Chapter 462: Chapter 462; Li Feng & Madam Chen

Lin Feng shifted on the thin mattress, his cracked ribs screaming in protest with every shallow breath. His gaze darted toward the others. Wang Jian was awake, sitting upright with the calm of a man who had already decided the night’s outcome. Chen Wei lounged against the far wall, picking at a loose thread on his sleeve as though the evening were merely tedious. And the tattooed man—the one whose ink crawled up his neck like strangling vines—sat motionless on the edge of his bunk, eyes fixed on Lin Feng with the unblinking focus of a predator that had already marked its prey.

Lin Feng’s throat tightened until swallowing felt like forcing glass down his windpipe. "What... what is it?" he asked, the words fracturing before they fully left his mouth.

No one answered.

Then came the sound.

Not from inside the cell.

From the corridor.

A key turning—slow, deliberate, almost courteous in its precision. Cells were never opened at this hour. Not without paperwork. Not without lights and alarms and witnesses. The lock disengaged with a low mechanical grind that echoed like a death sentence.

The heavy door slid open.

Two guards stood framed in the doorway, their uniforms crisp, batons resting at their hips. They did not step inside. They did not speak. They simply looked in, expressions blank as fresh concrete. One of them tilted his head a fraction—an almost imperceptible signal that carried the weight of absolute authority.

The tattooed man rose first.

Then Wang Jian.

Chen Wei followed, rolling his shoulders like a man warming up for routine work.

Lin Feng’s heart slammed against his broken ribs, each beat a fresh spike of pain. "No..." he whispered, shaking his head weakly, the motion sending fresh agony lancing through his skull. "No, I didn’t do anything... I followed everything today, I swear—"

"Get up," Wang Jian said calmly. Not loud. Not angry. The absence of rage made the command infinitely worse.

"I can’t..." Lin Feng’s voice cracked like dry bone. "Please... I really can’t..."

Chen Wei crouched in front of him, close enough that Lin Feng could smell the faint sourness of prison rations on his breath. He smiled—not widely, not theatrically. Just enough to show he meant every syllable. "You don’t understand yet," he murmured. "This place doesn’t punish what you do." A pause, deliberate as a blade being drawn. "It punishes what you are."

Lin Feng tried to scramble backward, but the wall was already at his spine. There was nowhere left to go.

Wang Jian’s hand shot out, iron fingers closing around Lin Feng’s arm. He yanked him upright. Pain exploded through his torso like shattered glass, tearing a broken, animal sound from his throat.

"Please!" Lin Feng gasped, tears cutting tracks through the dried blood on his face. "Please... I’ll do anything... just—"

"Too late for that," Wang Jian replied, almost kindly.

The guards remained exactly where they were, watching with the detached interest of men who had seen this script performed many times before. Their presence was not oversight. It was permission. Encouragement. Control.

The tattooed man stepped forward last, slow and measured, the tattoos on his neck shifting like living shadows in the dim light. "You were powerful outside," he said, voice low and conversational, as though they were discussing the weather. "Men like you... you don’t break quickly." He reached out and gripped Lin Feng’s jaw with callused fingers, forcing his swollen face upward. "So we help you."

And then they moved.

Not chaotic. Not wild.

Precise.

Each strike was placed with surgical expertise—where it would bruise deepest, where it would weaken without killing, where it would strip away resistance layer by layer like peeling back skin. A fist to the solar plexus to drive the air from his lungs. An elbow to the kidney to make his legs buckle. A knee to the ribs already cracked from yesterday. They worked in silence, coordinated as a machine that had done this before and would do it again tomorrow.

Lin Feng tried to fight at first—instinct, desperation, the last scraps of the man who had once commanded empires with a word. His arms flailed, his nails scraped uselessly against fabric. But his body betrayed him almost immediately. Too weak. Too damaged. Too late. The blows kept coming, muffled and controlled, never loud enough to carry beyond the cell. No shouting. No screaming permitted. Just the wet, meaty thud of disciplined violence inside a locked steel box.

After a while, Lin Feng stopped resisting.

Then he stopped reacting.

Then he stopped making any sound at all.

That was when they stopped.

Not out of mercy.

Because that was enough.

For tonight.

Wang Jian released him, letting the body drop back onto the mattress like something already discarded. Chen Wei wiped his hands casually on his trousers. The tattooed man looked down at the crumpled form one final time, eyes flat and unreadable. "Tomorrow," he said quietly, "you stand faster."

They returned to their bunks without another word, the routine as ordinary as brushing teeth.

The guards stepped back. The door slid shut. The key turned again with the same deliberate click.

Everything returned to silence.

But it was no longer the same silence.

Lin Feng lay there, barely conscious, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth onto the stained mattress. His mind floated somewhere above the pain, detached and flickering. Not thinking. Not processing. Just... existing. Broken further than before, the last fragments of his old self ground into dust beneath the heel of a system that had no interest in justice—only in reshaping what entered its walls.

And somewhere deep inside him, in the small, dark place that still remembered what it was to be human, a single, shattered thought flickered like a dying ember:

This was only the beginning.

Something began to collapse.

Not his body.

Not yet.

Something else—deeper, more fragile, the last scaffolding of the man Lin Feng had once been.

In the women’s block, the darkness came differently. It was heavier here, more personal, as though the walls themselves had learned to listen and remember every broken sob. Madam Chen had finally drifted into a shallow, exhausted sleep when a hand touched her shoulder. The contact was light, almost courteous, yet it ripped her awake with the force of an electric shock. Panic surged through her veins before her eyes could focus.

Her cellmate stood over her, a shadow against the faint glow seeping through the barred slot in the door. "You need to get up," the woman said, her voice stripped of emotion, flat as the concrete floor.

Madam Chen blinked, disoriented, her splinted hands throbbing in dull, relentless rhythm. "What... what is it?" she whispered, the words scraping raw from her throat.

The woman did not answer immediately. She glanced toward the door, then back at Madam Chen, her expression unchanging in the gloom. "They called your name."

Cold fear bloomed across Madam Chen’s chest, spreading like frostbite. "At this hour?" Her voice trembled despite every effort to steady it.

"That’s why you should be worried."

A single, firm knock sounded against the metal door—measured, authoritative, impossible to ignore. "Chen. Move."

Madam Chen’s breathing quickened, shallow and frantic. Her body screamed in protest as she tried to sit up, splinted hands useless, balance treacherous on the thin mattress. "Where... where are you taking me?" she asked, the plea fracturing at the edges.

The guard on the other side offered nothing.

The door opened with a low, metallic groan that echoed like a verdict.

This time there were no explanations, no paperwork, no pretense of routine. Her cellmate stepped back into the shadows, neither helping nor interfering. Just watching. Because everyone in Black Water Ridge understood the unwritten law: when you were called at night, it was never routine. It was personal.

Madam Chen hesitated for half a second—long enough for the guard to step forward and seize her arm in a grip like cold iron. "Move."

She stumbled into the corridor, bare feet dragging against the unforgiving concrete, barely able to keep pace as he pulled her forward. The heavy door slammed shut behind her with a final, resounding clang that vibrated through her bones. As they walked, the harsh fluorescent lights of the main block gradually surrendered to dimmer, flickering bulbs that cast jagged orange shadows across the walls. The corridor walls seemed to close in, narrowing with.....