Free Web NovelChapter 1216: Chapter 1198: Torture
After Yuan Li was captured, he was sent to Lujiang. Sent along with him were the radio set and the slips of paper with writing that had been found.
Wang Dun carefully leafed through them. From the words preserved there, he seemed to see a group of people chatting face to face: the language was concise, most of what was said concerned important matters, yet the give-and-take flowed with complete naturalness.
Because transportation was inconvenient and message delivery took time, every letter would be written as fully as possible, and for fear the other side might forget something, a matter would even be mentioned again and again in several letters.
Like when Wang Dun wrote to Wang Dao, luring him into rebellion, he went over and over the Wang family’s future and Sima Rui’s suspicions of him.
But the "letters" they had seized were written in question-and-answer form, back and forth, like the dialogues between Confucius and his students in the Analects—extremely concise—and above each line of dialogue there were corresponding numbers.
Looking at the characters produced by those numerical correspondences, thinking of those indistinct rumors, then casting another glance at the big copper box they had taken, whose use he could not discern, Wang Dun faintly guessed something.
He had already compared them against the Analects and the Thousand Character Classic, using his own method to match some of the text. Strangely, some characters he could find, while others did not fit.
He vaguely felt that his method was not wrong, but that the reference text was, and for the moment he could not find a way through.
There were too many unknown riddles. He wanted to get more information out of Yuan Li’s mouth.
Wang Dun summoned a cruel official and had every torture used on him once, barely managing to keep Yuan Li alive.
The cruel official was very excited; it was the first time he had seen someone who could endure such torment. If Wang Dun had not set limits and insisted that Yuan Li’s life be preserved, he felt he could have done much more.
Seeing Wang Dun arrive, the cruel official lowered his head, bowed, and withdrew to the side. He knew he was not well-liked, and that Wang Dun had never been a man of good temper.
Wang Dun looked at Yuan Li, hanging there with his head drooping, smelled the heavy reek of blood in the air, and frowned, glancing at an attendant.
The attendant stepped forward, lifted his face, and, after testing his breath, said, "He’s still alive."
Wang Dun: "Wake him up. I have something to ask him."
The cruel official brought a large iron needle and savagely jabbed the soles of his feet several times. In the throes of dying, Yuan Li’s whole body shuddered, and he weakly lifted his eyelids.
The figure before his eyes was a blur. His mouth was pried open, something was poured down his throat in a rush, and it was a good while before Yuan Li felt anything solid, tasting the bitterness.
It was medicine, medicine to keep him alive. In the past two days he had already drunk three bowls of it—which meant he had been at death’s door three times; this was the fourth.
Yuan Li had no wish to die. He firmly believed that if the young lady learned he had fallen into Wang Dun’s hands, she would stop at nothing to rescue him. So once he realized it was medicine, he swallowed of his own accord, gulping as much of it as he could down into his stomach.
Seeing his will to live, after he finished the medicine Wang Dun said, "Yuan Li, so long as you’re willing to talk, not only will I let you live, I will grant you the rank of General, give you good land and beautiful women. Whatever you have with Zhao Hanzhang, you will have with me as well; what you do not have there, I will also give you here. How about it?"
The voice buzzed in his ears. Yuan Li’s vision was still nothing but shadows; he could see no faces clearly, could not hear words distinctly. But even thinking with his toes he could guess what they were saying, so he moved lazily and paid them no heed.
Wang Dun frowned. The cruel official only needed one look to know the state Yuan Li was in, and reported, "General, he has just woken and not yet come back to himself, so he cannot hear sounds, and seems unable to see faces clearly either."
Though displeased, Wang Dun still waited patiently for a while. Only when the light returned to Yuan Li’s eyes, and he received the cruel official’s nod, did he repeat what he had just said.
Since being brought here, Yuan Li had not seen Wang Dun, but back in Jiankang City he had more than once stood in the crowd and watched him, so he recognized him at a glance.
He gave a short, derisive laugh and sneered, "What face do you have to compare yourself with our Great General? An Inspector who abandoned his city and his people is worse than a deserter who fled just to save his life."
Rage surged up in Wang Dun; his face flushed scarlet. He snatched the whip from the cruel official’s hand and lashed it across Yuan Li’s body.
The barbs on the whip brought up bloody foam, but Yuan Li only grunted twice and then burst out laughing. This level of pain was nothing to him.
Aside from the cruel official, probably no one knew that to him the lash was just an appetizer; among all the punishments, it was the least painful.
But Wang Dun did not think so. Seeing two more bloody welts appear on him, the anger in his heart eased a little. He pressed the whip against Yuan Li’s chest and said, "You’re counting on Zhao Hanzhang to come save you? Keep dreaming. To her, you are nothing more than a torturer, less than a dog. You live in the shadows; I am giving you the chance to stand in the sun. That is your fortune for three lifetimes."
Yuan Li spat the blood from his mouth, dirtying the whip, and stared at Wang Dun without the slightest fear. "You know nothing about my lord. Don’t use that sesame-sized brain of yours to guess at my Family Head."
Once again provoked by Yuan Li, Wang Dun reflexively moved to administer more torture. The attendant hurriedly rushed up and grabbed the fist he was about to swing. If that punch landed, Yuan Li would likely truly die. "General, better to hand him over to the men below. They are experienced in torture; they can make a man wish he were dead without actually killing him."
Yuan Li laughed wildly. "When it comes to torturing me, you lot are miles off. If we’re talking about torture, I’m your ancestor!"
Wang Dun stared at him for a while, then suddenly laughed and turned his head. "Bring everything here."
He said to Yuan Li, "You’ve been under torture since you were brought in, so you don’t know what’s become of your private residence, do you?"
"Your people are very loyal. They’re more self-aware than you: they knew they might not endure the torture, so they killed themselves early."
Yuan Li immediately guessed it was Zhao Bingzhong. Aside from that boy, everyone in the private residence was a soldier he had personally brought up. To say nothing of anything else, among them ’better a wretched life than a noble death’ was carried out to the very letter; they would absolutely never kill themselves. If they had to die, they would drag the enemy with them, taking whoever they could.
Zhao Bingzhong...
Yuan Li did not want to grieve. He had never been able to stand that boy, but the boy certainly did not know that his eyes were now red, filled with tears to the point that his vision blurred.
Zhao Bingzhong was very clever, the cleverest in their entire class. He learned things extremely quickly, but he was too simple, too kind. He had been a refugee, had seen the deepest evils of this world, yet he still believed that most people in this world were like the young lady, that they would save him, would save every sufferer they saw.
So he was like that as well.
He had been under Yuan Li’s command for only a short time before Yuan Li wanted to send him back to Jiangbei. The role he played in Yuan Li’s hands was less than a tenth of what he could do; better to go back to Jiangbei and be an official.
But Zhao Bingzhong was stubborn. Once given an order, he simply would not go back, and in truth Yuan Li could not find anyone more intelligent than him.
He was not only responsible for sending and receiving telegrams; all information from every channel, once gathered, was sorted by him into categories, with useful intelligence sifted out, recorded, and handed up.
