She didn't know how long she had slept. When she rose from unconsciousness, she saw darkness all around her.

Flame leaped. The shallow shadow moving on the wet black brick wall gradually became clear in Gu Yunxi's sleepy eyes.

No sooner had she moved than she felt pain all over her body. This was the aftereffect of having been knocked down by the fake prefect.

She was suddenly shocked.

She found herself lying on the cold brick floor, bound with twine. With her face against the floor, she couldn't avoid the foul smell in the secret room, which made her retch.

She opened her eyes to look around and found Feng Yunheng, who was covered with blood, lying a few steps away from her.

He was asleep, perhaps. His back against the wall bent from torture, his head lowered still, and his shriveled body rose and fell rhythmically with his breath.

Someone came with quick footsteps.

Gu Yunxi twisted her neck to look in an ungainly posture. A short guard came out of the darkness with a torch in his one hand and a bowl in another. The smell of the food, which wasn't so delicious, wafted from the bowl together with the foul smell in the air formed a strange and terrible smell.

"Oh... you are awake."

The guard came near, humming an off-key tune. He let out a laugh when he saw Gu Yunxi's injured face under torchlight and then wandered to Feng Yunheng, kicking him awake.

"Get up! Get up! Don't sleep! Get up to eat!"

He inserted the torch into a ring on the wall and then squatted down. When he was going to put the bowl on the ground, he paused.

He seemed to think of something funny and grinned. He flipped his wrist and emptied a bowl of rice onto the floor.

"Come to eat."

Before the short guard had stopped his ridicule, Feng Yunheng dived for the dirty food like a starved beast. He gulped desperately, making a series of chewing sounds of "yum" with his stink mouth, satisfied.

So excited were his hands and feet, tightly bound with coarse twine, that they kicked and struggled throughout the meal. He looked like a worm without a spine, crawling about before being butchered.

"Haha! A goddamn official should eat like a dog!" The guard laughed and enjoyed his ugly performance.

Gu Yunxi looked on with astonishment. Her eyebrows wrinkled out of sympathy and sorrow.

The man who was eating like a dog was a rank-fifth official of the government as well as the prefect of a county. Now he was abducted and tortured by a group of unknown people to feed on all fours, as cattle did, regardless of dignity and prestige. The scene struck a chill to the heart of Gu Yunxi.

She lay on the ground with her heart burning in anxiety.

She discovered the secret of the fake Prefect Feng, but was caught before telling Leng Qingtang about this. Now trapped in this secret room, she was cut off from the outside, not knowing the time and what would happen to her Master.

She couldn't stop conjecturing, but each scene was so horrifying and bloody that Gu Yunxi sweated profusely and dared not to imagine anymore.

She couldn't stay here anymore. She must get out to find the Master.

The guard was satisfied with Feng Yunheng's eating. He spat on the ground and then turned his head to Gu Yunxi.

"What the f**k are you looking at? You officials do evil and oppress the good all the time. You deserve this!"

Gu Yunxi crumpled her lips and said in a weak voice,

"Big Bro... I want to go the restroom..."

"Pee? Pee here! There's nothing to fussy about in this place!"

The guard stood up after scorning. He glanced at her lower body and showed her an obscene smile,

"It will be in chaos outside. Unlike this official, you are worthless, you know? You are dying anyway, just make do with it!"

Chaos?

Gu Yunxi captured this vital information from his words. Seemed that the fake prefect was going to lay a hand on the Master!

There was no time for her to contemplate. She made up her mind to escape.

"Bro, I beg you..." She wriggled on the ground and pleaded again,

"Please do me some good to untie me... I need to go to the john, but my hands and feet are numb..."

"How troublesome you are!"

The impatient guard walked over, cursing. He reached to Gu Yunxi's belt with his large black hands and immediately drew her scream,

"Ah!"

Shocked by her piercing voice, the guard withdrew his hands.

"What the hell are you screaming, you f**king asshole?"

The guard rose his hand to slam Gu Yunxi, outraged.

Gu Yunxi looked at the guard fearfully, on the verge of tears, and stammered,

"Bro, to tell you the truth... I, I'm a woman..."

"What?"

The guard put down his hand in shock.

Looking pathetic, Gu Yunxi repeated in shyness,

"I, I'm a woman. I can't..."

The guard was totally stunned. He moved closer to Gu Yunxi to look carefully at her face. He saw her fair skin and delicate features. Her beauty was indeed different from a handsome man's.

The guard gasped in surprise and closed his lips. The round Adam's apple protruded from his neck rolled up and down twice.

After a quick attack to Gu Yunxi's breast, his gladness reached to the peak. His eyes, shining with lasciviousness, were quite obvious in the darkness.

Forbearing the hatred and discomfort in her heart, Gu Yunxi had to continue acting to make a successful escape.

"Bro... that eunuch bought me. I just want to live. I'm forced..."

Gu Yunxi frowned sadly to make herself look pathetic. She opened her red lips, begging in a slightly trembling voice as delicate as the ripples on the lake, which made the guard's ears hot and heart itching.

The guard's complexion eased. He exhaled hard as if trying to restrain himself.

Then he untied Gu Yunxi's feet neatly, at an amazing speed, and supported her up.

Her arms were still bound with twines behind her back. At the distance of a finger, with her lips pressed tightly together, she made a charming look at the guard. Her bright eyes glistened like stars in the night sky, dazzling in the dim room and attracting infinite imagination.

"Bro..." She spoke in a quavering voice. There were wrinkles of sadness in her eyebrows.

The guard also stared into her eyes. They looked at each other, and the guard's breath grew rapidly, showing his male instinct.

All of a sudden, he rushed to her and pressed her against the wall.

"Oh..."

Gu Yunxi's back colliding with the wall made her pain, but she only let out a slight groan as soft as nightingale singing, charming and pathetic.

That stimulated the guard. He held her and kissed all over, and she pretended to be comfortable, squeezing a groan or two, and pleased him with her eyes half-closed,

"Untie my hands. I can make you happy. I'm itchy..."

The guard stopped assaulting, rubbed his hand against her face, and said with an immoral smile,

"Little bitch!"

Soon the twines were removed from her upper body. The concupiscent guard was going to get closer when Gu Yunxi gave him a hard kick on the vital part between his legs.

The guard immediately cried out at the kick and rolled on the ground, hands over his vulnerable organ.

Gu Yunxi had endured long. The ugly performance of the guard, killing by the pain, strengthened her flaming rage. Her eyebrows rose, and, during a time, she had completely lost her head.

In her view, the crying figure on the ground turned into a dying wolf.

The whites of her eyes were bloodshot. She pulled the dagger out of her boot, rushed on, and cut into the guard's throat.

A cold light flashed in the darkness, followed by spurted bright red blood. The guard couldn't even make a sound and died after twitching on the ground.

...

In the Feng's Mansion.

In the yard, Xiao Xiaoshen, Yuan Qian, and Qinger met two secret guards of the Eastern Depot who were searching in the mansion.

According to the secret guards' report, they knew that there was a blind pass in the study of the Feng's Mansion. Famous calligraphic and paintings, rare antiques and curios, as well as the account books that recorded briberies, promotions, and illegal contacts with other officials during his tenure as the prefect of Qiling County, were hidden inside.

There was no silver, gold, or silk.

Later, they gathered in the courtyard to dig up the soil under the peach trees. As expected, under the strangely blossoming trees, there were fifty-two bodies, including men and women, masters and servants. They died more than half a month ago and were all killed in one cut.

Frightened by this fact, they decided to return to the post house to report the third captain Zhao Wuji immediately before they saw, in the north, a bright streak of silver-white light, as resplendent as fireworks, soaring up into the sky. It silently burst into bloom to all the directions, leaving countless light spots dancing in the inky-blue night sky.

To the south, the sky was of orange color. The flickering flame that billowed thick smoke reddened half the sky.

There was a fire!

In the direction of Donglai post house!

...

In the secret room of the Prefect's Mansion.

With a shake of her body, the dagger, still dripping blood, fell on the ground. Crisp and harsh clash echoed in the silent space, completely waking Gu Yunxi up from the nightmare.

She stared at the unmoving body on the ground, opened her mouth to let out hysterical cries, and got out of the secret room, scratching and scrambling.

It was burning overground. There were people fighting in the blazing fire and heatwave. Swords clashed other swords at lightning speed, and then this scene was covered by the flames.

Gu Yunxi stood transfixed in the fighting yard, staring at the scene both familiar and strange to her with a blank look.

She had just escaped from an inferno and then stepped into another one.

Sparks burst around from the point that the weapons collided, reflected in cloudy eyes. The world in her nose was made up of smells of rust, blood, and tar.

Her head ached. Something was trying to breaking free from the cage of memories like a trapped beast. Gu Yunxi bent down out of pain. Hands on her head, she was at a loss.

"Master, where is Master?"

Under the red sky, she stumbled along, searching among the shouting and metal clashing, undaunted.

Finally, she found that immortal-liked figure, standing straight under the phoenix tree, pointing his opponent with his sword.

Leng Qingtang had exchanged hundreds of blows with that man.

Gu Yunxi held her breath, looked at Leng Qingtang worriedly, and then moved her eyes along the sword to Leng Qingtang's opponent.

That man in prefect's official suit was holding a sharp and heavy golden broadsword decorated with nine rings. The sling on his left arm was gone, leaving only an empty sleeve dauntingly fluttering in the wind.

The disguising was removed, so his real face, from which one could tell that he was in his 40s, revealed. His facial feature was plain but expression upright.

In his front, Leng Qingtang held his sword, speaking slowly as though he was letting out a sigh,

"Wenren Junzheng... It has been eleven years, and you're still alive..."

"Hahaha..."

The middle-aged man laughed aloud,

"Of course I'm alive! I've been waiting for this day for eleven years! Finally, I can kill you flunkies of the Eastern Depot and revenge for the Zheng Family and my left arm! I'm so glad to have this day!"