Chapter 66: Chapter 54: Examiner Official Fan Zhenglian_2
While they were speaking, Lu Tong suddenly stood up and walked inside, lifting the felt curtain.
Yin Zheng was taken aback, "Miss, where are you going?"
Lu Tong replied, "Making a new medicine."
Ah Cheng, holding a broom, followed behind and wondered, "Didn’t you say this morning that you didn’t know what new medicine to make?"
"Now I know."
...
The Palace Marshal’s Mansion was located southwest of the Imperial City, inside the Shangjin Gate and backed by a vast training ground. The summer sun blazed down upon the practice field, filling it with a fiery atmosphere.
But inside the dungeon, cold winds brought a bone-chilling coolness.
The faint flickering of torches on the walls, and from deep within the cells, came the intermittent sounds of pained screams.
In one inner torture room, six people were locked onto a row of iron racks. Two men in black stood in front of the rack when, with a "swoosh," two buckets of saline water laced with stinging salt hit the rack, eliciting a chorus of agonized screams.
Sitting on a heavy wooden chair directly in front of the rack was a young man wearing a Dark Arrow Robe. He held a pair of iron tongs and absent-mindedly fiddled with the hot irons in the brazier at his feet.
Surrounding him was a scattered array of torture instruments, their knife points and iron tools reflecting a dark, cold gleam. Someone’s voice arose amidst the suppressed pain and anger, "Pei Yunmeng, if you’re going to kill or flay me, just do it quickly. Why drag it out?"
"How could that be?" Pei Yunmeng said with a smile. "Now that you’re here, how can I let you have it easy?"
He stirred the iron tongs within the brazier a few times, the black jade ring inlaid with turquoise on his finger reflecting a touch of emerald green light, like a brisk stream in a fleeting moment, before he picked up a piece of hot iron.
He walked up to the person who spoke.
The six of them had been stripped of their clothes, their eyes bound with cloth and chained to the iron rack, with barely an inch of unmarred flesh left on their bodies. After being tortured, and then having salty chili water poured over their wounds, if one didn’t possess tremendous willpower, they would have confessed after the first round of torture.
But not everyone is afraid of pain.
He stopped in front of the person who spoke, titled his head to size them up, and suddenly, the red-hot iron in the tongs shot towards the person’s chest.
With a "ssss," a strong smell of burning flesh and skin rapidly filled the air, and the prison cell echoed with a hoarse, low wail.
The chest area of the person being tortured had already been injured, with old wounds not yet healed. Now inflicted with new wounds, the pain was unbearable. Pei Yunmeng’s expression remained indifferent, without a hint of joy or anger, and his hand motions didn’t ease in the slightest; the hot iron pressed firmly against the person’s chest as if intending to drill into his flesh and melt into his bones.
The acrid smell of burning flesh pervaded the surroundings, and the screams echoed in the dungeon for a long time. Having their sight obscured, the people in the darkness sensed an eerie terror that was even more horrifying.
After a while, amidst the horrifying screams, the prisoner on the far left could no longer hold back and tentatively started to speak, "...I’ll talk."
"Shut up!" The person being tortured was startled upon hearing this and, ignoring the agony of their body, yelled, "You dare... "
In the next instant, a flash of bright silver light cut through the air, and the chastising voice abruptly stopped.
Pei Yunmeng sheathed his long sword at his waist. If not for the fresh blood on the ground, it would seem as if the act of drawing his sword and killing someone had not been his doing.
The person on the rack slumped down, blood flowing freely from their throat, silent and lifeless.
In an oppressively silent atmosphere, he turned his head, threw the iron tongs aside, and looked towards the person who had spoken, beginning with a smile, "Now, you can talk."
The prison cell fell quiet for a moment.
The prisoner, with their eyes covered, knew not what had happened; the unknown was even more terrifying than the known. Although they could not see what had just happened, the fact that the person who had just rebuked them was now silent allowed them to guess what had transpired. Fear showed on their face as they started to speak anxiously, "...It was Lord Fan."
"Oh?" Pei Yunmeng raised an eyebrow. "Fan Zhenglian?"
"Yes... Yes," the prisoner said nervously. "On the day when Lu Dashan of the Department of Criminal & Justice met with trouble, the Examiner Official’s subordinates had already received orders from Lord Fan. The death of Lu Dashan, Lord Fan was aware of it."
Pei Yunmeng laughed, "As expected."
He turned around, accepted a cloth handed over by someone at his side, and carefully wiped the blood that splattered on his hands from the killing. Afterward, he walked out the door.
The guards followed behind. "My lord."
Pei Yunmeng paused, "Did you hear everything clearly just now?"
The guard Qingfeng had not yet spoken when someone else hurried over. It was a person dressed as a servant. The servant approached Pei Yunmeng, bowed in greeting, and then respectfully said, "Princely Heir, on behalf of the master, I have come to inform you that next month is the master’s birthday. The master is thinking of you and requests the honor of your presence at home for a gathering."
Qingfeng, standing behind Pei Yunmeng, dared not speak.
Everyone around knew of Pei Yunmeng’s customary discord with Lord Zhao Ning. After returning to the capital several years ago, he simply bought a residence outside and, except for the annual ancestral rites, he never spent the night at the Pei Family home.
When bringing up the Pei Family, their young master showed neither intimacy nor anything but distaste in his eyes. It seemed likely that, once again, the servant from the Pei Family would return empty-handed.
Indeed, Pei Yunmeng replied without hesitation upon hearing the message, "I’m busy."