Book 4: Chapter 66: Choi Zhi Peng
A murderous headache was pounding in time with the increasing pace of Choi Zhi Peng’s heart rate. He did his best to maintain a calm fa?ade, but the headache had been a constant companion ever since that bastard Tong Guanting had shown up and murdered nearly everyone. In doing that, Tong Guanting had accidentally elevated him to the role of house patriarch. House patriarch, sneered Choi Zhi Peng internally, what a joke. He had always assumed that he’d assume that role one day, enjoying all of the status and luxury that came with being the patriarch of a major noble house. The problem was that there had to be a house for there to be a patriarch. Nearly every close blood relative Choi Zhi Peng had ever had was dead. All of their most knowledgeable and valuable servants were dead. Even the servants who had worked in the kitchen were dead. Not that Choi Zhi Peng really cared about any of those dead, but that one cook had always made pork fried rice just the way he liked it. That man’s loss was a true tragedy.
The only thing that had kept the house even nominally functional had been Choi Zhi Peng working nearly around the clock and massive outlays of money. He’d needed to hire mercenaries to guard his home because that damnable Tong Guanting had killed most of the house guards as well. He’d also needed to hire extra security for all of their holdings and businesses or the other houses would gleefully seize them. The costs were enormous and, he knew, unsustainable. Choi Zhi Peng had given brief consideration to grabbing whatever taels he could lay his hands on and simply running. Yet, not everything was as hopeless as it had seemed at first. He’d made it clear to the king what would happen if the man tried to back out of their deal. The fact that the royal house hadn’t moved against him had seemed to have a chilling effect on the enthusiasm of the other houses to finish the work that Tong Guanting had begun.
The thought of having Chan Yu Ming in his power, finally, was enough to bring a smile to his face even through the headache. He’d tried to court her when they were younger and the full extent of her cultivation prowess wasn’t clear yet. He’d been shocked when she didn’t even try to hide her loathing. It wasn’t just loathing for his house, which was commonplace enough, but for him personally. She had told him that, as far as she was concerned, he had less value than rat droppings. Those words had burned themselves into his mind. He hadn’t been able to do anything to her then, because of her station and because she was a cultivator. He suspected that she thought being a cultivator would let her deny him. She was wrong. He had what he needed to bring her to heel. Won’t she be surprised, he thought. Then, she’ll find out what it means to be lower than rat droppings.
As the pain in his head grew even worse, Choi Zhi Peng accepted that he wasn’t going to get any more work done. He thought about going to bed, but he knew that he’d just toss and turn if he didn’t do something to relax. Fortunately, he had just the thing for that. Pushing away from the financial scrolls that continued to assure him that he couldn’t keep spending the way he had been, he made his way to a particular panel on a particular wall that, with the deaths of so many in the family, only he knew about. He checked the hallway, making sure that none of the new and wholly untrustworthy servants were lurking, and opened the panel. He slipped inside the narrow, hidden stairwell and closed the panel behind him. The stairwell was a cramped thing with stone steps and wooden walls, but he didn’t care about that. All he cared about was the peasant that was waiting for him at the bottom of those stairs.
The foolish boy had dared to glare at him after Choi Zhi Peng had allowed his parents the honor of providing him with a free meal. The parents had known their place, at least, but the boy didn’t. As it had done so often in the past, the duty to instruct the boy until he learned manners fell on Choi Zhi Peng. Of course, the boy’s parents had begged and pleaded for the boy. He had enjoyed the sight of them on their knees, kowtowing to him as all peasants should. Still, that wouldn’t teach the boy his place. That’s what whips, knives, and broken bones were for, after all, to educate the ignorant. He just hoped the whelp didn’t die before he was done with his instruction. Choi Zhi Peng felt a stirring in his groin just thinking about it. Yes, he decided, this will be exactly what I need. He didn’t let himself rush down the stairs. He took the steps at a measured pace, let his anticipation build, and savored the prospect of whimpering cries of pain.
As he entered the special room that his family had used for such activities for generations, he called out.
“It’s time for you to learn your proper place, boy.”
“Funny,” said a woman who standing right behind him. “I was thinking something remarkably like that about you.”
No matter how startled he was, or how impossible it was that a stranger could be in this place, he’d been trained to defend himself. Choi Zhi Peng spun around and sent a fist lashing out. A smirking woman dodged the blow like it was nothing. Then, as if to drive home to him just how little respect she had for him, the woman slapped him across the face. Choi Zhi Peng’s world exploded into shades of white and red. When he could put thoughts into order again, he realized that casual blow had knocked him off his feet. He could taste blood in his mouth and he was having trouble opening one of his eyes. His thoughts were so muddled that it took him almost half a minute to realize the obvious.
“Cultivator,” he slurred.
“Oh, look who’s back,” said the woman.
Her tone was cheerful, but there was something in it that turned Choi Zhi Peng’s blood to ice. All in a rush, clarity returned and the true horror of the situation dawned on him. He was in a place that no one else knew about with a cultivator who clearly meant to do him harm. Worse still, even if he screamed for his mercenary guards, no one would hear him. That was the whole point of this room. Desperate to escape, Choi Zhi Peng scrambled toward the stairs on his hands and knees. That lasted until someone grabbed the back of his robes and threw him across the room. He collided with a wall. After that, he drifted in and out of consciousness. He was vaguely aware that he was being moved. It wasn’t until he was being hoisted into the air that he snapped back into awareness.
He’d been suspended from the ceiling. He looked up and saw the manacles on his wrists, which were connected to hooks on the ceiling meant for that express purpose. He’d planned on doing this exact thing to that boy. Hope sprang to life in his chest. The boy can run for help, he thought. Choi Zhi Peng looked around wildly, but all he saw was the woman who slapped him and a green-eyed girl. Even knowing that the woman was a cultivator, the look the green-eyed girl gave him sent lightning bolts of terror through him. There was nothing in those eyes that suggested she saw a person when she looked at him. It was like she saw a collection of things that she thought it would be interesting to take apart. The woman was looking around the room as if she was trying to understand what he was looking for.
“Oh,” she said. “Wondering where that poor kid went? I expect he’s been returned to his family by now. There wasn’t any need for him to witness this.”
Her tone was casual, nonchalant even, but that just made it worse. He was helpless here and they were going to hurt him. No, he finally admitted to himself, they’re going to kill me.
“I can pay you!” he shrieked. “I’ll double what you’re being paid. I’ll triple it. I’ll get you anything you want.”
The woman gave him a pitying look. He turned his gaze on the girl only to feel his bladder let go. She had wandered over to one of the tables, picked up a barbed hook, and was giving him a speculative look while she hefted it.
“Please. Please don’t do this,” he begged.
He felt a hot stab of shame as he felt the tears rolling down his cheeks. This wasn’t how things were supposed to be. He was the patriarch of the house of Choi. He felt anger welling up in him. He screamed and thrashed while the woman and girl mostly ignored him. As time ticked away, he started to think that this was all some elaborate joke or hoax. If they were going to torture him, they should have started. Choi Zhi Peng felt his own eyes go wide as the wall opposite him, a wall carved out of bedrock, seemed to turn to liquid and pull away. A tall, obscenely handsome man stepped out of that darkness. He nodded to the woman and the girl, then turned his gaze on Choi Zhi Peng. However frightening that girl was, she was nothing, nothing, compared with that man. His dark eyes might as well have been chiseled out of black ice. All of Choi Zhi Peng's hopes that this had been some mistake or joke died the moment that his eyes met those of the cultivator who had stepped through solid rock. Those eyes, those pitiless eyes, belonged to the kind of man who was capable of anything.
“Who are you?” whispered Choi Zhi Peng.
“My name is Lu Sen. I’m the man your family tried to have assassinated by Tong Guanting and his little band of helpers. I’m also an acquaintance of Chan Yu Ming.”
“Oh gods,” whimpered Choi Zhi Peng.
“Not yet,” said Lu Sen. “But maybe one day. I’m going to explain to you what’s about to happen here. Somehow, you’ve managed to convince the king to give Chan Yu Ming to you. This, in spite of the fact that your house is in shambles and being reincarnated as pig feces would be too good a fate for you. Now, clearly, I’m never going to let you have her, but I do want to know how you’ve made that deal with the king stick. So, I’m going to leave you to the tender care of these two fine ladies for a while.”
“I’ll tell you,” screeched Choi Zhi Peng.
Lu Sen stared at him for five full seconds which felt like five hours to Choi Zhi Peng before the man said, “I’m not feeling patient today. Talk quickly.”
Choi Zhi Peng explained everything his family had learned about the king and how they leveraged that information to arrange the marriage. Lu Sen said nothing, but his expression grew even colder and less forgiving with each passing word.
“Is that everything?” asked Lu Sen.
“Yes,” said Choi Zhi Peng, nodding as hard as he could. “Will you let me go now?”
Lu Sen just lifted an eyebrow. “I see you didn’t understand. Regardless of whether you told me anything or not, I was always going to leave you with them.”
“What?” asked Choi Zhi Peng, his heart pounding in his throat.
“Oh, don’t worry. They aren’t going to kill you. I’m going to kill you. I’m just going to wait until they’re done.”
“No!” shouted Choi Zhi Peng as Lu Sen walked over to the woman and the girl.
“How long do you think?” Lu Sen asked the woman.
“Two hours should do it,” said the woman.
“I’ll be back then,” he said.
Choi Zhi Peng screamed at Lu Sen as the man disappeared back through that solid rock of the wall. The screams choked off as the woman walked over to him with a long narrow blade in her hand. She looked up at him with an all-too-familiar loathing on her face.
“A child,” she said, then drove the blade into his kneecap.
It didn’t last forever. On some level, Choi Zhi Peng knew that it didn’t. It just felt like forever. Yet, for all the suffering, all the mutilation, all of his pleas for death, they didn’t kill him. When they finally stopped doing things to him, it didn’t matter anymore. The pain just kept going. There wasn’t a part of him, what was left of him, that wasn’t sending waves of agony to his mind. A voice reached that part of him that was still a little sane. He managed to open the one eye he had left and saw Lu Sen staring down at him with that same implacable expression.
“You know what the sad part is? I sincerely doubt that you’ve suffered enough, but you’ve cost me enough time. I will leave you with a parting gift, though.”
Choi Zhi Peng didn’t really understand what was happening until his body fell. When he struck the bottom of the hole that Lu Sen had made, he screamed as all of his injuries lit up with the fresh trauma.
Lu Sen spoke down to him. “No one will ever know what became of you. You’ll just disappear.”
“End this,” wheezed Choi Zhi Peng, desperate for it just to be over. “Just kill me.”
“I am killing you. The way you killed. I’m killing you slowly. You will die alone, afraid, sealed away in the darkness.”
It took Choi Zhi Peng a long moment to understand what the man intended. As the rock at the top of the hole started to run back together, Choi Zhi Peng screamed one last time.
“Kill me!”
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