"Sir, surely you don't expect us to charge the Tartar dogs with bare chests, do you?"
The scarred man dragged his heavy chains and shuffled half a step forward. In those eyes, soaked through by the gloom of the cell's depths, most of the earlier listlessness had faded, leaving only a measuring gaze.
The scarred man's eyes swept over the blades of the guards' weapons. Though he had fallen to this state, any man who survived in a death cell until autumn had a quick mind. A death-warrant pardon dropped from the sky always had a bed of knives and seas of fire beneath it.
Lao Sun kept both hands tucked into his sleeves.
"Since you have all been tried and sentenced here, you must know something of the law." Lao Sun's gaze swept over the fifty disheveled, filth-caked death-row prisoners. "Which article of the Great Qian statutes says that death-row prisoners cannot be conscripted into the army?"
The silence around them was absolute.
The warder still gripped his horsewhip, and the prisoners dared not speak recklessly.
A moment later, a hoarse voice rang out from the back of the crowd.
"The Great Qian Criminal Code, scroll nineteen: death-row prisoners shall not bear arms and serve in the military. Whoever violates this, their commanding officer shall be implicated and sentenced to death by hanging after the autumn assizes."
The speaker was a tall, thin man.
He wore a tattered scholar's robe, his hair casually tied up with a dried blade of grass. He had once been a shyster who wrote legal petitions for a living, sentenced to immediate execution for inciting a wealthy household to encroach on good farmland, which had resulted in a death.
Lao Sun gave a slight nod.
"Exactly! The military law of Great Qian is strict. Taking death-row prisoners into the ranks would shake the morale of the troops—that is a sure road to destruction."
Lao Sun's voice was not loud, but it carried clearly through the courtyard. "So what is happening today has nothing to do with going to war."
The scarred man's brow furrowed into a tight knot, his confusion deepening. If not for battle, then what did they want them for? Digging trenches? Filling the moat?
The tall, thin shyster pushed past the men in front and squeezed into the second row, clasping his hands in salute. "Old sir, since you're neither sending us to die nor sparing us from death without reason, such a heaven-sent bargain must have a reason behind it. We may be men condemned to die, but we'd like to die knowing why."
Lao Sun lowered his hands from his sleeves and untied the cloth bundle hanging at his waist, setting it flat on the stone table beside him.
"The Tartars' assault on the pass has stalled, so they have hurled a deadly poison within." Lao Sun spoke as he unwrapped the bundle. "This poison is not brewed from ordinary herbs—it is a death-essence drawn from the charnel pits of countless generations."
"The moment it touches flesh, the skin rots through; if it falls into water, the whole city perishes."
He spoke very slowly, without embellishing the ghastly scenes outside of people dissolving into pus, simply laying out the facts.
Agitation rippled through the group of death-row prisoners.
Most of their faces turned green. They whispered among themselves, and a few instinctively stepped back.
"Flesh rotting through..." the scarred man muttered under his breath.
Lao Sun stood still, quietly watching the reactions of these men.
Fifty faces, fifty minds at work.
Most showed fear—a primal recoil from an unknown plague.
But Lao Sun's eyes were sharp, and in the far right corner, he spotted three or five particular men.
When these few heard the words "the whole city perishes," instead of panic, a faint gleam lit the depths of their eyes.
Lao Sun saw it clearly.
These men had all committed grave crimes, with the Great Qian blade hanging over their necks.
If the city fell and the Tartars broke through, the garrison command would collapse, and the execution warrants would become so much waste paper. The Tartars wanted slaves, and these men might scrape out a living on scraps and slops.
As for how many people died in Zhenbei Pass, what did that matter to bottom-tier prisoners like them?
What they were really calculating was endurance.
Hold out until the city falls—and that would be their chance to live.
Lao Sun quietly memorized the appearances of these men, his expression unchanging.
"The Imperial Envoy who arrived a few days ago has found a method that can cause a living person's body to produce vital energy, capable of withstanding this poison."
Lao Sun continued: "But this method has just been drafted and has never been tested. It must be proven on living bodies. This task has fallen upon your heads."
Lao Sun paused, then cast out his final card: "Survive five days, and your death sentences will be completely pardoned. You will be immediately released as free citizens. I swear there is no deceit."
The death-pardon card had been played.
Silence fell once more within the courtyard.
Pardon from death. Restoration to freedom! These were words that death-row prisoners would not even dare to dream of.
The Scarred Man stared at Lao Sun, his chest heaving.
"What method?" the Scarred Man pressed.
He had sensed the danger in those words. What did "never been tested" mean?
Were they to be used as livestock for testing medicine!?
Lao Sun turned and, from the rosewood box on the stone table, took out a small celadon porcelain bottle. The mouth of the bottle was sealed tightly with wax.
"This is poison pulp scraped from the sores and pustules of the patients at the Anji Infirmary."
Lao Sun explained.
Then, he produced a willow-leaf blade as thin as a cicada's wing.
One of Zhao Heng's personal guards brought over a basin of strong liquor. Lao Sun immersed the blade into the liquor, then passed it over the flame of a fire starter.
A faint blue flame licked across the blade's surface.
"An inch-long cut will be made on your arms. This poison pulp will be rubbed into your flesh." Lao Sun held the blade aloft, sweeping his gaze across the fifty death-row prisoners.
When they saw the celadon bottle, and then the cold gleam of the willow-leaf blade, the death cell erupted.
"You old villain! You're trying to take our lives!"
A prisoner with a face full of rough flesh struggled violently against his ankle shackles, the iron chain clattering loudly: "Cutting open our flesh and packing in poison water—what kind of saving is that? It's plain and simple murder!"
"I won't do it! I'd rather take one clean chop in autumn than suffer this lingering torment!"
"That Imperial Envoy must be born of some demon—to think up such a vicious trick that makes death seem merciful!" The lanky shyster retreated backward, his voice sharp.
Curses erupted from every side.
The jailers drew their waist-blades, slapping the flat of the blades against the iron bars in an effort to suppress the crowd.
But when faced with pain that touched their very flesh, the death-row prisoners' savagery was provoked, and they pressed forward with the posture of charging.
Zhao Heng's hand rested on his sword hilt, about to lose his temper.
But Lao Sun raised a hand, signaling he did not need to intervene.
Lao Sun stood still, letting them shout. When the noise began to subside, he spoke again, slow and deliberate.
"You were already names marked for execution on the death register."
Lao Sun examined his tools in the light.
"This cut today—either the poison finishes you off, or you walk out that gate hale and hearty. For those unwilling to take this cut, I will not force you."
Hearing this, the crowd relaxed slightly, thinking the old man had softened.
But Lao Sun pressed on:
"Still, the poisoned corpses from outside the city are thrown here every day. If Zhenbei Pass falls, and the barbarian army marches in—"
"You think this death cell can be a refuge? When the poison water floods in, you won't even have the chance to gamble for your lives. You'll dissolve into pus here, rot into a pile of bones, without anyone to bury you."
The death-row prisoners fell silent.
Death either way.
On one side, a quick, clean cut—with a gamble for a fresh life thrown in for free. On the other, hiding in the dark, damp cell, waiting for unknown poison water to corrode you into nothing.
The Scarred Man stood at the very front, staring fixedly at that willow-leaf blade.
The flame had long since died, and the blade's edge gleamed with a cold, green light under the dim torch.
He licked his parched, cracked lips. The gambler's mentality within him ultimately won out.
"Your old man here has thirteen lives on his hands—already a registered evil ghost in the underworld's registry." The Scarred Man suddenly raised his hand and rolled the tattered coarse sleeve all the way up to his shoulder.
His forearm was crisscrossed with old scars from years past.
He strode over to the stone table.
"Rather than wait for that damned poison water to seep in and soak me to rot, I might as well do it myself!"
The Scarred Man sat down heavily on the stone stool and slapped his arm onto the tabletop. "Come on!"
Lao Sun was delighted—it seemed this death-row prisoner's work was going to be easy!
He immediately waved over a nearby jailer.
Two burly jailers stepped forward at once, pressing down hard on the Scarred Man's shoulders and wrists from both sides.
The willow-leaf blade was razor sharp, without a hint of hesitation, it carved a half-inch-long gash along the outer side of the Scarred Man's forearm.
Lao Sun picked up a silver needle, unsealed the celadon porcelain bottle, dabbed up a smear of pale yellow venom, and steadily applied it into the still-bleeding wound.
The venom entered the blood.
The Scarred Man's muscles seized taut across his entire body, his jaw clenched shut, and the veins on his forehead bulged one by one, like gnarled tree roots.
He didn't utter a sound, but everyone could hear his heavy, rasping breaths clearly.
Seeing this miserable sight, the prisoners behind him who had still harbored faint hopes began to back away.
Especially those three or five in the corner who had been scheming to wait until the city fell—they exchanged glances and shrank themselves toward the very back of the crowd.
"We're not trying it! The Imperial Envoy said no one would be forced!" That shyster lawyer also shouted, trying to bury himself in the crowd.
Lao Sun slowly wiped the blood from the willow-leaf blade with a piece of white cloth, then casually tossed out a single sentence.
"The Imperial Envoy's military order is written clearly: fifty men are needed."
Lao Sun rinsed the blade in a basin of strong liquor. "Fifty names were drawn from the register. That means not one can be missing."
The moment those words left his mouth, Zhao Heng made a gesture.
Dozens of fully armed armored soldiers pounced like ravenous wolves and tigers.
Shields pressed forward, long blades drawn.
The prisoners in the corner who had tried to flee hadn't even managed to step back half a pace before the jailers slammed the sheaths of their swords hard into the backs of their knees.
A series of dull thuds, and several men were pinned to the ground.
The tall, skinny shyster had both arms twisted behind his back by two armored soldiers, his face stomped under a boot, mud smearing half his cheek.
"You old fraud! You have no honor! You just said you wouldn't force us!"
The shyster howled.
Lao Sun, holding the celadon porcelain bottle filled with venom, ambled over to the prisoner pinned before him.
"I'm not forcing your will." Lao Sun crouched down, the willow-leaf blade already pressed against the shyster's forearm. "But Marshal Tie's blade doesn't care whether you're willing or not."
The sound of the blade cutting through skin and flesh rang out with stark clarity in the dim depths of the dungeon.
In the time it takes to burn one stick of incense.
All fifty death-row prisoners had been cut.
Some collapsed limply to the ground, some cursed at the top of their lungs, and some, like the Scarred Man, sat cross-legged staring fixedly at their own wounds.
Lao Sun put away the emptied bottle, relocked the wooden box.
"House them separately, and triple their meals." Lao Sun ordered the warden on duty.
The warden gave a cold nod, and with a wave of his hand, the jailers dragged and shoved the newly envenomed prisoners toward the solitary cells.
Zhao Heng guarded Lao Sun's side, preparing to head back the way they came.
But no sooner had they stepped three or five paces past the stone steps of the courtyard than a piercing, miserable scream erupted from the deepest depths of the dungeon behind them.
“Uh—it’s burning hot! Fire! There’s fire burning me!”
