In the cabin.

After hearing Song Pu Zhenxin's request, Jin Ke finally said, "Let's put the matter of seppuku aside for now. Since you are our prisoner, your life and death will be decided by us."

"If you cooperate, we might be able to arrange a grand caesarean section ceremony for you. He said with a faint smile: "If you don't cooperate, we will take you back to the Ming Dynasty and parade you through the streets. Can't you bear being spit on today? When the time comes, the people will spit on you one by one. Then you will be subjected to the most solemn death penalty in our Ming Dynasty."

"What?" After listening to Inukai Matasaburo's translation, Matsuura Shinnobu asked curiously.

"Lingchi execution. It takes three days to make 3,357 cuts!" Wang Rulong answered with a sinister smile, "If the prisoner doesn't get the full number of cuts and dies early, the executioner has to make up the difference from his own body. That's why the executioners are very skilled. They can cut off all the flesh from your body and still let you breathe. Don't you think it's incompetent?"

After hearing the translation, Matsuura Zhenxin was so frightened that his face turned pale and he couldn't utter a word.

Why is a kaishakunin required for seppuku? Because samurai are afraid of pain, so if they cut themselves in the stomach, the kaishakunin will chop off their heads to reduce their pain. Sometimes samurai will use a wooden sword or even a folding fan as a symbolic blow, and then rely on the kaishakunin to help chop off their heads, which is called fan-kiri.

A young man like Matsuura Zhenxin, who is only in his early twenties, was planning to cut him with a fan. He couldn't even handle one cut, let alone more than three thousand cuts...

Wang Rulong vividly described the details of Ling Chi to him. Because it is too bloody, I will not go into details. If you are interested, you can go and read "Sandalwood Punishment"...

In short, Matsuura Shinnosuke successfully became the second young man today who was scared to pee his pants by Wang Rulong.

Once he peed his pants, there was no need to pretend anymore. He cried and begged to be let go, saying that he would cooperate and would do whatever he was asked to do.

"That's more like it." Although Wang Rulong is known as the living king of hell, he is not as perverted as Tong Zigong. He retracted his supernatural power after achieving his goal: "Tell me, how did you know our whereabouts in advance?"

"It was Boss Jin from Jeju Island who told us." Songpu Zhenxin answered obediently, "Seven days ago, Jin Xishan, a big merchant from Jeju Island who was doing smuggling business with us, came to my Sun Prison City and said that he had a great fortune to give us. This was what he was referring to."

"Are you so obedient?" Wang Rulong frowned.

"Alas, since we cut off trade with the south, we have to do business with the merchants from Jeju. We should give them some face." Matsuura Zhenxin said hurriedly, "Besides, the land in our Hirado Islands is barren, and we can only survive by trade. But the goods supplied by Jeju are less than 20% of those from the south, and the quality is not good. We can't sell them at a good price, so our life is very difficult. When we heard that there were 100 ships of food to be robbed, we were immediately tempted."

In fact, he had another very important reason that he didn't mention. The disastrous defeat four years ago seriously shook the position of the Matsuura family in Hirado Domain and even in Hizen Province... The Matsuura family was not considered a strong domain in Kyushu, which was like a Shura field. It was only because they were located on an outlying island with a natural barrier of the strait. Under the reputation of the Mishima navy, the Otomo family and the Ryuzoji family, the overlords of Kyushu, did not get involved in the Hirado Domain.

However, after the Battle of Fukuda Bay, the Mishima navy suffered heavy losses and lost its reputation. The overlord of Tohizen, Ryuzoji Takanobu, took the opportunity to force his father, Matsuura Takanobu, to submit to them. Takanobu had no choice but to surrender and became a monk, letting his young son, Takanobu, succeed him as the head of the family.

After Zhenxin succeeded to the throne, he worked hard to restore the strength of the Mishima navy, revive the reputation of the Matsuura family, and get rid of the control of the Ryuzoji family. However, in recent years, the trade between the Hirado Domain and the Portuguese has been cut off, and for some reason, the Ming Dynasty merchants have not come. There is not even a merchant ship on the sea, let alone trade, and they can't find a target to attack if they want to resume their old business.

They could only rely on the smuggling of the Li Dynasty and tighten their belts to rebuild these 70 ships. Now that they have the ships and the pirates of Mishima are well trained, all they need is a victory to restore the prestige of the Matsuura family!

At this time, Kim Hee-sun, a Joseon merchant whom he trusted very much, told him that there was a fat sheep from the Celestial Empire passing through. Park Yu-shi was very tempted but it was not convenient for him to act. However, he would transfer the patrolling Joseon navy to ensure that they would not interfere with their action. After the matter was completed, he only wanted 20%, and the remaining 80% would belong to the Matsuura family.

Zhen Xin believed it immediately and immediately mobilized the elite troops of Mishima, rushing forward excitedly, intending to ambush him. Unexpectedly, he was beaten to a bloody pulp, and lost more miserably than his father... At least his father's army was not completely wiped out, and he was not captured by the Portuguese.

~~

When this was mentioned, Zhen Xin was filled with hatred, thinking that it was Jin Xishan who had betrayed him, so he revealed: "Jin Xishan went to sea with me as a hostage, and is now among the captives!"

"Oh?" Jin Ke and Wang Rulong were overjoyed when they heard this, and immediately ordered Inukai Matasaburo to take people to the bottom cabin where the prisoners were held and bring the stick up to let it breathe.

It was not difficult to find the long-haired Li people among a group of bald thieves. After a while, a short, black and fat man was brought into the cabin.

"This fat guy is Jin Xishan. He is the one who did all this!" Zhenxin, who was eager to make a contribution, immediately introduced him.

When the fat guy saw that the dignified head of the Matsuura family actually sold him out so cleanly, he was so scared that his knees went weak and he knelt on the ground, becoming the third person to wet his pants.

Unlike the unruly Japanese, the fear of the Ming Dynasty was deeply engraved in the people of the Joseon Dynasty. Now that they were discovered to be traitors to the Ming Dynasty by the Celestial Empire, it was simply a disaster that would destroy their entire family!

The king and the yangban would cut off the heads of their entire family, place them in a Jingguan and send them to Beijing to apologize...

Jin Xishan begged for mercy from the Heavenly Emperor. He hated Park Sung-sung for dragging him into this mess, so he naturally wanted to pass the blame on:

"…It was that Right Envoy Piao who forced me to do this. He said that you had offended a powerful person in the Celestial Empire, and that person wanted to use him to destroy you. But our navy is loyal to the Ming Dynasty and will not obey his orders, so he had no choice but to kill with a borrowed knife and ask the Mishima pirates to do it."

As he spoke, tears welled up in his eyes. "I am really forced to do this. We are maritime merchants. It seems glorious, but we are doing a shady business. Park Chengxing can arrest me and put me in jail at any time. How dare I disobey his orders?"

"You said that Park Sung-seong asked you to do it, but do you have any evidence?" Jin Ke asked in a deep voice.

"How could he leave any evidence for something like this?" Jin Xishan blinked and said pitifully.

"Don't play dumb!" Jin Ke is very careful and not easy to fool. "If you don't have any evidence against him, aren't you afraid that he will kill you?"

"That's right." Wang Rulong said fiercely, "You are very dishonest! I won't talk to him anymore. Let the Ministry of Justice talk to your Wang when the time comes!"

"No..." Jin Xishan was afraid of this move. The emperor and his ministers of the Joseon Dynasty competed to curry favor with the Ming Dynasty. Whoever was better at licking would be invincible in the court struggle. As long as the Ming Dynasty mentioned this matter, they would rush to destroy their own family.

Helpless, he had to say with a bitter face: "The reason why I am not afraid of him selling me out is that he secretly withheld hundreds of thousands of taels of filial piety and deposited them in the bank of Daming. Although the money was not from me alone, it was transferred to him through my account. If he dares to sell me out, my people will make his secret public and kill his whole family."

After saying this, fearing that the two great men of the Celestial Empire would not understand, he explained in detail why Park Chengxing's deposit in the Ming Dynasty must not be made public.

Wang Rulong was overjoyed when he heard this, and immediately asked someone to bring Park Sung-in over to see how this guy could deny it.

While waiting for the people to arrive, Jin Ke asked his Korean cousin, "What is the name of the Ming Dynasty bank?"

"Hengtongji." Jin Xishan replied quickly.

Jin Ke and Wang Rulong looked at each other and basically guessed who was the mastermind behind the scenes.

~~

After a while, Park Sung-in, the first person to wet his pants, was brought to the cabin. Seeing that Kim Hee-sun had died, he knew that he could not deny it at all, so he confessed everything he knew.

As expected by the two, the mastermind behind the incident used his account details in Hengtongji to threaten Park Sung-sung.

Although Jin Ke and Wang Rulong were laymen, they knew that this was the bank's top secret. Once leaked, the bank's reputation would be ruined and the losses would be unbearable.

Therefore, ordinary people had no way of finding out about this matter. Only the top leaders of Hengtongji could use it to threaten a naval commander of the Li Dynasty.

However, it is not their job to make judgments. They only need to send the interrogation records to the young master.

When the two men asked the prisoners to sign their confessions and were about to end the interrogation, Park Sung-in suddenly asked that he needed to meet with Chen Tianchao alone for something.

Jin Ke and Wang Rulong thought there was some big secret, so they asked someone to take him to the next room.

"My Park family is willing to present the three hundred thousand taels of silver deposited in the Ming Dynasty to the two great lords of the Celestial Empire, just in exchange for letting this matter go unexplained!" Park Sung-in begged on his knees.

He knew that officials in the Celestial Empire had meager incomes, and three hundred thousand taels of silver was a huge fortune that no one could refuse!

Jin Ke and Wang Rulong looked at each other, and the former asked calmly, "Explain to me what you mean by revealing this matter?"

"We should just play it safe and only trace it back to the Japanese, but not to involve our people." Park Sung-in said pitifully, "We are also loyal to the Ming Dynasty. We made the mistake because we were coerced by them. It's okay to compensate with 300,000..."

Before he could finish his words, Wang Rulong punched him in the heart.

Park Sung-in cried out "Ah..." and knelt on the ground, curling up like a shrimp.

"Fuck you! You guys killed so many of my brothers, and you want me to turn a blind eye?!" Wang Rulong punched him and cursed, "You dare to bribe me? Can you afford it?!"

Although Jin Ke didn't say anything, his cold gaze was more piercing than Wang Rulong's fist.

"Can you... earn a hundred taels of silver a year?" Park Sung-in thought that the amount of bribes he had given was too huge and had made the two lose their sense. He endured the pain and said, "Three hundred thousand taels... is enough for you to work for three thousand years! A garden in the south of the Yangtze River only costs tens of thousands of taels, right? You will never have such a chance to make a fortune in your eight lifetimes!"

"Pooh!" What answered him was a mouthful of thick phlegm from Wang Rulong. He was very angry today and had a lot of yellow phlegm.

"Who wants your dirty money!" Wang Rulong shouted and had him taken out. Before he left, Park Sung-in heard him say:

"I earn more than a hundred taels a month!"

In fact, there are bonuses, options and various benefits... Once a person is financially independent, it will be boring to ask him for money in advance.

ps. There will only be two updates today. I will write about Zhao Hao again tomorrow.