Finally he said:

"If today Your Majesty should kill me, an innocent man, then people would say: `The King would rather be deceived than believe his own bodyguard.'"

The King of Chu was very angry. He ordered to have the archer beheaded. The archer said:

"Of course, it is."

Upon hearing this, the archer snatched the medicine, stuffed it into his mouth and swallowed it.

While the King of Chu heard this, he felt that there was something in what the archer said, so he let him go.

As the guard held the medicine in both hands and walked towards the inner palace, he met an archer of the bodyguard. The archer asked him:

There was, a man who came to the palace of the State of Chu and gave the guard a kind of medicine for immortality to be presented to the king.

"It is not my fault but the fault of the guard, because he told me `It is edible.' "

Then he continued:

"This is a medicine for immortal life. Now I have taken it, but I am going to be killed by Your Majesty. Then, the so-called medicine for immortal life will become `a medicine hastening death', won't it? The man who presented this medicine was trying to deceive Your Majesty."

The guard answered:

"Is what you hold in hands edible?"