In the last five days, Wei Lan searched through almost all of the big and small streets of the Capital. Luo Wei had been gone for five days, there were already people guessing that he’d met his end. Wei Lan didn’t want to keep listening to these speculations that made him want to die. The only thing he knew right now was that if Luo Wei’s alive, he’d want to see him, and if Luo Wei’s dead, he’d want to see a corpse at least.
Luo Ze And Ten were standing by Wei Lan. They were accompanying him in searching this street in the capital famous for its brothels. It was the largest of its kind in Greater Zhou.
“Would Xiao Wei be in a place like this?” Luo Ze asked. Luo Wei had been gone for five days, the people in the Luo family had already gone nearly insane.
Wei Lan answered him, “This is the best place to hide someone.”
“Hiding in plain sight,” Ten agreed, “We’ll search these places one by one, but we can’t scare them off.”
Luo Ze turned to survey over the people they’d come with, “It won’t be hard, all we’ll have to say is we’ve come to check census.”
Wei Lan left them, preferring to go by himself. He had ways of looking for people.
Luo Ze and Ten broke from each other too, splitting into two groups as they entered the red light district.
Wei Lan didn’t go to those open, well lighted rooms on the floor level. In his experience, you needed to hide a person somewhere secret, so he only checked the bas.e.m.e.nts and hidden rooms.
Luo Wei was tied onto a wooden box, body rocking back and forth with the box. The large bronze stick attached to the box was moving back and forth in Luo Wei.
“Make it go faster,” Ku Liu said.
The two muscular men quickened the pace, and the wooden box seemed to move much faster all of a sudden.
Luo Wei’s moans grew louder, his lower body was already bloodied and raw. The drugs they used on him made him more sensitive, pleasure mixing with the pain, and Luo Wei’s consciousness became blurrier as time went on. Ku Liu still haven’t let anyone touch him yet, but this body was already scarred and hurt.
Ku Liu’s expression was terrible to behold. It’s already been five days, toying with this body without care for night and day, but this person still had not surrendered. If he said this to other people who were present, they wouldn’t have believed him. But Ku Liu knew that this person was only suffering, he has not been broken. Even in the worst moments of humiliation, the eyes that Luo Wei stared at him with only had hatred, but no distress.
Luo Wei’s head tilted to one side as he lost consciousness again.
This was also one of the reasons that Ku Liu looked so terrible. The time between Luo Wei’s waking moments were becoming shorter. This meant that even if his mind has not fully gone, the condition of his body was slowly becoming untenable. Yet for this extraordinarily stubborn youth to break, Ku Liu had to use large amounts of drugs on him. People often said that drugs, even good medicine, is three parts poison. Not to mention this sort of drug. So it became a harmful spiral downwards. If they continued like this, Luo Wei would die, but if they stopped now, taking him down a peg would be even harder.
The sky had darkened outside, and Wei Lan’s heart was growing colder. If he couldn’t find Luo Wei here, then where else was he going to look? He wanted to see him if he were alive, and if he were dead, they need to see proof, but he knew better than anyone that all you needed was some lye(1) or a fire, and a body would quickly become a puddle of water or a pile of ashes.
This bas.e.m.e.nt was built in three levels. Wei Lan silently descended down to the bottom-most floor. The two levels above were to keep people imprisoned, and there was no shortage of people there looking dishevelled or devoid of any clothing.
Luo Wei’s hair hid his face, and Wei Lan couldn’t tell who it was from appearance alone, but he recognized the voice. In that moment of recognition, Wei Lan’s heart went ice cold. Luo Wei’s image in Wei Lan’s heart was always someone who was perched above everyone else, elevated to the skies and the clouds, someone who wouldn’t touch this mortal world and its desires, but now this person was bound and naked, being tortured by a bronze toy under the gaze of ten or odd people.
“Who’s there?!” The people in the room had already discovered Wei Lan’s presence.
Wei Lan went mad, the only thought in his head at the moment was to kill everyone present.
The wooden box stopped moving.
Luo Wei sat on the wooden box, secured by that bronze thing onto it like a doll, unmoving.
“Young master?” After Wei Lan had gotten rid of everyone at the scene, he ran up behind Luo Wei.
“Lan?” When Luo Wei came around just slightly, he’d already fallen into Wei Lan’s arms.
“Young master!” Wei Lan held Luo Wei close, “Are you alright?”
“Don’t, don’t let people, let people see me like, like this,” He’d been gagged for five days, and the words weren’t coming naturally to him, so Luo Wei stuttered as he spoke to Wei Lan.
Wei Lan pulled clothes off of one of the men closest to him and wrapped the robes around Luo Wei.
Luo Wei scanned the ground for the corpses. Ku Liu’s was not there.
Wei Lan held Luo Wei in both arms and the two left the bas.e.m.e.nt like a gust of wind.
FOOTNOTES:
1. Lye – The original text said “corpse dissolving powder”, which is something common in Wuxia novels and legends, this translation uses “lye” which is a similar chemical in real life, just not as magical. The choice was made to keep the translation short and feel more realistic.