Several Jinyiwei in the hall were drinking, playing drinking games and shouting, not even sparing a glance at William Sullivan. William Sullivan was pinned to the rough straw mat by sandbags, the suffocating nausea overwhelming him like a flood.
His vision blurred, William Sullivan lifted his head, gritted his teeth, and tried to move his legs. His legs, nearly numb from the beating, felt almost insensible as he raised them. He stepped on the left corner of the wooden bed, where it had been eaten away by insects and had already been damaged a bit the day before when he sat on it.
Breathing became increasingly difficult.
William Sullivan pressed down on that corner with all his strength. But his legs were weak, he couldn't even make a sound, and the bedboard didn't budge. Cold sweat poured down, soaking the clothes on his back.
He wanted to live.
A desperate moan escaped William Sullivan's throat. He bit through the tip of his tongue and kept stomping on the bedboard.
Ethan Carter's mangled corpse was like a whip lashing his will to survive, and it seemed as if Ethan Carter's voice still echoed in his ears.
He must live!
William Sullivan slammed into the wooden board with all his might, and finally heard a "thud." Half the bedboard collapsed, his body sank to the side, and the sandbags rolled off with him. He broke free as if bursting through water, falling to the ground and gasping for air.
The ground was icy cold, and William Sullivan's injured leg wouldn't obey him. He propped himself up with his elbows, sweat dripping down his nose. The prison was cold, yet he felt as if his whole body was burning, his insides churning. At last, he couldn't help but lower his head and retch.
David Sullivan deserved to die.
Zhongbo had 120,000 troops, with defensive lines set up across six prefectures. After the defeat at Chashi River, the Biansha cavalry invaded the Dunzhou front. Just as the interrogators said, there was still a chance to turn things around at the time: David Sullivan not only had strong forces and ample supplies, but also the garrison troops of the three cities of Duanzhou at his disposal. Yet, unexpectedly, he abandoned Duanzhou, shrinking back to hide in the Dunzhou Prince's residence.
That retreat marked the beginning of Zhongbo's downfall. The three cities of Duanzhou were massacred by the Biansha cavalry, the garrison's morale collapsed, and they fled south in panic. Everyone thought David Sullivan would make a last stand against the twelve Biansha tribes in Dunzhou, but he fled again at the first sign of trouble.
The Zhongbo army suffered defeat after defeat, the Biansha cavalry like sharp blades, almost piercing through all six prefectures. They rode in, lightly equipped, sustaining themselves by living off the land, and chased all the way to eight hundred li outside the Great Zhou capital, Qudu.
If David Sullivan had burned the city granaries during the retreat and implemented a scorched earth policy, the Biansha cavalry would never have been able to penetrate so deeply. They had no supply trains, relying entirely on the grain seized from captured cities. If the grain had been burned, no matter how fierce the Biansha cavalry, they would have starved.
You can't keep fighting on an empty stomach. At that point, the Li Bei cavalry would have crossed the frozen river to cut off the Biansha tribes' retreat, and the garrison of the five counties of Qidong, led by Tianfei Que, would have blocked their escape. Those curved sabers would have been trapped like fish in a barrel, unable to survive the winter.
But David Sullivan didn't do that.
Not only did he abandon resistance, he left all the city granaries to the Biansha cavalry. The Biansha cavalry, fed on the grain of the Great Zhou people, slaughtered the cities of the Great Zhou. Their horses, fattened by David Sullivan, drove the people and captured soldiers at Chashi River, massacring them all in a single night.
William Sullivan was a survivor by sheer luck.
Now, Qudu was settling accounts. All of David Sullivan's orders before his death seemed especially hasty, as if he really had colluded with the twelve Biansha tribes. But David Sullivan, fearing punishment, burned himself to death, destroying all documents in the fire. Even the efficient Jinyiwei were at a loss.
The emperor wanted the truth, so they could only keep interrogating anyone who might know, like William Sullivan. But William Sullivan's birth mother was a Duanzhou dancer, and David Sullivan had too many sons. As the eighth illegitimate child, he was never in line for anything, long since cast out to be raised in the wilds of Duanzhou by the Dunzhou Prince's residence. David Sullivan probably didn't even remember he had such a son.
Someone wanted him dead.
This was no secret. He had entered Qudu to take the blame for his father. He was the last remnant of the Zhongbo Shen clan. The son's life would pay for the father's debt. After the interrogations, the emperor would surely use his life to atone for the thirty thousand soldiers massacred at Chashi River.
But it shouldn't have been an assassination like this.
William Sullivan wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with his thumb and spat out the blood-tinged saliva.
If David Sullivan had truly colluded with the enemy and plotted rebellion, William Sullivan would die sooner or later anyway. Why bother with an extra assassination attempt on a nameless, illegitimate son? Someone in Qudu was still worried about the interrogation. If so, there must be something suspicious about David Sullivan's defeat.
William Sullivan knew nothing.
He had a master in Duanzhou, and his brother was his master's only son, Ethan Carter. To him, David Sullivan was just Prince Jianxing, unrelated to him. Whether David Sullivan had colluded with the enemy, he had no idea.
But he had to insist that he hadn't.
The ground was bone-chillingly cold. William Sullivan lay there, the cold making him more clear-headed than during the day. He was a major criminal personally named by the Jinyiwei. All the arrest warrants, summons, and official documents came directly from above, and he was taken straight from the hands of the Li Bei heir Charles Bennett into the imperial prison, even bypassing the joint trial of the three judicial offices.
This already showed the emperor's determination to get to the bottom of things, with no leniency. But who would dare, under such circumstances, to risk everything and try to kill him before the emperor's personal interrogation?