The bluestone slabs of the Xuan'an Bureau prison were slick with night dew, and Chen San's desperate roar crashed against the mildew-filled brick walls, startling a rat on the rafters into a hole.
He clawed his fingernails into the iron bars until his knuckles turned white, the veins on his forehead bulging as if they were about to burst—just three days ago, he had stubbornly confessed to murder, but at this moment he looked as though his soul had been sucked out of him. "I never touched Chunxiang! A man in a gold-patterned Daoist robe gave me five taels of silver and said as long as I signed and pressed my thumbprint, my mother's medicine and my sister's bride price would all be taken care of!"
A prison guard stepped closer with an oil lamp, the beam flickering across Chen San's face.
Chapter 187