Rebirth: The flatterer prince I raised couldn't be so clingy

With her hands and feet tied, she couldn't put up any resistance and could only let the hemp rope tightly hold her neck, getting tighter and tighter.

On the rainy night in her previous life, the hemp rope tied around her neck was only to restrain her movements, but now it has become a tool to take her life.

Gu Qingzhi's face flushed red, and a bloody mark gradually appeared on her clean neck from the rough hemp rope, but she still kept her mouth tightly shut and refused to utter a word.

Zuo Chengyu crossed his arms and watched her breathing hard, with a look of sneer and embarrassment on his face.

"You still won't tell me? This is difficult. I originally planned to let you go as long as you told me."

An extremely familiar feeling of suffocation came over me, and my increasingly confused thoughts spread like fog.

Gu Qingzhi clenched her teeth, veins bulged on her face, and her chest heaving violently was of no avail. The long period of deprivation of breathing caused pain in her chest and abdomen.

She clenched her fists and stretched the injured part of her arm hard. The piercing pain made her wake up immediately.

Zuo Chengyu frowned and waved to the soldiers behind the gallows. The force of the hemp rope suddenly loosened. He stood up and walked to the gallows, carefully looking at the wound on her arm.

"It's all burned like this, why bother?"

Having just escaped from the feeling of suffocation, Gu Qingzhi was gasping for breath. She had no intention of listening to what he said. She just stared at him coldly with vigilance.

Zuo Chengyu seemed to have discovered something interesting, turned around and picked up a dish of yellow powder from the table.

Then he slowly sprinkled the powder on the wound and tilted his head to smile at her.

"You have risked your life for Feng Zhanye many times. If he knew that you came from nowhere and were not a guard of the Prime Minister's Mansion, do you think he would still care about your life or death?"

Gu Qingzhi was stunned and had no time to pay attention to those threatening words.

Zuo Chengyu poured almost the entire dish of yellow powder onto her wound. As the burning sensation became more intense, she felt as if her shoulder was almost burned through.

The yellow powder covered the entire wound, and the blood, which had no time to coagulate, was submerged in an instant.

The skin seemed to be roasted on fire. If you smelled it carefully, besides the smell of sulfur powder, you could even faintly smell the burnt flesh and blood.

His temple was throbbing and in an instant, Gu Qingzhi broke out in cold sweat all over his body.

She gasped, held her breath and clenched her teeth before swallowing the unbearable pain back into her stomach.

"Tell me, who are you?"

Gu Qingzhi suddenly laughed softly.

The corners of his lips were raised in an almost insane mockery, his teeth drew strange arcs in the dim light, and his ink-black eyes were filled with endless murderous intent.

"Oh, who am I... I am an evil ghost that crawled out of the lotus pond... I am here to take your life!"

The surrounding criminal officers and government soldiers looked at each other in confusion, wondering how could this man suddenly be possessed by evil spirits?

Zuo Chengyu, who had been sure of victory, was suddenly stunned, straightened up abruptly, and stared at her intently.

"What did you say?"

"Why...when you were destroying the corpse by the lotus pond...why weren't you afraid that the ghosts killed by you and your son would come to seek revenge?"

Gu Qingzhi spoke in a voice hoarse from being strangled by the hemp rope, raised the corners of her lips, her eyes full of mockery, and her smile carried a sinister and ghostly air.

Zuo Chengyu stared at her with his eyes like those of a venomous snake or scorpion, and did not say a word for a long while.

When did he discover that something was wrong with Lianchi? Was it when he was Marquis of Guang'an, or when his study was robbed?

No, it seems neither. If you think so, the two assassins were left beside the lotus pond at the beginning.

If he did it, he seemed to have known about it all along.

Why would he know?

No matter how hard Zuo Chengyu thought about it, he couldn't get the answer to this question, so he could only ask cautiously:

"Who are you? Who sent you to the Prime Minister's residence?"

The strands of hair on Gu Qingzhi's forehead were wet with cold sweat, and the pain from the wound almost made her bite her teeth off.

She opened her mouth with difficulty, her lips trembling uncontrollably: "Zuo Chengyu...it turns out you are afraid sometimes."

"Well, you still won't tell me? Officer, torture him until he tells the truth."

Zuo Chengyu's face turned ugly due to such provocation.

Ever since he met Lan Zhou that night, things started to get out of his control. Now Lan Zhou is nowhere to be found, and this unidentified guard has appeared. What is going on?

As he thought about it, he couldn't help but glance towards the completely dark corner not far away. His expression became increasingly unclear, as if he remembered something, and he hurriedly led the palace troops out of the dungeon.

After sending Zuo Chengyu away, the executioner picked up a whip on the table nearby, dipped it in some sulfur, and whipped Gu Qingzhi.

"You are so ungrateful. Not only did you reject the young master's kindness, but you also tried to anger him. Now that you are here, don't even think about leaving. Just do what the young master told you to do, and maybe you can keep your body intact."

The executioner did have some skills. With one whip, he tore her cloth and inner garments, leaving a fresh blood mark on her lower back.

This method is much more sophisticated than that used by the commander of the guards, who could cause skin and flesh to be torn apart by a whip.

Blood splattered everywhere, and the sulfur on the whip seeped into the back through the wound, bringing a new round of burning pain.

Gu Qingzhi gritted her teeth and endured it, digging her nails into her palms.

Then, another whip.

The pain spread from the back to every part of the body, but the force in the executioner's hands became stronger and stronger.

After a dozen lashes, blood mixed with sulfur stained his entire back. There was not a single spot of skin or flesh that didn't hurt, and the whole person felt as if he was thrown into a pile of fire and burned.

It seemed as if all the bones in his body were broken into pieces and roasted over the fire bit by bit. Compared with such torture, the redness, swelling and pain in his arms were nothing.

Gu Qingzhi lowered his head, breathing heavily numbly, and his mind became increasingly unclear.

"Come here, search him and brand him."

The criminal officer looked Gu Qingzhi up and down, and seeing that she was still stubborn, he called over several cruel officials.

The cruel official brought up a stove with a red-hot iron inside that was heated by charcoal fire.

The executioner turned around to get a wet cloth to keep it warm, then grabbed the soldering iron from the furnace and carefully burned every corner until it was red. Several cruel officials surrounded Gu Qingzhi and grabbed her buttons and pulled them hard.

The white cloth that had long been out of shape inside her inner garment was faintly visible, as well as the fair and tender skin at her collarbone.

"Why...why is it a woman?"

The cruel official closest to the scene was the first to react and cried out.

Hearing this, the executioner turned around, dropped the branding iron, pushed away the cruel official, and stared at the slightly raised straps.

The eyes that were fixed on her became increasingly obscene, and a disgusting grin appeared on his mouth. He grabbed the cloth band that tied Gu Qingzhi's hair and pulled it down with several strands of long hair.

The black hair fell between the eyes, and the beautiful face had nowhere to hide.

"I didn't expect it. She's really a woman dressed as a man. Look at her delicate skin and tender flesh."

"Sir, I will report to the eldest master."

One of the cruel officials came to his senses and tried to leave reluctantly, but was stopped by the executioner.

"Why are you in such a hurry? How long has it been since we last saw this kind of stuff? She can't run away anyway, why not give us a bargain first?"