“Yu Yaqing?”

After a long stretch of silence, Su Man called up from below.

“Yu Yaqing, are you all right?”

……

She finally came back to herself. She tried to speak, and found her throat had gone dry and hoarse.

Yu Yaqing closed her eyes, steadied herself for a moment, and replied, “I’m all right…”

“What’s up there? Is it safe?” Su Man asked again.

Yu Yaqing slowly let out a long breath, settled her nerves, and opened her eyes once more —

“Up here… it’s a very large room. Very dark. There are a few fire basins for light, but the flames are nearly out… Around the room there are — there are — seven torture racks. I don’t see Bluebeard.”

She crawled forward a little and raised herself up to widen her field of vision.

Then she spotted a white figure lying on the floor ahead. Her entire body froze.

“Don’t come up yet.” Yu Yaqing’s expression turned grave. Her eyes fixed on the figure as she said, “There’s someone up here. Might be Zhao Lanfen. Let me go take a look first. Come up once I know it’s clear.”

Su Man fell silent for two seconds, then said, “Be careful.”

She could not go over to help arbitrarily — the passage below still held a group of companions waiting for her to bring back word.

Yu Yaqing crawled out of the passage with great caution, rose slowly, and walked toward the figure step by step.

When she was close enough, she realized it was not Zhao Lanfen. It was a man.

An unconscious man.

He was dressed in a medieval-style white shirt with broad, lantern-like sleeves, its collar piled high with elaborate ruffled lacework — ornate and flamboyant.

He looked worn and haggard, his skin pallid, his breathing faint.

Yu Yaqing exhaled slightly in relief.

Though she was exceptionally bold — braver, even, than most men — somewhere deep in her subconscious, she still did not want to face brutality or bloodshed head-on.

Yu Yaqing returned to the passage entrance and called down, “It’s an unconscious man. He doesn’t seem dangerous. Come on up.”

Su Man heard this and crawled up.

The moment she emerged, she too was struck by the sight before her. Every hair on her body stood on end, and she said with undisguised revulsion, “…What kind of twisted filth is this?!”

Yu Yaqing stared at the torture devices, her own expression dazed. “Unbelievable, isn’t it? Men and women — they’re both human beings… yet they could make things like this. It’s as though… as though tormenting and torturing women was their idea of entertainment. Tell me, what were those men thinking? Weren’t they born of women?”

“You can’t quite put it that way…” Su Man furrowed her brow, studying the devices. “These are all from medieval Europe. That was a dark era — full of plunder and slaughter. No law. No order. People were more savage and brutal back then. Something like this wouldn’t exist today!”

Yu Yaqing gave a hollow, bitter smile. Softly she said, “That’s just because you haven’t encountered it yet. If women want to break free from men’s domination, they must become stronger than them!”

Su Man had no desire to debate the subject of men and women in a place like this. She furrowed her brow and looked around, asking, “Is this the third floor? It’s such a massive room — why didn’t we find it before?”

“The door is here.” Yu Yaqing found the door, gripped the handle, and pulled it open —

There was a wall on the other side.

She blinked, then pushed against it — and found that the wall could pivot a full 180 degrees!

“So the hidden mechanism is here.” Su Man was equally astonished.

The two women pushed the stone wall together, rotating it 90 degrees. It stood perpendicular in the middle, creating two openings — and on the other side was the third-floor hallway.

Yu Yaqing understood now. “If you couldn’t open the door from the inside, even if we’d spotted signs of the mechanism out on the third floor, we couldn’t have gotten in — because only when the interior door is opened does the stone wall have enough space to rotate.”

Su Man stepped out and looked up and down the hallway. “I’ll go down and tell the others.”

—