Chapter 654: Rescuing a Rebel, Part 3

If you took an aerial photograph with a drone, the Hanyang Prefectural Office inside Hanyang City would be a perfectly standard Ming-dynasty municipal government compound.

The compound faced south, situated in the northeastern district of Hanyang City — true north symbolized the Forbidden City, so to avoid taboo, the yamen would yield the due-north position.

The Hanyang Prefectural Office covered roughly a hundred mu, a figure common to most prefectural yamens. Its interior followed the central axis, forming a complex centered on the Great Hall, Second Hall, and Inner Hall.

The buildings within the entire compound, besides the most familiar Great Hall and Second Hall, actually included side rooms, auxiliary rooms, stables, wing rooms, proclamation rooms, storehouses, section offices, clerks' residences, the Back Residence, and more — in total no fewer than a thousand rooms and structures... In essence, it was a miniature Forbidden City.

Where there was a yamen, there was a prison. Throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties, every prefectural and county yamen was invariably equipped with a jail... This was one of the essential administrative installations of the ruling apparatus.

The prison's location was not chosen arbitrarily; its orientation was generally on the west or southwest side of the compound.

The east governs life — the Gate of Life and Gate of Spirits are placed on the east side for ordinary people to pass through; the Gate of Death and Gate of Ghosts are placed on the west side for condemned prisoners to use. The southwest belongs to the Kun trigram, regarded in feng shui as a foul location, making it a fitting site to build a prison.

Hanyang Prefecture was no exception — its prison sat beneath the compound's western wall, adjoining the partition wall with the outside world.

The street beyond the compound's western wall was called Yaxi Street. Calling it a street was generous — it was barely wide enough for two horse-drawn carts to pass each other; calling it a lane would be more apt.

Because it bordered the jail, ordinary folk rarely came, fearing they'd catch bad luck, so Yaxi Street was a desolate lane. Apart from a letter-writer and fortune-teller and a couple of snack stalls, there were only two wreath shops.

Since ancient times, the shady dealings within the prison system have been countless, most of them things that could never see the light of day.

Moreover, even on ordinary days, the various officials and masters traveling to and from the prefectural yamen were equally displeased at the sight of ill-omened prisoners and jailers shuffling in and out of the compound.

For all these reasons, the prison system in fact often used the West Side Gate to escort prisoners in and out, as well as to bring in or send out contraband items.

The West Side Gate was set into the compound's western wall, an inconspicuous outer gate.

This unremarkable side gate was the first checkpoint that a certain rebel rescue team focused their attention on.

In the earlier planning, the scheme of entering the prison from the compound's main front approach was quickly rejected... Personnel came and went too frequently, multiple guarded doors would have to be breached, and there were too many uncontrollable factors.

The West Side Gate, however, was simple. Break through this one gate, and you could reach the prison system by the shortest possible route while avoiding contact with all other personnel systems in the compound.

It was high noon the day after Bao Shinan and Xiao Guan had "settled matters" at the restaurant.

At this hour, the yamen was naturally off duty and resting. A handful of outstanding employees, however, still had to labor overtime... such as the jailers in the prison... These were paragons who loved the court and loved the yamen, well deserving of commendation.

The next moment, Xiao Guan, dressed in a plain, subdued robe, hopped down from the carriage shaft of a horse-drawn cart stopped on Yaxi Street.

He dusted off his robes, reached into the cart and lifted out two food boxes, then knocked the beast-face iron ring on the West Side Gate.

At the sound, the duty jailer promptly opened the small window in the gate to look out. Xiao Guan cupped his hands, said "sorry for the trouble," and gave his name. Before long, the bolt rattled, and the gate silently opened halfway, admitting him.

The first moment he stepped inside, Xiao Guan swept his gaze left and right.

What met his eyes first was a crude rain shelter against the wall, inside which were only two yamen runners and a single long table. Apart from that, there was the long, narrow alleyway stretching beneath his feet.

The prefectural and county yamens built in the early period all incorporated certain military design requirements.

This alleyway existed to provide a defensive line for the Prefectural Governor to hold the yamen if the city walls were breached. Thus both high walls were built of top-quality green brick, standing four and a half meters tall, capped with rain-shedding glazed tiles... This too was stipulated by Zhu Yuanzhang: "Prefectural, subprefectural, and county outer walls shall be one zhang and five chi high, built with lime-tempered green brick."

Xiao Guan now stood between those two high walls.

The two uniformed jailers behind the long table wore hard expressions. After letting Xiao Guan in, they said nothing, first conducting a meticulous search of his entire body, not even sparing the food boxes.

Once they finished, the one with a gaunt face and rat-like whiskers finally spoke: "Since it's Friend Guan in person, Jailer Bao left instructions. Follow me."

"Much obliged, much obliged." Xiao Guan picked up the food boxes and followed the gaunt-faced jailer, walking another twenty meters south along the walled alley.

At this point, a gate that truly led into the yamen interior appeared on Xiao Guan's left.

As he passed through this gate, Xiao Guan noted a difference from the first gate, which had opened from the inside: for this second gate, the gaunt-faced jailer took out a key and unlocked it from the outside.

The logic was easy to grasp: the first gate needed to keep out idle outsiders, so it opened from within. The second gate was a working door for their own people inside the alleyway, so the duty personnel needed to be able to open it at any time.

Xiao Guan silently committed this detail to memory.

After passing through the second gate in the second walled alley, another alleyway appeared before Xiao Guan's eyes, and directly ahead was yet another high wall.

This time, Xiao Guan knew: the prison was here.

Sure enough, after following this narrow alleyway south for another ten-odd meters, then turning east, the view suddenly opened wide: the main gate of the Hanyang Prefectural Office prison was before him.

Having reached this point, Xiao Guan, who had broadly studied the compound's layout beforehand, felt a secret surge of delight: from the first gate all the way to the prison's main entrance, the entire route had kept him walking in the alley between the prison and the outer wall.

The prison complex had invisibly blocked contact with all unrelated personnel.

This tacitly understood design of the prison system was precisely what the rescue team needed.

From the outside, the legendary, mysterious, and gloomy prison was really nothing special. It was simply a traditional Chinese-style entrance hall with curved inward-splaying screen walls.

The hall's main doors were shut as usual, with a black plaque above bearing the two characters "Prison." To the left and right hung matching black vertical plaques, forming a couplet: "Would that all men joyfully kept their work; why lament a prison forever empty?"

Here, there was a duty guard. Xiao Guan, following behind the gaunt-faced jailer, studied the guard carefully: an ordinary runner with the character "Prohibition" on his chest, slouched against a battered chair, half-asleep.

In theory, the prohibition runners responsible for the prison system should belong to the larger group of the "Zhuang Squad" within the Three Squads and Runners.

However, due to the highly specialized and confidential nature of their work, the prison system personnel formed an independent little faction within the runner corps. Their squad leader was called the Jailer-in-Chief, and the ordinary staff were called prohibition runners.

This group had a dedicated establishment within the yamen, equal in rank to the Zhuang Squad leader commonly referred to as the "Chief Bailiff."

In a typical county yamen, the prohibition runner establishment was six to eight men. At the Hanyang Prefectural Office, however, due to its larger scale, there were fourteen prohibition runners in total.

After sweeping a glance at the guard, Xiao Guan followed the gaunt-faced jailer through a low side door into the prison.

Past the main gate, the first thing he saw was a green brick spirit screen. Rounding the screen, what Xiao Guan beheld was another utterly unremarkable front courtyard.

Directly ahead in the courtyard was the prison's main hall; to the left and right were administrative offices and the Criminal Division... Peering in from outside, the walls of the Criminal Division were indeed hung with quite a few torture instruments, all appearing stained with blood — the sinister atmosphere emerged at once.

And standing in the courtyard with his hands behind his back, smiling as he waited for Xiao Guan, was none other than Bao Shinan, Bao the Jailer.

At the sight of Jailer Bao, Xiao Guan, fully prepared, hurried forward with cupped hands: "Ha ha! Jailer Bao is truly a man of his word!"

"All part of the job, all part of the job."

Jailer Bao was exceptionally courteous today. After a few pleasantries, he dismissed the gaunt-faced jailer with a wave and personally led Xiao Guan deeper inside.

As they walked, Jailer Bao enthusiastically explained to Xiao Guan: the side gates to the left and right of the front courtyard each led to a compound holding ordinary prisoners.

And the left side gate he was leading Xiao Guan through was the only route to Death Row.

Passing through the left side gate, Xiao Guan finally saw the legendary prison.

This was a compound for holding ordinary prisoners. Unlike the barred communal cells resembling large shared bunks seen in films and dramas, the real prisons of ancient times were actually rooms built of brick and stone.

Once here, Xiao Guan had little to say; step by step, he followed the jailer through the narrow corridor.

On either side of the corridor stood a row of ordinary cells. These rooms were all built of green brick, with tiny windows and low, squat doors.

Looking up, the gap overhead was so narrow it felt like a sliver of sky, and a rope net still stretched between the two eaves… The night-roaming heroes and directors flying around in films and dramas probably never imagined this detail.

Passing through the ordinary prisoners' courtyard, directly facing the narrow passageway stood two restricted rooms, where the jailers lived.

And right beside the restricted rooms was Xiao Guan's destination for this trip: Death Row.

The condemned cell had its own separate great gate. The gate was carved with a Bixie head, closely resembling a tiger's head, hence it was commonly known as the Tiger-Head Cell.

The entrance hall of the Tiger-Head Cell had one door at the front and one at the back, separated by only two or three meters — exactly the distance of a single room.

Both of these doors stood wide open at the moment, and Xiao Guan swaggered right into Death Row alongside Bao the Jailer.

Yet as Xiao Guan passed through these two doors, he deliberately observed the doorframe positions. The next moment, he said to himself inwardly: "Just as I expected!"

These two cell gates were ingeniously designed — one opened to the left, the other to the right. When a prisoner tried to escape, even if they managed to open the first door in their desperation, they would often find themselves completely helpless before the second. The wisdom of the ancients was evident here.

Xiao Guan had not known about this design beforehand either. However, before his departure, his "benefactor brother" and master Huang Zhong had produced a sheet of paper from who knows where and told him a full nine subtle points he needed to observe as closely as possible — the cell gate joints being one of them.

The Death Row courtyard, on the contrary, was not as cramped and oppressive as the outer ordinary prison courtyard — after all, condemned prisoners were relatively few in number.

Yet the construction of the Death Row courtyard had been the most labor-intensive.

It followed the same courtyard structure, but three of its sides were cells with immensely thick walls and floor bricks, three cells per side — the walls reached a thickness of five chi and were filled with sand inside, precisely to prevent prisoners from boring holes and escaping.

The Death Row courtyard had a well and a water trough. To prevent prisoners from throwing themselves into the well to commit suicide, the well opening was only half a chi wide, and the windlass and bucket were both specially made.

As Bao the Jailer entered the courtyard, one jailer emerged from each of the restricted rooms on the left and right.

What followed was the standard visitation procedure. First, Bao the Jailer made introductions, then Xiao Guan offered his greetings to the two brothers on duty and presented them with bits of loose silver.

Next, Xiao Guan handed one of the food boxes to the two old brothers as well: "Cold day — have a bite to ward off the chill."

After all these formalities were complete, the jailers, beaming from the benefits they had received, finally took the key hanging on the restricted room wall and opened the door of a cell due east in the courtyard for Xiao Guan.

When the thick wooden door swung open and sunlight streamed into the cell, the first thing Xiao Guan saw was a grating with bars as thick as a child's arm — and this grating was also locked.

Through the grating, Xiao Guan finally saw the inside of the cell. On the rotting straw in the corner, two men indeed lay there.

The next moment, Xiao Guan raised his voice and shouted: "Tian Daxiong! Deputy Lord Tian has sent your little brother to see you!"