Torture again
Ever since he was robbed and beaten at the market, Tuoba Hong's life in the countryside had completely fallen into another state.
Ning Lingyi no longer came, and the figure reviewing memorials was no longer seen by the edge of the field, as if she had completely forgotten him in this world.
If the food he earned through hard work was enough to fill his stomach and was barely edible, now what was delivered to his hut was often some stale and hard cakes, porridge so thin that you could almost see your reflection in it, or stale rice that had been eaten by insects.
His clothes, bedding, and even the hoe that he used more easily, either disappeared or were maliciously damaged.
He seemed to have fallen into an invisible yet omnipresent net. The threads of the net were so fine that it made it hard for him to breathe, but he could not break free.
Every time an item was lost, every time a discovery was destroyed, it was like an icy needle piercing his increasingly fragile nerves.
He didn't understand why Ning Lingyi did this?
Finally, one day, when his newly acquired set of relatively complete winter quilts was covered in filth, he exploded.
With red eyes, he rushed towards the farmers who were laughing in the distance. After all, he was a hero who had fought on horseback for half his life. Even though he was down and out, his momentum when he was furious was still terrifying.
But he didn't even touch the corner of anyone's clothes.
The village head appeared with seven or eight strong men holding sticks, as if they were prepared.
Without a word of nonsense, the sticks fell like raindrops, hitting the thick parts of the flesh and avoiding the vital parts. He was knocked to the ground, curled up, protecting his head and face, listening to the dull sound of bones colliding with hard wood, and feeling the smell of soil mixed with blood.
That time, he lay on the cold earthen kang in the thatched hut for four or five days before he could barely get out of bed.
The food sent by the village head was still the same inedible food.
He won't starve to death.
But, life is not good either.
Dignity? That was already too luxurious to even think about.
He was just struggling to survive like an ant.
This humiliation, minute and prolonged, bloodless, could grind a man's will into dust, inch by inch. It wasn't like the quick, single-handed killing blow on the battlefield, but rather the slashing of flesh with a blunt knife, leaving him wanting to die but unable to, wanting to live but unable to see a ray of hope, leaving him with only resentment and anger.
He wanted to ask Ning Lingyi, why?
Since you don't want to kill him, why do you want to use this method to strip away his last bit of dignity?
He even began to miss the simple physical fatigue he experienced when he first came to Huangzhuang.
At least then, he could still feel that he was fighting back, rather than sinking into a sticky, suffocating quagmire of despair like he was now.
But there was no response.
Ning Lingyi seemed to have disappeared from this world, leaving him with only endless suffering.
Just when he was about to collapse, one night, several strange men came to Guitianyuan, broke into his hut and took him away.
He was filled with confusion and uncertainty.
Who? He didn't believe that the old Beishuo people could find this place, and he didn't believe that Ning Lingyi would be completely defenseless. This place must be a den of dragons and tigers.
Sure enough, those people did not take him away from the capital, but escorted him to a noisy dock.
The smell of turbid river water hit me in the face, and the shouts of the porters, the scolding of the supervisors, and the collision of boats were intertwined.
Before he could see his surroundings clearly, someone grabbed his jaw tightly and forced him to drink a bowl of strange-tasting medicinal soup.
The drug takes effect very quickly.
He tried to shout, but when he opened his mouth, only a hoarse sound came out of his throat, and he could no longer form any complete syllables.
He is mute.
Tuoba Hong struggled frantically, but was met with even heavier punches and kicks. Then, he was pushed and shoved into the group of ragged and dull-eyed boat trackers.
If in Huangzhuang, the beatings from the village head were just enough to make him obedient, then here, what he saw was the real hell on earth.
The supervisor's whip was merciless, and it would tear the skin and flesh apart when it hit the body.
He could not understand the heavily accented dialect and slang of the boat trackers around him, and was unable to communicate, let alone help each other. The food he ate was even worse than when the imperial farm was at its worst, often consisting of moldy bean cakes and brown rice mixed with sand.
He refused to accept and tried to resist.
What he got in return was being beaten nearly to death time and time again.
He was speechless, unable to even roar in pain. All his anger, resentment, and humiliation could only be suppressed in his chest, burning fiercely but finding no outlet.
Every day he repeated the inhuman labor of pulling a heavy cargo ship and struggling forward on the muddy riverbank. Sweat, blood, and mud mixed together, covering his face. His once strong physique quickly became thinner, and he began to hate it!
Ning Lingyi!
All of this must be Ning Lingyi's doing!
If before, as the Khan of Beishuo, he still had respect for Ning Lingyi between rivals, and even a hint of indescribable admiration and affection, then at this moment, there was only the purest and most intense murderous intent left in his heart.
He wished he could eat its flesh and sleep on its skin.
Tear this woman who has pushed him into such an abyss into pieces!
*
The news from the dock was sent to the imperial desk in the palace through layers of channels.
Ning Lingyi pondered for a moment as she read the secret report. Then, she wrote a vermilion imperial edict on the document: "After six months of training at the docks, secretly escort him to the northern frontier. Arrange for him to infiltrate a slave camp belonging to a small Beishuo tribe. Make him suffer a fate worse than death, just like all other Beishuo slaves. Bring him back six months later."
*
Half a year later in the northern border, the wind was as cold as a knife.
Tuoba Hong didn't even know how he was transferred here.
When he regained consciousness, he found himself in a shabby tent reeking of livestock and sweat, surrounded by slaves with pale faces, skinny bodies, and hollow eyes. They were shouting in the Beishuo language, a language both familiar and unfamiliar to him. He was in a trance for a moment.
Homeland? He actually returned to his hometown in this way?
The tribe was not large, with only a few hundred people including men, women, young and old, warriors and slaves.
They had similar deep features, rough skin eroded by the northern sands, and spoke the same language.
But Tuoba Hong soon discovered that these hundreds of people were divided into two worlds by a barrier that was more severe than the curtain of the golden tent in the royal court.
On one side, there are just a few dozen "people".
They were the chief of the tribe, his sons, and brave warriors.
They lived in tents that could protect them from the wind and cold, wore thick fur coats that were not gorgeous, cut greasy mutton around the campfire, and drank kumis in big gulps.
They talked and laughed loudly, and their eyes showed human joy, anger, greed and calculation. They could walk around freely, scold, and even decide the life and death of another group of things.
On the other side, there was a dark mass that made up the majority of people - "not human".
They are the slaves that Tuoba Hong is among now.
Their ragged clothes barely covered their bodies, and they shivered in the cold wind. They ate moldy bean cakes, worse than pig food, mixed with sand and grass roots, and drank cold, dirty water with ice chips. They had no names, only insulting names they casually called out. Their eyes were empty, and occasionally a glimmer of light flashed, which was also a desire for food.
They don't speak, or rather, no one cares about their voices.
The whip fell on them like a whipping of an animal that would not resist.
The sick and injured were left outside their tents to die, their bodies dragged away like discarded debris and thrown to the wolves. The chiefs and warriors walked past them without a moment's pause, as if they were livestock in human form.
Tuoba Hong realized with horror that the treatment he suffered here was even more cruel and brutal than in the Southern Dynasties.
The Southern Dynasty seemed to still value a long-term approach and acknowledged that he was a useful person. Even if they tortured him, it was with some personal purpose against him.
But here, he, like the slaves around him, has completely become something "not human".
His life and death, his pain, and his dignity are worthless in the eyes of those people.
He saw with his own eyes an old slave who was whipped to death by the overseer because he was a little slow, and his body was dragged away like a torn sack.
He saw a sick slave girl wailing in the cold night, her voice eventually fading away until it was silent. He saw young slave children snatching scraps in the mud like little animals...
They have the same face, bleed the same blood, and speak the same language.
But an abyss separates them.
On one side are “people”.
On one side are “not human”.
It seemed as if the entire hell was between them.
The overwhelming hatred for Ning Lingyi that once sustained him was gradually eroded by the torture that was even worse than before day after day.
Hate requires strength and an object.
But when he himself became one of these "non-humans", when he saw with his own eyes how the people he once ruled took their fellow human beings for granted and treated them as worthless, that kind of personal hatred became pale and ridiculous.
He no longer wanted to kill Ning Lingyi.
He no longer even thought about the unattainable throne of Khan.
He just wanted to return to the imperial farm in the west of Beijing and to be next to those two acres of thin land.
There, at least... at least he was still treated as a human being. Even if he was an enemy, a prisoner who needed to be tamed, he was still a "human" with a name, a past, and someone who was worth the effort to torture.
Rather than being something that's about to be consumed, as it is here.
He just wanted to be a farmer who could be treated as a human being.
However, every morning when I wake up, what I see is still the gray sky of the north and the numb eyes of my compatriots who are "not human" around me.
Despair, like the cold river water, completely drowned him.
It was in this boundless darkness, one night when he was huddled in a haystack and shivering after being whipped, that he finally understood.
I understood the purpose of all of Ning Lingyi's seemingly absurd and cruel arrangements.
She wasn't simply torturing him.
She had pulled him down from his human position and thrown him into this place he had once been accustomed to, turning him into an inhuman being.
She wanted him to experience it for himself and witness with his own eyes how the ethnic group he came from and led drew the line between "human" and "non-human".
She wanted him to experience firsthand how, in the system under his rule, a person who lost their identity and power would easily fall into the abyss of "inhumanity", where even hatred would become a luxury.
She wanted him to use his own flesh and blood to measure the depth of this hell on earth, to let him see clearly what kind of corrupt and cruel foundation was beneath the surface that supported the strength of his Beishuo.
This system that treated its own kind as worthless, this policy that created countless "non-humans", was what Tuoba Hong once took pride in...
Now it was his turn.
It turned out that this was the answer Ning Lingyi wanted to tell him.
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