Related Cases (2)
Related Novels (2)
Related Chapters (6)
The Pardon That Never Came
Words: 3026 · Source Novel:: The Executioner's Lure
On the night of their planned escape, Yu Sheng receives a warning that Cao Hong has obtained a promise of amnesty from Cao Cao himself, planning to spirit his useful assassin north. Man Chong confronts Yu Sheng inside the inn, the mask of “Zhao Qian” finally dissolved. In a raw exchange, Yu Sheng admits every murder but insists that he saw beauty in Man Chong's lies and chose to let himself be caught. Man Chong orders the arrest, kissing Yu Sheng on the lips before the soldiers enter, promising a quick death. He then rides through the night to the county office, personally fast-tracking the beheading before the imperial pardon can arrive, watching his lover die under the executioner's blade at dawn.
The Mirror Trap
Words: 3036 · Source Novel:: The Executioner's Lure
As weeks pass, Man Chong and Yu Sheng become inseparable, wandering the ruins outside the city walls. Man Chong stages a moral crisis, confessing to his new companion that he once betrayed a brother for a government post, hoping to see if the killer will reveal himself as a purifier of the corrupt. Yu Sheng responds not with condemnation but with a tortured confession of his own: he serves the general Cao Hong by eliminating those who carry secret letters that could disgrace the Cao clan. He claims to love Man Chong's simulated purity and offers to flee together. Man Chong, shaken, sends a coded message to his deputies while tasting the bitter joy of being loved by the monster he must hang.
The Blade in the Twilight
Words: 3047 · Source Novel:: The Executioner's Lure
Man Chong, undercover as the trembling scholar “Zhao Qian,” is ambushed by thugs paid to silence a witness. A stranger intervenes: a soft-spoken, erudite swordsman named Yu Sheng, who happens to be the private secretary of Cao Hong. Yu Sheng kills the attackers with terrifying precision, then tends to Man Chong's shallow wound. That night, in a lamp-lit room, they share tales of exile and loss, and Man Chong recognizes the cadence of the poems carved on the victims. Attraction ignites between them, even as Man Chong plants false evidence in their conversation to test the man's curiosity about death.
The Retainer's Kin
Words: 3126 · Source Novel:: Blood Debts Inherited
Months later, the epidemic of "blood madness" spreads silently. Cao Hong, still nursing his grudge, dispatches the dead retainer's orphaned son, Cao Lian, to investigate strange occurrences around Changshe. Cao Lian discovers that Yang Pei has been conducting secret executions without imperial authority—tax evaders, petty thieves, even those who merely whispered against him. But Yang Pei's family shows the truest corruption: his wife moves through the household with predatory stillness, his teenage son dissects small animals to "understand judgment." Cao Lian realizes the madness is passed through proximity to the original crime. He understands now: he carries the retainer's grievance in his blood. Vengeance is a duty inherited.
The Wounds of Xu Capital
Words: 3024 · Source Novel:: The Executioner's Lure
Man Chong, the newly appointed prefect of Xu County, discovers a pattern of ritualistic murders among the floating population of fallen gentry. Failing to draw the killer out with conventional patrols, he decides to become the bait: adopting the guise of a destitute scholar fleeing the wars, he books a room at a dilapidated inn near the eastern market, where the latest body was found with a poem carved into the skin. Cao Hong, a swaggering general, publicly mocks the magistrate's futility, while his reclusive guest watches from the shadows.