บท 23: Dumping the Corpse
บรรณาธิการ: Transn
After the knife was plunged into the bed, Gu Shenwei immediately turned his body to dodge.
Gu Shenwei had practiced this action numerous times. At the last moment, though he maintained his feeling of urgency, all his muscles became stiff, as if his mind was occupied by an evil spirit. He moved slowly, like in a nightmare.
His blood flowed uncontrollably into his head, and his limbs were much weaker than he had expected.
Eventually, Gu Shenwei got out from under the bed and saw Slave Xie huddle on the ground with his face buried in his arms, his thin naked body shivering.
The sight of Slave Xie looking so terrified made Gu Shenwei calm down. Gu Shenwei disentangled himself from his nightmare. Immediately, he stood up and jumped onto the bed. His moves were agile, as if he were an experienced master in Lightness Skills.
He used all his strength to press down on the pillow. The man under it seemed to be both struggling and, at the same time, totally unresponsive.
After quite a while, Gu Shenwei found that another person was pressing on the pillow with him.
Slave Qi was also naked. As he exerted his strength with every muscle, his face was distorted, his eyes bulged out, almost falling to the point of popping out, and his teeth clenched his lower lip, which was starting to bleed.
Suddenly, Gu Shenwei felt frightened and gently pushed Slave Qi. "Alright, he's dead."
Slave Qi had used up all his strength. He was not as tough and firm as he looked. With the gentle touch, he instantly sat on the bed and open his mouth blankly, saying a word in his own language. It sounded meaningless to Gu Shenwei.
Han Shiqi was dead.
Gu Shenwei removed the pillow. His enemy was staring at them, but could hardly recognize him.
Han Shiqi was stark naked as well. The ugly thing between his legs had turned impotently to the side. Slave Xie held a dagger and rushed over to chop it off.
Gu Shenwei hastily jumped off of the bed and stopped the impulsive Slave Xie just in time. "Watch out, no more blood."
Gu Shenwei crawled under the bed again to dismantled the hilt. Slave Qi and Slave Xie had settled their minds and slowly lifted up the corpse together until the sharp knife was completely taken out from the seam of the bed, and then they turned the corpse around.
Though many unforeseen incidents had occurred, this assassination had gone more perfectly than they had imagined.
That sharp knife had pierced precisely into Han Shiqi's heart. He had died with hardly a struggle. He had even lost little blood, leaving only a tiny stain on the covers.
In the flicker of the candlelight, the three teenagers beheld the dead in silence, as if they were offering their condolences or appreciating a masterpiece.
After a while, they began to do their own tasks as pre-arranged in the plan.
Slave Qi and Slave Xie put on their clothes. One of them went to check the situation outside while the other left to pack up Han Shiqi's belongings with Gu Shenwei, including several pieces of clothes, a dagger, a stiletto knife, a killer waist token, several small bottles, a handkerchief, and other sundries.
The killer waist token was an oval flavescent jade stone, imprinted with a simple bird and the character "Jue".
With this waist token, one could visit lots of places in Golden Roc Fort. Gu Shenwei wanted to keep it, but gave that up after hesitating for a while. As he was just a teenager, attempting to show the killer waist token would bring more trouble than it was worth.
"You can take it. It's your trophy."
Slave Qi pulled the stiletto knife and small bottles close to his chest. According to the tradition of their clan, all of the dead's possessions belonged to the one who had done the killing.
Gu Shenwei shook his head, put the waist token with the rest of the belongings, and rolled them into a ball. "It's too dangerous. We'd better not keep his things."
"If we stay here with them, it'll be dangerous. But it won't be if we run away."
Slave Qi spoke confidently and seemed to have a plan, which he had never mentioned before. While Gu Shenwei was about to ask him, Slave Xie came back and nodded to them, indicating that everything was alright outside and they should carry the corpse away.
The three teenagers carried the corpse together. The brothers each held one foot of the corpse while Gu Shenwei held the head. They quietly walked to Ghost Cliff outside the western door with the belongings placed on top of the corpse.
Slave Xie had already opened the yard door to ensure they could get out smoothly.
Gu Shenwei was mostly worried about the mysterious night watchman, but they were lucky tonight. No night watchmen showed themselves the entire way that they carried the corpse to the gate. Ghost Cliff was a precipice. There was no need for guards, and therefore, they were safe for the time being.
The teenagers of Firewood Yard had all carried corpses, but Han Shiqi was quite heavier than any of those. Still a dozen steps away from the edge of the cliff, Slave Xie was already worn out and could not help stooping down.
Slave Qi and Gu Shenwei glanced at each other and slowly put down the corpse together. They felt exhausted. No matter how hard they tried, they could not bring themselves to finish the last few steps.
The sharp knife still remained in the back of the corpse with only a sliver exposed that could barely be seen in the moonlight.
Gu Shenwei thought that it was a mistake to take a rest and they should dispose of the corpse as soon as possible. When he stooped to pick up the corpse, it suddenly grasped his ankle!
The strength of the grip was as strong as an iron hoop.
Gu Shenwei's blood boiled and then directly froze into ice. At that moment, he felt that his spirit was outside of his body.
Slave Qi and Slave Xie were stupefied at first, but then pounced on Han Shiqi together. The elder brother pulled out the sharp knife and haphazardly stabbed with all his strength.
The corpse gave no response.
Gu Shenwei pushed Slave Qi away, disentangled himself from Han Shiqi's grip, and turned over the corpse to observe carefully.
This was still a corpse, just with a little effusion of blood around the corners of his mouth. Nevertheless, Gu Shenwei did not know why it had grasped the ankle of its murderer and whether it had been alive while grasping.
Gu Shenwei's spirit came back to him. It seemed to have been purified while it was absent. While it was gone, he had been cool-headed, like a coroner performing an autopsy.
He checked Han Shiqi's breath and touched his chest for a while. Part of him wished that Han Shiqi would still be alive, so that he could ask about his sister's whereabouts as well as the reason why Golden Roc Fort had slaughtered the Gu family.
"Is he really dead?" Slave Xie whispered. His face paled, whiter than the moonlight.
"Yes."
The three teenagers no longer had the strength to carry the corpse, whereupon they rolled it together to finish the last dozen steps and pushed it off the cliff with its belongings.
No matter if Han Shiqi was dead or alive, he would not be coming back.
"What next?"
Gu Shenwei asked. Slave Qi and Slave Xie obviously had thought it through much more than he had and already had a plan to cope with the aftermath.
Slave Qi, whose hands were stained with blood, appeared panicked and irritable, as if he would blow up if someone provoked him even slightly.
"Hmm? Next? Next, we'll run away. You'll come with us."
"Run away? How? This is Golden Roc Fort."
Slave Qi took a deep breath to cool down and looked much better. "You know, every morning we have to carry water. There are lots of wooden barrels. Water is sent from the outside. If there's a chance, we can hide in the wooden barrels to escape."
Gu Shenwei had also done this job, so he immediately understood what Slave Qi meant. Golden Roc Fort was located at the peak of the mountain, without a source of water. Daily water was carried from the foot of the mountain. The men that delivered the water were not allowed to enter the fort. The water would be poured into a stone pool. Then, the servants inside the fort would carry it to their own yards. By the pool, lots of empty wooden barrels were left, which might be taken away the next day by the men who delivered the water.
There was an overseer by the pool, but that did not mean that they did not have any chance. Sometimes, when there were too many servants who carried water, the overseer could not keep his eye on all of them, so one could crawl into the barrels and wait for the arrival of the men who delivered water.
It sounded like a feasible plan.
But Gu Shenwei still shook his head. It was the second time that he had refused to escape with them. Slave Qi gave him a strange look.
"I'll stay. I have my enemies here. I want my revenge."
That's all Gu Shenwei could tell them. Even though they had murdered the man together, he could not expose all his thoughts because he was cautious and also insecure. He would take revenge for his parents and brothers by killing the entire Shangguan family. It might be a whimsical goal that nobody else could understand.
However, Slave Qi and Slave Xie accepted his reason. In their eyes, vengeance was more important than anything. They had postponed escaping because they wanted to kill the man who had humiliated them.
The three teenagers returned to Firewood Yard. Gu Shenwei returned to his room alone. Slave Qi and Slave Xie went to clean Slave Ji's bed, and tried to make the small stain as inconspicuous as they possibly could. Then they went back to sleep. The other five teenagers were sleeping soundly and no one envied the pair of brothers.
Gu Shenwei closed his eyes. As the first enemy had been killed, the small piece of the huge stone blocking up his heart had fallen and a sliver of light shone inside. He had lots of things to do, but now felt sleepy. Without clearing away all of his thoughts, he fell deeply asleep.
It was a sweet sleep like Gu Shenwei had never known before.
Waking up in the morning, Gu Shenwei almost forgot everything that had happened the night before. After a while, he was infused with the joy of having tasted revenge. Even the sunshine outside appeared to be more radiant than usual.
He had enjoyed the three-day holiday for getting rid of the evil spirit and had to pay his respects to the Miss with the other teenagers. He had been wondering why Mama Xue admitted to teaching Slave Yao Internal Strength.
However, Mama Xue seemed to have forgotten all about it. He did not see any clue from her cold, stiff face.
When they returned to Firewood Yard, Slave Ji appeared slightly restless and kept asking Slave Qi and Slave Xie where Third Brother was and why he had left without saying a word.
Slave Qi and Slave Xie were quite well-composed, which Gu Shenwei admired. The brothers casually explained that Third Brother had left that night, and they had opened and then locked the yard door because the overseer had already fallen asleep and they did not want to bother him.
Slave Ji believed their words, as Han Shiqi did not spend every night there. However, Slave Ji did not know why he was so restless and kept thinking of it all day long.
In the afternoon, Slave Ji felt more distracted. Overseeing the teenagers at work, he was completely absent-minded. At dusk, he even did not call roll, and he locked the yard door later than usual. After going back to his own room, he kept the candle lit and fell asleep after midnight.
Due to his absent-mindedness, Slave Ji did not find that Slave Qi and Slave Xie were missing. The brothers went to carry water in the afternoon. They came back once, but did not return the second time, owing to the overseer's serious negligence of duty.
Gu Shenwei felt relieved for Slave Qi and Slave Xie, as the first step of their plan to run away had gone smoothly.
The other five teenagers found it unusual, but no one else cared about it. As new servants, they did not know how to deal with things like that, nor did they dare to remind Slave Ji, as the overseer was already in a bad mood.
Gu Shenwei privately prayed that the two brothers would succeed in escaping.
As for Golden Roc Fort, it was a peaceful night, but the next morning, when everything was exposed, a storm was raised.
บท 24: Torture Chamber
บรรณาธิการ: Transn
When the teenagers paid their respects to the Miss, there were no signs showing that Han Shiqi's death was known. The Miss did not notice that two servants had disappeared. Only Mama Xue frowned and inquired about it. The six teenagers looked at each other and gave no response. She discontentedly shook her head, but did not ask anything further.
After they went back to Firewood Yard, Slave Ji still had not noticed that two people were missing. He eventually found that there were only six teenagers left in the yard when he wanted to ask Slave Qi and Slave Xie for more details.
"Where are they?"
Slave Ji was quite astonished and could not imagine that someone had disappeared in Golden Roc Fort, as it was impossible in his eyes.
The teenagers looked at each other and gave no response.
Slave Ji became furious and swung his rosewood stick at the teenagers without any particular reason. "How dare you! How dare you play tricks behind my back! You're all in this together. Did the other two brats leave with Third Brother?"
The teenagers ran away from him while they yelled that they did not know.
While the yard was in disarray, the eastern door opened. It was not the servants bringing dying people, but a group of men in black who entered. They looked slightly different from killers with their belts not red, but green or yellow, and they were also not equipped with blades.
Upon looking at those people, Slave Ji appeared more scared than he would upon meeting with killers. His rosewood stick fell to the ground. He opened his mouth without saying a word and could not help bending his knees. No one knew whether he would bow to them or fall down.
The men in black silently dashed over and rapidly carried Slave Ji away, who was paralyzed with fright. Someone locked the western door, which had never been locked before. The eastern door was also locked from the outside when they left.
No one explained anything to those terrified teenagers. Now they felt as if they were imprisoned in Firewood Yard. Except for Gu Shenwei, the others knew nothing about what they were guilty of.
Two injured men had been sent to the yard two days ago. Usually, the teenagers would avoid stepping into the room of those two men. But now, all of them ran into the room to look after the injured, because they wanted to prove that they were still useful in Golden Roc Fort.
At noon, no one brought them lunch, which was an ominous sign.
The two injured men died before it had gotten dark. The western door, which was used to access Ghost Cliff, was locked, therefore, the corpses could only be left on the brick bed to become stiff little by little.
"I didn't do anything. We didn't, right? Only Slave Ji got into trouble. He won't get us involved, will he?"
The teenager, Slave Zhao, suddenly spoke. Everyone had been silent for a long time. They just felt restless because they did not know what exactly had happened. Only Gu Shenwei could roughly guess most of it, but he would not say a word.
"Mama Xue will save us. We're underlings of the Miss, and we've taken oaths." Another teenager, Slave Lei, looked hopefully at his companions, wanting to gain some confidence from them.
The other teenagers desperately nodded and suddenly breathed a sigh of relief.
Gu Shenwei nodded, but thought that the Miss and Mama Xue would not save them. If they had such thoughts or abilities, they would not have let them stay in Firewood Yard to serve the dead. The Eighth Young Master's yard also needed servants, but they had not been asked to go there.
Bighead Kingpin's daughter, who had supreme power in the bandit camp, had ended her previous life since she had gotten in the bridal sedan.
At dusk, only two of the men in black with the yellow belts returned again. One of them gave a brief order to the six panic-stricken teenagers.
"Follow us."
Though they were worried, the teenagers did not dare to inquire about it and honestly followed the two men in black to leave Firewood Yard. It had been a place that they desperately wanted to leave, but now, it was like home for them.
Gu Shenwei kept calm and was even a little optimistic. The men with the yellow belts did not tie anyone up. Maybe they only wanted to make an inquiry. Regarding the facts that a killer was missing and two servants had suddenly disappeared, everyone would link those two things together and would not suspect those who remained.
But Gu Shenwei's thoughts were not completely correct.
The men with the yellow belts were torturers from Heart Cleansing Yard. All of the teenagers were brought there. A formal interrogation was waiting for them.
Heart Cleansing Yard was not far from Firewood Yard, with there being only a small yard between them. It was also called Ghost Yard and it was used for punishment.
Gu Shenwei had always wanted to enter Ghost Yard to look for his sister. Now he knew that it was useless to go there. All the cells for the prisoners were underground and heavily guarded, so no one could see into them from outside.
Gu Shenwei thought it was ironic that there were "prisoners" in a killer organization.
The teenagers were brought to an underground torture chamber. It seemed to be frequently used, for the floor was filled with greasy mud. The teenagers had looked after several dying people who came from Heart Cleansing Yard, and their bodies were stained with this sort of mud. Slave Yao once said that the mud was mixed with flesh. Having seen the broken limbs of the dying people, they knew his judgment was nearly correct.
Numerous strange implements for punishment were placed inside the room, with iron chains here and there. In a corner, a prisoner was tied up to a wooden stand. His skin and flesh were torn so much that his original appearance could not be recognized. When he let out a groan, all the teenagers cried out.
That man was Slave Ji.
He had been the overseer of Firewood Yard in the morning, but now, he was only qualified to return to the yard to await his death.
A teenager immediately fainted and another two teenagers were so stupefied that they could not move a single step as some liquid dripped from their pants.
More than 10 people stood inside the room. Besides the torturers with the yellow belts, there were other people, some of whom even did not wear black. They did not care about the teenagers' fears. If someone were to remain calm upon entering Heart Cleansing Yard, that would make them surprised.
Gu Shenwei felt his leg shivering and he had the impulse to run away.
He was the descendant of the Gu family of the Central Plains. As the son of a government official, he used to play with the generals' and courtiers' sons. For them, excruciating torture, like a ghost or a god, was just a tale.
"How did I fall to such a place? Isn't it enough that I have lost my entire family? Must I also have to experience a humiliating way to die?"
No one expected that one of the teenagers was the young Master of the Gu family, nor could they understand how he felt. The torturers deftly tied the six teenagers to different stands and began to flog them without saying a word. After a single whip, the fainted Slave Lei cried out horribly. Then, the chamber was full of screams.
No one dared to resist.
That was the rule of Heart Cleansing Yard—whether one did something or not, one had to accept punishment first. Among those punishments, flogging was the lightest one.
After the flogging, the torturers ordered the teenagers to speak, but they did not say what the torturers wanted to hear.
The teenagers scrambled to tell them anything that they knew, even their experiences of pouring tea for Slave Ji. They still thought the overseer of the yard had run into trouble.
Then the torturers asked the teenagers to talk about Slave Qi and Slave Xie, which brought about more details.
It was all nonsense, but the poker-faced torturers wanted to discover a hole in the nonsense and find the real insider.
Gu Shenwei's legs went limp, but his fear disappeared after the flogging. Compared to the hidden agony in his heart, the physical pain became insignificant.
He also cried out and spoke nonsense. Although it was his first time entering a torture chamber and facing a torturer, he was quite clear about those tricks. He pretended to be an ordinary teenager while he observed them in private.
The inquirers were all underlings. The two men in charge stood far away and appeared indifferent.
One of them wore black and a yellow belt. He was a tall, thin man with a gloomy expression. Obviously, he was in charge of Heart Cleansing Yard. The other one wore a grey robe. Like a scholar, he was short and thin and had a meditative look about him.
They did not have sabers, which were symbolic of a killer.
After the interrogation, the torturers stepped aside. Then the two men began to make their judgment.
"They cannot say anything useful. The two servants did it alone," the man wearing the yellow belt said first. The teenagers felt relieved.
"Humph. That seems to be the case, but we should be careful. These kids are sinister, especially when they've had adults to teach them," the man wearing the grey robe said casually with a courteous smile, as if he was pointing out a common truth.
"Maybe. These kids haven't been in the fort for long. As they have only met a few adults, it would be easy to find out the person who is behind them. Right, Mister Guo?"
The man in the grey robe, called Mister Guo, looked surprised. "Blademaster Shen, you've misunderstood my words. I just feel that we shouldn't easily believe these kids. Han Shiqi was a killer. It seems impossible that these kids could have plotted against him."
Han Shiqi was his real name. Most of the killers in Golden Roc Fort were not famous, therefore, it was not necessary for them to use fake names while performing tasks.
Blademaster Shen and Mister Guo held different opinions; the former wanted to minimize the effects of the issue, but the latter wanted to dig up more information.
Gu Shenwei reminded himself that if he could survive in Ghost Yard, he would inquire about every conflict in Golden Roc Fort, which might be helpful to aid him in his vengeance.
The interrogation fitfully went on without any focus. The torturers seemed to ramble a bit. Gu Shenwei felt that the interrogation had been arranged on purpose. Every time the teenagers mentioned Mama Xue or the Eighth Young Mistress, the torturer would not ask anything further. The clever teenagers understood and no longer mentioned anything about the Eighth Young Master's yard.
Blademaster Shen and Mister Guo left and returned several times. They really did not speak much. There were no signs shown that they had had a dispute, but they did not look at each other.
The Eighth Young Master, Shangguan Nu, also arrived once. It was the second time that Gu Shenwei had seen his enemy who had slaughtered his entire family. Shangguan Nu stood farther away than he had before, so it was even more hopeless for Gu Shenwei to get his revenge.
Shangguan Nu just took a look and left without saying a word. He nodded at Blademaster Shen, but ignored Mister Guo. Instead, Mister Guo paid his respects to the Young Master.
At midnight, several men in black rushed in, threw something on the ground, and retreated after bowing to Blademaster Shen and Mister Guo.
That thing was a living person. As he raised his head, the first person that he saw was Gu Shenwei.
Slave Qi had been caught.
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