The door to the death row cell in Wannian County was closed tightly. When Di Renjie walked into the prison, bursts of shrill screams could be heard in the distance.
Di Renjie quickly closed the door, and immediately, the screams were trapped in this deep underground prison.
Yan Jiu soaked the leather whip in his hand in salt water, then flicked it on the ground. Some of the salt water fell on the stove, leaving a trail of white spots.
Immediately, the whip made a semicircle in the air, and landed accurately on the back of a prisoner. The sound of the whip entering the flesh was dull, only breaking the outer skin, but the prisoner screamed in agony.
Di Renjie was flipping through the interrogation records and turned a deaf ear to the prisoners' screams.
This guy is the one who threw the meat buns bought from Jinchangfang on the ground. He is not worthy of sympathy at all.
When the prisoner was in a daze after being whipped by Yan Jiu's whip, Di Renjie stood up and grabbed the prisoner's hair and said, "What is the process of making gunpowder?"
The criminal said with his mouth half open: "Little..."
Before the prisoner could finish what he said, Di Renjie said, "Well, yes, there is saltpeter. Go on, what else is there?"
When the prisoner saw the official in front of him, he actually said that he was right, and he quickly begged for mercy: "Stay..."
Di Renjie smiled and said: "Yes, yes, there is saltpeter, sulfur, and what else, tell me quickly."
After speaking twice and being interrupted twice, the prisoner quickly said: "Spare my life."
Di Renjie was so angry that he grabbed a piece of carbon and stuffed it into the prisoner's mouth, and said to Yan Jiu: "Continue to beat him until he tells everything he knows."
Yan Jiu wiped the sweat from his forehead, took out a red-hot iron from the stove, and pressed it on the prisoner's butt without thinking.
As a burst of green smoke rose, Sin's screams filled the entire prison.
The same thing happened to several other important criminals. Di Renjie planned to use six days to let these prisoners piece together the complete murder.
Everyone only knows part of it, but once everyone's confessions are combined, a rough process for making gunpowder will be obtained.
Just like the guy next door who was beaten up and panicked, when he saw a bite-sized egg on the jailer's desk, he didn't even know why, so he shouted out the word "egg".
When the Dali Temple jailer recorded the word "egg" in the record, he ate the remaining half of the egg.
In fact, even the jailer himself did not know what the word egg meant to the gunpowder craftsmen of Wuyan Institute.
Naturally, gunpowder cannot be mixed with water, but the gunpowder can be wrapped with egg whites, and then sieved into small balls. As long as it is dried in the shade, it will become granular gunpowder.
As for how to get these people who know nothing about gunpowder to fully confess a complete set of the top secret murder process of the Tang Dynasty, Di Renjie has ten thousand ways. In other words, Di Renjie has ten thousand ways to distinguish the authenticity of the prisoners' confessions.
method.
Especially after playing psychological games with Yun Chu for several years, Di Renjie's grasp of human nature had reached its peak in the Tang Dynasty, except that he had no way to deal with Yun Chu.
Yuanwailang from the Ministry of Punishment was here to monitor the government. As soon as he got a little bit of information, he quickly turned it into a top-secret document and sent it to the Military Research Institute. During this process, he was always accompanied by two eunuchs. The content of the document even included the eunuch.
Even the foreigner doesn’t know.
Every time the experiment was successful, Wailang, a member of the Ministry of Punishment, would personally kill the prisoner who confessed the secret recipe in front of the two eunuchs!
So much so that later on, this foreign minister from the Criminal Department was so red-eyed that he committed murder, and everyone he saw thought that the other party might know the secret of gunpowder, and everyone he saw wanted to kill him and silence him.
When the Wuyan Institute finally produced granular black powder that was the same as the one seized last time from Dali Temple, Di Renjie organized the article and presented it in front of the three officials of Dali Temple, the Censor of Yushitai, and the Foreign Minister of the Criminal Department.
In front of him, he took the hand of Qiu Shenji who was unconscious, applied a little ink pad, and put his fingerprint on the text, in triplicate.
He handed it to these three people respectively and said: "Our work is done, the rest depends on the superiors."
Gentle, who had always been invisible among the three of them, let out a long sigh and said, "I don't believe Qiu Xinggong can escape being involved in this matter."
Si Zhi of Dali Temple sneered and said: "Zan Xiruo Sanbaijing, the son of Lu Dongzan, the prime minister of Tibet, said that it was Qiu Shenji who did it. I don't believe it."
Wailang, a member of the Criminal Department who was already a little nervous, smiled like an owl.
"Kill, kill, gunpowder is an important weapon of the country, how can it fall into private hands? Anyone who knows the secret of gunpowder should be the Yi tribe! Hahaha."
When Di Renjie left, only Qiu Shenji was left on death row in Wannian County. After Si Zhi of Dali Temple left the prison, the death row in Wannian County became empty again.
Yan Jiu felt a little disappointed as he stroked the various instruments of torture that he had made great contributions to before. He stuck out his tongue and licked the whip that had been soaked in human blood. He murmured to himself crazily. Finally, using all his strength, he pointed at the tightly locked whip.
The cell door yelled: "Come again -"
Di Renjie returned to Jinchangfang alone.
This time, instead of using the bamboo chips given by Yunchu, I bought a handful of bamboo chips with my own money.
When he came to the stall selling steamed buns, he smiled and handed a handful of bamboo sticks to the cook and said, "Here are three drawers of steamed buns. They should be of good quality, pure meat, and have meatballs inside."
The cook took the bamboo chips with a smile and said to Di Renjie: "Mr. Di Lang, the filling of the buns should be fatter. The ones with oily bites are the best.
My husband just bought three drawers of fat buns, saying he was going to pay homage to someone. How about you also buy three drawers of these buns?"
Di Renjie nodded and said: "When it comes to eating, your husband is a professional. As you said, give me three drawers, one bite and one oil-soaked meat bun."
The cook immediately took out a lot of white and fat meat buns from the steaming steamer. After the buns had dried for a while and the steam disappeared, they were neatly stacked in a huge bamboo food box.
He also thoughtfully sprinkled some white sesame seeds on the buns and garnished them with some minced green garlic before giving them to Di Renjie.
Di Renjie left Jinchangfang on horseback with the food box, walked along Zhuque Street to the gate of the Imperial City, turned left and walked to the end of the Imperial City, then turned right and came to Xiudefang.
Xiudefang is said to be about cultivating virtues, but it is the most immoral one in Chang'an. In other words, it is because human trafficking is so immoral that it needs to be cultivated.
Although the human market in Xiudefang is not as lively as the West Market, it definitely exceeds the East Market under the jurisdiction of Yunchu. Because the goods here are people. The goods in the West Market are piled up like mountains, and the goods in the East Market are extremely beautiful. The place is overcrowded.
Passing by the Kunlun slave area, there were some strong, black, or brown, or neither black nor brown people standing, squatting, or lying there. Some Kunlun slaves who were too strong even had their bodies smeared with oil, and were exposed to the sun. The skin underneath is shiny.
Di Renjie just glanced at them twice and then moved forward. In his eyes, these Kunlun slaves were just commodities. There was nothing surprising about this.
Ren Yazi likes to put Kunlun slaves at the front, so as to attract more people to enter the market.
Further forward, there is the self-sale area. Most of the people being sold are women, most of them are older, but there are also young ones, but they are not good-looking.
There are also some men here who are obviously injured. They are slaves themselves, but they made mistakes and were sold by their masters.
The situation here is difficult to judge. Some women are sold, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Family members who can sell their own family members for money are just that. If they are sold, they may still meet a good family.
The place selling Silla maids in front was very lively. There were always Silla maids squirming on the table. Di Renjie took another look and found that there were not many Silla maids among them. There should be more. They were Goguryeo and Baekje, and there seemed to be a few Japanese women with black teeth mixed in between them.
After passing the place where Silla maids were sold, it became quiet in front, because the people responsible for selling people here were all officials.
It is the power of the government to sell boys, girls and children. If ordinary people want to sell their children, they must first sell them to the government, and then the government will select suitable families to sell these boys, girls and children at a higher price.
This was originally a good policy, but later went astray during the implementation process and turned into a huge profit business.
However, the government is also very strict in investigating, and if it is found that people here who have connections with the government dare to buy and sell boys, girls and children who have no real background, they will commit a serious crime.
This is why there are so many beggars wandering the streets. Their parents did not sell them, but they were no longer able to protect them.
These children, who have no ability to make a living, come to the market, hoping to be noticed and bought by others, so that they can have a shelter from the wind and rain.
Di Renjie soon saw Yun Chu wearing linen clothes, sitting among a bunch of dirty children, eating steamed buns with them.
Not far from where he was sitting, there was a solitary meat bun. The color of the land in that area was darker than that of other places, and there were many flies surrounding it. On the snow-white meat bun, It was also covered with flies and looked dark.
Di Renjie stored the horse, came to Yun Chu with a food box and said, "It's not enough, I still have some here."
Yun Chu looked at the children who had gathered around him again and said, "No matter how much, it's not enough."
Di Renjie opened the food box and took out a bun next to the one covered with flies. He gave the remaining buns to the children who looked thinner. Soon, the buns in the hands of the thin children were occupied by others.
The child was snatched away and sat on the ground crying.
It's a pity that he doesn't have the protection of his father, brother and mother, so no matter how heartbreaking he cries, no one pays attention to him.
Yun Chu put the bun he took a bite out into the mouth of the child who cried the most, and said to Di Renjie, "This child just left his parents."
Di Renjie also gave the bun in his hand to a thin girl and asked, "How can you tell?"
Yun Chu smiled and said: "Children who have been away from their parents for a long time never cry, even if they die, because they know that no one cares why they cry."