happened to be very vocal, and quite justifiably, ostracized against.

 

It had not escaped Rafiqa's attention that most of that minority were either descendants of nobles connected or part of the traditionalist faction, or otherwise related to them. She might not be into politics, but she was also well aware of her parents' stance, and how they were completely against the traditionalists' views.

 

After all, their relationship itself would have been considered taboo on multiple counts under those views.

 

While she mostly had to deal with sycophants and bootlickers - an eventuality she had long prepared for, given her identity - others who were inducted along with her had been hassled by schemers who tried to bring them down for personal benefits of political reasons.

 

Ying Xiao, the champion of the tournament, had been the one harassed the most, and many unsavory rumors circulated about her. Rumors that stated lies like how she supposedly gained her position by spreading her legs for her superior, or even worse slander.

 

Naturally, Rafiqa had known of the girl's past. As the Marshall of the army, it was her father's duty to investigate the backgrounds of those inducted into the military, especially those who received higher positions.

 

The information they gathered was never considered confidential, and mostly served to weed potential spies and enemy agents. In Ying Xiao's case… Her background was quite easily found, an unflattering one, a tale that had filled Rafiqa with secondhand rage when she heard of it, even if those involved in the tale had long received their much-needed execution in a gruesome way.

 

Where Rafiqa and her sisters and her father Mustafa - father Zhang had already known of the story, since he was directly involved with the incident - had shed tears when they thought of the hardships the girl must have been through and applauded her determination to carry on, others had thought otherwise.

 

Others had disparaged Ying Xiao, calling her all sorts of names behind her backs, claiming her filthy antecedent rendered her unfit to serve in any high capacity. They had first done so to her face, but they quickly learnt a lesson the hard way from that.

 

It turned out that the military had no disciplinary punishments if one of them were to cripple another for uttering insults that were "intolerable" so long as there were witnesses. With how the commoners outnumbered those of noble descent massively in the army, Ying Xiao easily found witnesses sympathetic to her story.

 

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Needless to say, after the first noble retainer who called her a "Tainted whore's whelp" to her face ended up with a dishonorable discharge because he could no longer serve with all the bones in his arms and legs broken into hundreds of fine shards and his family jewels shattered much like an egg that struck a rock, nobody else dared utter such words to her face.

 

One officer who was of the traditionalist faction had called for Ying Xiao to be punished, but was almost infuriated to death instead. All the other officers at the trial were either of commoner birth or else firmly in the emperor's faction.

 

Many of them had lamented that if it had been them, they would have killed the offender instead, or at least would have taken the rod as well, not just the balls. They "reprimanded" her for showing too kind and merciful a hand to one that had not deserved it, all with large smiles on their faces that they had not bothered to hide at all.

 

All the incident caused was to increase her popularity instead, as the commoners in the military heard of and sympathized with her tale, and firmly supported her. Those who disliked her - again, a minority, if a loud one - were reduced to spreading rumors amongst themselves behind the backs of everyone else, for the commoners were all too happy to be given a justifiable reason to best up some uppity nobles or their stooges.

 

Despite being of the nobility herself, Rafiqa found that she stood firmly on the young girl's side. She had befriended the quiet, taciturn girl over the past year, as they happened to be assigned to the same unit, partly by way of being stubborn enough to spar again and again with her despite repeated trouncings.

 

Most others who sparred with the young girl, including instructors who had tried to "correct" her fighting style, gave up quickly after a thorough trouncing or three. It was too much humiliation for them to handle. What joke was it for one who cannot even defeat another to presume to correct the other's form?

 

That form in question had been a mystery to Rafiqa and many others. Where most everyone in the Empire trained in a fighting style that emphasized solid defense and measured counterattacks, whoever taught - and Rafiqa was certain the girl was taught by another, not self-taught - Ying Xiao had apparently believed in a diametrically opposite approach to fighting.

 

Ying Xiao's fighting style was one of unrelenting, vicious aggression, where one would sacrifice flesh to cut bone on a regular basis. It was the literal antithesis to the fighting favored in Al-Shan. And most important of all, it worked.

 

Rafiqa had seen the young girl spar with - and trounce - uncle Ishmael, widely considered the best spearman in the Empire. Nobody tried to correct Ying Xiao's form after that fight, and instead, some had started to emulate her fighting style, if clumsily.

 

For her own part, Rafiqa, as Ying Xiao's regular sparring partner - or sandbag, some said - felt that she had improved quite a bit through her spars with the younger, smaller girl. She verified that on a rare occasion where she and father Zhang happened to have a free day together and sparred with her.

 

Usually Rafiqa would be happy to win one out of ten spars against her father. She won four out of ten bouts that day. Even her father admitted that she had improved greatly, and that had elated her to no end.

 

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