The Night Watcher of Great Jing - Chapter 72

The bewildering rant from inside the torture chamber made Zhao Li pause before pushing the door open.

The first thing she saw was the tall, long-legged Sister Ying from yesterday, one brow raised high and a whip clutched in her hand.

Old Liu stood in front of her, trying to hold her back.

“Thousand-Household Commander Tan, Thousand-Household Commander Tan—calm down. Calm down.”

“He’s already injured. Don’t beat him to death.”

Only then did Tan Ying grit her teeth and fling the whip to the ground.

Zhao Li entered and saw a… lump of a man bound to the torture frame.

The three-foot dwarf remained covered in tangled dog skin.

Old Liu had patiently peeled the hide away from his head, revealing a deeply wrinkled skull.

Scars covered it. The creases were packed with muck formed from dried blood.

The stench reached them from across the room.

Zhao Li circled to the front. One look at his face made her close her eyes in disgust.

Tan Ying frowned when she saw her. “A-Li, why did you come? Don’t let this filthy thing foul your eyes.”

“I came to take a look, Sister Ying.”

Zhao Li greeted her and Old Liu.

Tan Ying’s words enraged the dwarf. He thrashed against his restraints.

“Whores! Shameless whores, both of you!”

The iron chains rattled continuously with his movements.

It took Zhao Li a moment to realize whom he was insulting.

She bent to pick up the whip Tan Ying had thrown down.

Old Liu and Tan Ying hurriedly stopped her.

Zhao Li sat at the table and glared at the dwarf.

Seeing that she did not torture him, he asked, “Have you fallen in love with me too?”

His barklike face held no trace of humor. He was completely serious.

Zhao Li immediately regretted coming. The disgust was like swallowing a fly.

“Did you get anything from him, Sister Ying?”

Zhao Li could not tell whether the dwarf was pretending or genuinely diseased in the head.

Tan Ying said nothing. She handed over a scroll containing his statement.

Zhao Li accepted it and read carefully. Her brow soon tightened.

The dwarf came from western Liaoning and had looked like this since childhood.

Even after reaching adulthood, he remained only three feet tall. He traveled from place to place with a performing troupe.

Most of his performances exploited his physical difference, forcing him to make ridiculous movements for the audience’s mockery.

From childhood, he had been exceptionally sensitive and paranoid. He dreamed only of rising above everyone else.

Thus, he turned to crime and used his small body to steal.

At first, everything went well, and he made a considerable fortune.

But even the surest horse stumbled. One day, the dwarf heard that the owner of a newly opened rice shop was extremely wealthy, and wicked ideas stirred in him.

He called together his accomplices, and they went to the shop at night.

They had expected a simple burglary. Instead, they stumbled into a powerful practitioner of evil arts.

All his accomplices were killed.

Only the dwarf was spared because of his short stature.

They stripped him naked, cut wounds the size of a child’s mouth all over his body, and used sorcery to wrap him in a layer of dog skin.

From that day forward, the dwarf became a dog.

He followed the White Lotus Sect and helped them commit one crime after another.

The pitiful young woman named A-Yin had been one of their victims.

Zhao Li snapped the statement shut, sickened.

The dwarf had been watching her the entire time. When he saw her expression, he suddenly grew agitated.

“Have you changed your heart?”

Zhao Li was now certain he was ill.

She calmed herself and watched him hanging from the torture frame, spraying spittle as he ranted.

“Old Liu, have you heard of water torture?”

Why should filth like this escape suffering merely because he was injured and they needed his testimony?

Old Liu paused. “Does Thousand-Household Commander Zhao mean the Paper Mask?”

The name sounded refined, but the punishment involved placing sheets of wet yellow paper over a prisoner’s face one at a time.

As the layers accumulated, the victim was smothered by the sensation of suffocation and drowning.

Old Liu thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No. Torturing this man now could easily kill him.”

Zhao Li shook her head as well. “Not the Paper Mask. Water-drop torture.”

She crooked a finger. Old Liu and Tan Ying both leaned closer.

A moment later, Old Liu asked dubiously, “Will that work?”

It did not sound particularly intimidating.

Zhao Li smiled with confidence. “We’ll know once we try.”

The arrangement of the torture chamber soon changed.

The muttering dwarf was laid flat on a wooden bed.

His hands, feet, body, and head were all strapped down so tightly that he could not move.

A bucket full of water hung above him.

There was an exceedingly tiny hole in its bottom.

Drops of water seeped through.

Once every breath, a drop struck the center of his forehead.

The gentle droplets seemed neither painful nor irritating.

The dwarf on the bed plainly took no notice. He continued muttering his filthy delusions.

They extinguished every light in the torture chamber and left him alone.

Water-drop torture was an exceptionally humane method, suitable for physically weak prisoners who could not endure severe punishment.

It did far more harm to the mind than to the body.

For people like the dwarf, however, damage to the mind was sometimes far more effective than injury to the flesh.

“Let’s go. We’ll have lunch and come back afterward,” Zhao Li said lightly to Tan Ying.

Old Liu refused to leave. Brimming with interest, he squatted outside the door and listened for changes in the dwarf’s condition.

The Pacification Office’s Imperial Prison had always faced a recurring difficulty.

From time to time, they encountered prisoners who could not be subjected to physical torture.

If this water-drop method worked, Old Liu would have another tool he could use freely.

At the thought, his eyes blazed with fervent light.

Zhao Li and Tan Ying both edged farther away from him.

In another chamber, the interrogation of Han Yun and Han Qi continued.

Lu Zhao and the others were there to handle it.

Zhao Li happily linked arms with Tan Ying and decided to skip work for lunch.

She greatly liked this valiant, dashing older woman.

Tan Ying liked Zhao Li’s temperament just as much.

They chatted constantly along the way.

Tan Ying had traveled widely and experienced much. She told Zhao Li many fascinating stories and cases.

Zhao Li, in turn, explained numerous taboos concerning supernatural incidents.

The two stayed together and idled away the entire afternoon. Only then did they return arm in arm to the Imperial Prison.

As they descended to the third underground level and rounded a corner, they heard a scream of utter despair.

“A-Yin! My lady! Spare me! Spare me!”

The throat-tearing cry sounded especially dreadful in the sinister underground prison.

They walked over and found a whole row of people outside the door.

Besides Lu Zhao and his group, there were several other familiar faces.

Clearly, everyone working in the torture chambers had emerged to watch the excitement when they heard the screaming.

At the sight of Zhao Li, they all gave her strangely stunned looks.

None of them had ever imagined that a tiny, harmless drop of water could produce such an effect.

Only Old Liu continued listening to the dwarf’s screams while writing furiously in a small notebook.

“Water-drop torture uses rhythmic droplets directed at the most sensitive point in the center of the forehead, forcing the victim to concentrate on them.”

“In darkness, all emotion becomes infinitely magnified. Anxiety, terror, and the ghosts within a person’s own heart are drawn out, producing an exceptionally powerful torment.”

Old Liu snapped his notebook shut and looked earnestly at Zhao Li.

“Thousand-Household Commander Zhao, this Old Liu has been blind to the wider world. You’re the true master.”

Against the backdrop of the dwarf’s screams, Old Liu raised a thumb high in Zhao Li’s direction.