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.
บท 25: The Emergence of the White Handkerchief
บรรณาธิการ: Transn
They soon discovered the real cause of Han Shiqi's death. However, for many people, dealing with the individuals involved in it was a difficult problem.
The Eighth Young Master, Shangguan Nu, had bad luck this year. Bad things kept happening one after another. The deceased Han Shiqi was his underling and the two murderers were discovered to be servants brought by his new wife.
Gu Shenwei could speculate about what had happened over the past three stifling days by piecing together the information that he had heard through the grapevine.
After Slave Qi was caught, the other six teenagers were immediately sent back to Firewood Yard. They were imprisoned again and were completely isolated; the only exception was that someone brought them only one meal every day. No one had taken care of the two corpses, which had started to decay. The smell gradually wafted through the whole yard and into the room where the teenagers lived.
They had been in great distress during the past three days. After scabs formed, they helped each other peel them off and waited for the final verdict. This was the last time that the sworn brothers would trust and support each other.
Gu Shenwei felt very nervous because he did not know what Slave Qi would confess.
Gu Shenwei already had an awful fright when Slave Qi glanced at him at the underground torture chamber in Heart Cleansing Yard. Most people who were older and more strong-willed than Slave Qi would have made a full confession under various cruel tortures.
At noon on the fourth day, the western door was eventually opened and a new overseer arrived.
The first thing he did was open the eastern door and dispose of the two corpses.
The corpses were rotten and infested with maggots. Although the corpses looked disgusting, the teenagers were cheerful when they carried them away. They resumed their jobs and it seemed as though they had been forgiven.
After the teenagers cleaned up the room with the corpses, the new overseer announced that nothing would change. Firewood Yard had reopened and the teenagers should continue to carry out their duties.
But actually, everything had changed.
The new overseer did not live in Firewood Yard. He came at dawn and left at night. He would lock the yard door while he was away. As a result, the teenagers led a more restricted lifestyle. They no longer paid their respects to the Miss. More guards were arranged around the water-carrying place in the fort. All the empty barrels that were not used at the moment were moved away.
They accepted the first patients after Firewood Yard reopened and one of them was the ex-overseer, Slave Ji. He had suffered crueler torture than the others but he managed to survive. While the other patients were thrown off Ghost Cliff one after another, unexpectedly, only he had recovered.
However, Slave Ji became quiet and often remained silent all day long. After losing his backer and his position, he had an uncertain future. One night, when he just managed to walk by himself, he committed suicide by using his own belt. The corpse was found the next morning, dangling on the doorframe of the western door.
No one was surprised at his death and no one cared about it. The teenagers threw his corpse off the cliff. Someone even complained about how inconsiderate the ex-overseer was. "Since you wanted to commit suicide, why didn't you directly jump off the cliff?"
One day, the teenagers saw Slave Qi's corpse, which was beheaded, being carried directly to Ghost Cliff by two men in black.
Although he was accustomed to seeing corpses, Gu Shenwei could not bear it and began to vomit. The other teenagers averted their eyes with a pale look. They lost their appetite for the rest of the day.
Slave Xie was caught less than two days later. He resisted so fiercely that the attackers had to directly kill him. His body was thrown into the wild because they no longer needed to have his confession.
Slave Qi had borne through everything in Heart Cleansing Yard. He did not mention anyone except for his younger brother.
He confessed that he made the plan to murder Han Shiqi. He had nailed the sharp knife under the bed. Then he crawled under the bed and killed the enemy who was enjoying himself while Slave Xie held down Han Shiqi.
Everything matched his confession. Han Shiqi's belongings were found in Slave Qi's luggage.
It turned out that Slave Qi and Slave Xie were orphans of the Great Snowmountain. They were sold as slaves because their parents had died in a fight between several mountains. The pair of brothers and Long Feidu, who had slaughtered the Eagle Gang at the T-junction, belonged to the same tribe, but they were from different mountains.
The Great Snowmountain and Golden Roc Fort were bitter enemies.
Gu Shenwei did not understand people from the Great Snowmountain, who fought among themselves even when faced with a strong enemy.
The origin of the pair of brothers provided an element of conspiracy to Han Shiqi's death. The six teenagers of Firewood Yard were interrogated again and were asked about their personal history.
This time they were not sent to Heart Cleansing Yard, but all the teenagers were greatly intimidated. Once they were questioned, they revealed all their life experiences starting from the day they were born.
Gu Shenwei did not tell the truth, but it was too hard for him to make up his origin. Therefore, he stole Slave Yao's origin as a servant of a businessman from the Western Region. He said he was grabbed and made into a slave by bandits while he was accompanying his master on a trip.
What Slave Yao said before his death was incoherent. Therefore, Gu Shenwei had to polish what he had said once again. It turned out to be so convincing that even he himself almost believed that he had experienced these events.
The only problem was that his words could not withstand scrutiny because he looked quite different from the pointy-faced Slave Yao.
However, no one would put in the effort to find the merchant of the Western Region, who was so far away from here, only for the purpose of verifying Gu Shenwei's statement. Gu Shenwei was secretly worried about it before he confirmed that he had successfully deceived them.
The case gradually faded into the background. No one suspected that there was another accomplice. There were some people who wanted to end the case as soon as possible in order to minimize the impact of the case.
Gu Shenwei was aware of the contradiction between the two sides in the torture chamber. The thin and tall Blademaster Shen, named Shen Liang, was the chief in Heart Cleansing Yard, and he was also the Eighth Young Master Shangguan Nu's uncle. He represented his nephew's interests and used his power to minimize the effect of the case.
The thin and short Mister Guo came from Whiterobe Academy in East Castle. Although he was not any Young Master's relative, it was known that he was close to the Fifth Young Master. Mister Guo was eager to maximize the effect of the case so he could damage the Eighth Young Master's power.
Almost everyone in Golden Roc Fort knew that the Eighth Young Master was on bad terms with the Fifth Young Master. It was said that the two young masters' mothers had not gotten along well with each other and had passed their enmities onto their sons.
As the Supreme King, Shangguan Fa, did not want the case to get out of control, the Eighth Young Master, Shangguan Nu, had seemingly won this round. It would be a major scandal if the news that a killer was assassinated by two teenagers in Golden Roc Fort were to spread outside the fort.
The lord of Golden Roc Fort was unwilling to hold his son accountable for the case, therefore no one dared to stir things up.
Nevertheless, Shangguan Nu fell into the lowest position in his father's mind, as he was not capable of taking the leadership of a group of killers and he could not even handle the internal affairs of his yard, which made the Supreme King disappointed.
It was not helpful for Gu Shenwei to know that Golden Roc Fort was not united. He was stuck in Firewood Yard now, dealing with the dead every day. Though he had five acquaintances, they barely spoke with each other, as the five acquaintances were afraid to speak.
There had been 10 teenagers who followed the Miss into Golden Roc Fort. After a little more than one month, four of them were dead. Even though "at least one person gets killed every day" in Golden Roc Fort, it was still a scarily high proportion. All the teenagers were pessimistic about their future.
Gu Shenwei found himself being isolated in such circumstances.
The other five teenagers often avoided him or whispered behind him. They showed a flicker of fear toward Slave Huan.
Gu Shenwei felt confused about their behavior. He had not bullied or betrayed anyone. He lived at the bottom of Golden Roc Fort and did the humblest work with them. He could not figure out why he became unusual in their eyes.
After several days, he finally realized why he looked different from them.
Although his behavior was disguised, he was still different from that of the other teenagers from the mountain areas. He did not randomly sit on the ground. He frequently washed his hands, was able to read, and always walked with his back straight.
He knew Kung Fu. Although he was not comparable to the killers in the fort, none of the teenagers were his match.
He was not afraid of Ghost Cliff and often went there by himself. Sometimes he practiced Kung Fu there; sometimes he just blankly sat there. The others would not go to that place, except for when they needed to dispose of the dead.
When Slave Yao was possessed by the evil spirit, Gu Shenwei stayed with him. Slave Qi and Slave Xie once attempted to help Gu Shenwei drive the evil spirit away, but instead, the brothers "had been possessed by the evil spirit" and had made an assassination. Slave Xiao, who had died early on, also seemed related to Slave Huan, as they used to stay together.
Those were the five teenagers' thoughts. Though Gu Shenwei was initially irritated by it, he began to feel at ease as no one would come to disturb his Kung Fu practice.
Gu Shenwei had practiced Kung Fu the hardest for over a month since he entered Golden Roc Fort. Now that he did not know the whereabouts of the shortcut manual, he had to put all his hopes on regular Kung Fu practice.
It would never be too late to get his revenge. He had already given up on the idea of taking revenge as soon as possible.
As long as no one recognized him, he could patiently wait until he mastered Yin and Yang Strength. No matter how long it would take, regardless of whether it took 10 or 20 years, he would have a chance to get his revenge, as his enemy Shangguan Nu was still young and would still be alive at that time.
On the 10th day after Firewood Yard was reopened, the teenagers, who became more and more frightened of Slave Huan, "gave" him a surprise.
On that day, there was no patient in the yard. After the new overseer locked the eastern door and left, Gu Shenwei took the opportunity to practice Kung Fu on Ghost Cliff. He returned to the yard to have lunch at noon.
The other teenagers avoided him, so he usually went back to his room and ate alone. It was the same on that day, except that there was one more thing on his bedding.
It was a piece of white handkerchief with some words on it.
Gu Shenwei almost dropped the bowl onto the ground.
He rushed forward, put down the bowl, and picked up the white handkerchief. After reading the first line of the writing, he knew it was the shortcut manual of Yin and Yang Strength.
He greedily read, ignoring his meal. He had no time to be curious about the origin of the white handkerchief.
Gu Shenwei felt disappointed after reading it through.
It was indeed the real shortcut manual. However, it was not a shortcut as he had imagined. If he practiced Yin and Yang Strength at normal speed, he would finish the all forces merger when he reached the ninth level of Yin Strength and Yang Strength. If he practiced the shortcut manual, he could combine the two kinds of strength at any level, but the power could not be comparable to the normal practice method.
The words on the white handkerchief made it clear. If one reached the third level of Yin Strength and Yang Strength, it would be powerful after combination; if one reached the fifth level, it would be very powerful; if one wanted to be invincible, he had to reach at least the seventh level.
Although it was called a shortcut, it had its limits.
His father, Gu Lun, had practiced it hard for dozens of years and had just reached the fifth level of Yin Strength and Yang Strength. In comparison, Gu Shenwei had just reached the first level of it and did not know when he would master Yin and Yang Strength.
Gu Shenwei tucked the white handkerchief away. After thinking for a while, he took it out and spent that afternoon thoroughly memorizing the manual. Then he tore up the white handkerchief and threw it off the cliff.
From now on, the unique skill of the Gu family had no written records and only existed in the sole descendant's mind.
Gu Shenwei now had the time to consider just who had given the white handkerchief back to him.
It had to be one of the other five teenagers. He had kept the important articles for Slave Yao and did not divulge the secret, even if he suffered a lot in Heart Cleansing Yard.
Gu Shenwei had to find that person.
However, Gu Shenwei could not decide whether he should thank him or remove him for now.
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