By the time Xiao Nanhui made her way back to the Sun Mansion, the guards had grown far denser than they had been that morning. It took considerable effort before she managed to climb back over the wall into the courtyard where Tian Wei’er had previously been staying.

The moment her feet touched the ground, Wu Xiaoliu’s voice rang out across the courtyard.

“Where did you go?”

Xiao Nanhui startled and looked back. Wu Xiaoliu was sitting on the stone bench where they had eaten pastries the night before, staring at her unblinkingly.

Before she could answer, he asked again: “Where did the young lady go?”

Xiao Nanhui was silent for a moment, then told the truth: “I sent her away.”

A flash of despair crossed Wu Xiaoliu’s face, replaced almost immediately by that faint, lingering sorrow of his. It seemed he needed no further explanation — he understood perfectly well what had happened.

Seeing his reaction, she said gently: “But I came back, didn’t I? If you have nowhere to go, you can come with me.”

“Go where?”

“Somewhere the Sun Family can’t find you.”

Wu Xiaoliu let out a short laugh at that, then shook his head. “No. The places you can go, I cannot. You’re skilled and come and go freely, while I’m just a fat man who’s too timid to slaughter a chicken.”

Xiao Nanhui looked at him, momentarily at a loss. She stepped forward, intending to persuade him.

“It was I who brought you here. I’ll find a way to keep you safe.”

Wu Xiaoliu didn’t respond. He simply picked up the teapot from the stone table, poured two cups of overnight tea, and handed one to Xiao Nanhui.

“Have some water first.”

Xiao Nanhui took the cup and drank as she shared her plans with him: “The Sun Family isn’t the best refuge right now. They look prosperous on the surface, but they’re hemmed in on all sides by the Bai Family. On top of that, most of their guards are hired outriders — numerous but scattered like loose sand. Sooner or later someone will swallow them whole. But that Pan Mei’er seems to have some backbone. I don’t know what her stronghold is like exactly. Perhaps we could go there first to get a feel for things.”

As she spoke, Xiao Nanhui suddenly felt her tongue growing sluggish. She paused, thinking something had gotten on her lips, and reached up to touch them — only to find they had gone numb.

By the time she realized what was happening, her gaze had already drifted up toward the blazing sky overhead.

The feng shui of Lingxi really was rotten. She’d been here barely half a month and had already fainted twice.

Indistinct sounds came to her in broken fragments. She seemed to see Wu Xiaoliu’s unusually calm eyes swaying back and forth above her head.

“I’m sorry. I just don’t think you can protect me for the rest of my life. In the end, the only one you can truly rely on is yourself. Don’t you agree?”

She opened her mouth, wanting to remark: you really can’t judge a person by their appearance.

These days, you couldn’t even trust a fat man.

Xiao Nanhui finally lost the battle to keep her eyes open and slipped into complete unconsciousness.

When Xiao Nanhui opened her eyes again, her hands and feet were immobile. The flat-bow spear and dagger she had concealed inside her clothing were both gone.

Beneath her was coarse, gritty sand, and the same rough texture surrounded her on all sides. Only near the ceiling was there a small air hole, roughly the size of a bowl, letting in a faint trickle of light.

This was a natural stone chamber, now being put to use as a natural prison cell — more secure and solid than any iron bar could be.

The only entrance to the stone chamber was a single person-height opening, sealed by an enormous wooden barrel that could only be pushed open from the outside. The moment her gaze landed on it, the barrel slowly rolled to one side, and a figure entered carrying a bowl. The instant he stepped through, the barrel was pushed shut behind him from outside.

Even without looking up, Xiao Nanhui knew who it was.

The porcelain bowl of water was set down on the ground directly in front of her eyes, and a voice followed.

“Drink some. After this, who knows whether they’ll give you water or not.”

She didn’t move, staring at the contents of the bowl in a daze.

“How do I know there isn’t poison in this water too?”

Those two stout legs standing before her bent at the knees, and Wu Xiaoliu settled down onto the ground, watching her quietly. After a long moment, he spoke with composure: “Actually, aside from being a spy for the Sun Family, I haven’t lied to you about anything else.”

Xiao Nanhui finally lifted her head, looking at this somewhat unfamiliar round face.

“Someone once told me that only fear makes people speak the truth. It seems our relationship was simply too amicable.”

Wu Xiaoliu paused, then picked up the bowl before him and drank it dry himself. “I’ve been longing to return to West City. They abandoned me in East City to fend for myself. I’m not clever — all these years and I couldn’t catch a single soul to bring back and report. You walked right into my hands. I can’t be entirely blamed.”

“Why didn’t you expose me when we first arrived at the Sun Mansion?”

“Back then you hadn’t done anything, and for a while I even thought it wasn’t so bad, having you to keep me company at the Sun Mansion. But then you let the young lady go. I—”

“Enough. Say no more.”

Xiao Nanhui suddenly lost all patience for listening.

They had never been the same kind of people from the very beginning. That they had walked the same path at all was the peculiarity, and discussing it now served no purpose whatsoever.

For a moment, only silence filled the stone chamber.

When Wu Xiaoliu finally rose and picked up the bowl to leave, the wooden barrel at the entrance suddenly shifted — and two people walked in.

The first was Sun Taishou, and behind him walked Pan Mei’er.

Wu Xiaoliu prostrated himself in the dust and stammered out a salute: “I — I pay my respects to the Lord, and to the Fortress Chief.”

Pan Mei’er stepped past Sun Taishou and moved forward, kicking the water bowl aside with one foot. Her voice remained as soft and coquettish as ever. “I heard that Lord Sun had caught himself a traitor, so I came to watch the excitement. But why is it so quiet? Not the least bit interesting.”

Sun Taishou said nothing. He gestured to the two servants behind him, who hauled Xiao Nanhui up from the ground and threw her onto a punishment chair to one side.

Her backside had already suffered the torment of the alkaline ground, and now being pressed down onto this bronze chair made her silently exhale.

Sun Taishou unhurriedly looked her over, then personally stuffed both her legs into the bronze box-boards, securing them in place, leaving only two long, slender leather cords dangling on the outside.

Xiao Nanhui couldn’t tell from the outside what torturous implements were concealed within the box-boards — which made it all the more agonizing. It seemed Sun Taishou’s interrogation methods were far more practiced than she had imagined.

Pan Mei’er stepped forward, toying with the two beads threaded on the leather cords, that smile never leaving her face.

Xiao Nanhui almost suspected this woman was simply born wearing that expression, because she genuinely could not understand what there was to smile about in the present circumstances.

“What is your name?”

The other woman had spoken. Xiao Nanhui licked her cracked lips. “Yao’er.”

“Yao’er?” Pan Mei’er’s voice hovered above her head. “You have quite an interesting face.”

She continued brazenly: “Yes — people have said since I was small that I look like the merciful Bodhisattva in the temple.”

“A Bodhisattva?” A cold, hard hand seized her jaw from below, forcing her to look up. “Then look at me — do I resemble a Bodhisattva?”

Xiao Nanhui blinked.

She’d been too far away to see clearly at the banquet earlier. Now that she was close, she found she had no desire to look at all. If any temple’s Bodhisattva looked like this, the incense money would be the least of their worries — lightning would probably strike the temple flat.

Either way, she had no intention of telling a single truth today. She might as well keep up the act.

“Yes.”

The grip on her jaw released, and Pan Mei’er let out a strange laugh, unlike any of her previous tones.

“Not only is your face interesting — your words are interesting too. I’ll give you an easy way out. If there’s anything you’d like to say, you might as well say it now.”

“What would Fortress Chief Pan like to hear?”

Pan Mei’er’s fingers worked nimbly at the leather cord, tying knots. “Why don’t you start with whose dog you are. As you know, even a dog has its own territory. When a dog doesn’t stay put in its own territory but wanders into someone else’s, it’s inevitably going to get bitten. Would you agree?”

Xiao Nanhui was quiet for a moment, then lifted her head and looked at Pan Mei’er with a grin.

“I don’t keep dogs. Not a single word the Fortress Chief says makes any sense to me.”

The smile and coquetry vanished from Pan Mei’er’s face in an instant. Like a tiger shedding its human skin, her true nature showed itself — she gave a violent yank on the long cord in her hand.

With a piercing metallic screech, two rows of iron-toothed steel spikes shot out from both sides of the box-boards, clamping down firmly on Xiao Nanhui’s anklebones. Every spike pierced through flesh and embedded into bone.

A gut-wrenching pain surged through her. She clenched her teeth tight, yet fractured cries still churned in her throat.

Wu Xiaoliu stood to one side, watching blankly, his face gradually draining of all color.

The smile returned to Pan Mei’er’s face. Her long, hard fingernails scraped across the two iron clamps, drawing out a grating sound. “Oh my — judging by that reaction, she really has had some training.”

Xiao Nanhui knew today was bound to end badly, which paradoxically removed all hesitation. She looked up at Pan Mei’er and smiled back. “Fortress Chief Pan had better put a bit more force into it. If you can manage to crush the bone entirely, I’ll save money on shoes from now on.”

Even for someone who had witnessed many varied interrogation scenes, Pan Mei’er’s face twisted for just a moment.

Sun Taishou to one side maintained the same expressionless face throughout. He raised a hand and ladled out a dark liquid from the large vat beside him — a black, glistening mass that had been steeped in some kind of medicinal herb — and poured it directly over Xiao Nanhui’s anklebones.

The liquid seeped bit by bit into the broken wounds, amplifying every previous pain in an instant. This time agony outpaced reason — she heard her own screams echoing through the sealed chamber, continuing until her strength gave out.

Wu Xiaoliu stood watching the whole time. At first his face was blank, then his body began to tremble violently, until at last he could hold himself up no longer and collapsed to the ground.

His knees had gone soft. He dragged himself forward with great effort, his voice coming out in broken, stuttering fragments: “My — my lord, she only did it for money. She lost her head and helped that Tian Family woman elope with an outside man. You are a magnanimous lord — spare her this once—”

Sun Taishou tossed the empty ladle back into the vat, maintaining the same thin-smiled, cold-eyed expression: “Little Six, you’re an honest man — you shouldn’t be mixed up in these matters. The situation is unsettled right now. Tiancheng hasn’t been sparing any effort to gather intelligence on Bijiang, so we need to take precautions, lest those with ulterior motives slip in and cause trouble later. Wouldn’t the Bai Family and I suffer together?”

Sun Taishou’s words drove straight at Xiao Nanhui’s identity like a long lance, but the pain that had seized her body in that moment left her unable to form a rebuttal.

What surged through her mind instead was the image of Tian Wei’er and Jia Han’s retreating figures, disappearing into a sky full of drifting yellow sand.

She had always wondered: why did this world so often have more villains than good people? Why did the wicked live long while the virtuous died young?

Actually, the answer was simple: being a good person came with a price.

That truth she hadn’t understood before. Now, at last, she did.

“Why have you gone quiet? Weren’t you such an interesting person just a moment ago?”

Pan Mei’er’s face hovered before her, still wearing that smile — though the smile was thoroughly twisted.

From the pain, sweat poured down her face. The ginger-mixed kudzu root powder she had applied earlier had mostly dissolved, turning into murky droplets that fell before her eyes along with the sweat.

She forced her mind to start working again. A bold idea broke through her reason and pushed its way out.

She gasped, struggling with great effort to control her tongue and keep it from going disobedient from the pain. “Lord Sun, as for who I am — you ought to ask Fortress Chief Pan.”

Sun Taishou’s fleshy face finally registered a different expression.

“Oh? Fortress Chief Pan — do you know who she is?”