Jiang Chan was forced to look up, her eyes blurred with tears, as she looked at Zhao Kui's disgusting fat face, then at the two fierce-looking thugs behind him, and finally, her gaze fell on her father's unseeing eyes on the ground.
In the last moments of his life, those eyes fixed desperately on the old pottery jar in the corner.
Jiang Chan's mind raced. A direct confrontation? The weapons in her spatial dimension couldn't be used yet! She couldn't kill the person in front of her outright… but she absolutely couldn't hand over the secret formula!
"I...I..." Jiang Chan's lips trembled, her voice breaking with sobs, filled with fear. She seemed paralyzed with terror, her words incoherent. "Father...Father...he hid...hid him so well...I don't know...I really don't know where he is..."
Zhao Kui stared intently into her eyes, as if trying to dig out secrets. Jiang Chan struggled to control the trembling in her body, trying to make her eyes appear as empty, desperate, and terrified as possible.
Her heart pounded in her chest, but her mind remained as calm as a frozen lake. She was gambling—gambling on Zhao Kui's greed and arrogance, gambling that he would believe she was too scared to act immediately.
"Don't know?" Zhao Kui tightened his grip on her chin, his voice barely audible, "Looks like you want to experience the same fate as your father?"
Jiang Chan abruptly closed her eyes, her body shrank violently as if she were terrified. Tears streamed down her face, and she let out a desperate whimper like a small animal.
Zhao Kui stared at her for a good ten seconds, his cold gaze seeming to pierce her. Finally, he snorted coldly and released her. Jiang Chan lost her support and slid softly down the wall to the ground, curling up into a ball, her shoulders still trembling as she suppressed sobs.
"Lock her up! Keep a close eye on her!" Zhao Kui straightened up, took out a silk handkerchief and disgustedly wiped the hand that had been pinching Jiang Chan's chin, then ordered the thugs, "Right here in this dilapidated courtyard! Not a single fly is allowed to fly out without my order! I have plenty of time to slowly pry her mouth open! I'm determined to have this secret recipe!"
He gave one last sinister glance at Master Su's corpse on the ground and the bloodstained porcelain bottle, a cruel smile spreading across his face. He turned and left the workshop with another thug. The heavy footsteps faded into the distance.
The thug who remained stood like an iron tower blocking the doorway, arms crossed, coldly staring at Jiang Chan, who was curled up on the ground.
The workshop was filled only with the crackling of oil lamps, Jiang Chan's suppressed sobs, and the thick, overwhelming smell of blood and death.
Jiang Chan buried her head in her knees, her body still trembling with fear, her shoulders shaking. But the tears on her face, buried in her arms, had dried. Her eyes were wide open, but there was no fear in them, only a cold, burning flame.
Her gaze, peering through the gaps in her arms, was fixed on the unremarkable old pottery jar covered in a thick layer of dust in the corner.
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