Volume Two, Chapter 17

Sign and press your fingerprint, or face the finger stocks? Choose for yourself.

Li Xiangfan turned to the side, revealing the eighteen types of torture instruments outside the cell door behind him. The fire tongs in the charcoal stove burned a fiery red, sending out crackling sparks that made her scalp tingle with numbness.

Prime Minister, though the scholar had not yet entered the imperial court, she still held an official academic rank. As the saying goes, punishments do not apply to senior officials. For you to use torture instruments against the scholar violates the laws.

Laws? He lowered his gaze, coldly sweeping over her trembling body and deathly pale face. I know them better than you do. But sometimes, for the sake of the greater picture, one must temporarily cast aside these meaningless things. Someone, bring out the torture instruments.

Several personal guards took the order and pressed in close to her with the glowing hot fire tongs and finger stocks.

Zhu Bafu swallowed hard. It is over, she is going to meet her end right here today! Her father already used half a lifetime of personal lessons to tell her the most important highlights of life—first, a cut-sleeve's wife runs away; second, accompanying the sovereign gets your whole family killed. With such blood-and-tears lessons, why was she still foolish enough to follow in her father's footsteps? Being a cut-sleeve and accompanying the sovereign, the two greatest fools in the world, and she, this foolish daughter, went and did both!

The fire tongs spat sparks in front of her. She wondered which part they would burn first—she had heard that these private tortures were rather wretched, and the first spot they always liked to burn was a man's root—yet that thing was something she did not possess!

Those fire