chapter 16

Yan Ci leisurely heated the fire tongs, very politely asking Wen Mu not to scream and disturb the neighbors, but to simply state his purpose.

Wen Mu, who was tied up tightly, was so frightened that urine soaked his crotch, nearly revealing the color of his underpants.

He said he was only there to relieve himself. He said he had only heard one sentence. That was Yan Ci’s words: “The wild cat is coming to hunt for food.”

Yan Ci smiled. “Yongqing Palace is to the east. You came all the way here just to relieve yourself? Are you that idle at night?”

He hated being lied to the most. He had intended to pry off Wen Mu’s fingernails with a kitchen knife, but before doing so, he muttered to himself, “Then he wouldn’t be able to write.”

Yan Ci asked me what I feared most. I pointed to my own teeth-I was afraid of having a tooth pulled.

Yan Ci was eager to try, saying he would heat the pincers red before pulling. But just before acting, he turned and plunged the glowing tongs into a bucket of water.

“What a pity,” Yan Ci said with genuine regret. “He’ll scream too much if I pull his teeth. Better to pry off his fingernails.”

Yan Ci kept changing his mind, while Wen Mu was on tenterhooks, sweating through his back before a single drop of blood was shed.

Wen Mu, with one hand tied, held a dry twig and shakily wrote on the ground.

He wrote a line, Yan Ci read a line aloud, and I swept away a line. He wrote so much, rambling on and on, but it all boiled down to one thing.

Emperor Yan’s illness had taken a strange turn, and Yan Qing had grown suspicious of Yan Ci’s actions, so he sent someone to investigate.