The Night Watcher of Great Jing - Chapter 26

The Imperial Prison, Pacification Office, Shengjing.

Even at noon, the Imperial Prison that struck terror throughout Great Jing remained damp and bitterly cold.

The smell of blood hung stagnant in the air.

Zhao Li sat inside one of the torture chambers. Several braziers had been piled around her feet, but they still could not drive the chill from her body.

“A-Li, why don’t you leave first? You are injured, and it is cold and damp here. Don’t let the chill harm your insides.”

Lu Zhao sat across from her, his voice full of concern.

Besides, Zhao Li was still a young woman. With her present, certain methods would be inconvenient to employ.

Zhao Li hugged a hot-water pouch.

Surrounded by the concentrated resentment and gloom of the Imperial Prison, she felt uncomfortable too.

But if one took a profession, one ought to commit to it. These were circumstances she needed to face. It was a matter of professional ethics.

“Don’t worry, Lord Lu. I’m no stranger to this sort of thing.”

Lu Zhao could not argue her out of it.

He waved, and two black-clad prison guards dragged Lin Lan in from outside and chained her to a wooden frame.

Her padded jacket and jewelry had already been removed. She wore only a thin undergarment.

At the sight, Provincial Graduate Wang, who had been tied to an interrogation chair nearby, made two agitated sounds through his gag.

His clothes were intact. Only his freedom had been taken.

Two filthy socks had been stuffed tightly into his mouth, leaving him unable to speak.

Lin Lan hung bound against the frame.

The Wang household was wealthy, and she was no longer the Baiyue slave who had once endured hunger and cold.

Unable to withstand the chill, she trembled continuously.

Yet she kept her head lowered and said nothing.

Zhao Li arched an eyebrow. By chance, she noticed that Lin Lan’s bowed posture had loosened her collar, exposing the smooth, carefully tended skin beneath.

Lu Zhao was about to summon the torturer when Zhao Li rose first.

“I will tell you nothing.”

Lin Lan turned her face away.

A moment later, she released a piercing scream.

White smoke rose with the stench of scorched flesh. Zhao Li removed the red-hot iron that had been pressed against Lin Lan’s neck, still sizzling.

She could be petty. Whenever she thought of Lin Yu, she could not bear the sight of this woman’s fair, unblemished skin.

Zhao Li casually tossed the branding iron, now stuck with red, charred flesh, back into the burning brazier.

Lu Zhao’s eyebrow jumped.

She truly was no stranger to this sort of thing. That had been a vicious move.

Lin Lan’s body convulsed and spasmed. It took a long time for her screaming to subside.

Feeling much better, Zhao Li retreated with her hot-water pouch in her arms.

“Lord Lu, she says she won’t confess. Your turn.”

So you simply wanted to brand her yourself?

The corner of Lu Zhao’s mouth twitched.

He had finally realized that this young woman was genuinely cut out for a career with the Jingning Guard.

Lu Zhao clapped his hands.

A middle-aged man with narrow, smiling eyes entered.

As he chatted amiably with Lin Lan, he took the instruments from the case he carried and arranged them one by one.

“I used to specialize in death by a thousand cuts. But His Majesty is merciful and rarely resorts to extreme punishments these days, so now I can only satisfy the occasional craving here in the Imperial Prison.”

The middle-aged man lifted a blade as thin as a cicada’s wing, smiling all the while.

“Madam, please look. This is the one that sits best in my hand. I can peel the skin from your face without touching the flesh underneath. I guarantee not a drop of blood will stain your collar.”

Lin Lan shuddered. Even Provincial Graduate Wang stopped making noise in his chair.

“And this!”

The man raised a pair of pliers. “Do these look like they are meant for pulling fingernails? No! The smaller pair beside them is for fingernails. These are specially made for teeth.”

“But what do we do with the bare gums after all the teeth have been pulled?”

“Use a branding iron? No, no, that would be far too barbaric. The prisoner might injure his tongue and lose the ability to speak. I normally have them bite down on cold iron.”

“It may look like only a small piece of metal, but when someone bites it with freshly emptied gums—ah, the pain is more than many a hardened man can endure.”

“And then there is this.” The smiling torturer drew out a spiral-shaped spike. “This is—”

“I’ll talk! I’ll talk!”

Before he could finish, Lin Lan collapsed.

She could not imagine what it would feel like to have any of the hundred-odd instruments used on her body.

“I was the one who planted Gu in Lin Yu and covered her face with festering sores. It was me.”

Once her defenses crumbled, Lin Lan confessed through streaming tears and mucus.

Provincial Graduate Wang began struggling again behind his gag. But Lin Lan had opened her mouth, and there was no taking the words back.

“But she killed herself because she could not accept it! I did not kill her!”

Lin Lan spoke frantically. It sounded less like a defense than an attempt to hypnotize herself into believing it.

“Wang-lang never wanted to marry her. He only had to because their marriage had been arranged before they were born.”

“Wang-lang told me he did not despise my Baiyue origins. If Lin Yu had not stood between us, he would have married me properly, with matchmakers and every betrothal rite.”

The clerk nearby hurriedly recorded her testimony.

As Lin Lan confessed, Provincial Graduate Wang went limp in his chair, despair covering his face.

Without the rope holding him up, he would almost certainly have collapsed to the floor.

“So you harmed the woman who rescued you from a brothel?”

After reading the full case file, Zhao Li had already formed suspicions and was not surprised by the truth.

What surprised her was how these two had lived happily ever after, having children and raising a family, without the slightest guilt.

“No. Lin Yu never truly wanted to save me.”

Lin Lan protested urgently, “If she sincerely wanted to save and help me, why did she make me her maid? Why did she make me serve her?”

The absurdity of the statement made Zhao Li, Lu Zhao, and the others want to laugh.

“If she did not make you a maid, was she supposed to recognize you as her father and kowtow to you every day?”

Zhao Li snatched up a rough clay teacup and hurled it.

Unfortunately, her body had not recovered. Her aim was poor, and she lacked strength. The cup struck the floor with a crack and shattered.

“Lin Yu said herself that she treated me like a sister!”

Lin Lan’s shrill voice echoed through the Imperial Prison’s dark corridors.

“She claimed we were sisters, yet she ordered me to pour tea and fetch water. She made me watch her happily embroider her wedding dress and prepare to marry Wang-lang.”

Zhao Li reached for another cup, but Lu Zhao beat her to it.

He grabbed the cup and threw it.

It struck Lin Lan squarely on the forehead with a crack, and blood streamed down her face.

“That is your reason for doing such a thing to her?”

Lu Zhao had seen Lin Yu’s corpse with his own eyes.

He had a daughter himself. He could not imagine how much suffering the young woman had endured in life and after death.

Every stitch in her wedding robes had embodied a girl’s most beautiful hopes for her future.

In the end, she had not even known why it happened or who had harmed her. Rumors had driven her to death.

She had been buried in haste and left to become a ghost ignorant of the truth.

And the same vile creature before him had spread those rumors.

Lu Zhao turned toward Provincial Graduate Wang.

He snatched up the teapot and flung it. The pot smashed into Wang’s face, covering him in blood. With a single cry, the man fainted.

The registrar’s family who later died in Fragrant Orchid Courtyard and the comrade who had been unjustly killed two days ago—all of it could be traced back to these two vermin.

“Lord Lu, calm down, calm down. You can drive bamboo slivers beneath her fingernails if you like. There is no need to make yourself ill with anger!”

Zhao Li hurried to soothe him.

After she spent some time talking Lu Zhao down, a prison guard woke Lin Lan with a basin of cold water.

“One last question. Do you recognize this Daoist?”

Zhao Li took a portrait from inside her robe.

She had sketched it from Old Yi’s description.

There might have been a few inaccuracies, but it was more than sufficient.

Lin Lan glanced at the portrait. She froze, then turned her eyes away.

“I don’t know him.”

Zhao Li had watched every shift in her expression.

Now she was certain Lin Lan knew the Daoist.

“Still dishonest.”

Zhao Li retreated a few steps and signaled to the middle-aged torturer.

“Leave her to me, Commander Zhao. You can rest easy!” The man’s face split into an enormous smile.

“Mm.”

Zhao Li nodded. This torturer seemed to be more than a little sadistic.

“That one too.”

She pointed at the unconscious Provincial Graduate Wang. “They are a couple united by true love. We cannot favor one over the other.”

As a provincial graduate, Wang possessed official status. Before Lin Lan confessed, they could not conveniently torture him.

Now that she had spoken, everything was much easier.

True love meant sharing hardship!

“Heh. Consider it done.”

The middle-aged torturer tucked his hands inside his sleeves and smiled like a narrow-eyed cat.

“I will make certain they understand that true devotion still exists in this world.”