Time, like all other aspects of conscious thought, became warped and stretched in Lian’s mind while she remained frozen: but based on the comments of passing guards, she understood it was two days later when Wong returned to see her again, this time with Prefect Tai at his side.

The torture of being frozen in place was not exactly what Lian had expected. There was pain, to be sure, but it was the dull ache of pressure points where the cage met her body. Granted, those pains were amplified into maddening proportions by her body’s immobility, the unceasing nature of the pain, and her mind’s resolute focus on them, but they were not the kind of pains one expected in a torture chamber of a man as powerful as the Prefect of Liangyong. After the first day Lian realized she was not even that hungry – the freezing placed the victim into a physical state very similar to Shuli Go meditation, the fuel of the body preserved and most other processes slowed down.

The greater torture was entirely mental. Unlike Shuli Go meditation, the Curse of the Living Stone kept the mind unaffected, forcing it to turn over and over itself in unending cycles of suffering. It was impossible to sleep with the amplified pains and the inability of the body to shift in any way. For two full days, all Lian could do was to look forward to Tai’s visit, and the chance that they would unfreeze her in order to ask her questions. If she did not have that to look forward to, she was sure she would eventually go insane, locked in stasis and never able to move freely again. Given the choice between obeying Wong and being trapped in her own mind, Lian could start to see the appeal of Wong.

As far as torture went, it was fairly ingenious. The point of torture was never to change a victim’s body, but their mind. This achieved that goal without mutilation, or even the screams of the victims. Lian saw that the people An had found were not physically drained, but mentally destroyed. Their pallid forms were not lacking blood but the mental energy to run their bodies efficiently. Prefect Tai did not want immortality, he wanted an army that would do his bidding. Men and women spread across important posts around the Empire, awaiting his instructions or facing a slow descent into insanity in a body that will take years to die.

Tai was a very dangerous man. And Lian had underestimated him. Zu too. Everyone had.

“So,” Tai said after two days of Lian’s suffering, his voice loud enough Lian knew he was close to her, looking at her. Despite that presence and his danger, her head was filled with excitement at the thought that Wong would free her, even if for a second, to respond to his question. “Who do we actually have here?”

“Suono shen,” Wong said, and a flood of relief came over Lian as her body came alive and the pain dissipated. She quickly readjusted her legs to take the pressure away from where the cage had been pressing against her. She opened her eyes, just slightly, but they had not seen light in two days and even the small torches of Tai’s guards burned her eyes, causing them to water all over again. She could not hold back an audible gasp of pain, nor the sigh of relief. It was the most exquisite feeling after two days of immobility to move her fingers again, to control her own breathing, and stretch her tight muscles. She could see why the men who had grabbed her had been so willing to do Wong’s bidding. He was both torturer and savior.

“Well,” Tai continued, “who are you, really?”

Lian looked him in the eye, but said nothing.

“Oh, that’s right. You know what it is Wong does down here. You know about his book. And so you probably know that he can’t lock you up if you’re far away, without your real name. So you’re not likely to give it, because you think you may get out one day and you want to keep your freedom.”

Tai then approached Lian’s cage and brought his face close to the bars. He was close enough she could reach out and throttle him in seconds, but she knew it would be useless if Wong froze her.

“Let me tell you something though. You’re never leaving here. Not without your name.”

Lian swallowed, itself a painful process after two days of dust and vile air had coagulated in her throat, then responded. “I am Zhu Zhuyang, supervisor class—”

“Bah!” Tai pushed away from her cage and laughed. “I had my accountant go through the ledger you brought with you. Apparently it was all nonsense numbers that looked to be from a bar or a brothel or something. You should have spent more time on your props if you were going to stick with that lie.”

Lian was panicking inside, trying to devise a way to keep her name without being refrozen, or worse. But two days of constant pain had left her without much in the way of quick-thinking resources. She simply stared at Tai and swallowed again.

“You weren’t too bad at it, you know. You were smart enough to almost have me believe you were an actual accountant. But you break Wong’s nose, and your friend kills two of his men. You’re no accountant, and you weren’t doing this on your own. I need your name, and the name of whoever sent you.”

Lian had no compulsion about giving up Zu – who’d most certainly lied about a great many things to have put Lian in this position – but she did hold out hope she’d get out of there one day, and she didn’t want to give her real name. If she was going to be sentenced to die, she’d do it there and then, before she could be used to hurt anyone else.

“You know,” Tai said, quieter this time, almost as if he was sharing a personal secret with her. “If you’re that smart, then you probably know what I’m trying to do here. I’m not interested in hurting anyone. Not really. But I will.” He smiled at her, their minds joined in this terrifying secret. “Let’s give her an example,” Tai said to Wong.

Wong stepped between Lian and Tai and smiled, finally able to do what he enjoyed most. Lian backed away and shut her eyes just before Wong froze her.

“Her friend, the fat one. Bring her here,” Tai instructed.

Lian couldn’t even focus on the new exquisite pains that were spreading across her body as she froze in an awkward position – instead she was overcome with terror for her friend. She listened through the pain as the guards pulled An’s body nearby. She could only imagine what An herself was thinking and fearing.

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“Take off one of her fingernails,” Tai said, as if it was nothing. And Lian knew for Wong it would be even less.

Lian sat, her mind already reeling at the thought of how much something like that would hurt in the middle of the curse, how intense and amplified the agony would be without the ability to even scream through the pain. She didn’t really need Tai’s reminder when he whispered into Lian’s ear: “Think of just how much this will hurt. And then remember that you have ten fingernails yourself. And ten toenails. And then ten toes, and ten fingers we can take right off.”

Then she listened to Wong perform the disturbing surgery: the sharpening of a bamboo point, the initial spurt of blood as it was wedged into An’s finger, then the sickening pop as he wedged the fingernail off entirely. And Lian knew then she was doomed. There was no fighting back, just an endless agony that awaited she and An both. The least she could do was tell them quickly, and save them both from the worst of it.

Lian wanted nothing more than to cry – not just at the thought of her friend in so much pain, but from a deep well of her own shame – they hadn’t even touched her yet, and she was already prepared to give in. But this was not like any pain she could be expected to resist. It wouldn’t matter if she even managed to escape, there would be no end to the control Wong had over her.

Wong had been right. She belonged to him now.

“What is all this then?” A faint voice came in from somewhere far away in the dungeon.

There was a brief hubbub, and Tai’s voice raised to respond to the first. “My dear, please, this is no place for such a—”

Yaling. That bitch. Lian’s shame and suffering spiralled into an explosion of anger at her former friend, who had left her and An to be captured and suffer. It was the most extreme pain she experienced that day – the desire to shake with rage at Yaling but denied even that tiny expression.

Lian’s mind drifted above her anger somewhere in the middle of Yaling and Tai’s conversation, catching as Yaling was saying something to Tai in her most love-tainted of coos, “—but Wulai-jan,” she used his first name and the affectionate suffix reserved for pets and lovers, “you promised me a tour of the whole castle. Every nook and cranny you said.”

“Yes, Yaling-jan, but—” Tai’s voice was drenched in embarrassment at being infantilized by his lover in front of servants, but he was sufficiently wrapped around her finger to allow it to continue.

“But you promised,” Lian could see the pouty look Yaling would be giving right then. “And this!” Yaling continued, “is this the book you were telling me so much about?”

Lian’s anger died in an instant. If Yaling were to see that the book was not the Book of Dragons, she wouldn’t have any reason to stick with Tai. Looking past her pain, Lian listened intently.

“It is, Yaling-jan. It’s the magic book.”

“Ooooh, you know I adore magic. I had a friend once who could make sparks fly out of her hand.”

“That’s nice dear, but we really were busy here and—”

“Oh, and you. You must be the Mr. Wong I’ve heard so much about. Doing such good work for Wulai-jan.”

Even Wong wasn’t totally immune to Yaling’s own brand of magic. “Ye…yes, that’s…that’s right.” He stammered.

“Yaling-jan, please, we really must finish—”

“Oh, Wulai-jan, you can spare a few seconds to have your servant here explain a few things to me.”

Lian could tell Tai was about to interrupt based on the deep breath he took in, but Yaling just continued on.

“So, Mr. Wong. This book, it’s one of those ancient ones the Demi-Gods left behind, right?”

“If… if one believes the leg…the legends. Yes, yes that’s right. Um, my lady.”

“I had a teacher, once, who told me that magic from the Demi-Gods was always very private. More of a contract than the magic we little humans can use.”

If Lian could have shouted in joy, she would have.

“Ye…yes, that’s. That’s basically it.”

Yaling’s voice turned on the allure, and Lian knew she was getting right next to Wong.

“And if one of the parties of the contract were to… say die… the contract would be over, right?”

Lian hoped she would be close enough to help.

“That’s. That’s right, my lady.”

“I see.”

Lian listened as Yaling’s hair pin was driven into Wong’s skull – up, straight through his jaw, just like Lian had taught Yaling years ago. Lian was the teacher – had been Yaling’s only true teacher, as far as Lian knew. And against all odds, Yaling had turned out to be a decent student after all.

Tai erupted into a crazed shout as Wong gurgled his own blood, spitting, chirping, and burbling before his body hit the ground. In the time it took Wong to die, Yaling was grabbed by one of the guards and Tai was screaming at her, threatening her with death and worse.

“Don’t you see Wulai-jan,” Yaling was pleading, begging for time. “He was in control of all the men. He could have betrayed you at any minute.”

“I cast the spell on him first!” Tai shouted in a powerful boom. “He was mine! I owned him! Like I own you! You fucking bitch!”

Wong coughed one last spurt of blood then died, the Curse of Living Stone lifted, and Lian could open her eyes just in time to see Yaling smile her most coquettish of grins at Tai and reply, “Oh, Wulai-jan, you idiot. No one could own me.”

An screamed – mostly out of pain, but also from a surge of adrenaline as she, too, became free of Wong’s spell – and rushed the nearest guard, her left pinkie finger bleeding profusely as she grappled with the man for his spear. Lian was disappointed to see she was too far from the action to do much, but she did manage to shoot a stream of fire towards Tai, who was inching closer to Yaling and looked ready to kill. The fire caught on his robe, near the bottom, and the guard holding Yaling tossed her to the ground to help Tai take off the outer robe and stamp out the fire.

An was fighting valiantly, but the guard was bigger than her, hadn’t recently been wounded, and had eaten in the last few days. He tripped her and shoved her hard to the ground before stepping on her wounded hand, causing her to scream even louder. The guard lifted his spear above An to impale her.

Before he could though, the first of the prisoners reached him, literally flew into him in order to save An. Then another prisoner joined the first. Then another, and another. The trickle turned into a flood of them, pouring down and over the guards and Tai, literally ripping the men apart limb from limb with their bare hands. These weren’t the larger ones that had fought for Wong a few days ago – the beaten down individuals who had already lost all will – but the fresher victims, the weaker and skinnier ones Wong had left frozen because they didn’t serve any particular purpose. They’d been captured and left to go mad in their own minds, for no good reason. They were wiry and frustrated, and more insane than Lian had thought possible. And they showed no pity. Bits of flesh, blood, and skin flew out from the mob, but there was no controlling them – they were free of a prison they’d never imagined had a route to liberty, and more importantly they had a chance to avenge their captors.

Yaling helped An to her feet and out of the path of the prisoners, picked up Wong’s copy of The Book of Terrors, then scrounged through the scattered remains of the first guard before locating the keys. She set about opening Lian’s cage, then moved through the rest of the hall, opening the cells of any prisoners who looked halfway salvageable.

The big ones, the ones that had held down Lian, remained frozen in place. Without Wong to impose a will on them, they were mere husks. Functioning, yes, but they would never again think or feel for themselves. The ones on the other end, who were merely terrified and scared and wounded, Lian and Yaling rounded up, then headed towards the secret entrance An had carved out.

The mob continued its frenzied run up, towards the Prefect’s house. Lian knew they’d be cut down before they could do too much damage, but their bloodlust allowed the women to escort the survivors out, into the sewers under Liangyong, and then on to freedom.