lcionline Chapter 333 Confession
Chapter 333 Confession
The moonlight filtered through the iron bars of the air vent, casting mottled marks of frost on the damp ground and cutting pale stripes on Hu Qing's face.
He lay on his back in a pile of moldy straw, the festering wound on his left leg oozing yellow-green pus, staining the carefully selected clean straw stems beneath him a dirty brown.
A few fat rats were rustling around not far away, greedily sniffing the scent of rotten meat.
Hu Qing's upper body was also feeling uncomfortable. The new whip wound on his right cheek had become festered. The yellow-green pus dripped down his jaw and solidified into a cold scab on his chin.
The rotten flesh on his left leg attracted several green-headed flies, which greedily bit the edge of the wound. Whenever Hu Qing twitched in pain, they would fly up and circle around.
"Cough...cough cough..."
The smell of blood in his throat made Hu Qing frown.
He spat out half of the broken tooth and licked the blood in the depression of his gums with the tip of his tongue.
Hu Qing slowly raised his right hand. The shackles on his wrist had worn through his skin and flesh, revealing the white joints.
The scorch marks left by the branding iron during the interrogation the day before ran across his chest, tearing out tiny beads of blood with every breath.
He was staring at a spider weaving a web in the corner of the wall. Three days ago it was only the size of a grain of rice, but now it had grown to the size of a copper coin and was busy wrapping a dead cockroach that had strayed in with silk thread.
"Clang-"
The loud noise of the iron gate opening in the distance caused the wall dust to fall down, and scared the spider into retreating into the darkness.
Hu Qing's pupils suddenly contracted, and his nails unconsciously dug into the scabbed wound on his palm.
The muscles all over his body tensed instantly, and the whip wounds that had not yet healed broke again.
He was very familiar with this sound - whenever the bronze lantern appeared at the end of the corridor, it meant that another long torture was about to begin.
It's that time again, those vicious guards should be here.
The blood on the soles of his boots was still steaming from the time they had driven a red-hot iron through his ankle.
(What will it be today? Nail stripping? Waterboarding?)
Hu Qing was not sure, but he was completely tired. No matter what he said, that group of people would not listen. They only wanted to satisfy their own perverted desires.
The sound of boot soles hitting the stone slabs came from far away, and every step seemed to step on nerves.
Hu Qing subconsciously shrank into the corner, his back against the damp and cold bricks.
The moonlight just happened to shine on his pale face. A new cross-shaped knife wound went through his brow bone and jaw, and the scab was still stained with the dirty blood from the interrogation room.
The footsteps stopped in the next cell.
Hu Qing heard the rustling sound of cloth rubbing against stone slabs, followed by an old man's plea for mercy: "Sir, please spare my life... I am really not a bandit, I just went up the mountain to collect herbs..."
The hoarse pleading voice was filled with phlegm, like the sound of an old bellows pulling, "My granddaughter is still waiting at home..."
"Crack!"
The crisp sound of broken bones interrupted the pleading.
The strong smell of rust instantly filled the corridor, and Hu Qing saw a stream of blood splattering on the brick wall opposite, slowly sliding out a hideous trajectory.
"Prisoner No. 307, pleads guilty and accepts execution." The guard's voice was like a blunt knife scraping bone.
After the dull sound of the sharp blade entering the flesh, warm liquid seeped out from the cracks in the stone.
Hu Qing's fingertips touched the dark red pool and found that it was mixed with finely chopped meat.
The rustling of writing began, and he heard the soft sound of a quill being dipped into ink, followed by a verdict that froze his blood:
"Drag the bodies to the incinerator and dispose of them together tomorrow."
The sound of something heavy being dragged was getting closer.
Hu Qing suddenly discovered that the spider web was shaking violently - not from the wind, but from the vibration coming from the ground!
He struggled to climb up by grabbing onto the crack in the wall, and his rotten left leg dragged a sticky blood trail on the stone wall.
Through the iron bars, he saw a skinny old man with disheveled white hair being dragged through the corridor by his ankles, his head tilted at an abnormal angle, his cloudy eyes facing his cell.
The herbal bag hidden in the old man's arms left an intermittent bloodstain on the bricks and stones, and a few pieces of dried herbal fragments floated into the pool of blood on the ground.
After the old man was dragged away, Hu Qing collapsed in the corner.
He found himself unconsciously biting the shackles on his wrists—rust mixed with blood spread in his mouth, just like the feeling when Deep Sea King hit him.
When the moonlight shone again, Hu Qing noticed the reflection on the edge of the air vent.
It was half a broken mirror embedded in the cracks of the bricks, reflecting his current appearance:
Two cloudy beads were embedded in the deep eye sockets, just like the eyes of a dead fish that had been exposed to the sun.
The sound of an iron door was heard again in the distance.
Hu Qing curled up into a ball. This time he could hear it clearly—the dragging sound was clearly coming towards his cell...
The iron chains rattled, and dim light slanted in from the corridor, casting a distorted shadow on the wet ground.
Hu Qing stared blankly at the broken spider web in the corner of the wall - a moth was struggling in vain among the silver threads, which was very similar to his current situation.
"Squeak-"
The rusty iron door was pushed open, and familiar deerskin boots stepped into the cell.
Hu Qing didn't look up. Just by smelling the stench of sweat mixed with alcohol, he knew that the person coming was the guard captain with the scar on the right side of his cheek.
The soles of the boots rolled over the broken grass on the ground, making a teeth-grinding crunching sound.
"Tsk, you're not dead yet?"
When the guard squatted down, the torture instruments on his waist made a crisp sound.
He covered his nose in disgust, and with his other hand casually swatted the flies that had laid eggs on Hu Qing's wound.
He crushed a fat green-headed fly, and its yellow-green fluid splashed on Hu Qing's exposed bones.
"I brought you something good, you have to thank me."
A stack of yellowed papers was thrown in front of Hu Qing, and the dust it raised danced in the beam of light.
Hu Qing's scattered vision slowly focused - the three large cinnabar characters "Confession" stung his eyes, and the densely packed small characters below were like countless wriggling maggots.
A cold knife suddenly touched my index finger.
Hu Qing didn't even feel the pain, but he saw his blood dripping onto the four words "Sea Clan Spy".
The guard's rough fingers pinched his knuckles tightly, leaving a crooked blood mark on the paper.
"Now we are all alive."
The guard blew away the blood and rubbed the rolled-up parchment across the wound on Hu Qing's face. "You're lucky! I was thinking of playing with you for a while, but the Second Prince is eager to present his achievements to His Majesty, so he'll have you brought to court tomorrow."
He suddenly lowered his voice, and his hot breath, reeking of alcohol, blew into Hu Qing's ears: "If you could cry out in the palace and complain a few times about how the sea people were ordering you around, maybe..."
Hu Qing's pupils contracted slightly.
The guard's thumb suddenly rolled heavily over the whip wound on his face, and he wiped his bloody fingers on his collar:
"Of course, if you talk nonsense..."
The skinning knife at his waist flashed coldly under the lamp.
The sound of the iron door being locked again echoed in the corridor.
Hu Qing slowly raised his bloodstained right hand. Moonlight shone through the air vent onto his palm—half of a black fragment lay quietly there…