The interrogation chambers deep beneath the Department of Punishments were a world away from the gilded halls of the Forbidden City. Here, the air was cold and damp, smelling of wet stone, rust, and old fear. The walls wept with a perpetual condensation, and the only light came from a single, sputtering lantern that cast long, dancing shadows, making the darkness in the corners seem alive.
In the center of this miserable stage sat Old Wu. The poison master was chained to a heavy, iron-strapped wooden chair. His fine silk robes had been stripped from him, replaced by the rough, scratchy burlap garb of a common criminal. The chains on his wrists and ankles were thick and cold. For hours, he had been left in the suffocating silence, a tactic designed to let his own imagination become his primary tormentor. But Old Wu was no common criminal; his arrogance was a shield, and he sat in stony, defiant silence.
The heavy door creaked open, its iron hinges groaning in protest. Old Wu looked up, expecting a brute with a whip or a hot poker. Instead, the Guangxu Emperor walked in.
He was not dressed in his imperial dragon robes, nor was he flanked by a crowd of retainers. He wore a simple, dark blue tunic of fine wool, the kind a wealthy scholar's son might wear. He looked small, almost fragile, in the cavernous, threatening space. Behind him, Meng Tian entered and took up a position in the darkest corner of the room, becoming a silent, human-shaped statue of menace. The juxtaposition of the frail-looking boy and his monstrous guard was profoundly unnerving.
QSH didn't speak. He calmly dragged a simple wooden stool from against the wall and placed it a few feet in front of the chained eunuch. He sat down, his posture relaxed, and simply studied Old Wu, his gaze not filled with anger or a thirst for vengeance, but with a detached, chillingly academic curiosity.
The silence stretched. It was Old Wu who broke it, his voice a sneering rasp. "So, the little Emperor comes to gloat in person. I am honored." He leaned forward as much as his chains would allow, his eyes squinting in the dim light. "You look pale. My children left their mark, even if they did not finish their meal. A pity. The work was meant to be my masterpiece."
QSH ignored the taunt completely. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, calm, and carried a strange intellectual weight. "I have questions about your craft. The fungal culture… it was impressive, in its own way. A remarkable biological agent. Was it derived from a strain of Cordyceps, mutated for virulence?"
Old Wu stared, utterly baffled. He had expected threats, torture, pleas for the names of his co-conspirators. He had not expected a technical review. "What… what kind of question is that?"
"A practical one," QSH continued, as if discussing a disappointing piece of pottery. "The way it targeted the lungs suggests a preference for the body's natural heat and moisture. How did you make it so virulent? Did you cultivate it on living tissue? Pigs, perhaps? Or was it something more… exotic?"
The eunuch's jaw worked silently. The boy's calm dissection of his life's work was more unsettling than any threat. "It is the secret art of my school! Passed down for generations! It is not for a child to comprehend!"
"It is a failed art," QSH said, his voice taking on a harder edge. "And I am curious about its flaws. It was aggressive, certainly, but it was unintelligent. It was a wildfire, not a poison. A true poison is subtle, patient. Yours burned too hot, too fast. It sought to overwhelm, and in doing so, it consumed its own fuel source before it could secure a lasting victory." He leaned forward slightly, his dark eyes seeming to glow in the lantern light. "And it had a critical vulnerability."
"Impossible!" Old Wu spat. "There is no cure! No herb, no draught, no prayer can stop the Children of the Rot once they have taken root!"
"You are correct," QSH agreed softly. "It cannot be cured." He held up his right hand, palm open, between them. "It can only be burned. Your art is vulnerable to pure, elemental heat. You used a biological agent that mimicked the effects of an internal fire. A very clever trick. But a trick is no match for the genuine article."
QSH fell silent and stared intently at the thick iron manacle locked around Old Wu's left wrist. The eunuch followed his gaze, confused. Then, a strange warmth began to emanate from the cold iron. Within seconds, it began to glow, shifting from a dull grey to a faint, sullen red, then to a brighter cherry hue. It was not hot enough to instantly sear his flesh, but it created an intense, inescapable, radiating heat that began to blister his skin.
Old Wu gasped, a strangled cry catching in his throat. He yanked at his chain, trying to pull his hand away from the impossible heat source, his eyes wide with a mixture of pain and disbelief. "What… what is this?! What sorcery is this?!"
"It is not sorcery," QSH said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "It is control." He lowered his hand, and the glow on the manacle instantly faded, leaving the iron a dull, smoking grey. Old Wu whimpered, cradling his scorched wrist. "I did not 'recover,'" the Emperor explained. "I did not find an antidote in some ancient text. I located your little pestilence within my own body, I cornered it, and I burned it out. I felt every last spore turn to sterile ash. The experience… was educational."
The full, horrifying truth finally crashed down upon Old Wu. This was not a boy who had gotten lucky. This was not a prince who had been saved by a better physician. He was in the presence of something utterly beyond his comprehension. His shield of arrogance shattered into a million pieces, replaced by a primal, soul-deep fear of the supernatural.
"You…" he whispered, his voice trembling uncontrollably. "You are not human."
QSH's face remained impassive. He stood up from the stool, his small frame seeming to cast a vast shadow in the terrified eunuch's eyes. His demeanor became one of utter dismissal, as if his curiosity was sated and the specimen was no longer of interest. "I am the Emperor. Your art failed. Your patron has failed."
As if on cue, the heavy chamber door opened. A guard hurried in and whispered urgently to Meng Tian. The general's expression did not change, but he stepped forward from the shadows.
"Your Majesty," Meng Tian said, his voice a deep, formal rumble. "A message has just arrived from the commander of the guard at the Summer Palace. The lamp in the Dowager's chamber, which was ordered to be kept lit until she expired, has gone out. The physicians have confirmed. Cixi is dead."
The news was delivered with the flat, administrative finality of a logistics report.
Old Wu heard the words and seemed to collapse inward. The last pillar supporting his world had crumbled to dust. His great patron, his life's work, the grand conspiracy—all of it had amounted to nothing. He was a failure, and he was in the hands of a monster. He slumped in his chair, a broken, empty husk.
QSH looked down at the pathetic figure. "You see? It all amounted to nothing. A ripple in a pond, now still. An execution would be a formal recognition of your importance, and you have none. It would also be a waste of a good poisoner." He turned to Meng Tian, his mind already moving on to more practical matters. "Your knowledge, however flawed, may have some use to the state."
He addressed Meng Tian, but his words were for Old Wu. "Have him transferred to the new Military Medical College being established in Tianjin. He will be their first and primary specimen for the study of advanced toxins and their effects on the human body. He will be kept alive, and he will detail every secret of his art to our physicians. He can spend the rest of his miserable days contributing to the science that will keep my soldiers alive. A far more useful fate than a quick death."
A strangled, inhuman sound escaped Old Wu's lips. The prospect of being a living specimen, a human guinea pig for the very enemies he sought to destroy, was a fate far worse than any clean execution or lingering torture he could have possibly imagined. He began to babble, to scream, but the guards were already on him. They stuffed a dirty rag in his mouth to silence him and unchained him from the chair, dragging his limp, shuddering body from the chamber and toward his new life in a cage of science.