Liu Yangong fell silent. This time, he truly had nothing more to say. Zhang Tang’s sharp perception left him shaken — and afraid.

Only now did he understand that every word he had spoken could become a clue leading Zhang Tang closer to the truth.

And that single tiny crumb of food on his person had already given Zhang Tang a direction.

“You’re the kind of person who strikes others with great cruelty.”

Zhang Tang patted Liu Yangong on the shoulder: “But this time, your choice wasn’t to be cruel to others — it was to be cruel to yourself.”

Zhang Tang turned and left.

In the instant Zhang Tang stepped out the door, a sentence nearly burst from Liu Yangong’s lips, yet he held it back — he gambled that Zhang Tang wouldn’t find the person he was trying to protect.

He had wanted to beg Zhang Tang to spare that person. Just her, only her.

That woman.

Liu Yangong felt deeply helpless. In her presence, he couldn’t even summon his courage. There were times when he wondered: if he had simply declared his feelings outright, she might not have refused. And even if she had refused, he would have had no regrets in this life.

But he didn’t dare. Because he was a eunuch.

It was precisely because of that shame — that deep sense of inadequacy — that he had begun to hate Yu Enze, to hate Liu Chongxin, to hate the Investigation Bureau, to hate this nation of Dachu.

Yet he didn’t dare direct that hatred at any of them. He didn’t dare show even a trace of defiance.

His hatred could only be vented upon the common folk — because they were the ones who wouldn’t fight back, just as he himself dared not fight back before Liu Chongxin and Yu Enze.

And yet, even that never restored his confidence.

All the dignity the Investigation Bureau had ever given him crumbled before that deep-seated inadequacy — and crumbled utterly.

Li Chi had asked him: *Do you really have the medicine?*

How much damage those words had done — only he himself knew.

It wasn’t that Li Chi was brutal. It was because Li Chi would never hold any goodwill or patience for someone like him.

Li Chi held no contempt for eunuchs as a whole, for he understood clearly that many who entered the palace through castration had done so out of sheer desperation.

Some families had no way to guarantee their children wouldn’t starve to death, and so they made this choice in the hope of keeping them alive.

Perhaps no one had ever stopped to consider this: even in the most prosperous days of Dachu, even within the great city of Daxing, there were still countless families who couldn’t put food on the table.

Nor did people consider, after parents made such a decision, how many of those children died from it.

The common folk had little understanding of palace customs. Many believed that once a child was castrated and brought to the gates, the palace would simply take them in.

On the western hills behind the Shiyuan Palace in Daxing, every year children who had died of infected wounds were left and abandoned there.

Some were killed by the palace’s own hands. Others by those of their own parents.

Just beyond a single wall from that most glittering and magnificent of places, the dying cries of those children seemed to be held back by some invisible barrier, heard by no one.

What medicine could poor commoners afford to stop the bleeding? They couldn’t even afford to eat — how could they have medicine?

Li Chi despised the people of the Investigation Bureau. In the final, depraved, and frenzied era of Dachu, the most depraved and frenzied of all were those eunuchs.

When they tormented people, they didn’t see them as human beings at all.

When an entire group begins to twist and warp — and that group holds absolute power — one can only imagine how vast their vengeance upon society would be.

Yet they would never direct that vengeance carelessly at those with power and influence. They vented it upon the same poor and powerless people they themselves had come from.

Medicine?

Could medicine allow a eunuch to spend night after night living it up in the pleasure houses?

Li Chi had said: *If you have medicine, you can give me the formula* — and the meaning buried in those words had filled Liu Yangong with despair.

*I can give you a chance to live — but can you take it?*

Li Chi had also said: *There’s no shame in chasing money, as long as that money is for the sake of the people of this world.*

Liu Yangong thought of the Investigation Bureau. Its people had also scrambled desperately for money — willing to do anything for it.

That was why he had thrown the question back at Li Chi: *Aren’t you just in it to win?*

Li Chi had said: *What else would it be for?*

Liu Yangong had nothing more to add. To win the realm — yes, there was no shame in that.

What Li Chi had left unsaid was this: *I win — because I intend to grind every last one of you into the depths of hell, and keep you there, never to be reborn through the cycle of reincarnation.*

The Investigation Bureau was a thing born of a particular era — and Liu Chongxin had turned it into a machine, a machine that made the foundations of the dynasty shake ever more violently. For though this machine appeared to be endlessly suppressing the common people, in truth it was endlessly hollowing out the roots of Dachu.

And yet, despite all of this, Liu Chongxin was so deeply contradictory that he still believed himself to be a loyal subject of Dachu.

Liu Yangong sat in the chair and tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling — and suddenly, a face materialized there, vast and vivid, startling him badly.

It was the aged face of his adoptive father, Yu Enze.

*”My child, remember this — our bodies are incomplete, and so people look down on us. Then let those ‘complete’ people see for themselves whether they don’t end up kneeling before us, wagging their tails and begging for scraps.”*

The face began to twist slowly, becoming something frightening.

*”They go on and on calling us castrated dogs — but they’re the real dogs. You can make them wag their tails for you. And if they won’t wag, chop them to pieces and feed them to the other dogs. Those hounds scramble and fight over the scraps like they’ve never had such a good time.”*

Liu Yangong shuddered violently, shaking his head again and again. The face on the ceiling vanished.

In truth, that face had never been on the ceiling at all. It had always been inside his heart.

—

The Tingwei Bureau. The deputy chief Tingwei’s study.

Zhang Tang held the tiny food crumb up to his nose and inhaled slowly, then closed his eyes and concentrated.

“Osmanthus cake… with a faint trace of honey.”

Zhang Tang looked toward his Senior Officer, Fang Xidao: “Officer Fang, go look into it.”

Fang Xidao nodded. “I’ll go at once.”

Zhang Tang gave a sound of acknowledgment, and just as Fang Xidao was nearly at the door, Zhang Tang added one more instruction: “If you find that woman — bring her back alive if at all possible. Let her meet with Liu Yangong.”

In that moment, it was as if the devil Zhang Tang had briefly become someone else.

Fang Xidao was quiet for a moment, then nodded again. “Understood.”

—

An hour later, a Tingwei officer strode quickly to the entrance of Gao Xining’s study and bowed: “My lady, the prisoner has been demanding an audience with Prince Ning — he’s been shouting for quite some time now.”

Gao Xining looked toward Li Chi. Li Chi rose. “Then let’s go see him again.”

Not long after, in the interrogation chamber, the moment Liu Yangong saw Li Chi appear, he stopped shouting. His eyes had gone bloodshot — it looked as though his eyeballs might burst at any moment.

Li Chi pulled up a chair and sat across from Liu Yangong. He said nothing, waiting.

“I only wanted her to live.”

Liu Yangong said.

Li Chi nodded, gesturing for him to continue.

Liu Yangong exhaled heavily, then lowered his head — as if gathering together everything he wanted to say. Perhaps there was too much, too tangled, for he remained silent a long while.

“She… is also a pitiful person.”

Li Chi still said nothing.

Liu Yangong said: “When she was abandoned, she was still an infant in swaddling clothes. It was the Director-General’s vicious hounds that carried her back in their jaws — yet they didn’t kill her. Prince Ning, you may not know this, but the Director-General’s hounds were fed on the flesh of condemned prisoners — sometimes even with living people as feed. That is why those hounds were so ferocious.”

He paused, then raised his eyes to glance at Li Chi: “Prince Ning also has a woman he holds dear, I’ve heard. And I’ve heard that you treat her very well.”

Li Chi did not answer.

Liu Yangong said: “My original intention was this — I would come forward myself. I would hand over the hundreds of thousands of taels of silver hidden in Xingchen Tower. She would take nothing. As long as she could walk away free.”

Li Chi asked: “What are you trying to tell me? That because you’re devoted to her, she deserves to be pardoned?”

Liu Yangong raised his head, a flash of fierceness in his eyes: “Everything she did was at Liu Chongxin’s direction! And even if it wasn’t — she only did it to please Liu Chongxin!”

Li Chi simply looked at him.

*Only… to please…*

Liu Yangong said: “She… she did kill people. Many people. Because she believed that was how she would make Liu Chongxin cherish her more. She saw Liu Chongxin as her own father. But I know the truth — she was just another kind of vicious hound that Liu Chongxin had raised.”

Li Chi rose. “Good.”

Liu Yangong startled. “Does Prince Ning think she can be forgiven?”

Li Chi said: “Knowing she was a hound that devoured people is enough for me.”

Liu Yangong’s eyes went wide.

Li Chi said: “You think I would forgive a pitiful person who ate other people? The only authority I hold is to send her down below, and let her face the people she killed — and see whether they forgive her.”

Li Chi pointed at Liu Yangong’s eyes: “I have no interest in listening to your story. Stories can earn someone’s sympathy — but if stories could earn the sympathy of the law, then I could just as well tell you a story while eating you alive. And you should believe me: when it comes to people like you, I could bring myself to do it.”

Li Chi reached into his robe, pulled out a jade vial, and tossed it onto Liu Yangong. “This is medicine — the kind that will rot your intestines from the inside and make blood pour from every orifice. The Investigation Bureau’s own medicine.”

Liu Yangong was bound and couldn’t reach the vial. Li Chi didn’t leave — because he was angry.

He opened the jade vial and tipped out several pills. “To test the potency of their poisons, the Investigation Bureau’s people would randomly seize people off the street and force-feed them — women, children, the elderly, the young — even infants were used to determine lethal dosages…”

He pried open Liu Yangong’s mouth and forced the pills inside. Liu Yangong thrashed and fought violently but couldn’t break free.

As Li Chi forced the pills in by hand, Liu Yangong immediately spat them out — and then he saw Li Chi looking down at him with undisguised contempt.

“You’re not as unafraid of death as you thought you were. Are you?”

Li Chi pocketed the vial. “These aren’t the Investigation Bureau’s poison. They’re medicine for insomnia — my medicine. But it doesn’t do much good; I still can’t sleep most nights. I just haven’t told many people. I look cheerful and smiling every day — because I know that if I weren’t cheerful, I would kill far too many people. In this world, those whose crimes are lighter have already been spared the death sentence by me. That is already my concession.”

He leaned down and looked into Liu Yangong’s face: “Do you know why I can’t sleep? I spend entire nights thinking about how to destroy all of you — from top to bottom, leaving not a single one.”

Li Chi straightened and looked at Liu Yangong’s deathly pale face.

“Ever since Yuming Xiansheng was killed by your people, I have been waiting for the day I could wipe out the Investigation Bureau — every last one of them.”

Li Chi turned and walked out.

Liu Yangong sat motionless, gasping in great heaving breaths, as though he had just made a full circle at the gates of death and come back.

In this moment, he finally understood what kind of person Prince Ning truly was. Prince Ning only *appeared* so easy-going, so cheerful — but his mind was saturated with slaughter.

Prince Ning simply knew with perfect clarity who his killing was meant for, and he would never waver.

A story?

This world held far too many tragic stories. When had it ever been the Investigation Bureau’s turn to tell tragic stories?

—

Li Chi walked out of the interrogation chamber. Zhang Tang was already waiting outside.

Seeing Li Chi emerge, Zhang Tang bowed: “My lord.”

Li Chi gave Zhang Tang a cold, measured look. “You made a mistake.”

Zhang Tang’s expression changed at once. He immediately lifted the hem of his robe and knelt to the ground.

Li Chi strode forward, speaking as he walked: “Mercy is not something you should be doing.”

Zhang Tang pressed his forehead to the ground. “This subject… knows his error.”

—