The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty, Chapter 49: The "Ten Fingers That Are Not Needed for Pleasure"

The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty《成化十四年》Chengnian Shisi Nian
The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty, Chapter 49: The "Ten Fingers That Are Not Needed for Pleasure"

As soon as they arrived at that place, Wang Zhi laughed and said, "So it's this one. You South City Gang are really hidden!"


The two men who led the way didn't dare to squeak. They kept their heads down and pretended to be fools.

On the orders of Wang Zhi and Sui Zhou, the Western Depot and the Northern Administrative Court had already surrounded the brothel and were surrounding of it head to tail, so that not even a mosquito could fly out.

Eunuch Wang's tone of voice was more familiar than that of the normal men present. Tang Fan might have laughed out loud if the situation wasn't wrong, but now he just asked with a tense face, "What's wrong with this place?”

On the plaque at the front door were three characters engraved with the words "The Writing House" and the words "The calligraphy Style" and "The Elegance Style" and "The Romantic Literary Style" would have been a restaurant if not for the laughter coming from inside and the ambiguous candlelight coming out.

Wang Zhi said slowly, "This one is also Wan Tong's restaurant.”

This information sounds amazing, but when you think about it, it's not surprising, since the Western Depot is also the mastermind behind the Xianlin House, why can't the Jinyiwei have a youth house under his name? It's also possible to gather information under the pretext of gathering information, just because the youth houses, the casinos, and the taverns and restaurants are the most frequented places, and where there are more people, there's more information, which is exactly what these criminal intelligence agencies want.

When he thought of this, Tang Fan looked at Sui Zhou.

But Sui Zhou shook his head slightly, meaning he didn't know.

It seems that Wang Zhi was referring to Wan Tong's personal relationship in this building.

Wan Tong has a sister who is a noble consort in the palace, and he’s even more powerful than Wang Zhi in the capital because the Jinyiwei is under his command, the business of the Qing restaurant has become more prosperous, and there is no need to be afraid of being approached by the authorities for bribes in different names.

But Wang Zhi, as soon as they were ready to smash the place, they were greeted by a woman, Xu Niang, with a smile on her face, who was the manager of this restaurant.

"What are you doing here today, gentlemen? “ When he saw Wang Zhi, there were so many of them, but he didn't panic, so he knew what he was talking about.

Wang Zhi didn't say anything, in fact, he didn't have to. A man named Ji Yang, the head of the Western Depot, stood behind him, and ordered someone to bring up the two men: "Cut the crap, do you know them?”

The Madam of the Brothel looked away, her smile unchanged: "Never seen them before!”

The Commander of the Western Depot grunted, "Come on, get in there and search!”

The Madam of the Brothel blanched, “Hold on!”

Along with her voice, more than a dozen men, all tall and armed with sticks, were staring at Tang Fan and the rest of them with fury.

It's really amazing!

Not to mention Sui Zhou, Wang Zhi and others, Tang Fan was dressed in official uniforms, and their unique robes made it obvious that they were from the courtroom.

Ji Yang said, "You mad old lady, you're out of your mind! Do you know who we are? "

The Madam of the Brothel, calm and collected: "Of course, you are from the Western Depot, so what? I would welcome it if you were here to have some fun, but you're here to ruin the show, and if I let you in, I'm not going to do this business anymore! The Western Depot is a great place, but do you know who owns it here? "

Wang Zhi finally spoke up: "Isn't that the property under Wan Tong's name?”




The Madam of the Brothel studied him with narrowed eyes for a long time, and seeing the other side calling to him after the other side, and seeing the stars and the moon, she smiled again and said: "Is this the Western Depot, Governor Wang? The Western Depot and the Jinyiwei are like family, and since you know what's at stake, I'd like you to be more accommodating in the presence of General Wan! "

Wang Zhi was the Noble Consort Wan's man and Wan Tong was the Noble Consort Wan's brother, which was no secret, but a young lady, the Madam of the Brothel, would dare to threaten Wang Zhi with Wan Tong.

As soon as she raised her hand, someone brought the tray to the Madam of the Brothel and lifted the handkerchief to reveal the gold underneath, which was so heavy that it could not be more than three or four hundred taels.

The Madam of the Brothel, seeing everyone staring at the tray, smiled and covered the handkerchief again, and said to Wang Zhi, "This is a small token of appreciation, just to buy wine for Governor Wang and his men, no disrespect, please accept it! "

Wang Zhi laughed coldly and stretched out his hand to lift it.

All the people watched as the plate was tipped over and all the gold was tipped over in the air and fell to the ground, all at once glittering with gold.

Wang Zhi said to the dumbfounded Madam of the Brothel, "Are you so worthy to bribe me? A few words with you is already a great endorsement, don't really think of yourself as a big peach! "

The Madam of the Brothel has made a big mistake.

Admittedly, Wan Tong is a part of this restaurant, and with Wan Tong's relationship with Wang Zhi, Wang Zhi should give her some respect, and it would be inappropriate for her to confront him, or Wang Zhi wouldn't be able to do anything if the Noble Consortium were to pass it on to Wan.

However, the problem is that now Wang Zhi is looking for someone, and it's been confirmed that this place is linked to the South City Gang, and it may be one of the South City Gang's strongholds. If the case isn't solved, Wang Zhi will be held responsible.

The Madam of the Brothel's mistake is that she thought she could stop Wang Zhi if she left Wan Tong's name, but she didn't think that Wang Zhi would be a good match for her. If she doesn't dare to go after a young house, what will people think of Eunuch Wang, or if he's not a good match for her?

Wang Zhi kicked the Madam of the Brothel to the ground and said, "Search!”

"Wait, wait! You can't go in there! "The Madam of the Brothel paled as she was kicked in the waist and couldn't get up, so she sat on the ground and shouted, "I'll send someone to ask Master Wan, you're not allowed in! You're not allowed in!"

Wang Zhi coldly said, "Master Wan, it's no use even if he comes, why don't you go in and search for me!”

The men who guarded the gate looked so swift, but how could they beat the Western Depot's men who were even fiercer than them and all fell to the ground within a few rounds.

Sui Zhou brought fewer men with him tonight, Xue Ling and the others were arranged to guard the back door of the building, not here, and he didn't compete with the Western Depot's men, so he went in behind them with Tang Fan.

Once the Madam of the Brothel saw the Western Depot, she thought that she could turn Wan Tong's name into a big deal tonight, but she didn't expect that Wan Tong would be useless now, and Wang Zhi didn't even give her a damn.

She was so confident that she didn't evacuate the people inside, but Wang Zhi, instead, they burst in, and the lobby was filled with screams, and the guests were panicking, but they didn't know that the back door was the one where they jumped out of the window, and someone was waiting for them.

Ji-Yang ordered the Western Depot to go up in several directions, and at once went up to the second and third floors and kicked in all the doorways and rooms, and pulled out everyone in the room, no matter what they were doing, and there was a burst of screaming.

Everyone was brought down to the first-floor lobby and gathered together. Tang Fan swept the room, and there were a few officials.

Even though the imperial court said that the officials were forbidden to have sex with prostitutes, there was no man who didn't do something fishy as long as no one found out and was not impeached by the Imperial Censor. With Wan Tong's connections and the ability of the Jinyiwei commanders, the secrecy was still guaranteed, which made the building especially popular in the illegal and legal sorta people and the business was good.

But today, the Western Depot is being rushed in by a man who's astonished.

"Governor Wang, don't blame for not reminding you to keep a line of sight... and see you later! “ The Madam of the Brothel came in with a limp and snapped.

Wang Zhi looked at her coldly, like a dead man: "Do you know which family's children have been lost tonight?”

The Madam of the Brothel laughed coldly and looked on without fear, "How would I know any of this? Governor Wang, it's ridiculous. If a child is lost, he'll go looking for it. I'm a courtesan, so what does it have to do with me?"

Wang Zhi said, "Among the missing children tonight are the infant daughter of Zhu Yong, the Duke and the granddaughter of the Ministry of Appointments, how dare you hide the missing children for the evil-doer, and if not one Wan Tong or even ten Wan Tong can't save you! "

The Madam of the Brothel's face was covered with a thick layer of powder, and no one could tell whether her face was white because of the fear or not, but her eyes showed some hesitation and disbelief because of Wang Zhi's words, which were different from her previous look of high-mindedness.

By this time, the Western Depot had already turned the whole building upside down, and Ji Yang came out from the utility room next to the kitchen on the first floor and said to Wang Zhi: " Depot commander, there's a cellar here, but there's no one in it anymore! "

Wang Zhi's eyes glared sternly at the Madam of the Brothel: "Where are the people!”

The Madam of the Brothel laughed: "If no one is found, that means we've been wronged, and Governor Wang doesn't believe in searching, so I don't lie!”



Sui Zhou and Tang Fan went straight into the cluttered room, only to see the messy ground cleared out to reveal a black hole in the entrance.

Tang Fan asked, "No one is down there?”

Ji Yang nodded and said, "I went down to check it out myself. The place down there isn't big and there isn't any hidden trap. Even if there was someone hiding there originally, it's impossible to escape from there. "

There was a lot of stuff in here, from grains and cereals to ropes and other things, and it looked like an unusual room, even the existence of a cellar below was not surprising. Many big families or businessmen had cellars like this for perishable foods."

Tang Fan didn't let Ji Yang's words stop him. He glanced at Sui Zhou, who immediately took a candle from the wall, and the two of them walked straight down the stairs.

Ji Yang was a little upset, and said, "I've already checked it, and you still doubt me?"

He didn't go down either, but stood there with his arms around his chest, waiting to see how frustrated they'd both look when they came up.

After a while, they came back up again, but Tang Fan looked very serious and the first thing he said was, "There is a hidden place down there.”




Ji Yang frowned, "How did you see that?”

Tang Fan replied, "From the surrounding walls, the cellar must have been built for some time, it can't be completely empty, but if it was used for storing food, such as pickles, there must be a residual smell and a trace of storage. But now that it's completely clean, there's not even a trace of it, so it wasn't used for anything. "

Ji Yang had a sinking feeling that he, too, had just found the cellar a bit odd, but couldn't tell what was odd, because he'd forgotten to analyze it in terms of its smell.

He asked, "Where did they get out? Did they get the news before we arrived? "

Tang Fan shook his head, "From the time we got those two South City Gang guys to ask for statements, to the time in between coming here, and the people they contacted, there's not much chance that they would have gotten away after seeing us arrive.”

Ji Yang: "But there's no other way out here, there's a guard out there and they'll be found once they get out.”

By this time, Sui Zhou was already looking in the cluttered room. He used the hilt of his knife to pick through the many ingredients piled in the corner and poked at the surrounding walls. Ji Yang could naturally tell that he was looking for another hidden passage.

Unfortunately, he didn't seem to find anything.

Ji Yang was a little disappointed and was about to go to the other house when he heard Sui Zhou say, "There's something strange here.”

When he turned his head, he saw Sui Zhou's knife hilt poking at a stack of hay that propped up against the wall, but no matter how much he poked, the sack wouldn't move a muscle. Tang Fan went up and unhooked the sack, revealing a piece that at first glance was estimated to weigh over several thousand pounds.

How could there be such a stone pier in a cluttered room where the ingredients were kept?

It was not necessary for Tang Fan to say that Ji Yang could see that there was something strange.

Together with Sui Zhou, they moved the sack a little bit.

They saw a thin layer of straw underneath the sack, swept the straw away, and saw a thick tile covering it, which, although it fit in with the ground as well as possible, it still left some traces. Sui Zhou and Ji Yang dug up the tile, and saw that there was a hidden entrance, which looked deeper than the cellar, and they didn't know where it led.

Ji Yang suddenly realized that whoever had dug this tunnel had been very cunning, and had created an easy-to-find cellar here. A person who saw that there was no one in the cellar would have looked elsewhere, and would not have thought that there was another tunnel in the house. Unless one by one, as Sui Zhou had done, and unpacked it without any trouble, nothing would be found.

Then the Madam of the Brothel will be able to say that she is innocent.

Ji Yang immediately went out and told Wang Zhi what he found here.

Wang Zhi looked to the Madam of the Brothel: "What else do you have to say?”

The Madam of the Brothel, her face unsettled, her mouth stiff as ever: "This tunnel was originally dug as a ditch when the house was first built, but it was abandoned and never used again. What's so strange about that?"

Ji Yang laughed coldly: "You're digging a frigging ditch so people can walk in, but it's a lot of work. Which artisan made it? I'll hire him later! "

Wang Zhi, with substantial evidence, calmed down and said to the Madam of the Brothel: "You say you have Wan Tong's background here, but Wan Tong hasn't shown up so far, and you know why? You're just the Madam of the Brothel, if anything happens, you'll be thrown out as a scapegoat. You say you're Wan's agent, but he won't admit it. What can we do? Anyway, we have plenty of time, so let's ask here. Take our time. If you don't want to tell us, we'll ask until you do! Wei Mao! "

A stiff-faced middle-aged man comes forward, he’s the Western Depot’s most skilled at extracting confessions, and in this case, this is a job well done and professional. With a wave of his hand, Wei Mao stepped forward and clamped the Madam of the Brothel down tightly.

"First, I'll give you 'Ten Fingers That Are Not Needed for Pleasure.' Strike that. "He walked up and asked his men to press the Madam of the Brothel's finger to the ground.

Wei Mao, somehow, took out strangely shaped tweezers, crouched down and pinned them on the Madam of the Brothel's fingernails, then lifted them again!

"Ah--!!!!” the Madam of the Brothel's screams broke through the clouds.

The guests and girls of the Western Depot had all been rushed to the first floor and watched the scene, all of them paled in horror. They had heard so much about the Western and Eastern Depots until now that they had not really seen the scene of the real torture, that for a long time to come they would quake with fear at the mere mention of the Western Depot.

The so-called "Ten Fingers That Are Not Needed for Pleasure" is a pretty name that actually means removing all ten fingernails from a person's body, and connecting them to their heart.

Everyone looked at the Madam of the Brothel screaming and howling and felt their fingernails hurt like hell.

Tang Fan came out from the inner room and heard Wang Zhi say to the Madam of the Brothel: "Anyway, you have ten nails and you're running out of hands and feet, if you can still be so tough after you've lifted them all off, then I'll be convinced. "

The Madam of the Brothel's hands were held so tightly that she couldn't even move them, her nose was snotty and her eyes were flowing with tears, and her old arrogant face looked so pathetic.

But Tang Fan would never sympathize with such a person. To put it bluntly, the Madam of the Brothel was a devious person, and even if she had nothing to do with the missing child case, she would still do a lot of bad things in her daily life, even if she tasted all the torture in the Western Depot, she would not be cleared of her sins.

When Wei Mao saw that she still wouldn't talk, he clamped his index fingernail with tweezers, and when he was about to do it, he heard the Madam of the Brothel howling like a pig: "Don't clamp! I will speak, I will speak! Don't clamp it! Let me go! Let me go! Let me go! Let me go! Let go of me!"




The feeling of having her fingernails lifted off, may not be understood by others, but the Madam of the Brothel at this moment felt so much worse than death that she wished she could cut them off, and perhaps not so much as that. She cried out as hard as she could, her body convulsing, but she could not shake the pain of the gangrene.

She couldn't think of anything else, and all the secrets were far away in her mind, and all she had left was one thought: stop this pain!

Wang Zhi waved his hand and the Madam of the Brothel was picked up and taken to the storeroom.

The door was closed, and besides the Madam of the Brothel, there were only three or four people present.

Wang Zhi said: “Speak.”

The Madam of the Brothel sobbed as she said, "Those children are not, not here... "

Wang Zhi raised his eyebrows, thinking she was going to be cheating again: “Wei Mao, get some saltwater and sprinkle it on that finger of hers.”

"No, no, no! I'm not lying! Those people aren't here anymore. They've been gone for over half an hour! "The Madam of the Brothel screamed, "I'm only here for the skin and meat business, and the South City Gang, if they've abducted children, sometimes they hide them here for a while, but they'll take them away soon! "

Wang Zhi asked, "Did you see us coming and tell them to leave? How many of them were there? How many children were there? Where did they run towards? Where does this tunnel lead? "

He threw out several questions at once, the Madam of the Brothel looking at the nearby tweezers, already too frightened to answer.

"No, no! I did not inform them, and those men left before you came, for someone had come back to say that you, the Western Depot men, had seen you questioning near the townhouse, and, thinking they might be exposed, hurried back and brought the children out of the cellar and down the tunnels! There were three of them, seven, or eight of them, all under the age of ten... The tunnel leads out of the city, so that you may know that I am a transit point, and I don't know where they are going! "

Tang Fan asked, "What is your position in the South City Gang? And who are those people in the South City Gang? "

The Madam of the Brothel cried, "I'm a Brothel House Mistress, the Madam of the Brothel, I don't have any status, I'm just a nobody in the gang! I don't dare ask about the human trafficking trade! Sometimes they send me children from the south to teach them, and I do as I'm told, but this is a transit point for them. I don't actually know about anymore!"

Wang Zhi didn't say a word and Wei Mao poured salt water on the bloody finger of the Madam of the Brothel, who cried and begged, but she couldn't find any more useful information.

Everyone could see that the Madam of the Brothel wasn't lying, and there was only so much she knew.

Tang Fan asked again, "Was there a fat eight or nine-year-old among those children? She wore a bun and a red silk braid on her head. "

To stop suffering, the Madam of the Brothel strives to recall: "As if there was... No, no, there was! There was! I remember, there was this little girl who cried all the time, and the men with them got impatient and beat her up, and the girl was defending her, and she was slapped hard for it! "The girl was still defending her, so she was slapped!"

Tang Fan looked deathly grim, A-Dong was a slave, but since she came to Tang Fan's side, why would Tang Fan hit her when he loved her so much, and now when he heard that she had been hit, he felt angry.



Wang Zhi asked a few more questions, such as where is the South City Gang, where are the other members of the parish, and the identity of the person who took the children, etc. The Madam of the Brothel has no idea what to do, and it's useless to torture her.

Tang Fan said, "It's not too late, I'm going to check it out now!”

Sui Zhou nodded, “Let’s go together.”

He called for Xue Ling and the others, along with Tang Fan, five of them, brought candles and other things, and went through the tunnel at the waist.

The tunnel was narrow enough for only one person to pass through, and he had to hunch over halfway through it.

According to the Madam of the Brothel, the tunnel was rough, there were no steps to light it, but there were no traps, it was just a way to the outside of the city, so that those people could move some people and things out of sight at any time.

Sui Zhou, Xue Ling, and others were good, but Tang Fan followed behind.

The group walked for some time, because the tunnel was rugged, and they were too busy to adapt to the environment, but they were not careful enough to wait for Tang Fan to walk for a while, and then they noticed that there was someone behind them, and when they looked back, it was Wang Zhi and some of the Western Depot's boys.

"It's a shady place like this, it's a shame that Eunuch Wang, with his status as Eunuch Wang, doesn't have to do everything himself.” Tang Fan couldn't help but mock him for letting A-Dong take the bait.

Eunuch Wang grunted, "The other side must have someone outside the city, I'm afraid you're just a few of you, if you're not careful, you'll be a disgrace!”

The author has something to say:

Note: At this time Zhu Yong has not yet been crowned Duke of the Kingdom. He hasn't appointed a prince or a eunuch, and he's borrowed his title in advance.

He's playing the lute with his fingers, and he's not touching the water... and he's feeling like he's about to be tortured. In fact, this article is very positive energy and sunshine, not scary at all, right (*^_^*)




The Little Theatre:

The Madam of the Brothel: Don't be angry, I'll tell you a joke.

Wang Zhi: Speak.

The Madam of the Brothel: Once upon a time there was a eunuch.

Wang Zhi: ...?

The Madam of the Brothel: It's missing. (presumably the d.ick)

Wang Zhi:... Shut the door and let the dogs go, and I will torture you!





- The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty -



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