Chapter 60 A Child Raised on Scares

"Aunt Lan, you can keep the Black Flood-Dragon Sword if you like, since it's quite valuable. But that celadon ware is not mine; it belongs to the Pei family. Even if you want to sell it, you'll likely stir up a huge trouble. Why don't you return it to me and choose something else instead? Anyway, I noticed that those men from the fourth branch of the Zou family have plenty of valuable things on them; you can just take two items today."

Having figured this out, he suppressed a smile and said to Lan Yufeng with a deadpan expression, "Besides, Chen Tu is going over to help interrogate them later, so you can tag along and help out."

"Okay!" Lan Yufeng immediately lost her shyness. In fact, she had already noticed yesterday that those people were carrying exceptionally good things.

Turning around, she happily returned to her tent and handed the cloth-wrapped celadon back to Gu Liubai.

"Aunt Lan, when you have time, could you also keep an eye on my belongings along the way and make sure no one else takes them?" Gu Liubai suddenly thought of something as he watched her follow Chen Tu with eager excitement to interrogate the Zou family members.

"We're all our own people, no problem at all." Lan Yufeng cheerfully agreed without a moment's hesitation.

Gu Liubai couldn't help smiling again.

More than just their own people.

Probably every single valuable item in Aunt Lan's eyes was already her own.

She might not take them right away, but she wouldn't let anyone else take them either.

Chen Tu cast a speechless glance at Lan Yufeng.

He felt that Lan Yufeng would end up just like Pei Yunqun, being sold out by Gu Liubai and still happily counting the money for him.

Yet, why hadn't anyone among their own group thought of asking Lan Yufeng to guard everyone's valuables before?

A moment later, however, he felt he was getting the short end of the stick.

What free help?

Taking one item a day was quite a steep price.

That single Black Flood-Dragon Sword alone could be sold for who knows how many taels of silver, and it was certainly the kind of item people would scramble to buy.

Furthermore, as far as he knew, Lan Yufeng could tell at a glance whether something was valuable or not; unless there was truly nothing else to take, she would never touch anything worthless.

***

When Chen Tu appeared before Old Madam Zou and Li Xizhi, Old Madam Zou wore no severe expression in front of Zou Suoyi and the others. She spoke in a casual, everyday tone, calmly instructing, "When interrogating them, it is best not to let their faces show obvious signs of torture at a glance. Keeping them alive should still be useful."

As soon as she said this, Zou Suoyi, Steward Wu, and the others directly fainted again.

Chen Tu merely smiled, looking as harmless and amiable as could be. "Old Madam Zou, rest assured, I will take good care of them. At most, their throats might become a bit hoarse."

"Then I must trouble you, sir." Old Madam Zou spoke very ordinarily, letting Zhou Luer support her as she walked out.

Chen Tu smacked his lips.

Even though she wasn't a cultivator, this old madam still gave him a strong sense of oppression. She truly deserved to be the one who had nurtured two Grand Secretaries of the Censorate.

"Let's begin."

He looked at Zou Suoyi and Steward Wu lying on the ground before him, rubbed his hands together, and quickly grew excited.

A group of Youzhou soldiers guarded the encampment.

All the other frontier troops here had been sent out for drills.

The camp was empty and desolate.

More than a dozen veteran soldiers at the main entrance of the camp occasionally glanced toward that cluster of houses within.

Last night, the bathhouse together with two adjacent utility rooms had been cleared out and turned into an interrogation room.

***

What exactly had happened, they did not know; who was interrogating whom, they were equally unaware.

Soon, a blood-curdling scream echoed from one of the rooms.

When the shrill screams first rang out, none of the soldiers showed any particular reaction.

After the time it took to brew a cup of tea, the expressions of these Youzhou soldiers finally changed somewhat.

The sole veteran soldier squatting on the ground tapped the stem of his tobacco pipe, slowly stood up, frowned, and said softly, "That's an expert."

They had seen plenty of torture and extorted confessions.

To be able to make someone scream so miserably for the time it takes to drink a cup of tea without letting them pass out from the pain definitely required an expert.

However, what followed completely shattered their understanding.

Half an hour later, the screams continued, but the sound had grown hoarse, resembling shrill cries muffled through layers of tattered fabric.

The noise made their hair stand on end. Even the leader of these men, the usually calmest veteran soldier, found his hand trembling slightly.

Hua Cangming also walked out.

His expression was indescribably pale; even while breathing the fresh air outside, he still couldn't suppress the urge to vomit.

He had never had any interest in torture, but at least he had witnessed it a few times in the Youzhou grand prison.

Yet, what was the purpose of torture?

Fundamentally, its purpose was to make prisoners tell the truth.

He had never seen someone as perverted as Chen Tu.

Those men had clearly confessed to everything, yet Chen Tu still gleefully continued to torture them.

To the point that those whose turn for torture hadn't even come yet would piss and shit themselves in terror at the mere sight of Chen Tu's smile, scrambling to blurt things out first.

He seemed entirely unconcerned with how much information these people could provide, taking pleasure instead in studying how to torment them.

When he finally calmed his emotions and arrived at the tent where Gu Liubai was staying, he noticed that the color of Gu Liubai's pupils had completely changed.

However, he kept his emotions well under control, not even daring to take a second look. He simply bowed deeply and said softly, "The transit passes will be delivered in an hour."

Gu Liubai calmly returned the bow and asked, "Have you ever considered why I chose to obtain the transit passes from your hands instead of asking Pei Yunqun for help?"

Hua Cangming was stunned for a moment, then answered honestly, "I didn't consider that question. What I considered was that, according to our agreement, the transit passes were supposed to be handed to you last night."

Gu Liubai smiled faintly. "Youzhou is relatively a place where the powerful families of Chang'an rarely interfere, and they hold the Zou family in great awe. In other places—Chang'an or Luoyang, for instance—if their actions crossed the line of tolerance, they could smooth things over through a certain exchange of interests. But if they were to offend the Zou family, they would be swarmed by the Censorate, impeached, stripped of their official posts, and might even alert the Emperor. Therefore, few dare to investigate the Zou family. Yet in this entire affair, your Hua family will become the breakthrough point; the Hua family will become the weakest link in my plan."

Hua Cangming's mood inexplicably grew heavy.

Knowing that Gu Liubai spoke the truth, he nodded and said, "Yes."

"The fact that you failed to prepare the transit passes before last night in accordance with our agreement is presumably due to your habitual way of doing things. You didn't trust us enough; you thought you would wait until Old Madam Zou confirmed whether Zhou Luer was indeed Zou Jianan before giving us the passes. If we were swindlers, you wouldn't have to waste any effort at all." Gu Liubai glanced at him. "However, there is a difference between rushing to handle this matter at the last minute and preparing it well in advance. Since you've already reflected on the issue of timing, you should have figured this out yourself."

Hua Cangming's expression turned somewhat ugly. "I will make amends for this mistake."

"Before we arrive in Youzhou, I will give you this opportunity to reissue a fresh set of transit passes for all of us. I do not wish to fall into the sight of those nobles the moment I enter Chang'an." Gu Liubai looked at Hua Cangming and said earnestly, "I hope you remember that doing business with me means black is black and white is white. There must never be any mishaps."

"I will not make the same mistake again," Hua Cangming said with exceptional firmness.

Instead of anger, he felt a wave of relief.

Being able to do business with a person like this should be a blessing for both the Zou and Hua families.

"If Old Madam Zou's health is fine, I would like to set off at noon."

Watching Hua Cangming's retreating figure as he walked out of the tent, Gu Liubai listened to the distant, shrill cries still echoing through the air. As he picked up his firewood chopper once again, he couldn't help massaging his temples on both sides.

It was enough to give him a headache.

He had previously heard Yin Shiniang mention in passing that Chen Tu was very skilled at interrogation, but he truly hadn't expected Chen Tu to be so addicted to it.

Those scoundrels of the Yin Mountain probably found life truly dull up in the mountains.

Come to think of it, a place like Yin Mountain had plenty of grasslands, cattle, and sheep, but a severe shortage of people.

Especially in recent years, things had grown much more peaceful over at Yin Mountain; they probably didn't even get a few business jobs in a year.

When Yin Shiniang let Granny Long play with her bow and arrow, it was perhaps to give her a sense of participation, but another reason might simply have been that Yin Shiniang killed people too fast, leaving them unbearably idle. So they deliberately imposed restrictions and difficulties on themselves, while also creating misperceptions about the Yin Mountain bandits, lest formidable figures stop daring to flee through their territory in the future.

When Chen Tu walked out of those two rooms, he was completely spotless, as if he had taken a bath and changed his clothes before coming out.

What was even more shocking was that when Zou Suoyi and the others emerged, they were equally spotless. Yet, having suffered some unseen trauma, their eyes were unfocused, and their legs wobbled like soft noodles as they walked.

Even the two sixth-rank cultivators were in the same state.

There were no visible lacerations on their skin, but looking at Chen Tu was like looking at the King of Hell, causing their entire bodies to collapse limply to the ground.

Chen Tu was beaming with radiance.

Only Gu Liubai's expression left him somewhat dissatisfied.

Throughout the entire interrogation process, Gu Liubai hadn't even come over to take a look, and right now, there wasn't the slightest trace of curiosity on Gu Liubai's face.

"Aren't you genuinely curious about how I dealt with them?" Chen Tu grew somewhat depressed.

Gu Liubai smiled. "I was a bit curious at first, but hearing them scream for so long reminded me of two torturers from the previous dynasty in Rongzhou—one excelled at making human-skin lanterns, while the other specialized in driving needles into people's skulls. The one who used needles could stimulate acupoints, plunging people into various kinds of agony. They say certain needles could make a person feel an intense, unbearable sourness in their mouth, as if a million claws were scraping deep inside their bones, while others could make it impossible to breathe without actually suffocating them—even more terrifying than waterboarding. I've heard that with dozens of different needles combined with various techniques, no matter how tough someone is, they couldn't survive past the seventh needle. I suspect you have such a set of needles on you, I just don't know if you've mastered the techniques of the other torturer as well."

Chen Tu couldn't even manage a smile. He stared at Gu Liubai for a long time. "Even those things have reached your ears?"

Gu Liubai couldn't help laughing.

Everyone had heard plenty of bedtime stories when they were children.

He was no exception.

Only, the bedtime stories he heard were rather unique.

They were the kind that were particularly stimulating and thrilling.

Stories like the Buddha in the urn, wax-sealed corpses, walking blue-faced corpses, the water dungeons of the Great Sui Dynasty, and the ten great tortures.

Zhou Luer loved listening to them too.

That was why, when he went with that old lama to witness a celestial burial for the first time, he felt no fear whatsoever, only finding it amusing.

It had left the old lama astonished beyond measure.