The dining hall, once smelling of expensive tea and sandalwood, now felt like a tomb.
Lin Qingzhou's skin was rapidly blooming with angry, red welts that had nothing to do with the lashes on his back.
His throat was tightening, making every gasp for air sound like a whistle through a broken reed. He clawed at his neck, his eyes wide and bloodshot, fixed on Fu Jingshen.
Jingshen didn't look up.
He sipped his coffee, his expression as calm as a frozen lake. He truly believed this was another performance, a "scholar's trick" to garner sympathy.
"Master!" Auntie Chen's voice broke the silence, high and shrill with genuine terror.
She rushed forward, her hands trembling as she looked at Qingzhou's cyan-tinted lips. "Master, please! He's not lying! His face... his breathing... an allergic reaction is no joke! If this continues, he'll suffocate right here!"
Jingshen finally set his cup down.
The clink of the porcelain against the saucer was the only sound in the room. He looked at Qingzhou, who was slumped in the chair, his body shivering with a violent, bone-deep cold.
For a moment, their eyes met.
Qingzhou's gaze wasn't filled with the tears of a victim anymore. It was filled with a raw, unfiltered hatred so concentrated it seemed to burn through the haze of his suffocating lungs.
"You're... so cruel," Qingzhou rasped, the words scratching his throat like shards of glass. He pushed the guards away with a sudden, desperate strength, his body swaying as he forced himself to stand.
"One might think... what on earth could I have possibly done... to deserve this?" He choked out a bitter, wet laugh that turned into a coughing fit. "Your hatred... It lies with my father. But I'm the one... on the receiving end of the stick."
He grabbed the edge of the table, his knuckles white. The allergic reaction was making his head spin, but the fire in his soul was keeping him upright.
"I thought... if I minced my words... if I played the doll... I'd somehow escape your wrath," Qingzhou spat, a trace of foam and blood at the corner of his mouth. "But I'm not doing that anymore. Regardless... I'm going to suffer before I die. So I'll do it without any regrets."
He looked Fu Jingshen dead in the eye, his voice gaining a sudden, venomous clarity.
"You think you're a King, Fu Jingshen? You're just a pathetic, insecure coward who can only feel powerful by tormenting a man in a cage. You're a dog with a bigger bite, nothing more. My father died like a King, but you? You'll die alone, surrounded by people who hate the very air you breathe. You're disgusting. You're a hollow, soulless bastard, and I hope you rot in the hell you've built for yourself."
The room went deathly silent. Even the guards took a step back, their faces pale. No one—no one—had ever spoken to Fu Jingshen like that and lived to see the next hour.
Fu Jingshen's face didn't move, but the veins in his temple began to throb. The air around him seemed to darken, radiating a cold, suffocating pressure. He stood up slowly, unbuckling the heavy leather belt from his waist with a deliberate, terrifying calm.
"Auntie Chen, leave," Jingshen said, his voice a low, vibrating hum of pure rage.
"Master, please—"
"OUT!"
The woman fled, her sobs echoing down the hallway. Jingshen walked around the table, the leather belt wrapped twice around his hand. He didn't use the cane this time. The cane was for "discipline." The belt was for a man who had finally pushed him over the edge.
"You wanted to speak without regrets," Jingshen hissed, grabbing Qingzhou by the hair and slamming him face-down onto the dining table, right amidst the spilled congee and broken porcelain. "Then I'll make sure your screams are the last thing you remember."
The first strike of the belt was a heavy, sickening thud. It didn't just cut the skin; it bruised the bone.
Qingzhou braced himself, his fingers digging into the tablecloth until it tore. He didn't beg. He didn't take back a single word. Even as the allergic reaction made his heart race and the belt tore his back into a bloody map of agony, he kept his jaw clenched.
Strike.
He felt the hot, copper taste of blood in his mouth.
Strike.
His vision was fading into a blur of red and black. The physical pain was a mountain, but beneath it, he felt a strange, twisted sense of freedom. He had said it. He had spat in the face of the man who owned him.
By the time Jingshen stopped, his own breath was coming in heavy heaves. He looked down at the unconscious boy on the table.
Qingzhou was a mess of torn white fabric, blood, and the swollen, red marks of the allergy. He looked like a broken marionette, his long hair fanned out across the mahogany.
Jingshen threw the belt aside, his hands shaking, not with fear, but with an adrenaline he couldn't control. He looked at his men, his voice raspy.
"Call the doctor. If he dies, you all follow him."
He turned and walked out, the heavy doors slamming shut, leaving Lin Qingzhou in the silence of the dining hall, a "Pearl" crushed into the dust.