Cell Door Slaughter

"What did you say?" Luan Yi flew into a rage, slamming Wei Ning back against the wall. "What do you mean by Zhaoji weeping bitterly all day and suffering in agony? Make yourself clear!"

Wei Ning's neck was pinned tightly in the crook of Luan Yi's arm, turning him red and breathless. It was only with great difficulty that he managed to rasp out in a hoarse voice, "You hypocritical scoundrel, don't think people don't know what you've done. What did you do to Zhaoji?"

"What did I do? I cherish her too much to ever harm her. How could I do anything to her?"

Veins bulged visibly on Wei Ning's neck. "Cherish? You call this cherishing? Driving her to get pregnant out of wedlock—you call that cherishing?"

"What? Zhaoji is pregnant?" Luan Yi turned pale with shock, releasing Wei Ning and staggering back several paces. Although the era of the Han Dynasty was not as conservative as the Song Dynasty, a woman getting pregnant before marriage was still a scandalous violation of moral norms. Had she faced cold stares? Yes, undoubtedly. Even if she never left the house, how would the family servants view her? Had there been gossip? Yes, absolutely. With so many people talking, even if Cai Yong kept his mouth tightly shut, walls have ears, and someone was bound to be whispering behind her back. Luan Yi could hardly imagine how Cai Yan had endured this period. Fortunately, however, he was about to marry her. After the grand wedding, everything would be fine. "And the child?" If the child was his, it should be born by now... wait, nearly half a year old. Why had Cai Yan never mentioned the child to him at all? Could it be that the child wasn't his?

Ashamed of his own petty-minded suspicions, Luan Yi grabbed Wei Ning by the collar and demanded once more, "Where is the child! Tell me!"

"You didn't know?" Wei Ning wore a look of utter bewilderment.

"Know what?"

"Zhaoji didn't tell you?"

"Tell me what?" Luan Yi roared angrily, "Speak!"

Wei Ning laughed up to the heavens. "You, Luan Yi, have committed countless evils. Even the heavens cannot stand it any longer. Hahaha... Your child is gone!"

"What!" Luan Yi trembled all over, a crushing wave of helplessness washing through every single cell in his body. Refusing to accept it, he barked, "What do you mean, gone?"

"Miscarried, of course!"

Upon receiving confirmation, Luan Yi stumbled backward several steps, muttering continuously, "How could this happen? How could this happen?" A miscarriage? It must have hurt terribly! A child is a mother's flesh and blood. Before the baby could even enter the world to call out to its mother, it perished just like that. How heartbroken Zhaoji must be!

Tears welled up and spilled uncontrollably from his eyes. Damn it, damn it all... It was I who harmed Zhaoji. If not for my momentary burst of passion, how could Zhaoji have suffered such torment? She endured the suffering with nowhere to cry out, and fearing to distract him, she dared not even tell him, forced to bear it all in silence.

At that moment, Wei Ning raised his voice in abuse, "You are a beast! Do you know how heartbroken I was every time I heard Zhaoji hiding at home and weeping? It's all your fault! If you hadn't stolen her away, I would have been living in bliss with Zhaoji long ago. Not suffering like this!"

"Talk nonsense!" Luan Yi flew into a rage. "Zhaoji never loved you at all."

Wei Ning shouted at the top of his lungs, "Lies! How could Zhaoji not love me? The two of us were childhood sweethearts, and Master Cai even intended to match us together. It was you who had to thrust yourself into the picture, saving her life from the jaws of a bear, and only then did you steal away her heart!"

"Wei Ning, oh Wei Ning, you truly have no self-awareness. Even without me, she would never have loved you! Zhaoji fancies a real, towering man, not a eunuch's lackey like you!"

"A eunuch's lackey? Who are you calling a eunuch's lackey?"

"I mean you!" Luan Yi stepped in close to Wei Ning's body, pressing his chest against Wei Ning's chin, and glared down at him angrily. "You're a scholar who has read books for years, yet you willingly stoop to doing Zhang Rang's bidding. If you aren't a eunuch's lackey, what are you?"

Wei Ning replied righteously, "I did it for the love of Zhaoji. As long as I could rescue her from your clutches, I would have no regrets even walking through blades of mountain and seas of fire, let alone working for Zhang Rang."

"Heh!" Luan Yi actually chuckled instead. "How pathetic!"

"What did you say?" Wei Ning refused to yield an inch, thrusting forward his face, twisted in rage, and staring fixedly into Luan Yi's eyes.

"I said you are pathetic! You thought doing Zhang Rang's bidding to harm me was saving Zhaoji? You were harming her instead. Although Zhaoji is a woman, she possesses the backbone of a man. If you had harmed me, and Zhaoji found out you used Zhang Rang's hands to kill me, she would rather die than be with you! You don't understand Zhaoji in the slightest, so how dare you speak of love?"

Wei Ning was deeply shaken, his eyes trembling incessantly. "You... you're talking nonsense!"

"Whether it's nonsense or not, you know it in your heart!" Luan Yi couldn't be bothered to deal with Wei Ning any longer. What he wanted most right now was to rush out of the dungeon immediately and visit the Cai residence to see the person he had deeply wronged.

He turned and strode toward the cell door. Before he even stepped out, he heard footsteps behind him, and right ahead, a blinding flash of dao light reflected off a wooden pillar. Wei Ning shouted from behind, "Luan Yi, prepare to meet your death!"

Luan Yi hastily turned sideways, swiftly dodging the slashing saber, and raised his right hand to clamp a death grip around Wei Ning's wrist, causing Wei Ning to break out in a sweat from the pain.

"Get lost!" Luan Yi couldn't be bothered to kill Wei Ning. He felt that rather than letting him die an obscure death in the dungeon, it was better to wait until tomorrow to have him dragged out and beheaded to make an example to the public. He casually tore a strip of cloth from the clothes of a dead body on the ground, and in a flurry of movements, tightly bound the howling Wei Ning, then stuffed another piece of cloth into Wei Ning's mouth. Only then did he pick up the two broadswords and walk out of the cell.

Outside the cell, more than ten guards stood neatly in the starlighted open space before the prison. They were startled to see Luan Yi, covered in blood, walking out of the dungeon. Raising their spears in confrontation, they shouted loudly, "Don't move!"

"Hey! Are you lot in cahoots with that fellow named Sha inside?" Luan Yi held one saber in his hand while resting the back of the other across his shoulder.

The guards looked at each other in dismay. One of them probed cautiously, "You're not dead?"

"Then you are in cahoots!" Luan Yi muttered, charging forward with twin sabers. Relying on their numbers, the dozen or so guards surrounded Luan Yi completely, thrusting their spears unceasingly. Yet their thrusts were entirely ineffective, as Luan Yi leaped left and right like a gibbon, dodging every blow. His broadswords slashed left and right, fending off two men at once with a sweeping maneuver. Springing into the air, he tackled a guard to the ground, bringing his broadsword down from above to sever the man's head. He then rolled forward smoothly to evade a spear thrust from behind, sprang up, and swept his twin sabers horizontally, instantly cutting three guards in half.

In the blink of an eye, six of the sixteen guards were dead, including the guard leader. Terrified out of their wits, the remaining guards no longer dared to advance rashly, circling around Luan Yi instead.

Luan Yi couldn't be bothered to waste time with them. Hooking his foot, he casually grabbed a corpse and hurled it with tremendous force at the guards.

Two guards were struck, pinned to the ground beneath the body. A gap immediately appeared in the encirclement.

Luan Yi charged into the gap without hesitation, kicking one of the fallen guards squarely in the stomach and sending him screaming in agony. With his left-hand saber, he parried an oncoming spear thrust, while his right-hand saber swept outward to take the man's head. Utilizing the momentum of the sweep, he leaped into the air, spun half a circle, and landed with his knee driving straight into the chest of the previously kicked guard, crushing the life out of him. At the same time, a flash of blade light finished off another fallen guard. The sequence of actions was as swift as lightning and flint, claiming three lives in rapid succession.

Seeing that over half their number had fallen, the seven remaining close-quarters guards panicked completely. Luan Yi stood before them in blood-soaked garments, the notches on his steel saber dripping blood onto the ground: "Drip, drip, drip..."

In their daze, the guards felt that the Luan Yi before them was no longer human. He was a wall—an impassable wall. This wall was pressing down upon them, choking them of air and stripping away any hope of survival.

They were genuinely frightened. Only now did they remember that the man before them was no ordinary person. He was the former Suppressor of the East General of the Great Han, a divine general who had achieved illustrious military merits. It was rumored he had once taken an opposing general's head amidst tens of thousands of rebel troops, easily snapping the enemy's commanding banner. To rout tens of thousands of troops single-handedly—how could small-time guards like them ever hope to defeat such a figure?

With this realization, accompanied by a miserable shriek and a splatter of blood, the guards' psychological defense finally collapsed. Dropping their spears, they fled for their lives.

Luan Yi chased them out the door and into the street outside the prison, but did not pursue further. Flipping his blade, he held it in a reverse grip and hurled his left-hand saber. "Ah..." It pierced through a guard's spine, claiming his life. The remaining five guards were badly frightened, their fleeing speed increasing even further.

In the distance, the city-patrol soldiers noticed something amiss, formed ranks, and ran toward the prison with torches in hand. Catching sight of the fleeing prison guards, they shouted loudly, "Don't move!"

Guiding spirits plagued by guilt, the prison guards dared not stop and continued to sprint. Under the command of the patrol officer, a squad was dispatched in pursuit, while the remaining troops strode toward the prison. "You there, drop your weapons!"

At first, Luan Yi assumed this squad of soldiers was also sent by Zhang Rang, and like an enemy facing a formidable opponent, he gripped his sword hilt tightly and refused to let go. When the soldiers drew closer and he made out the face of the patrol leader in the flickering torchlight, he finally let out a long breath. Releasing the broadsword, he cupped his fists in a salute. "Brother Zhongjian, how have you fared since we last met?"

As it turned out, the officer of this squad was none other than Chunyu Qiong, whom he had met briefly three years ago!

Luan Yi knew that Chunyu Qiong was a man of the Yuan family; meeting him meant he was safe.

Hearing the courtesy name shouted by the man before the prison gate, Chunyu Qiong was momentarily stunned. He snatched a torch from one of his subordinates, shone it fiercely ahead, and squinted for a long while before finally recognizing that the blood-stained figure covered in gore was Luan Yi. He cried out in astonishment, "Aya! Luan Ziqi? Didn't His Majesty pardon your crimes? How did you end up looking like this?"

"That's a long story!" Luan Yi let out a long sigh and slumped down onto the steps outside the prison courtyard.

Chunyu Qiong dismounted and trotted over to Luan Yi. "Is Ziqi injured?"

Luan Yi shook his head. "It's nothing! I'm just a bit thirsty. Could you trouble Brother to fetch me some water?"

Chunyu Qiong waved a hand, and a soldier immediately handed a waterskin to Luan Yi. Taking advantage of the handoff, Chunyu Qiong peered into the prison courtyard. One look was all it took to shock him thoroughly. Inside the courtyard, corpses lay scattered haphazardly everywhere. "This is..."

"Someone attacked me! I killed them all!" Luan Yi said it as casually as could be, but Chunyu Qiong listened with a cold sweat. Good grief, there must have been over a dozen men! And Luan Yi had turned around and killed every last one of them?