Yao

Chapter 2

It has been days since the ceremony, which ended before it even started to celebrate the Double Ninth Festival. Prince Yeon spends most of his time in the dungeon torturing the dancer to get answers about the guy behind Yao's murder. He pulls out every tooth the dancer has to prevent him from biting his tongue to commit suicide. Prince Yeon also comes up with new ways to make the dancer suffer just to get one word out of his mouth.

He orders his men to push the dancer's head into a tub filled with cold water when the dancer is asleep. Prince Yeon watches him suffocating. His body twitches every time his head is under the water. Prince Yeon then makes his men pull his back up for air and then push the dancer straight back into the tub.

"As much as I want you to die, you can't." Prince Yeon says coldly, "Tell me who is behind it!"

"Screw... you..." replies the dancer, and his head is pushed back into the water.

Prince Yeon ties the dancer with a fish net tightly around his body, gathers his flesh into pieces by the net, and scratches each part of the flesh with a knife. It is as if the dancer is a leaking blood bag. He then ties the dancer onto a table. Facing up, the dancer can see a tube with water droplets dropping on his forehead – a water droplet per second, but for the entire day. It drives the dancer into madness. He yells and cries, begging Prince Yeon to stop.

"You willing to speak now?" Prince Yeon walks towards the dancer.

"It's... It's... It's Que–" and an arrow shot right through his heart before he could finish his sentence.

"What... What on earth! Who shot him!" Prince Yeon shouts angrily and looks at the body in front of him. He then turns to the knights and yells, "Why are you still here! Go and catch the assassin you imbeciles!"

The knights storm out of the dungeon. Prince Yeon stares at the arrow, thinking how the dancer got killed right in front of him. He looks around the dungeon. There are zero windows or cracks on all four thick stone walls. The arrow wasn't launched from the walls. Prince Yeon examines the floor but still finds nothing unusual except a string, which looks like any other string that could be used for torture in the dungeon.

Just as the prince is about to pick it up to take a closer look, the knights come back.

"So?" the prince asks.

"We're sorry, your majesty," the knights, speaking in unison, kneel to the prince, hoping to have a little mercy, "We didn't catch anyone."

Prince Yeon yells in rage, angrily kicks the table, and walks out of the room.