Similar things had happened to many people. Over the past two days, virtually everyone who passed the Imperial Study had heard screams issuing from within from time to time.
Sometimes the screams were so ghastly they scarcely sounded human; sometimes they were as faint as gossamer threads. Anyone timid enough might well have nightmares that night after passing by.
Two consecutive days of arrests and interrogations finally yielded results.
"Your Majesty, this slip of paper was just found on Chen Dou of the Imperial Estates Directorate."
As Eunuch Zhao reported, another bloodstained slip of paper was delivered to the desk.
Two other slips already lay there.
During this sweep of arrests and interrogations, more than a dozen eunuchs of some standing had been beaten to death with staves. Even more had been tortured beyond recognition and still clung to a last breath.
"The Imperial Estates Directorate?"
Although Chen Dou was not a senior eunuch of the Imperial Estates Directorate, the directorate managed the pastures and imperial estates, operated the imperial shops, and had dealings with the Ministry of Revenue. Almost all the emperor's private income was managed there. Such an important department, like the Imperial City Office, was entirely controlled by the emperor's trusted confidants.
Chen Dou might have been only an ordinary junior eunuch, but being able to serve in the Imperial Estates Directorate was proof enough that he belonged to the inner circle of one of the emperor's trusted senior eunuchs.
Yet even such a man had been won over by his son, Prince Qi. Merely hearing of it sent a chill through him.
And the inevitable response to that alarm was towering rage.
The matters uncovered through two days and nights of interrogation, the items discovered in the searches-each and every one proved that not only his