Sun Taishou unhurriedly looked her over, then personally stuffed both her legs into the bronze box-boards, securing them in place, leaving only two long, slender leather cords dangling on the outside.
Xiao Nanhui couldn’t tell from the outside what torturous implements were concealed within the box-boards — which made it all the more agonizing. It seemed Sun Taishou’s interrogation methods were far more practiced than she had imagined.
Pan Mei’er stepped forward, toying with the two beads threaded on the leather cords, that smile never leaving her face.
Xiao Nanhui almost suspected this woman was simply born wearing that expression, because she genuinely could not understand what there was to smile about in the present circumstances.
“What is your name?”
The other woman had spoken. Xiao Nanhui licked her cracked lips. “Yao’er.”
“Yao’er?” Pan Mei’er’s voice hovered above her head. “You have quite an interesting face.”
She continued brazenly: “Yes — people have said since I was small that I look like the merciful Bodhisattva in the temple.”
“A Bodhisattva?” A cold, hard hand seized her jaw from below, forcing her to look up. “Then look at me — do I resemble a Bodhisattva?”
Xiao Nanhui blinked.
She’d been too far away to see clearly at the banquet earlier. Now that she was close, she found she had no desire to look at all. If any temple’s Bodhisattva looked like this, the incense money would be the least of their worries — lightning would probably strike the temple flat.
Either way, she had no intention of telling a single truth today. She might as well keep up the act.
“Yes.”
The grip on her jaw released, and Pan Mei’er let out a strange laugh, unlike any of her previous tones.
“Not only is your face interesting — your words are interesting too. I’ll give you an easy way out. If there’s anything you’d like to say, you might as well say it now.”
“What would Fortress Chief Pan like to hear?”
Pan Mei’er’s fingers worked nimbly at the leather cord, tying knots. “Why don’t you start with whose dog you are. As you know, even a dog has its own territory. When a dog doesn’t stay put in its own territory but wanders into someone else’s, it’s inevitably going to get bitten. Would you agree?”
Xiao Nanhui was quiet for a moment, then lifted her head and looked at Pan Mei’er with a grin.
“I don’t keep dogs. Not a single word the Fortress Chief says makes any sense to me.”
The smile and coquetry vanished from Pan Mei’er’s face in an instant. Like a tiger shedding its human skin, her true nature showed itself — she gave a violent yank on the long cord in her hand.
With a piercing metallic screech, two rows of iron-toothed steel spikes shot out from both sides of the box-boards, clamping down firmly on Xiao Nanhui’s anklebones. Every spike pierced through flesh and embedded into bone.
A gut-wrenching pain surged through her. She clenched her teeth tight, yet fractured cries still churned in her throat.
Wu Xiaoliu stood to one side, watching blankly, his face gradually draining of all color.
The smile returned to Pan Mei’er’s face. Her long, hard fingernails scraped across the two iron clamps, drawing out a grating sound. “Oh my — judging by that reaction, she really has had some training.”
Xiao Nanhui knew today was bound to end badly, which paradoxically removed all hesitation. She looked up at Pan Mei’er and smiled back. “Fortress Chief Pan had better put a bit more force into it. If you can manage to crush the bone entirely, I’ll save money on shoes from now on.”
Even for someone who had witnessed many varied interrogation scenes, Pan Mei’er’s face twisted for just a moment.
Sun Taishou to one side maintained the same expressionless face throughout. He raised a hand and ladled out a dark liquid from the large vat beside him — a black, glistening mass that had been steeped in some kind of medicinal herb — and poured it directly over Xiao Nanhui’s anklebones.
The liquid seeped bit by bit into the broken wounds, amplifying every previous pain in an instant. This time agony outpaced reason — she heard her own screams echoing through the sealed chamber, continuing until her strength gave out.
Wu Xiaoliu stood watching the whole time. At first his face was blank, then his body began to tremble violently, until at last he could hold himself up no longer and collapsed to the ground.
His knees had gone soft. He dragged himself forward with great effort, his voice coming out in broken, stuttering fragments: “My — my lord, she only did it for money. She lost her head and helped that Tian Family woman elope with an outside man. You are a magnanimous lord — spare her this once—”
Sun Taishou tossed the empty ladle back into the vat, maintaining the same thin-smiled, cold-eyed expression: “Little Six, you’re an honest man — you shouldn’t be mixed up in these matters. The situation is unsettled right now. Tiancheng hasn’t been sparing any effort to gather intelligence on Bijiang, so we need to take precautions, lest those with ulterior motives slip in and cause trouble later. Wouldn’t the Bai Family and I suffer together?”
Sun Taishou’s words drove straight at Xiao Nanhui’s identity like a long lance, but the pain that had seized her body in that moment left her unable to form a rebuttal.
What surged through her mind instead was the image of Tian Wei’er and Jia Han’s retreating figures, disappearing into a sky full of drifting yellow sand.
She had always wondered: why did this world so often have more villains than good people? Why did the wicked live long while the virtuous died young?
Actually, the answer was simple: being a good person came with a price.
That truth she hadn’t understood before. Now, at last, she did.
“Why have you gone quiet? Weren’t you such an interesting person just a moment ago?”
Pan Mei’er’s face hovered before her, still wearing that smile — though the smile was thoroughly twisted.
From the pain, sweat poured down her face. The ginger-mixed kudzu root powder she had applied earlier had mostly dissolved, turning into murky droplets that fell before her eyes along with the sweat.
She forced her mind to start working again. A bold idea broke through her reason and pushed its way out.
She gasped, struggling with great effort to control her tongue and keep it from going disobedient from the pain. “Lord Sun, as for who I am — you ought to ask Fortress Chief Pan.”
Sun Taishou’s fleshy face finally registered a different expression.
“Oh? Fortress Chief Pan — do you know who she is?”
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