Chapter 117 Chapter 117 The torture instruments and the portrait, separated by a wall...
Gu Huaijin even remembered approximately how long her bath took.
She finished her bath and changed her clothes. Not long after, a servant came in carrying a table and placed it against the wall. Another servant followed closely behind and placed some things on the table one by one.
After putting the things away, the two servants bowed respectfully to her and left.
She walked over to take a closer look with a nonchalant smile.
Whips, hammers, pliers, clamps, flesh brushes, canes, and head hoops were all things she had seen in the prison at Wangsheng Gate.
She couldn't help but sneer.
When she passed away, she was not lucky enough to enjoy these things, but now, she has to try it with her well-behaved and gentle ex-husband.
How interesting.
She picked up a whip and examined it.
The whip was made of cowhide, solid and hard. The whip body was like a scorpion's tail, and when it was released, it was as long as a thin dragon.
She smiled and shook her head. This man's temperament had really changed. He liked to do things to the extreme.
She had witnessed Gu Huaijin's whip skills before. That year, the daughter of the Hengshan Sect's leader had bullied her. To avenge her, he devised some method to force her up the mountain. With a long whip, he lashed the arrogant Heng Huang until his skin was torn and flesh was exposed. With just three lashes, the eaves of the temple collapsed on all sides.
Now, the person kneeling in the middle and being whipped has become her.
She wanted to try it on her hand, so she untied the small rope that bound the whip, shook the whip open, and held it in her hand. It felt heavy.
Suddenly, he whipped the whip hard, swung his arm, and with a snap, the long whip hit the moisture-covered stone wall, cracking two bricks and stones, and fragments fell off.
What a powerful whip.
For some reason, she felt a little refreshed. She swung her arm and whipped again.
It was really unexpected that when she was in the palace, in order to avoid this day, she thought of countless ways and played hide-and-seek with him for a long time; but when the moment of seeing the coffin came, her heart was relaxed and calm.
If I had known this would happen, I wouldn’t have been so worried and sleepless.
People are always like this. Before something happens, they are always panicked, but only when it really happens do they realize that it is nothing special.
She smiled and whipped the wall again.
As the whip struck her, she suddenly felt something was wrong.
It was the same stone wall. When the whip was hit, there were some places with crisp crackling sounds, but in some places... the sound was muffled.
She rolled up the whip, put it back on the table, and tapped the wall that had echoed the wrong sound with her knuckles.
As I knocked, I found that the echo in one place was quite different.
If the wall is solid, the sound should also be solid, converging at one point without any echo.
But when you knock on this place, the sound is scattered and weak.
There's something behind this wall.
She glanced towards the gate of Changshengquan.
Amidst the rising steam, the vermilion wooden door was faintly visible in the white mist, and there was still no movement.
She turned her head and pressed all the wall stones one by one along the four sides of that area.
Sure enough, not long after, she pushed an inconspicuous stone in a little.
She gathered her strength and pushed again, pressing down the entire piece of wall stone.
A heavy, solid stone door slowly slid open to the right.
A cold wind blew inside, and the door opened up to reveal a winding and deep corridor.
Nan Qiong Shuang turned back and looked at the wooden door again.
Gu Huaijin still hasn't come.
This was interesting. Normally, she would be cautious and wouldn't act rashly, so she probably wouldn't venture into this secret.
But Gu Huaijin had already placed the torture instruments in front of her one by one.
Anyway, the result is already like this, so what is she afraid of? Is there any difference between breaking three fingers and breaking five?
The most terrifying thing on this mountain is her moody and unpredictable ex-husband.
She smiled for a moment, lifted her skirt, and slipped into the corridor.
The corridor was dark, damp, and so narrow that only one person could pass through.
She had no lamp or tinder, so she walked up a spiral stone staircase with the light from the Longevity Fountain. The steps were covered with moss, slippery and tricky, and so narrow that only half a foot could fit. She tiptoed up one step at a time.
She walked for an unknown amount of time until she began to feel a tightness in her chest. Finally, the candlelight flickered and she entered a cramped and simple room.
A single, dim lamp lit the room. The candle had burned down to an inch, and wax had accumulated in the lampstand, evidently one that no one had regularly cleaned.
The room was in a state of chaos. The floor was covered with torn pieces of paper, half covering the entire floor, some with their backs facing up, some with their fronts facing up, but they were all obscured by each other and it was impossible to tell what they were.
In the corner of the room, there was something that looked like a painting, but the candlelight was too dim and half of it was hidden in the shadows. At first glance, she couldn't tell who it was.
Below the painting, there is a simple cabinet with miscellaneous sundries scattered on it, and in front of the cabinet, there is a rocking chair.
The whole room was filled with Gu Huaijin's scent, so strong that when she entered, it was as if she had bumped into his arms.
He has breathed, lived, and stayed here for a long time.
How would she know?
She doesn't understand it herself.
She walked over and looked carefully at the painting on the wall in the dim candlelight.
The person in the painting is sitting with his knees together and his hands on his knees, smiling sweetly and happily at the person outside the painting.
In his hand, he held a candy painting of a turtle.
Nan Qiongshuang's heart skipped a beat.
It's her.
On that cursed night of their final separation, she and Gu Huaijin went down the mountain and spent their first and last Qiqiao Festival at the market at the foot of the mountain.
That picture was drawn for her by an old man who was setting up a stall.
He still kept it for so many years, even...even if something like that happened, he hid it here.
She stretched out her hand, nostalgic and reminiscent, and carefully stroked it again and again.
It happened so many years ago, she almost forgot about it.
She remembered that at that time, Gu Huaijin laughed at her ugly painting skills. She angrily told the old man selling sugar paintings that she wanted to draw him, but she took the soup spoon and drew a turtle instead.
She lowered her long eyelashes and sneered a little at herself.
There was no dust on the cabinet, but it was full of miscellaneous items.
Earrings, fans, strange chess pieces, combs, hairpins, all of which were incomprehensible things.
With a nonchalant smile, she picked up the things one by one and looked at them.
One of her white jade earrings fell off at some point.
The hairpin was left in the room by Gu Huaijin when he was going down the mountain to see her. He sent her to Lingjue Pavilion and asked Li Xuanbai to protect her. She was afraid that he would really forget her, so she left it there on purpose.
He really left the hairpin behind.
Li Xuanbai's white jade folding fan. The handle is ivory, and the fan is made of mother-of-pearl. When viewed in an oblique light, it shimmers with brilliance.
She still remembered that at that time, Gu Huaijin was concerned about the gentleman's ways and refused to kiss her even though he loved her so much. He deceived himself by kissing her through the fan.
She thought she had lost the fan, but how come it was here?
The jade comb bought at the market during the Qiqiao Festival.
At that time, he didn't know that they would die and say goodbye that night. He smiled and combed their hair, saying that it was a wedding ceremony.
She sighed, feeling depressed.
There is one more chess piece.
It was a white chess piece with something bright red on it. I didn't know what the red was, nor did I know why it was worth keeping.
She didn't understand and couldn't figure it out, so she just sat down in the rocking chair.
A whole secret room filled with her former personal belongings.
Why must this happen? Why must this happen? He was outside, just below the spiral staircase, outside the corridor, and across the wall, where he had prepared a table full of gleaming torture instruments for her.
It turned out that her personal belongings from many years ago were hidden here.
She simply couldn't connect the two.
What exactly does he want?
The rocking chair creaked and rocked back and forth, and she curled up in it, puzzled.
He picked up the scattered things on the ground.
The woman's hair, the woman's clothes, the woman's fingertips, but they were torn into pieces, only half of them remained.
I picked up another picture, and it showed a woman in a narrow boat, carrying a lantern and wearing a robe, in the middle of a dense forest. Her eyes were gentle, and her smile was as beautiful as a flower.
Her heart suddenly skipped a beat.
It's still her.
He had painted it himself. Tianshan's foremost painter of the day, and even after so many years, the details were perfectly captured, the expressions vivid and lifelike. Even if it had been torn in two, the eyes were still clearly visible.
only……
However, the woman with beautiful eyebrows and eyes, whose face was as soft as water waves under the dim light, was dotted with some hideous, messy, and merciless white spots.
At first, even she, who was good at manipulating people's hearts, couldn't figure out what the white spots were.
After figuring it out, she jumped up from the rocking chair, the stone bricks thumping as she stepped on them. Her heart was pounding, her mouth was dry, and she took two steps back to the spiral stone steps and ran out.
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