Princess too Young, Prince too Old

The man, sitting on his seat, “Do you still think you don’t have a good command of divination?”

The Taoist priest was drenched in sweats with fright. His breathing got laboured and sounded like a broken air box. “Our master always told us... ‘Revealing... secrets was against our ancestors’ rules. Though... I’m not talented enough, I will never try to do anything that goes against our master’s words...” It took the Taoist priest a long while to speak these words.

“It never occurred to me that you can be so tough. Well, that’s really interesting,” said the man, a slight smile appearing on his face, “I really want to see if your spirit is stronger than your bones. Come here. Break the other leg.”

Crack!

“Ahhh!” the Taoist priest yelled.

The lower part of the Taoist priest was badly mutilated. His face was extremely pale and his lips seemed drained of colour. His chest was fiercely quivering. He opened his mouth for several times and then said, “Master is right. Secrets are not allowed to be seen...not allowed to be given away. Marchioness Deng died for her revealing the secret. So she suffered the disaster in the end. I can’t give away the secret... I can’t...”

Sitting on his chair, the man patiently listened to the Taoist priest talking for a long while. When he finished, the man sneered. “What do you think you will suffer if you refuse to tell the secret out? Do you know how many bones are there in your body? I have just broken your two leg bones. If I break your bones one by one, what do you think about it? Can you stand it?”

“No! No! No! Get out of here! Get out!” The Taoist priest shook more violently. He gasped and waved his hands on the ground, his nails filled with sands. He was so scared that he almost lost his voice, “Help! Help! No! No! You are demons! You are demons!”

However, the man just behaved as nothing happened. He just waved to his guards saying, “Shins.”

Cracks!

With two dull thuds, the Taoist priest’s shins were broken compulsorily. His flesh was torn to shreds and even his bones could be seen. The Taoist priest was too painful to cry out. His body became numb in a sudden and his mind got blank. He could hardly feel the pain and only found his head dizzy. He closed his eyes, feeling death approaching. It finally came, and the cruel punishment would be finished soon. ‘God bless,” he wondered.

But as he regained his sanity, the great pain was going to kill him again. Meanwhile, he was forced to take a pill. He tried to spit it out but failed. The guard lifted his jaw, so he had no choice but swallow it. Again he retched, but it didn’t work at all. Sprawling on the cold ground, he breathed convulsively.

“It’s the best life-saving drug in the palace. People believe that even the dead will come to life with it. It’s so small but can help people live two or three days longer. The pill you just ate costs a large sum of money.” The man looked at the Taoist priest and felt somehow interested. He crouched in front of him and gazed at the pale face of the Taoist priest with a wry smile. “Those ordinary people will have no chance to see it, not to mention eating it. You are so lucky, because I have prepared three pills for you.”

The Taoist priest was frightened and hopeless. “Please, please let me die.”

The man then smiled and said in a low voice, “You know what I want to know.”