"Number 338! Get up! Someone is here to see you!"
The sharp, authoritative shout of the female prison guard echoed through the heavy steel bars. Instantly, the chaotic, noisy cell fell into a dead silence.
"You lucky little bitch," the massive female prison bully—the Tigress—chuckled darkly. She slowly shifted her heavy, plump buttocks off Nan Xiang's chest, releasing the crushing weight.
"Huff... huff..."
Nan Xiang gasped frantically, sucking in air as if she were a drowning victim breaking the surface. For the very first time in her life, she realized that simply taking a breath of oxygen was an unimaginable luxury.
The other hardened inmates in the cell glared at her with vicious, predatory eyes. In just twenty-four agonizing hours, Nan Xiang felt as though she had been dragged back and forth across the razor's edge of hell countless times. These women had inflicted such profound physical and psychological devastation upon her that she genuinely had no idea how her heart was still beating.
"Listen to me, you filthy little whore. Wash your face and put your uniform on properly," the Tigress warned, her voice dropping to a lethal whisper as she looked down at her broken toy. Nan Xiang lay completely naked on the freezing concrete floor, her body trembling violently, her breasts and delicate labia painfully clamped shut with heavy, rusted iron clips. "If you dare to go out there and spout any nonsense to the guards, I will make you beg for death when you get back."
"Y-Yes! Yes! Number 338 understands!" Nan Xiang whimpered, jolted into absolute compliance. Her voice trembled violently, thick with hysterical tears.
Several female prisoners rushed forward, violently ripping the heavy iron clamps off Nan Xiang's sensitive flesh.
"Ah...!" She bit her tongue to stifle a scream, her entire body shuddering in blinding pain, but she absolutely did not dare to dodge or resist.
There was zero human dignity or basic rights left in this concrete box. If she dared to show a fraction of resistance, she would be met with even more unspeakable torture. Her former pride, her artistic elegance, and her self-esteem had been completely trampled into the filthy mud—she had been beaten, stripped, and literally urinated on by the cell block.
"Miss Nan. It is a pleasure to finally meet you."
Sitting in the sterile, dimly lit interrogation room, Yi Zhongtian—Mr. Yi—looked across the metal table at the trembling, broken girl and nodded in dark satisfaction.
The sheer, unadulterated terror radiating from her eyes proved that she had experienced a thoroughly horrific time over the past two days. What was even more remarkable, and a testament to the Tigress's professional restraint, was that there wasn't a single visible scar or bruise on Nan Xiang's flawless face. After all, even with Mr. Yi's cynical, discerning eye, he had to admit this woman was a generational femme fatale. If her beautiful face had been ruined by the inmates, Young Master Li would have been furious, and it would have become a massive operational headache.
"H-Hello..." Nan Xiang greeted him, her voice barely a fearful whisper. The extreme, brutal humiliation she had endured over the past forty-eight hours had nearly caused her to develop a complete cognitive breakdown.
"Please, have a seat," Mr. Yi smiled warmly, gesturing to the bolted metal chair opposite him.
"E-Excuse me... are you a lawyer?" Nan Xiang asked frantically, practically throwing herself into the chair. For the first time in two days, someone was speaking to her with actual human politeness.
When she was first thrown into the intake room, she had naively acted out the tropes she had seen on television—demanding her right to legal counsel, screaming for a guardian, and crying for basic civil rights. But tragically, she quickly learned that television was a pathetic lie.
If you were a wealthy citizen with deep political connections and a high social standing, you could demand a defense attorney. But she was just a disposable, unconnected bar hostess. Who the hell was going to answer her calls? Did she genuinely believe she was still considered a human being under the eyes of the law?
After being brutally beaten for speaking out of turn, Nan Xiang hadn't dared to utter the word "lawyer" again. She knew perfectly well that no one in this hellhole cared about her rights, nor did they care if she lived or died.
So, when she saw the sophisticated, suited Mr. Yi sitting before her, she looked at him like a drowning woman desperately clawing at a life preserver.
"I am not a lawyer," Mr. Yi replied smoothly, instantly shattering her hope. "However, I am intimately familiar with the exact details of your case, Miss Nan."
Mr. Yi opened a sleek black folder on the table.
"Your boyfriend, Xi Cheng, has been officially charged with massive narcotics trafficking, smuggling, illegal gambling, street violence, and severe assault. The physical evidence is absolutely irrefutable. He has already been rapidly processed, convicted, and sentenced to death by firing squad. The execution is scheduled to take place in exactly three days."
Under normal, bureaucratic circumstances, even an expedited death penalty case would take at least two months of legal processing. But for a minor, disposable street rat like Xi Cheng, there was absolutely no need to involve Vice Mayor Xu Guangxi; Mr. Yi's shadow influence alone was more than enough to grease the wheels of the executioner.
Although Xi Cheng had initially screamed and insisted that the two massive bricks of drugs weren't his, after being "kindly greeted" by his hardened cellmates for an entire night, the scumbag was left suffering from severe anal bleeding and massive internal trauma. He didn't dare utter another word of protest. With his forced confession officially inked, and given that he was a parasitic thug nobody would miss, the death sentence was handed down with terrifying speed.
In fact, considering the continued "affection" of his cellmates, it was highly uncertain if Xi Cheng would even survive the next three days to face the firing squad.
"Xi Cheng... is going to be executed?"
Nan Xiang stared blankly at the table. She had always believed that hearing news of his death would make her heart bleed—that she would feel like she was dying alongside him. After all, he was the man she had loved with a toxic, self-destructive devotion.
But sitting in that sterile room, the sadness she felt was shockingly hollow. The grief was microscopic compared to the severe, flesh-tearing psychological trauma she had just endured in the cell block.
"Yes. And as his documented accomplice, Miss Nan, your official sentencing will likely be handed down by the judge very soon," Mr. Yi noted, pausing deliberately to carefully monitor her reaction.
Nan Xiang let out a hollow, bitter smile. It looked almost like absolute relief. She had originally thought that facing a firing squad was the most terrifying fate a human could endure. But after the Tigress's cell? A bullet to the back of the head sounded like a sweet, merciful release.
Seeing that Nan Xiang was genuinely leaning toward the relief of death, Mr. Yi smiled inwardly. He was a master of psychological warfare. He had broken plenty of targets like this. It was glaringly obvious that the girl's miserable past, compounded by the horrific, degrading torment of the prison, had completely annihilated her will to live. After all, death wasn't scary to the broken; what was truly terrifying was surviving in a state worse than death.
"However," Mr. Yi continued, his voice dropping into a cold, clinical tone. "Because you are technically a first-time offender, Miss Nan, and the court may officially argue that you were violently coerced and misled by your boyfriend... you will avoid the death penalty. You will most likely be sentenced to twenty years in this exact maximum-security prison."
Upon hearing those exact words, the hollow relief in Nan Xiang's eyes shattered. Pure, unadulterated panic completely consumed her.
"No! No! Please, God, no! I don't want to go to jail! I can't stay here! Please, just shoot me! I beg of you, just execute me right now!"
Nan Xiang threw herself out of the metal chair, collapsing to her knees on the cold floor, sobbing hysterically. The past forty-eight hours had been a literal waking nightmare. She couldn't even begin to fathom the psychological horror of being locked in that cell with the Tigress for twenty years.
She didn't even dare to imagine the things they would do to her body over two decades.
"Miss Nan, the law is an absolute, rigid system of justice. You cannot simply bargain with the state for a bullet," Mr. Yi laughed coldly, elegantly adjusting the gold-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose.
"Please... please! I will do absolutely anything you want! I'll do anything! I really, truly cannot go back to that cell! Please, I am begging you!"
Nan Xiang knelt on the concrete, violently kowtowing, slamming her forehead against the floor in frantic desperation. If they dragged her back to that cell block, she swore she would bite her own tongue off and bleed to death right now.
"Well... if Miss Nan is willing to sign a specific, private arrangement... it is not entirely impossible to secure your immediate release," Mr. Yi said slowly, seeing that the psychological torture was finally complete.
"I'll sign it! I'll sign absolutely anything!"
In her heart, with her innate, sharp artistic intuition, Nan Xiang already understood the brutal reality: she had been entirely, deliberately framed by the man whose sexual advances she had rejected. But the 'who' and the 'why' no longer mattered in the slightest. The only thing that mattered was survival.
Mr. Yi slid a thick, bound legal document across the metal table.
[Contract of Indentured Servitude]
Looking down at the dark, absolute slave contract—a barbaric document that absolutely should not exist in modern, civilized society—Nan Xiang picked up the pen and signed her bloodied name on the dotted line without a single microsecond of hesitation.
As long as she could crawl out of this concrete hell, she would gladly sell her soul to the devil.
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Give me powerstones.
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