The Court of Judicial Review.

The lamp was gently snuffed out. When the window swung open, morning light poured in from outside, and the room seemed to change into a new set of clothes all at once.

New Garden was vast, but more than a third of it had been temporarily partitioned off for the Court of Judicial Review’s operations.

This had once been a rather beautiful study. The Court had since converted it into an interrogation room. Where bookshelves once stood, the walls were now hung with instruments of torture — the mere sight of them enough to make one’s blood run cold.

Jiang Wei could barely open his eyes — not because of the morning glare, but because he had been beaten.

He had always known he couldn’t run. Sure enough, he’d be damned if he could run.

They had barely set foot inside Shiyuan Palace the night before when they were completely surrounded by the Court’s operatives.

In the fighting that followed, he and Xue Lingcheng broke through the encirclement with a handful of men — and before they could even catch their breath, they found themselves ringed in by a dense wall of Wolf Ape Battalion soldiers.

That was entirely reasonable. We have more men than we know what to do with. Of course we could box you in.

A volley of crossbow bolts came flying. The ones whose martial skill fell slightly short didn’t last three breaths before they all hit the ground.

At that moment, Jiang Wei had still thought to himself: a man like him shouldn’t be a mere passerby in this world. He had worked so hard, pushed himself so ruthlessly, spared no means — and he had already come so far. He ought to be the protagonist of the story.

But it wasn’t his story. He was simply a side character in someone else’s.

If two men could still escape from the encirclement of ten thousand Wolf Ape Battalion soldiers, that story would have to take on the flavor of legend.

Jiang Wei’s face was now so swollen that his features were difficult to distinguish — altogether high and round. His eyelids had puffed up to a height seemingly greater than his nose bridge, though that might have been because the nose bridge was already broken.

This wasn’t the result of the torture instruments. It was simply from being hit when he was captured the night before.

To be precise: each person who apprehended him had landed one punch. Perhaps a hundred or so people in total.

Every part of his body ached, so it was impossible to tell which injury was worse.

The moment the window opened and sunlight fell across him, he felt as though he had been reborn.

Unfortunately, that particular process wasn’t yet complete.

He heard the scrape of a chair being pulled back, and sensed someone sitting down before him. His eyes were completely sealed shut; the narrow slit he could barely manage wasn’t enough to make out who sat in front of him or what they looked like.

“Very good.”

The person sitting across from him spoke two words. Jiang Wei had no idea what was very good — but the man across from him quickly offered an explanation.

“The Wolf Ape Battalion men at least know their limits. They beat a man into this state, and not one of them threw a punch at his mouth.”

The speaker sounded rather satisfied. Jiang Wei wanted to curse.

“Your name is Jiang Wei?”

The man across from him asked.

Jiang Wei had no desire to answer. He was already in this condition — what was there left to fear?

“No need to answer. Most people who’ve just come in are the same as you.”

The man’s tone was perfectly calm, yet somehow, beneath that even, gentle voice, Jiang Wei detected a thread of something cold.

“My name is Zhang Tang.”

The man introduced himself. Jiang Wei’s heart clenched.

He had never met Zhang Tang — but as a direct adversary of the Court, anyone from the Shadow Camp knew the name of the man who served within it.

The Court was home to many devils. But there was only one man at the sight of whom a ghost would rather die a second time.

Better to die twice than to be subjected to Zhang Tang once.

“Have Fang Biechen come see me.”

Jiang Wei spoke.

Zhang Tang replied with the patience of a man explaining something obvious: “You may not be fully acquainted with the Court’s customs. As a general rule, prisoners brought in by us have no right to set conditions.”

“By convention, different prisoners receive different interrogators. The fact that I am the one sitting across from you should tell you something.”

You qualify.

Those two words were, in their own way, telling Jiang Wei: You should feel a measure of pride.

—

At that same moment, in another interrogation room.

Xue Lingcheng’s treatment was no different from Jiang Wei’s — though his injuries seemed slightly lighter. At least he still had one eye that could open fully enough to make out the face of the person sitting before him.

“Shouldn’t you be interrogating Jiang Wei?” Xue Lingcheng asked.

The one seated across from him was Fang Biechen.

“I’m not here to interrogate you,” Fang Biechen said. “I was only ordered to come identify you.”

Xue Lingcheng let out a cold laugh. “The way you look serving someone else — it really is rather ugly. You changed sides so fast. Did even you not see it coming?”

Fang Biechen nodded. “I genuinely didn’t. If I’d known I could switch sides this quickly, I might have come over long ago.”

“Shameless.”

“A man like you,” Xue Lingcheng said, “in the future—”

He hadn’t finished his sentence before Fang Biechen cut him off. “My future will probably be a bit better than yours. Both in how I live, and in how I end.”

Fang Biechen said, “I’ve looked over the men you brought. None of them are Shadow Camp operatives — not a single face I recognize. But the men Jiang Wei brought were all Shadow Camp. So…”

“How many weren’t captured?”

Xue Lingcheng tilted his head toward Fang Biechen and opened his mouth to spit — but the Court officer beside him snapped a bamboo strip across his lips before he could.

A sharp crack. Loud.

Moments later, blood began flowing from Xue Lingcheng’s mouth, and the gaps between his teeth were streaked red as well.

In a place like the Court of Judicial Review, as a prisoner, spitting was not so easily done.

Fang Biechen said, “If any of your men are in hiding, they’re only slightly behind you in schedule. Shiyuan Palace and the Eastern Palace are still sealed tight. No one is getting out.”

Xue Lingcheng glared at Fang Biechen. “How can you look so pleased with yourself?”

“The winner doesn’t just get to look pleased,” Fang Biechen replied. “They get to look triumphant.”

He rose. “My task here is done. Someone else will come question you shortly. They probably won’t be as courteous as me.”

Xue Lingcheng said, “Congratulations, then. The post of Central Overseer that rightfully belonged to you was stolen by me — and now, on the enemy’s side, you’ve gotten what you wanted.”

“What I wanted from Prince Ning’s side,” Fang Biechen said, “I did indeed get. It’s called fairness.”

With that, Fang Biechen turned and walked out.

He paused at the door of the adjacent interrogation room, clearly hesitating over whether to go in and look.

He knew Jiang Wei was on the other side of that wall. But standing at the threshold, he found his interest suddenly gone.

He stood in silence for a moment — then finally turned and walked away.

—

Inside the interrogation room, Zhang Tang had barely begun applying one instrument before Jiang Wei lost consciousness. Zhang Tang found it rather tedious.

He gestured. His subordinates stepped forward to rouse Jiang Wei.

“Aren’t you supposed to be on the side of justice?” Jiang Wei said weakly. “Look at your methods. Does this look like something just men would do?”

Zhang Tang smiled. “The just side’s methods are even crueler — isn’t that something to be happy about? Not just happy. Something to be proud of.”

He glanced toward the door. “Bring the other one into this room.”

His subordinate immediately turned and left. Shortly after, Xue Lingcheng was dragged from the next room and brought into this one.

“When I first became a Court officer,” Zhang Tang continued in that same unhurried, even tone — so gentle, so calm — “someone once taught me: never interrogate two key prisoners together.”

The cold that threaded through his words had by now begun to seep through the room, as though the temperature were slowly dropping.

“Because putting two key prisoners together first kindles a shared defiance. If one won’t speak, the other — even if he can’t hold out — sees his partner’s silence and grits his teeth to keep on.”

“Second, if one speaks with a lie, the other will immediately corroborate it, filling in the gaps to make the falsehood more convincing.”

“Your Shadow Camp — you must have a similar saying, don’t you?”

Neither of the two men opened their mouths.

Zhang Tang didn’t mind in the least.

He smiled. “And yet I prefer to put two people together. Because it’s harder this way — and things that come too easily always feel a little dull.”

He issued a quiet instruction: “Be fair about it. Same instruments, same time. No playing favorites.”

“Yes, sir.”

Several Court officers stepped forward, rolling up their sleeves.

Zhang Tang sat back and arranged his tea set, setting water to boil — fresh spring water one of his men had just brought in.

Others drank tea while listening to music or watching performances. Zhang Tang drank his tea to the sound of screaming, and seemed to enjoy it just as well.

By nightfall, the two men had fallen unconscious several times over — and still neither had said a word. Zhang Tang had been right: interrogated together, each was held up by the other. If one didn’t speak, the other refused to break.

—

When darkness fell across the land, creatures that shunned the light began to stir.

There were many bats in the Eastern Palace. It was only early summer, but they already flitted back and forth through the night sky.

In the corner of one building sat a jar — so small that it looked as though even a winter melon would struggle to fit inside; its mouth, just barely wide enough for a person’s leg.

No one would think a human being could fit inside such a thing.

And yet inside such a jar, there was, in fact, a person.

First an arm emerged, twisting around the rim of the jar. Then a head slowly squeezed through.

Anyone who could have seen this would have been badly frightened — this was the stuff of strange tales, not reality.

Shang Jiuying had practiced contortion since childhood. The flexibility of her body defied belief. Even those who saw it with their own eyes often refused to accept it, or suspected some trick of illusion.

She came out slowly, because the jar truly was not large — she had to be painstakingly careful, or she might genuinely get herself stuck. This was no joke. It was genuinely treacherous.

Once free, Shang Jiuying exhaled a long, heavy breath, and spent some time simply standing still — likely allowing her organs to settle back into their proper positions.

She knew the Eastern Palace would still have Court operatives watching in the shadows, so she dared not move rashly through the building.

She watched the outside with meticulous care, waiting for the darkest hour before dawn.

She knew she had only one chance — and this chance had been bought for her with her companions’ lives.

Xue Lingcheng and Jiang Wei, along with more than a hundred elite Shadow Camp operatives — none of them were likely to survive.

Standing at the window, looking out at the moonlit world below, the ground appeared bathed in cold, pale light.

She wasn’t sure how long she waited. She calculated that it was nearly dawn now — the hour when people’s vigilance slackened.

And so she slipped out through the rear window, moving along the wall like a gecko, utterly without sound.

—

Morning.

Zhang Tang rose early, ate his meal, stepped outside, stretched a little — then walked into the interrogation room.

“Good morning, gentlemen.”

He sat down and instructed his subordinates: “Fetch me some fresh spring water. It’s a fine day today.”

He looked at the two men who no longer resembled human beings. “Dress their wounds.”

And the two men, hearing those words, felt as though they had been plunged into hell.

—