Rising Phoenix

The woman thudded against the wall and fell to the ground coughing, the dull rasp of her exhalations filling the dungeon and echoing unpleasantly.

Sometime later, she got her coughing under control and slowly pushed herself off the ground. She lifted her eyes to examine Jin Siyu, and finally she opened her mouth and asked: "Who are you? What is this place?"

For better or worse, her tone was casual and collected. Jin Siyu frowned down at the woman, his eyes cold as he solemnly replied: "You are not asking the questions. Who are you?"

The woman narrowed her eyes at the prince, her expression indeterminable, containing neither the ferocity that she wore in battle nor any discernible emotion. Her face carried only a hint of confusion as she repeated back: "Ah? Who am I?"

Jin Siyu's eyes flicked to the scar on the woman's forehead and barked a cold laugh: "Faking amnesia? To this Prince?"

"You are a prince?" The woman cocked her head at the man, a shade of delightful cunning touching her pretty face, causing a light to flash in Jin Siyu's eyes.

"Did I offend you? Is this your mansion's dungeon?" The woman murmured as she looked around. "Are you going to kill me?"

She paused in thought before slumping in exhaustion and lying back down, murmuring: "My crime was not small, and your eyes wish to kill me. Let's not waste time; I'm tired. If you're not going to give me food, then let me rest before you kill me."

"You can choose to sleep forever, or to answer my questions." Jin Siyu demanded, moving forward and grabbing the woman's jaw, shifting her gaze to the cold torture implements along the dungeon wall.

The woman smiled helplessly, pondering the various hooks and blades and screws before cocking her head again and saying: "Yes, I did not lose my memories. My name is Wang <anno data-annotation-id="83af5012-2ca7-2576-6e64-b2d585d888c0">Shaoyao</anno>, and… you are my enemy. I dressed as a man to get close enough to kill you for revenge, but I failed and was captured. That's what happened."

"Why am I your enemy?"

"You're an evil tyrant, abusing good and virtuous people. You kidnapped peasant girls and stole land." The woman paused to think as she spoke, her face utterly serious. "You thought my Ancestral Home had good Feng Shui, and you wanted to take it for your Ancestral Burial Ground. You killed my dad by drowning him in the river… and you forced my mother to death, making her hang herself…"

"Enough!" Jin Siyu cried out with amused fury, cutting off her spiel of nonsense.

The woman stopped, clutching her head and sighing.

"Hua La"

Terrifying torture instruments were piled up in front of her.

"I am giving you a chance, but if you do not know what is good for you, you cannot blame this Prince for lacking mercy." Jin Siyu said, quirking his lips in a joyless smile. "Any of these eighteen tools can turn the rest of your life into pain and suffering… picks one."

The woman lifted her eyes, her gaze flicking over the pile as she examined the instruments. Finally, she replied: "Since a prince has come personally to question me, I must be a serious felon. I should be treated like such a felon, with white silk or poisoned wine or arsenic."

"You want to die?" Jin Siyu's eyes chilled even more.

"I simply do not want to be tortured to death." The woman smiled as she replied. "I cannot answer your questions, but you will not accept anything else. You will torture me if I do not speak, and you will torture me if what I say dissatisfies you. The end result will be the same no matter what, so why waste time?"

Jin Siyu fell silent, frustrated.

His eyes touched her forehead scar again, confused suspicions filling his mind. The physician had examined her, and the strike to her forehead had been heavy. A brain injury was indeed possible, and that was on top of the clear evidence of an unfamiliar poison and illness in her meridians.

He had examined her himself and had not been able to make sense of her eccentric pulse, and the only thing he had ascertained was that almost all of her True Qi was gone.

Her Kung Fu was ruined.

Everything he knew said that such a courageous, skilled female expert would be unable to suppress her grief and despair when she realized her Kung Fu had been destroyed, but this woman did not seem to care at all, as if she did not even remember that she had been an expert.

"Your Highness." The Guard Leader stepped out of the shadows as Jin Siyu hesitated, "With <anno data-annotation-id="70d057bb-6434-7a29-0595-f645163e4ea2">Sanmu</anno> Torture, there are no questions that remain unanswered…"

Jin Siyu turned his eyes to the pile on the ground, some of the tools used to burn skin, others to slowly dig out the spin, some to flay the skull, and even more tools to dislocate joints and separate bones…

Jin Siyu bit his lips; though he had never been bothered by these instruments, today he found them twisted and hideous.

His eyes moved away and landed once more on the skinny and weak woman before him. As she lay curled, she seemed almost a child, her back small and the protruding curves of her bones thin like a butterfly's wings. Her fragility seemed so great that even his gaze might be too heavy.

Hidden under his sleeves, Jin Siyu clenched and unclenched his fingers again and again.

After a moment of struggle and indecision, the prince finally pointed to the smallest finger puncturing tool and said: "That one."

A guard lifted the instrument and stepped forward. The woman looked down at the row of needles and smiled bitterly as she said: "I really wish I could explain everything about my origin and the generations of my family."

"I wish so as well." Jin Siyu replied in a composed voice. "Do not think that your fate is surely death. You are just a woman, perhaps you have been forced. If this Prince is willing, saving your life is an easy matter. Your life is in your hands, and if you do not know good or ill, you will only court death.

"I want to say that I've been forced… but you probably won't believe me." The woman smiled bitterly, compliantly stretching her fingers forward even as she remained lying on the ground.

Her fingers perched on the dirty straw, thin calluses on her knuckles barely marring the crystalline beauty of her nails. When the guard looked down at the elegant fingers that he was to destroy, he began to feel some reluctance.

The woman's face was also dismayed and sympathetic as she examined her hand, turning her fingers before her eyes as she murmured: "I'm sorry, I've failed you, now we'll have to bid farewell to such perfection…"

Jin Siyu turned away.

The light of the oil lamp flickered and shadows danced across the dungeon walls, dark reflections of looming guards and delicate instruments. Slowly, forcefully, almost delicately, and the smell of fresh blood slowly wafted upwards into Jin Siyu's nostrils.

His face remained expressionless and emotionless, but his heart clenched in anticipation as he waited for a sound. He did not think the tender, formidable woman would cry or beg, but still he waited and waited, waiting in vain as a barely audible sigh passed through the quiet dungeon.

<annotations style="display: none;"><ol class="tinymce-annotation-container"><li data-annotation-id="83af5012-2ca7-2576-6e64-b2d585d888c0">Shaoyao is a type of peony, a sort of sister to Dowager Queen Mudan's name.</li><li data-annotation-id="70d057bb-6434-7a29-0595-f645163e4ea2">三木,three wood</li></ol></annotations>",