Just as the entire Wang family was in a state of utter chaos, a sudden earthquake shattered the peaceful morning deep in Luoyan Mountain, thirty miles outside Beijing.
Amidst the deafening roar of the landslide, a three-zhang-wide crack ran across the mountain ridge, shattering a secret buried deep underground for decades.
Upon hearing the news, the government dispatched troops to investigate. When the officers, carrying torches, ventured deep into the crevice, they were all horrified by what they saw—neatly stacked skeletons of nearly a hundred women lay beneath the collapsed earth.
These skeletons were twisted and overlapped in bizarre shapes, some with rusty iron chains on their wrists and rusty iron nails embedded in the depressions of their skulls.
Most chillingly, each skeleton had a bronze plaque nailed to its pubic bone, with the words "Type A No. 3, Type C No. 7" written on it in cinnabar.
When the news reached the capital, it shocked the entire court and the public.
Zhuque Street was packed with indignant citizens, and hushed whispers filled the teahouses and taverns: "I heard the youngest of those girls is only twelve years old..."
"Some bones were crushed, what a tragedy..."
Some families who had lost their daughters even brought their elderly relatives and children to the Jingzhao Prefecture, crying out to claim their remains.
At this moment, the Dengwen Drum was struck once again at the foot of the imperial city!
This time, the drummers were eighteen women dressed in plain clothes and wearing white veils.
They were slender as bamboo, but their exposed eyebrows and eyes were as sharp as knives.
The woman at the head of the group held aloft a petition written in blood, her hoarse voice piercing the morning mist: "I, Yun, along with seventeen other survivors of the Golden Pavilion, sue the powerful families of Langya Wang, Qinghe Cui, and Xingyang Zheng—for illegally operating the Golden Pavilion for thirty years, imprisoning over three hundred respectable women, and torturing and killing them for their own amusement!"
This accusation was like a thunderclap, throwing the courtiers in the hall into chaos.
One of the aristocratic officials shouted angrily: "Absurd! What kind of madwoman is this, daring to slander a high-ranking official of the court!"
Before she could finish speaking, a woman behind her suddenly ripped off her white veil, revealing a face covered in scars—the word "slave" was branded on her right cheek, and her left cheek bore whip marks resembling centipedes. Most horrifying of all was a deep, bone-revealing knife wound on the bridge of her nose.
"Slander?" She sneered, pulling up her sleeve to reveal a dense network of needle marks on her wrist. "Please, gentlemen, take a look at this!!"
As she moved, the other women revealed shocking injuries on their bodies: some had all their finger joints deformed, some had burns all over their waists and abdomens, and some even had lingering marks on their necks.
Even the most foolish person wouldn't believe this was a ruse.
The scandal involving the Golden Pavilion instantly ignited the city's anger.
The proprietress of the West Market Cloth Shop threw down her abacus and ran to the yamen (government office)—her sister had disappeared five years ago when she went to offer incense.
The cook at the Imperial College fainted on the spot—her daughter had said three years ago that she was going to work as an embroiderer for a wealthy family, and then she had been out of contact with her ever since.
As Wang Xiuxiu said to Lu Nancheng in the imperial study: "Cheating in the imperial examinations damages one's career, while the cruelty and murder in the Golden Pavilion destroys people's hearts—after all, not every family has a scholar, but which family doesn't have daughters and sisters?"
Amidst the overwhelming public outcry, the powerful families were forced to temporarily suspend their pursuit of the imperial examination fraud case.
The two cases were combined into one, and were ultimately handed over to the Ministry of Justice, the Court of Judicial Review, and the Censorate for a public joint trial.
Surprisingly, Zhang Heng, the poor scholar who once debated with a group of scholars in the imperial examination scandal, also volunteered to defend these wounded women.
In the courtroom of the Dali Temple, Zhang Heng stood there, his words sharp as knives, arguing against the powerful families until they were forced to retreat one after another.
"Gentlemen, do you question the evidence?" Zhang Heng unfurled a five-foot-long silk scroll. "This is a 'Goods Catalogue' retrieved from a secret compartment in the Golden Pavilion, detailing the times and methods by which scions of various noble families 'used' women from the third year of the Yuanxi era to the present—"
His finger hovered over a particular name, "For example, on the Double Ninth Festival of the tenth year of the Fuxi reign, the Third Young Master Cui blinded two young girls with red candles, and afterwards even specially noted, 'Their pupil color is special; they have been made into specimens.'"
An uproar immediately broke out among the members of the aristocratic families.
Young Master Cui's face turned from green to white. He suddenly lunged to snatch the evidence, but was held down by the constables.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, Zhang Heng unfurled another scroll, which prominently displayed a floor plan of the Golden Tower, marked with chilling locations such as "torture room" and "beast training ground".
"Forgery! This...this must be a forgery!" Cui's official shouted hoarsely, beads of sweat forming on his forehead.
Zhang Heng sneered: "Forged? Then the family seal on this is also forged?"
It turns out that the Golden Pavilion matter involves a huge amount of money. These scions of noble families are not fools. In order to prevent any unforeseen complications, they agreed to use their family seals as entry tickets.
Zhang Heng pressed on relentlessly, his logic meticulous, leaving the members of the aristocratic families speechless. Finally, enraged, one of them roared in the hall, "How dare you, a lowly commoner, question an aristocratic family?!"
These words sparked widespread public outrage!
Wang Chongli, the head of the Langya Wang clan, saw that things were not going well and turned to leave, but the moment he saw Yunniang remove her veil, the teacup in his hand shattered with a "crack".
The woman who had served him for three months at the Golden Pavilion still had the word "cheap" branded on her left cheek by his stamp.
"Lord Wang, please wait!" Zhang Heng shouted, holding up a gilded ledger. "This is the 'Goods Catalogue' seized from the Golden Pavilion. Page thirty-seven clearly records: 'On the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month of the year Yi Hai, a respectable young woman from Yangzhou was acquired. She is fourteen years old, and the price is eighty taels of silver. The Prince will personally inspect her in three days.'" He turned to the trembling Yun Niang, "May I ask, young lady, how old were you in the year Yi Hai?"
"Fourteen." Yunniang's voice was as cold as ice. "When they tied me to the daybed to examine me, I bit off Wang Chongli's jade thumb ring."
Zhang Heng calmly took out a brocade box: "Then please explain, Lord Wang, why is your courtesy name engraved on the inner circle of this evidence?"
A deafening roar suddenly erupted outside the hall.
Among them were families whose daughters had gone missing, who cried and tried to rush in.
No one knows who threw the vegetable leaves first, but in the blink of an eye, rotten eggs and persimmons rained down on the seats of the aristocratic officials.
The constables maintaining order exchanged glances and tacitly took a half-step back.
In the chaos, Lu Jingze led the Imperial Guards to quietly surround Cui's villa in the south of the city.
When the sandalwood door, carved with a picture of a hundred beauties, was broken open, even the soldiers, who were used to bloodshed, gasped in shock.
The entire secret room was filled with glass cabinets, which contained female organs arranged by year: an eyeball from the third year of the Yuanxi reign, a tongue from the tenth year of the Yuanxi reign, a row of fingers from the second year of the Fuxi reign... In the newly added cabinets, there were also several pairs of ears with earrings that had not yet been removed.
When this evidence was delivered to the palace by fast horse, Lu Nancheng was reviewing memorials.
Upon seeing the words "six human skin lanterns" on the evidence list, the red pen snapped in two with a "snap".
The next day at the grand court assembly, as the Imperial Guards dragged the scions of the aristocratic families involved out of the ranks, Minister Li, who came from a humble background, suddenly knelt down and wept bitterly—he had recognized his daughter's heterochromatic eye in a glass jar.
At the height of public anger, fierce arguments also broke out within the aristocratic families.
In the study of the Zheng family's villa, several young men slammed their fists on the table and stood up: "We're all going to die anyway, might as well join forces with the other families and rebel!"
Before he could finish speaking, the old clan chief swung his cane and struck: "Fool! Public resentment is boiling over, and the emperor is waiting for us to rebel! If you dare to make a move, the people will tear down the ancestral hall tomorrow!"
"Chief! Look outside!"
Not far away, in the direction of the Zheng Clan Ancestral Hall, thick smoke was billowing up.
Ultimately, the powerful families did not dare to take action. Under the dual pressure of overwhelming evidence and boiling public resentment, the families involved had no choice but to hand over the culprit.
On the day that seventy-eight scions of prominent families were escorted to the execution ground, the eaves of the houses on both sides of Zhuque Street were covered with women's white clothes.
It is unknown who first began singing a folk song to summon the soul, but gradually, the mournful song echoed throughout the entire capital.
In the archives of the Dali Temple, the case file of the Jinlou case was stored separately in an iron box, with 309 names engraved on the lid.
Those are the girls who, as far as we can confirm, will forever remain in the darkness.
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