Chapter 429

Su Qiao wore a cold sneer on his face and retorted.

Lester: "..."

Just as Su Qiao had said, his threat was utterly useless.

Facing Su Qiao, he had no room for resistance whatsoever.

So he simply stopped speaking.

As if turning himself into a mute, he knelt there motionless.

"It seems you do not intend to speak. You should be clear that the Great Ming has many methods of torture. If you do not speak, I cannot guarantee that I will not employ these methods."

After Su Qiao finished speaking, Lester remained motionless with no reaction whatsoever.

He now understood; it seemed Lester intended to hold out stubbornly.

He simply had never compared the torture methods of the East and West.

Western methods like water prisons, flogging, and so on, compared to the interrogation techniques of the Great Ming Embroidered Uniform Guard's Imperial Prison, were nothing but a little brother!

"Very well, it seems you wish to try. Guards!"

"My lord!"

"Take him away. Let the men of the Embroidered Uniform Guard try. I want his confession as quickly as possible!"

Su Qiao said with a cold face.

"Yes!"

Seeing Lester dragged away, Liu Minghe and Zhao Hui standing nearby felt a chill of dread on his behalf.

The Embroidered Uniform Guard! The Imperial Prison!

Who did not know how terrifying the torture inside was?

With their methods, they believed almost no one in the world possessed a backbone hard enough to endure it.

Too few.

This Lester would likely, before long, confess even to stealing candy from the neighbor's child when he was young.

Just as everyone thought today's interrogation was nearly over.

Sun Youxu finally returned with his men.

However, what surprised everyone was that Sun Youxu and his group returned without that Frankish priest.

Instead, they had captured an ordinary person.

Clearly, the target had escaped; Sun Youxu and his men had failed to catch him.

Su Qiao's brows immediately furrowed.

"My lord, this subordinate has failed. Please punish me!"

With an expression of guilt on his face, Sun Youxu came before the hall and knelt on one knee to beg for punishment.

Su Qiao opened his mouth and asked, "Where is the man?"

"My lord, we arrived a bit late. We do not know if that Frankish priest was prepared beforehand and fled early. We found no one in his house, so we immediately questioned the four city gate commanders, learning that he had already left the city through the Nancheng Sect an hour ago."

"So the man fled long ago, and you discovered no clues?"

"Yes. We only brought the person who lived with the Frankish priest and the evidence searched from the priest's house."

Sun Youxu said respectfully.

Su Qiao glanced at the scholar standing outside, trembling, and nodded, saying, "This matter is not your fault. I simply did not expect the villain to be so cunning. However, bring up the evidence. I wish to examine it. Also, who is the person brought back? Let him come up as well; I have questions for him."

"Yes!"

After Su Qiao's words fell, Sun Youxu breathed a brief sigh of relief in his heart.

Since Ma Kui and the other two were assigned to Su Qiao's side, responsible for protecting Su Qiao's safety and assisting with matters.

They did not say it was smooth sailing, but under Ma Kui's leadership, they had never made a mistake.

However, now that Ma Kui was temporarily assigned to Daotai Sect.

The duty of running errands for Su Qiao fell upon him, Sun Youxu.

This counted as him making a name for himself.

Originally full of ambition, wanting to do his utmost without any mishaps.

Who knew this mission would fail, and the prisoner would escape?

This left him utterly dejected.

Even though Su Qiao said he would not blame him and it was not his fault, he felt very uncomfortable inside.

Su Qiao did not notice Sun Youxu's change in emotion.

The scholar brought by Sun Youxu, who was standing outside the hall, entered; he was still a Xiucai.

Standing below the main hall, he did not need to perform the kneeling ritual; merely a slight bow with hands clasped was sufficient.

Su Qiao was quite curious about him, because looking at his appearance, he did not seem to have smoked opium.

Generally, a person who smokes opium and a normal, healthy person standing together are actually very easy to distinguish.

The entire Xiucai, Su Qiao judged, knew he should not have been dragged into the pit.

That Frankish priest, over such a long time, should have pulled many people into the fire pit.

Yet he had let this piece of meat within reach go.

Su Qiao was truly curious about the reason behind this.

"Who stands below the hall?"

"Student Cheng De, greets the Imperial Envoy!"

Although this Xiucai looked young, only in his twenties, slightly older than Su Qiao.

But he remained neither humble nor arrogant, far more composed than those wealthy merchants before.

Add to that his status as a Xiucai; though his looks were not those of a handsome man with sword-like brows and starry eyes, he possessed a certain refined and calm demeanor.

Even Zhu Di in the hall, along with Liu Ming and others observing as jurors, formed a fairly high impression of this Cheng De in their hearts.

"You are a Xiucai, are you not, Cheng De? Do you know why you were summoned here today?"

"This student has some guesses, though I do not know if they are correct."

"Speak."

"Well, this student believes it is because of that Franks priest who lived with me. Although this student does not know how that Franks priest managed to anger my lord, this student truly has no connection with that priest."

Cheng De pondered for a moment, then tentatively spoke.

The last sentence still revealed the fear in his heart.

It was truly much like the future era; what decent person would want to frequent a police station?

This great hall of the yamen, though not a police station...

... was much the same, far more formidable than an ordinary county yamen.

For ordinary people, the pressure was even greater!

Su Qiao chuckled lightly and said, "You say that Franks priest offended me? That is impossible. This official has never even met him, so there can be no question of offense. He can only be said to have done evil deeds; now that the matter has come to light, he sensed the signs and fled."

"Look here, do you recognize this? Have you seen it before?"

At this moment, Su Qiao had someone bring opium for him to see.

Cheng De glanced up, a flash of terror passing through his eyes.

"Replying to my lord, this student has seen this thing."

"Where did you see it?"

"I saw the priest who previously lived in the same courtyard as me occasionally selling this thing to others, and the price was extremely high."

As he spoke these words, Cheng De seemed to recall the scene at that time, shivering violently with a chill.

Who knows what he was recalling.

284, The Invitation!

"You saw that priest selling opium; did he not ask you to try it?"

Su Qiao finally asked the question he had wanted to ask.

Cheng De hurriedly shook his head, then nodded.

This left Su Qiao and everyone else very puzzled.

"My lord, this thing is terrifying. Once when I returned, I inadvertently saw a man who had been coming to buy this thing from the Franks priest; he was like a madman, begging for it, knocking his head until it bled. This student knew then that this, this opium is absolutely no good thing; it harms people terribly."

"Afterwards, that Franks priest asked me to try it, but I did not dare to try."