imperial psychologist

Chapter 489 No.60 First Sight in the Eight Cages
Bai Ling looked there silently, and suddenly smiled self-deprecatingly.

Back then, Lin Jieyu had given her a golden silk cage, but now she really fell into the cage.

Or, she was actually in the cage all the time without knowing it?
Bai Ling withdrew his gaze and continued to move forward.

The girls before and after her whose hands and feet were tied up with hemp rope came from various prefectures in Dazhou, and most of them had never been here; while the few who grew up in Pingjing recognized what it was at a glance place.

They screamed almost immediately, then struggled desperately to escape.

But the whips of the strong men fell again, and they beat not only the girl who was trying to escape, but also those who cried for help in panic.

The scolding soon overwhelmed the crying of the girls, and they shivered and huddled together, listening to the reprimand and the crack of the whip.

After a while, the team restored order, and everyone walked forward slowly, until after a corner, a young girl in the team suddenly rushed towards the hard stone wall without any warning, and after a dull impact , She slowly fell under the corner of the wall.

The man on the side hurriedly stepped forward to check, without asking any questions, he kicked a few times, followed by a series of unbearable yelling and cursing.

The fallen girl didn't make any sound. The man leaned over to breathe, cursed again, then bent down, untied the rope around the dead body's wrist, and left her by the side of the road.

Bo Ling was silent all the way, slowly moving forward with the crowd.

When she passed by the girl who had crashed into the wall and died, she averted her gaze somewhat unbearably.

Almost at this moment, she heard someone whispering behind her, "...I just heard them say that this place is called 'Baihuaya'... Where is Baihuaya?"

"...I don't know." The other person answered in a low voice trembling.

With a sound of "pa--", the whip fell to the ground beside them.

"Don't whisper!!"

The "golden cage" ahead is getting closer and closer.

That is the largest building in Baihuaya.

From a distance, it looks like a huge tall building, but when you walk in, you will realize that the buildings there are connected with each other to form a ring-shaped tower.

And at the highest point of the tall building, the hollowed out golden railings formed a golden cage shape.

At this moment, the golden silk cage is still full of lamps - it seems that last night, some noble people played and sang here all night...

Three years ago, Berlin once cast a distant glance here one night.She remembered that the men and women in Chinese clothes looked as small as ants.A Li had also told her that it was a place where only the nobles could haunt.

Sure enough, when they were about a block away from the main building, the team that Bo Ling was in turned around.

Prisoners like them obviously cannot take the path directly in front of the golden silk cage.

The guide led them into a narrow alley, and then walked all the way to the outermost flower alley here.

Berlin also recognized it.

The flowers are dirty and dilapidated, and when the women living in Baihuaya are too old or too sick to be the most humble "tail phoenix", they will live there.

Now it seems that the young children who are new to Baihuaya will also be thrown in...

Passing a familiar intersection, Bo Ling looked in the direction of Aunt Shen, but in his sight there were only layers of black bricks and tiles, and the sky cut into long lines.

Bo Ling couldn't help thinking of Lin Jieyu again.

Did she grow up in such a place back then?

……

At night, Berlin finally figured out the situation.

The group of people who came in with her were not daughters of ordinary families, they were Da Zhou's "criminals".

Being able to become "sins" means that their original backgrounds are not too bad.Most of these people have elders in their families who committed felonies and were implicated, and then the male relatives were exiled, and the female relatives entered the Jiaofang Division.

A total of 37 young women were escorted to Baihuaya from the Jiaofang Division, and they were detained at the top of the two towers on the east and west sides of Baihuaya.

But the house where the girls lived had no windows, and all the windows were boarded up.

The door was locked heavily with iron locks, and people were watching outside all the year round—these handymen working in Baihuaya were called "turtle claws".

How brutal these turtle claws are, they have already felt this morning.

After dark, someone came up to deliver meals to the girls.

The man entered the room first, and hung a candle lamp on a nail near the door frame. Finally, the dark room was slightly brighter.

Then, he bent down and handed out a bowl to each girl.

"Take it all! From now on, this bowl will be your proof of eating. How many bowls do you have and how much rice you have?"

It was quiet all around, no one answered.

"Give me all the bowls!" The man suddenly changed his tone and said sharply.

The girls just shivered and picked up the bowls in unison.

The man picked up an iron spoon and served them one by one—some kind of liquid, unidentified paste.

"I'll come to collect it in half an hour, give me a quick meal!"

After all, the man left quickly—and at the same time took away the candle he had brought when he came.

The whole house was plunged into darkness again.

In the silent silence, the girls heard his walking away, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

They seemed to be the only ones left on the tower.

Bai Ling sniffed the contents of the bowl—although the contents in front of her eyes were incomparable to the "last meal" she had at the Department of Punishment this morning, it was still much better than the meals in the prison before.

She took a small sip first, and the taste was really not good. It was probably made from a large pot of powder made from vegetable roots and millet, but it didn't affect her eating...

Just as Bai Ling was drinking heavily, she suddenly heard a somewhat annoyed voice from the darkness, "...Why didn't he give us chopsticks, and no spoon, how can we eat this?"

"Where is the food in this bowl for people to eat? It's basically pig food..."

"...Where is this place, does any of you know?"

"It's a brothel..." Suddenly a trembling voice came from Bai Ling's left, "Baihuaya is the biggest brothel in Pingjing."

Bo Ling obviously felt that the surroundings suddenly became quiet. Someone didn't hold the bowl in his hand for a moment, and with a loud crash, the bowl fell to the ground and smashed into a puddle together with the vegetable paste.

They finally realized why someone hit the wall and committed suicide this morning.

After a while, everyone cried together.

The first night they entered Baihuaya passed away amidst each other's terrified cries all day long.

That night, someone was severely beaten by the turtle's claw for breaking the bowl;
Someone was lying on a low bed covering his mouth in the middle of the night and thinking about home silently;
Someone tossed and turned, unable to sleep, and fell to his knees on the west side of the house—a crack in a dilapidated log cabin.

The dazzling lights in the distance pass through the gap, casting a shallow light path in the room.

Bo Ling lay in the corner of the room with his eyes closed, and heard the man praying in a low voice for the safety of his elder brothers and father.

She turned her head with some concern, and saw a girl about her own age kneeling under the cracked light path with her palms folded, her face full of tears, and whispering softly.

(End of this chapter)