Lin Rui didn't expect that they would have such high praise from Yan Qingqing, but Yan Qingqing didn't give him a chance to speak. As the wooden door in the yard was knocked, Yan Qingqing pushed him into a dilapidated house.
Lin Rui staggered and barely stood firm. Yan Qingqing had already walked to the door and opened it. It was the two servants that Lin Rui wanted to avoid before. They each held a food box in their hands, and when they saw Yan Qingqing, their faces were full of greed.
Yan Qingqing changed her previous charming and seductive appearance in the lotus sedan chair and looked at these servants coldly: "What are you looking at? You have lost your life force, so how can your six senses be impure?"
The greedy look on the servant's face disappeared instantly, and he became furious: "Who do you think you are? The legitimate Miss Yishuguan? I just want to see if the young general can take you away, otherwise your fate will be much worse than those women in the backyard. Do you think the Marquis and the eldest son will use you to reward the soldiers?"
Yan Qingqing had a sharp tongue: "That's better than talking to a hermaphrodite like you, who's neither male nor female. It makes me want to vomit."
"You, you! Yan Qingqing, just wait!" The servant was so angry that he threw the food box to the ground and turned away.
Yan gently closed the wooden door, and Lin Rui came out of the house where he was hiding and helped her pick up the steamed buns that had fallen on the ground and were covered with dust and dirt.
It is hard to imagine that the palace in front is filled with fine wines and delicacies, while the eldest lady in the back palace is eating rotten steamed buns. I don’t know how many days the steamed buns have been left, maybe they are made with rotten flour. Just smelling it, the smell is pungent.
But Yan Qingqing picked it up and stuffed it into her mouth as usual. Seeing Lin Rui staring at her, she hesitated for a moment and handed him another bun: "Do you want it?"
Before Lin Rui could refuse, Yan laughed at himself and said, "I almost mistook you for someone from Yishu Pass."
Lin Rui could understand the meaning of her words. It seemed that being able to eat such food in Yishu Pass was a delicacy. As for the banquet in the palace in front to entertain the young general, they were all at the level of a Manchu and Han banquet.
No wonder he said that Yishu Pass had a strange look from top to bottom. It turned out to be a whitewash. The real inside was already rotting and festering. The wound was deep into the bone marrow and could not be removed, so it could only be destroyed.
"The street in the main city of Yishu..." Lin Rui asked tentatively.
Yan Qingqing took another bite of the sour steamed bun in her hand and said, "You can see that something is wrong. We, the children, and the concubines in the neighboring courtyard, can't even get enough to eat. How can those people live in peace and quiet? This is all the idea of Yan Xiuyu and Yan Xiuzhuo. They are whitewashing the situation to lower your vigilance. Yishuguan has been almost destroyed by them. If we don't find a new party to ally with, Yishuguan will soon be in chaos."
Lin Rui wanted to ask for more details, but he heard a scream from the next yard: "Ahhhh!"
This shrill cry sounded like someone was enduring some heart-wrenching pain. Yan Qingqing seemed immune to this kind of cry and was not surprised at all. She continued to eat the steamed bun in her hand.
"That sound..." Lin Rui wanted to ask.
Yan Qingqing paused eating her steamed bun and looked up at him: "Curious?"
Lin Rui nodded honestly, and Yan stood up gently: "I'll take you to see it, provided you can hold on."
Lin Rui said naively, "Why can't I bear this? This is at most a cold palace, not a torture chamber."
Yan Qingqing has already stepped forward: "Come on."
She led Lin Rui to an alley in the courtyard. The wall of the alley was also made of loess. After being exposed to the sun for a long time, it began to crack, revealing cracks. The edges of these cracks were artificially enlarged several times by Yan Qingqing, so that the situation in the opposite courtyard could be clearly seen.
When he saw the situation in the yard, Lin Rui's pupils constricted, his hands clenched into fists, and his throat rolled violently, as if he was about to vomit in the next second.
The courtyard next door is where some concubines who were favored by Marquis Xinyang were imprisoned. Maybe they were old and ugly, or maybe Marquis Xinyang was tired of them, so he replaced the old ones with new ones. The new ones accompany the king, and the old ones are locked up in this dilapidated courtyard.
Darkness easily breeds in places where sunlight doesn't reach. The Marquis of Xinyang's rule is lax, and his management is even more corrupt. There is also a group of eunuchs in this palace. These eunuchs were all former refugees. Because they couldn't eat enough, they sold themselves to enter the Marquis of Xinyang's palace in order to survive, and were castrated to become eunuchs.
From a man to a eunuch, and a pseudo-emperor eunuch with no legitimate reason, these people were full of resentment. Xinyang Hou and Yan Xiu Yu and others were protected by special soldiers, and they could not easily see them. Moreover, even if they were given ten times the courage, they would not dare to offend the owner of Yishu Pass.
Therefore, these weak concubines imprisoned in the cold palace became a channel for them to vent their animal desires. Because they were castrated, they were destined to be unable to have sexual intercourse, and what awaited these poor women would be even more cruel torture.
What Lin Rui saw now was one of the tortures called "Lotus Blooms with Every Step". Women were made to walk barefoot on a red-hot iron plate. The scorching temperature of the iron plate melted the skin on the soles of their feet, revealing bright red flesh and blood. The red footprints that dripped blood while they walked on the iron plate were called lotus.
There were five women walking on the iron plate in agony. Their screams and wails could not sympathize with the eunuchs. Instead, they aroused the demons in their hearts, and they waved whips to urge them to walk faster.
If some women disobeyed, they would be whipped by the eunuchs until they were reduced to a bloody mass of rotten flesh.
These eunuchs tortured the five women until they were only breathing their last breath before leaving. As soon as they left, other disheveled women quickly came out of the yard, and they skillfully went forward to check the breath of these women. If they were dead, they would wrap them in a torn sack and bury them in the yard.
Lin Rui even heard a woman say, "Dig deeper so we can bury one more next time. The area is so small. If we dig too shallow, we won't even have a place to bury our dead in the future."
Her voice was calm and numb, as if she was accustomed to this kind of life and was indifferent to life and death.
Instead, Lin Rui, who was peeping through the alley, finally couldn't help but bent down and vomited all over the place. It was so cruel!
Although they had seen horrific scenes while fleeing the famine, those were what the starving victims had to do in order to survive; but the torture these eunuchs used on the concubines in the cold palace was simply to satisfy their love of torture and killing.
The sight of the bloody footprints on the ground made him feel extremely sick. He hadn't eaten much to begin with, and now he vomited out the acid in his stomach.
I looked up and saw Yan Qingqing standing in the corner as if nothing had happened, with her arms folded, and her cold and numb expression was the same as those women who were not dead.
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