Chapter 4 His Highness the Crown Prince caught Editor Lu red-handed; he was a political figure…
On the other side, deep within the Zhao prison, the stench of blood was so thick it was impossible to dispel.
Shen Hegui sat leisurely in his armchair, his pale fingers holding a small, exquisite piece of white sugar cake, savoring it with elegance. Diagonally opposite him, on the rack, hung a body no longer recognizable as human.
Lin Shoubai swung his arm two steps away from the rack. The leather whip, soaked in salt water and chili juice, fell with a shrill whistle, each strike eliciting a bloodcurdling scream that was not human.
Amidst the screams and the rhythm of the whipping, Shen Hegui squinted his cold, long phoenix eyes as if enjoying himself, taking a bite of sweet cake and a sip of tea.
She gently blew away the foam with her pale pink lips, sipped the last mouthful of tea, and then spoke softly to the bloodied and mangled figure: "You haven't spoken yet after all this time, do you want me to do it myself?"
Shen Hegui rose from his chair, rubbed the fine powdered sugar on his fingertips, and slowly and gracefully walked to the torture table, selecting from the branding iron and finger-crushing tools all the way to the tin snake and the hooked intestine.
Knowing that Shen He was about to return, all the instruments of torture here were brand new and made of gold and jade, both beautiful and cruel.
Shen Hegui glanced down at his wide robe and sleeves, and finally chose a delicate, small, long-handled hook. Seeing him step forward, Lin Shoubai consciously stepped aside, and then put away the long whip covered in blood and flesh.
The closer they got to the rack, the stronger the stench of blood became, and the more excited Shen Hegui became. The few remaining tattered pieces of cloth covering the prisoner were completely torn open, their privacy exposed to the flickering candlelight.
The prisoner felt a surge of panic as his softest, most vulnerable parts of his body came into contact with the cold, hard surface.
"What are you trying to do?!" A scholar may be killed but not humiliated!
Shen Hegui's face was half-lit and half-shadowed, and the curve of his lips carried a strange excitement: "You were once my subject, so of course I'll reward you with one last bit of pleasure before you die." He took out a white jade bottle from his pocket and had Lin Shoubai pour it down the prisoner's throat.
The white jade bottle contains the finest medicines from the brothels of Yanjing. It is said that even a dead person can be revived after being given a bottle.
Lin Shoubai's movements were skilled and swift. After about three or four breaths, the prisoner on the rack reacted uncontrollably.
Lin Shoubai grew up inseparable from Shen Hegui since childhood, so he knows all of Shen Hegui's secrets.
It was an ordinary summer day, unbearably hot and humid. In the middle of the night, a sudden downpour began, accompanied by continuous thunder. He sensed someone approaching his bed and hurriedly drew his sword, startled awake. In the flickering lightning, he saw Shen Hegui, dressed in a soaked white undergarment, standing woodenly before his bed like a ghost, demanding that he set off immediately to find several women of decent appearance.
At the time, he didn't understand why Shen Hegui made such a strange request. It wasn't until the next day, when Shen Hegui asked him to find several handsome men, that he realized his master was impotent. Neither men nor women could arouse his master's sexual interest, not even the strongest drugs.
From then on, the master he had always followed developed some strange habits, such as getting excited at the sight of blood, and collecting some strange and unusual things.
In short, as a fellow man, seeing this made him feel a dull ache in a certain area.
Shen Hegui weighed the golden hook in his hand and glanced down at it. "This size isn't very good. I heard that you took a concubine behind your wife and daughter's back last year, and that concubine gave birth to a son for you at the end of the year."
The touch of the cool gold hook against the scalding folds brought a strange thrill and a shiver.
The prisoner panicked even more: "What did you do to my son? He's just a child, he doesn't know anything."
Shen Hegui nodded but did not answer.
With a slight exertion of her smooth, jade-like wrist, a sickeningly loud screech of flesh followed, and a pair of red and white objects were lifted up and thrown to the ground, like garbage and waste from a slaughterhouse.
When people are excited, they release a lot of dopamine, so the prisoners didn't feel pain at first.
"If you don't speak up, this hook of mine is aimed at your infant son."
"You devil! You're a devil!" the prisoner cried out in alarm.
The smile on Shen Hegui's lips gradually faded, his expression turning cold. He threw the blood-stained golden hook into Lin Shoubai's arms and coldly ordered, "Go, bring his son here!"
"Yes!" Lin Shoubai immediately accepted the order, turned around and left, while quickly calculating in his mind where to go to pick up a child to cover up the lie of Shen He's return.
“Don’t go… I said! Don’t go…” The prisoner panicked completely.
Moreover, the lingering, excruciating pain completely robbed him of his ability to think and discern, and cold sweat covered the prisoner's forehead.
He was utterly ruined. The son in the villa was the only continuation of his family line, and he could not become the sinner who caused the lineage to die out.
Shen Hegui slowly and methodically tucked her long hair, which had fallen to her chest, behind her back.
It's a real shame he should have tied up his long hair and changed his clothes before coming.
Lin Shoubai stopped in his tracks very quickly.
"The Jia Chen imperial examination..." He took a deep breath, trying to calm the increasingly intense pain throughout his body, "I have been appointed as the deputy chief examiner. A perfect cheating scheme in the imperial examination cannot be accomplished by one person alone..."
Shen Hegui dusted off the almost non-existent dust on his clothes and interrupted coldly, "My patience is limited, get to the point." Then, he turned his head and gave Lin Shoubai a brief wink: "Give him some anesthetic."
Lin Shoubai took out a small brown bottle from his pocket, counted out a sufficient amount of pills, and fed them to the prisoner.
Most of the medicines used in the Zhaoyu prison came from the Imperial Medical Academy; they were effective and fast-acting. The prisoners' tense muscles gradually relaxed, and their confessions became much clearer and more coherent.
"Just after the first month of the twenty-second year of Qinghe, Minister Li of the Court of Transmission hosted a banquet to invite me. During the banquet, he dismissed his attendants and said frankly that the son of an acquaintance in Jiangnan was taking the imperial examination this year and hoped that I would do him a favor. Under my persistent questioning, Minister Li quietly told me that the person taking the examination was Zhang Long, the grandson of the current Grand Secretary of the Cabinet."
“Having worked in the Ministry of Rites for many years, I am well aware of the rules of the examination hall. Direct admission would be too risky. So I decided to use the four characters ‘天地玄黄’ (heaven, earth, black, yellow) as the key, instructing the candidates to embed one character in each of the four sections: the introduction, the continuation, the opening, and the conclusion. This was both concealed and easy for the examiners to identify.”
"The most crucial step in this coded cheating scheme was ensuring the exam paper reached the correct examiner. I used my authority to appoint my trusted confidant, Wang Hanlin, as a co-examiner for the 'Classic of Poetry' section. I also bribed the examiner to immediately send any exam paper with the character '天' (tian, meaning 'heaven') to Wang Hanlin. To prevent any slip-ups, I ordered the clerk in the sealing office to draw a circle with rice water on the back of the exam paper when sealing it. Once the paper was delivered to the copying office, Wang Hanlin only needed to touch it."
As the pain subsided, the prisoner's stomach rumbled loudly; he was hungry, very hungry. And due to the massive blood loss, his mouth was parched.
He wiped the blood from his lips and continued, "But who knew that Zhang Long was so incompetent that he could not even write a basic essay on the Four Books properly. Wang Hanlin dared not recommend the paper on his own, so he had to find a ghostwriter to rewrite it overnight."
Shen He returned to the table, poured a cup of tea but did not drink it: "But even if you find a highly sought-after handwriting, it will be different."
"Does Your Highness still remember Lu Wensheng, the third-ranked scholar in the twentieth year of Qinghe? He not only has beautiful handwriting, but he can also imitate other people's handwriting. As long as there are enough samples, he can imitate it perfectly."
"Oh, really?" Shen Hegui twirled the teacup with his slender fingers, his originally pale fingertips turning bright red from the heat, but he seemed oblivious to the pain.
The prisoner seemed lost in a distant memory: "Lord Lu was not only handsome, but also exceptionally talented. His answer sheet was so outstanding that we had to revise it again and again to prevent it from being exposed in the palace examination. At the time, I only felt regret that I did not have a daughter of marriageable age at home."
"How much does he charge for each exam paper he snatches?" Shen Hegui asked. The image of him brushing past Lu Wensheng on Xuanwu Street a few minutes ago inexplicably flashed through his mind, and then he thought of the special imperial examination that year.
In the Fengtian Hall, the young man was flamboyant and handsome, his brilliance fully revealed. At that time, it was the most intense period of his struggle with Prince Su. He was short of money and even more short of people. He originally thought of sending Lu Wensheng out for a few years, which would both protect him from the factional struggle and temper his brilliance, and hone this talented man.
Who would have thought that Lu Wensheng was so arrogant, insisting on being ranked among the top three. Later, by taking advantage of the high position of Prince Su and His Majesty, he became even more of a madman, coveting him every day. Even when he took a step back and tricked him into going to the imperial mausoleum, he still came to harass him, hoping that he would act like a woman and submit to him.
This is utterly absurd!
“I don’t know that. Lord Lu is usually under the protection of Grand Secretary Zhang, so she didn’t accept any money that time.” He paused and added, “However, I heard that later, the Grand Secretary hosted a private banquet for her.”
Shen Hegui snapped out of his thoughts: "He often takes exams for others?"
"yes."
Shen Hegui: "You know the list?"
I know a little bit.
Shen Hegui: "I have been fighting with Shen Zhao for years. Many officials, big and small, have died. How many officials in the court today were appointed through fraudulent means?" Shen Zhao is the name of Prince Su.
"Too many to count at once."
Shen Hegui: "Shoubai, put him down to write the list. Treat him well, don't let him die."
Shen Hegui handed him a cup of tea that had been warmed up: "Sun Youjian, write well. If the result satisfies me, not only will your son be safe, but you will also be able to return to your position as Vice Minister of Rites. Promotion is not impossible."
His son was Sun Youjian's lifeblood, as was his official position. So when Shen Hegui finished speaking, Sun Youjian's eyes, which had been listless, suddenly lit up.
"This guilty subject thanks Your Highness for your mercy!" He thought he was doomed, but unexpectedly he was able to escape death. He wanted to go home and plan a good future for his son.
The air inside the prison was stagnant, and besides the smell of blood, there were some other strange odors. Shen Hegui disliked it, so he went to wait in the carriage outside.
His Highness the Crown Prince's carriage appeared incredibly understated from the outside, but its interior was exquisitely luxurious. The walls were inlaid with precious rosewood, polished to a mirror-like smoothness, subtly exuding a fragrant aroma. The windows were not draped with ordinary brocade curtains, but rather with soft gauze embroidered with gold thread. Sunlight filtered through, creating a soft halo that ensured privacy without being dim. The thick velvet carpet underfoot, woven with gold and jade, was not only beautiful but also incredibly soft and comfortable to walk on.
About half an hour later, steady footsteps sounded outside the carriage. The curtain was lifted by a hand with distinct knuckles, and Lin Shoubai bent down and stepped in, handing a large list with freshly dried ink to Shen Hegui: "Your Highness, it's all here. Besides the annual imperial examinations, there are also some local examinations."
Shen Hegui took the list, his gaze first locking onto Lu Wensheng's cheating record, and let out a short, cold laugh: "What an audacious madman!"
Then, one by one, the official positions of the officials involved in the cheating and the substitute test-takers came into view, and Shen Hegui's knuckles gradually turned white as he pinched the list of names.
"This is absolutely rotten!"
A note from the author:
----------------------
Please forgive the male lead for possibly being a little abnormal, after all, the female lead is a character from a restricted novel. He can be incredibly passionate and erectile towards her.
The Four Books: *The Great Learning*, *The Doctrine of the Mean*, *The Analects*, and *Mencius*.
Eight-legged essay: breaking the topic, continuing the discussion, starting with the initial stock, then the middle stock, then the final stock.
The imperial examination system consisted of eighteen sections: five each for the *Classic of Poetry*, *Classic of History*, and *Classic of Rites*; two for the *Spring and Autumn Annals*; and one for the *Classic of Changes*.
The examiner is like a filter for exam papers. After all, it's impossible for the chief and deputy examiners to review all the papers. This is similar to how middle-level leaders often delegate tasks to their subordinates.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
