Chapter 29 Liu's Ordeal -- Riding the Tiger
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the Night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
"Feng! Feng! Wake up you fool!" Ming-tsu's strident voice cut through the
pleasant haze of Feng's remembrance of things past. His manly cock was as hard
as the pillars that supported the ceiling of the dungeon of the Black Pagoda.
Even after all these years, and all the intervening women, the thrilling memory
of the depravities that he and his comrades had inflicted on the beautiful
daughter of Dargon the Invincible never failed to excite him.
"What are you daydreaming about, man? There is work to be done!" Ming-tsu
smiled sweetly at Liu. "Although I dare say it will be pleasant work." She
reached out and stroked Liu's soft thigh, moist from the rain, and bare below
the hem of the skimpy shift. "Most pleasant indeed."
A moment later Ming-tsu turned to the huge Ox and the slight Drooler.
"You two won't be needed here any longer. But don't go far; I may need you to
apprehend Li Chang, once this little trollop reveals his whereabouts." Then,
addressing the gap-toothed Scorpion, "Dao, you will stay and keep an eye on the
old one, while Feng and I interrogate our pretty little prisoner."
"Stop by the Pit, lads," Dao winked, "And look in on that pretty young
housemaid Feng dropped off a couple of hours ago," he smirked through the
spaces between his yellowing teeth, referring to Ci-ci, whose beautiful but
much-beleaguered body Feng had deposited at the Scorpions' barracks earlier that
evening. "You'd better have a crack at the little thief, tonight; if I know the
Scorions, she'll be a little the worse for wear by morning!" Feng had told
his companions about the Scorpions' fetching new playtoy while they were en
route to the house of Wen-chi.
The Drooler licked his damp lips as he gave Liu's wet-bodiced breasts a
last hungry look; he wouldn't mind taking those stiff nipples between his teeth
while he worked his ardent young prick back and forth in her tight little
joy-box! He hated to leave before seeing what the old man's grand-daughter had
between her pretty legs, but it sounded as if there was some nice stuff awaiting
him at the barracks. He had been intimidated by the size and the teeming
multitudes of Shanghai since coming to the great city from his home in the
mountains to the north; but suddenly things were starting to brighten up.
Tonight it appeared that he would prove his manhood for the first time at the
expense of this girlish thief at the barracks; and who knew? Maybe he'd get a
chance at the beauty on the Tiger later. Lin the Drooler bowed obsequiously to
Ming-tsu and followed the immense form of the Ox as the big man exited through
the underground door.
Ming-tsu's words had startled Feng from his pleasant reverie, and he
pretended that he had been pre-occupied with the preparations for the
interrogation of his slender but shapely captive, Liu.
"Very sorry, miss," Feng bowed as he growled through his goatee, as he
toyed with the thick black whip, seemingly studying it for microscopic flaws.
He didn't care to be spoken to in that tone of voice, even by a woman as
fetching as Ming-tsu. Especially by a woman as fetching as Ming-tsu. He stole
a glance as her as he uncoiled the nasty-looking single-tailed whip she had
handed to him. Beautiful face, lovely hair. He wouldn't mind grabbing that
silky black mane and rubbing her face against his thick cock and hairy balls.
And that body! Juicy stuff, that was for sure. And he could tell that she
liked showing it off, the whore.
Feng had heard that Ming-tsu was the concubine of George Chan. And yet she
strutted around the dungeon like she was the Princess of the Black Pagoda,
stroking that brilliant jade pendant that hung from her neck as if she were
royalty. He'd wager a gold piece to a half-cup of rice that the presumptuous
slut had earned it on her back. Or her knees.
She'd learn soon enough that she was just another of George Chan's
playthings, Feng smiled grimly to himself; he'd been a Scorpion for many years,
since his arduous transcontinental journey from his mountain homeland to the
coastal regions. He'd been a trusted soldier in the Chans' army of the night
since long before Ming-tsu came on the scene, and he had every confidence that
he'd be around long after she was gone. George would eventually tire of her as
he had of all the rest...and if she dared to give George Chan any trouble when
he threw her out into the streets she came from... Well, chances were that one
day she'd find herself cowering on the floor of this very dungeon that she
strutted around tonight. Feng's cryptic smile widened. It amused him to
imagine Ming-tsu, naked and in chains, her delicious body at his mercy, begging
him to let her please him, if only he'd stop the pain...
But for now, he'd play along with her whims. Feng bowed his gleaming bald
head in Ming-tsu's direction again, and apologized for his inattention. Then,
holding the evil whip in his right hand, he leisurely gathered Liu's long black
hair in his left, enjoying its silky texture and the unmistakable scent of fresh
flowers which hovered around this young beauty like a floral garland. Feng
gently lifted her hair forward over her right shoulder, so that the rich dark
mane would not get in his way.
He didn't like to rush things; he enjoyed watching the tension build in his
victims. Fear and dread, he had long since learned in his terrible trade, were
most stimulating apertitifs to the main course, the blows themselves.
Liu, her body trembling from cold and fear, felt the torture-master's heavy
hand on her bare shoulder. She watched as Feng stepped in front of her and
began to unbutton his black blouse. How many more minutes until midnight?
Run, clock, run! she thought frantically. But the hands of the great clock on
the wall seemed frozen in place, moving with an almost infinite slowness.
The room, dark and ghastly, with sinister shadows dancing a macabre dance
against the torchlit walls, was horribly claustrophobic; Liu sensed that the
heavy stone walls, which had no doubt witnessed a thousand horrors, were closing
in on her.
As a wide-eyed adolescent Liu had sat with Li Chang while he had practiced
his English, a language that her grandfather had insisted he study, saying it
was the language of the future. It had been a common occurrence in their
household for Li, an apt student, to read stories silently in English to
himself, while translating them aloud into Chinese for Liu's benefit.
Li had particularly enjoyed reading the frightening tales of a strange
American writer. Bizarre and terrifying stories of black cats and eerie crypts,
of premature burials and entombments behind walls, of bottomless pits and
razor-sharp pendulums and murdered hearts drawing malefactors into madness. Li
had enjoyed sharing these imaginary horrors with her, and had used his voice
skillfully to make the hairs on the back of her neck electric with dread. Liu
remembered how in one story, Li had spoken of the white lips of the black-robed
judges of the inquisition "thin even to grotesqueness, thin with the intensity
of their expression of firmness -- of immovable resolution -- of stern contempt
of human torture". And she remembered how the thought of those thin, cruel
paper-white lips meting out sentences of pitilessness cruelty had once kept her
from sleeping for three nights on end.
But tonight her nightmares had become reality. Tonight it was she who
faced stern inquisitors with cruel lips. Liu's eyes swept the gloomy dungeon
once more, moving quickly from the beautiful lips of Li Chang's temptress that
seemed curled into a frozen smile, to the thick, lustful lips of Feng, the
goateed executioner, and on to the thin twisted lips of the gap-toothed villain
who hovered above her grandfather in the shadows.
Trying desperately to calm her nerves, and equally desperately to assuage
the burning bite of the Tiger between her pretty legs, Liu strained to lift
herself up off the Tiger's back, by pulling at the cuffs that secured her wrists
high over her head. Doing that seemed to abate most of the pain, but the effort
of lifting her body weight off the Tiger was taxing in the extreme. And it
caused the manacles on her lower legs to rub painfully against her ankles.
Trying to keep her mind off her the burning muscles of her arms and
shoulders, Liu watched as Feng stripped off his black shirt, displaying the
physique of a middle-aged wrestler gone to seed -- his squat thick-chested
body, and the bulbous belly of a glutton. Feng was nearly neckless; his ugly
head seemed to grow directly out of his shoulders. His chest and belly were
covered with clumps of coarse black man-wool; one could not be sure that the
beastly man had been born of woman, for his navel could not be seen through the
forest of belly hair. When he turned his broad back, Liu noticed that it too,
was matted with the same dark hair.
But repulsive as she found his torso, it was his arms that caused her limbs
to tremble, her pulse to race, and that turned her breath into nervous gasps.
Feng's bare arms were ape-like in their length and hairiness, thick-veined and
bulging with solid muscle. Another one of Li's thrilling stories had told of a
mindless ape, an orangutan, a Malayan 'Man of the Forest', who had butchered
two women in some great far off city. As Liu's mind flitted feverishly from one
panic-stricken thought to the next, it struck her that an ape almost as hairy,
and nearly as mindless, stood before her now; a balding, goateed fat-bellied ape
who also knew only the Law of the Jungle. How could she ever endure even one
blow from a monster such as he, she thought as the knot of fear tightened in her
throat. 'Father, mother,' she prayed to her long dead parents, 'help me find
the strength to defy my captors."
"When he spoke of you," Ming-tsu said in a taunting voice, "Li Chang said
that your voice was beautiful, that your laugh and your song reminded him of the
the sound of silver bells. I think I shall call you my little canary, Liu,"
Ming-tsu added as she stroked Liu's bare thigh, her fingers sliding the lower
part of the damp shift almost up to Liu's waist.
When Liu tried to wriggle free of Ming-tsu's wandering fingers, Ming-tsu
frowned at her effrontery. "Get on with it, Feng! I want to hear our little
canary sing," Ming-tsu whispered, her words dripping with venom.
The bald torture-master hefted the black whip Ming-tsu had proffered in his
thick-fingered hand for a moment, and then stepped slightly behind and to the
left of Liu. Feng took one quick practice stroke, letting the whip sail through
the air as if he were some grotesque subterranean angler, making sure that there
was sufficient clearance overhead and then letting the tail of the lash explode
with a sickening CRACCKK against the wooden frame of the Tiger. The sound
caused Liu to jump a bit in terror, only to fall back, groaning, against the
cruel spine of the terrible Tiger.
Feng waited patiently until Liu had regained her strength and lifted her
body from the Tiger's dorsal claw. He studied his victim for another few
seconds, as she tried to hold her body aloft; the back of her shift was hardly
more substantial or more opaque than the thinnest of scroll-paper. Liu's
graceful arms were cuffed high over her head, a position that Feng well knew
would soon have her shoulders and triceps aching with fatigue. Her back was
slender, sloping to an even more slender waist, and then swelling out again into
as sweet a young ass as you'd ever want to see. The wet silk clung to the
uppermost inch of her dark butt-groove with loving affection.
Feng was a bit surprised that the elegant young maiden hadn't spilled her
guts already; just the sight of the dungeon of the Black Pagoda, and its
appalling instruments of pain was enough to pry loose the lips of many that had
been brought before him.
But no matter -- a few strokes of the lash would put an end to the courage
of this young woman; she was clearly of the upper classes -- she could know
nothing of suffering.
"But she would soon learn!" Feng thought, as his lip curled up in a cruel
smile. He approached the girl, and as Ming-tsu watched with some puzzlement,
ran his hands up and down Liu's back as his captive squirmed in revulsion.
"What is this? Some new kind of fortune-telling?" Ming-tsu asked
scornfully.
"No, miss," Feng countered with a scowl. "Just locating her ribs."
Ming-tsu gave Dao a quizzical expression. But the tall Scorpion merely
returned her puzzled glance.
Feng then backed away again and took his place behind Liu on the left side
of the Tiger. Planting his feet, the burly whipmaster drew the diabolical whip
back and then shot its black length violently across Liu's shoulder blades,
CRAACCKK!! causing Liu to gasp in pain and to relax the tension in her
shoulders that was sparing her from the awful ridge.
"Aaaaahhh!" she shuddered in pain, trying her best to stifle her cries. And
then the groan resulting from the lash was echoed by a softer groan as the force
of the blow made her body drop down on to the Tiger.
Feng paused, admiring his own skill, and then waited patiently until the
struggling beauty had once again lifted her young body clear of the sharp ridge
before delivering a second, fearful SLASSHH!!! an inch lower, on Liu's tender
back, tearing at the damp nightgown.
"Aaaaghhh!" Liu exclaimed again and then, predictably, "Ouwwww!" when her
most sensitive parts once again felt the sting of the Tiger's kiss. It took the
pain-wracked maiden nearly a minute this time to summon up the strength to lift
herself off the torturous Tiger's spine.
Looking up, Liu's soft brown eyes met the the implacable eyes of Dao; or
rather they would have met his eyes if he had been looking at her face instead
of at the fleshy nipple-bullets that pressed against the sheer fabric. The
gap-toothed man's face was twisted in a rictus of lust; and why not? Each time
Feng lashed her tender back, Liu's exquisitely-formed breasts danced a sensuous
dance beneath the damp gauze. Liu shuddered at the sight of the prominent
bulge in the crotch of Dao's black trousers.
Feng waited a little longer between blows this time, watching with some
admiration as his slender captive strained at her wrist-cuffs. He waited until
there were tears of fatigue in her eyes and sweat-drops of exertion were
streaming down her face before he unleashed the third lash, which fell on Liu's
delicate back like a bolt of black lightning, creating yet another rip in the
gown, and leaving a lurid reddish mark on the chaste flesh beneath. And once
again driving her from her perch back into the painful embrace of the Tiger.
"Aaauaghhhh!" "Ouuwwww!"
Liu tried desperately to stifle her cries, in order to spare her
grandfather suffering; but the pain was insupportable. She could only hope that
his deafness insulated him from her misery to some extent.
Ming-tsu watched, fascinated. For all of his boorish and barbaric
demeanor, the muscular enforcer of the Scorpions was a clever torturer. The
idea of waiting until the girl had used all of her strength to lift herself off
of the Tiger before delivering a forceful blow that compelled her to relax her
grip on the overhead cuffs was ingenious. And doubtless effective.
Ming-tsu watched Liu struggle for a moment before approaching her again.
"What say you now, little one? Are you enjoying your duel with my muscular
associate? So far he seems to have the upper hand, doesn't he?" she added with a
cruel smile. "Why don't you give it up, and sing for us, my little canary?
You and the old one can be on your way. All you have to do is tell me the
whereabouts of the traitor. "Here," Ming-tsu lowered her face to Liu's and
spoke softly "You can whisper it in my ear -- even the old man will never know."
"Please," Liu gasped through tortured breaths as she tried to lift herself
again. "Let my grandfather go. He has not been well..." In fact, Liu had
noticed that he had fainted a few moments before the first lash had fallen;
occasionally he revived and looked wildly around him, but usually his awareness
seemed to last only a minute or two before he lapsed back into a semi-conscious
state. Tonight, at least, it was probably for the best, Liu thought.
"Where is Li Chang?" the intensity of Ming-tsu's voice belied its
softness. "Tell me -- and your precious grandfather can sleep in his own bed
tonight."
Ming-tsu could not be sure when Liu sadly shook her head, "No," whether it
was because she did not know, or because she would not tell. No matter. She
had little doubt that the truth would soon be forthcoming. Ming-tsu stepped
back and signaled to Feng. "Again."
"Aye, miss."
Liu could only watch in the great mirror as the half-civilized thug, his
rippling biceps gleaming with sweat in the eerie torchlight, took the devilish
whip back again and then slung it forward for a fourth time, emblazoning its
cruel brand on her thinly protected flesh, and driving her once again downward
into the ferocious jaws of the Tiger.
"Aaaaaaghhh! Unghhhh!" Liu felt as if someone had used a
sharp-pronged rake on the sweet furrow between her legs.
Feng's whipcraft was masterful. His skill was such that he was able to
place each stroke perfectly in the narrow area between a different pair of ribs
that extended outward from her thoracic vertebrae, always finding the most
vulnerable, sensitive, nerve-rich spots on his victim's back.
He waited patiently until Liu had painfully dragged herself up off the
Tiger's arch again, before taking aim at the band of flesh below the fourth rib
that his fingers had located and his unerring eye had committed to memory
earlier. Then he took a step forward and lashed out with the frightful whip,
which unfailingly burned its way across the precise latitude at which he had
aimed. But this time, having taken that step forward, the lash curled around
Liu's body before its stinging tip kissed the side of Liu's virginal right
breast.
"AAAGHHHHH!!" Liu's cry of pain was unquestionably louder this time.
Feng smiled with satisfaction as her slender body slumped back down onto the
Tiger's spine. "Nnnngghhh! ... Ah! ...Aah! Please... please..."
"The traitor! Where is he?"
Through her tears of pain Liu met the fierce gaze of Ming-tsu. "How can
you do this? He loved y..." Aaaaagghhhh!!
At Ming-tsu's signal Feng had cut off her question with another horrific
lash, an inch below the last one.
"Did he tell you that?" Ming-tsu asked, pleased with herself. With men one
could never be sure.
"Yes. Even I though I warned him against you."
"You did, did you? That is not the tune I wished to hear! Feng!"
CRACCCKKK!! "Aaaagghhhhhh! Please.... I can't..."
Smiling sardonically at Liu's scream, Ming-tsu said, "Our canary is
singing now, Feng. But she doesn't carry a tune very well, does she?" Then,
addressing Liu, this time in a cajoling voice. "Do you see? I am easy to talk
to, aren't I? Li thought so. He told me all about you and the old one. If it
were not for him, you would be home in your bed. Why do you protect him?"
Liu hesitated, not sure how to answer. And not sure, perhaps, of the
truth. Instead she desperately tried to pull herself up off the body of the
tiger.
"You will speak to me when I ask you a question! Feng!"
CRAACCKKK "Aiiieeeeaaahhh!" Another wrap-around lash that curled lovingly
around the softness of Liu's plum-like right breast. That plaintive cry was
followed a split second later by the tell-tale "Nnnnggghhhh!" indicating that
she had once again slumped downward onto the angled ridge of the Tiger's back.
"Why do you protect him?" Ming-tsu demanded again.
When her question was still met with stubborn silence, Ming-tsu
contemptuously gestured for Feng to begin anew.
After Feng had painstakingly administered four more blows, each an inch lower
than the last, the back of Liu's delicate nightgown was in shreds, and the
golden flesh beneath was criss-crossed with garish streaks. Liu no longer had
the strength to lift her body from the tiger, which continued to gnaw away at
her nether lips. She merely sat astride the horrible Tiger spine suffering
silently as the lashes continued to set her lower back ablaze.
After the fourth lash, Ming-tsu held up one hand to stop the Butcher as he
prepared to unleash the next stroke. "Are you having second thoughts yet, my
little songbird? I assure you that your strength will give out before Feng's.
Why are you sacrificing yourself for such a man, such a traitor? Do you think
he would do the same for you?" Her lips curved upward in a smile of sensual
remembrance. "He begged for my body like a dog begs for table scraps."
Ming-tsu gave a little half-turn, posing en silhouette as if to illustrate the
splendor of her shapely body, especially in relation to the slender figure of
her prisoner.
Liu was barely able to gasp out a reply. "You are a beautiful woman, and I
... I am but a simple girl. I know that he loved you and not me." Liu felt a
fresh tear rolling down her cheek, this one born not from pain, but from
heartache. She cursed herself for displaying her feelings to these pitiless
jackals, these heartless creatures of iniquity. "But that does not matter. The
Li Chang I know is no traitor. He was as a second son to my grandfather. And
he is a friend of the people of Shanghai. Even if I knew where he was, I would
not betray him to you."
Liu's tear-filled eyes tried to read the clock on the wall: it was a minute
or two past 10:40. She could not believe that only half an hour had elapsed
since the Scorpions had dragged her into this ghastly corner of hell. It seemed
like an eternity. And Li was still more than an hour away from the safety of
the midnight vessel to Taipei.
"You think not, little one? We shall see." and Ming-tsu gestured to Feng.
Feng, tiring of the whip, had selected a yard-long length of coarse nautical
rope from one of the menacing iron hooks on the wall of the dungeon. The
bestial executioner gripped the thick hawser in a meaty fist, and began again,
this time bringing the punishing weapon down on the enticing upper curves of
Liu's rounded buttocks.
"Aaaaahhh!"
Feng delivered a second vicious stroke before coming to the conclusion that
Liu's erect posture, with her hands cuffed high over her head, restricted his
access to his new, nicely rounded target somewhat. He uncuffed her wrists, and
forced her arms down to encircle the neck of the tiger, where he cuffed them
together again.
Now Liu could only relieve the burning pressure against her delicate
vaginal lips, by leaning forward and lifting her center of gravity up off the
Tiger, and thus proffering her lusciously dimpled buttocks to the cruel caresses
of Feng's rope-whip. Her strapping tormentor's tongue circled his thick lips
with lustful delight; he was eager to set her ass on fire.
Dao, meanwhile, cheated of the splendid vantage point that had allowed him
to study Liu's lovely breasts as they vibrated with each stinging lash, glanced
down to make sure that Wen-chi was still safely bound. Assuring himself that the
semi-conscious old man was no threat, he walked around behind the Tiger where he
was greeted by the delicious vista of Liu's firm young bottom-cheeks, nicely
elevated for the whip.
Seeing that Liu's still slightly damp shift would interfere with the
effectiveness of his blows, the heavy-set torture-master took the rear hem of
the thin silk and threw the lower part of the garment up onto the small of Liu's
back, baring her pale-gold buttocks, buttocks that in all of her young life had
never felt a violent hand.
Feng proceeded to paint Liu's saucy buttocks cherry red, rope-lashing them
some thirty times over the next quarter of an hour. He took his time flogging
Liu's soft-skinned bottom, pausing between every vicious blow, his sadistic
grin widening with each stroke. Not only did the angry tip of the rope land
with a bitter sting, but every inch of its coarse length abraded Liu's delicate
skin as well. After each stroke Feng's dark eyes sought out the facing mirror on
the long wall, so that he could see the effects of his artistry on Liu's
pain-wracked face.
After several strokes, Feng paused to run a thick hairy hand crudely over
the young maiden's shuddering bottom, enjoying the warmth he had imparted to her
firm young flesh. He squeezed her perfect buttocks with licentious abandon,
and let his probing fingers delve deeply into her dark butt-cleft, until he
sensed that the flashing-eyed Ming-tsu was impatient for him to get on with it.
Then he took two ponderous steps backward, lifted the rope high overhead, and
slammed it down again into the quivering roundness of Liu's lovely bottom-ovals,
eliciting fresh moans of pain. Feng's powerful right arm delivered blow after
searing blow, as he sought to etch a vivid pattern into every square inch of
Liu's delicious derriere.
As each minute passed, and each vicious stroke of the rope fell, Feng
grudgingly came to admire Liu's courage; Dena, for all her wickedness, had been
the bravest, most defiant woman of the hundreds on whom he had practiced his
cruel arts -- no one else had ever approached her physical courage. But Dena
had been a big strong outdoors girl, whereas one would have expected the tiny
Liu, coming from her aristocratic background, to be as fragile as a porcelain
doll. He had felt certain that her fortitude would shatter and crumble into dust
in the first five minutes.
For that matter, Dena had had little choice; it was unquestionably easier
to show courage when cowardice would prove unavailing. Feng had little doubt
that Dena would have betrayed almost anyone, perhaps even her father, had she
had the option. Liu, on the other hand, had chosen loyalty over freedom, and
suffering over faithlessness. The pretty little canary had the heart of an
eagle.
A very foolish eagle, he thought to himself cynically, as he noted with
admiration how the warm orange torchlight of the dungeon seemed to enhance the
ever-increasing rosiness of Liu's well-flogged buttcheeks, making them as
desirable a pair of targets as one could imagine. The hairy dungeon-master took
his weapon back and exultantly ripped the rope-whip into the ripe rounded
summits of Liu's bottom-globes once again...
For Liu, each minute seemed like an hour, and each blow seemed worse than
the one before it. Now and then Feng's rope would assail an area that he had
visited before; when this happened, she could almost feel the contusion split
open to spill a tiny droplet of blood or two on the curves of her shapely
buttocks. When the infernal torchlight in the dungeon occasionally flared up
brightly, she could look in the mirror and see tiny streamlets of blood flowing
into the rivers of perspiration that coursed down her shamelessly posed body.
And she could see the ogling, ominous figure of the gap-toothed Scorpion behind
her, his lecherous eyes as glued to her naked bottom as they had previously been
to her damp-nippled breasts.
Feng paused from his strenuous but pleasant labors just as the clock
struck eleven. His shaggy chest, shoulders, and arms, no less than the gleaming
body of his captive, were coated with a glistening lather of perspiration
resulting from his strenuous exertion in the close confines of the humid
dungeon.
"Another hour of this?" thought Liu, as she counted the eleven chimes as
they resounded with a gong-like intonation. She prayed fervently to the
numberless generations of her ancestors to intercede with the gods of heaven to
grant her one wish -- that another hour's measure of strength and courage might
be hers.
Ming-tsu had been content to watch patiently, fingering her glittering
jade pendant, while Feng had thrashed Liu's pretty bottom. But now she
approached Liu and lifted her head back by pulling on her silky, sweat-drenched
hair. "Do you feel like singing yet, little bird?"
Liu grimaced in pain as her gorgeous tormentor's grip tightened, but she
remained silent.
After a few seconds, Ming-tsu released Liu's hair in disgust. "Very well
then; you shall soon see the rewards of obstinacy.
Ming-tsu caressed Liu's smooth thigh-flesh with a silken hand. "Such soft
skin. So delicate. It will be very sensitive I fear. Feng, you have neglected
Miss Liu's pretty legs. Let us correct that oversight. And you," Ming-tsu
called out to Dao who had been watching the interrogation from the shadows,
"make yourself useful and light a fire under that brazier in the corner." She
smiled wickedly at Liu. "Perhaps our guest is not yet fully aware that we will
stop at nothing to achieve our desired ends."
The tall, gap-toothed lackey grumbled under his breath about being
addressed in that fashion, and for having once again lost an ideal vantage point
for watching the erotic torture of the shapely young captive. Nonetheless the
disappointed voyeur obediently strode over to a far corner of the room , and set
about lighting the coals on the ancient brazier which was adjacent to a crude
ventilating shaft.
Meanwhile Feng chose a heavy leather strap from the panoply of evil
instruments hanging on a nearby wall. He studied it briefly, noting several
dark splotches on its business end, mementoes of the last time he had used it --
on the heart-shaped bottom of the attractive wife of a fishmonger from the
teeming waterfront district. The pretty young woman had unaccountably gotten
the notion into her head idea that her young husband's unfortunate death at sea
might somehow have granted her a month's grace from paying extortion money to
the Scorpions. But three score strokes of the punishing yak-leather strap
across her plump naked buttocks had soon put an end to the money-grubbing young
mother's refusal to cooperate.
After folding its arm-long length in two, Feng popped the strap, which was
a good two inches in width, loudly in his hands, smirking at the way Liu's body
flinched in fear from the mere sound of the tough leather.
"Mind you, little one," Ming-tsu smile sardonically, "The bite of Feng's
strap is much worse than its bark. Would you care to reconsider your foolish
stubbornness? The hour grows late, and my patience is wearing thin."
But Liu just lay there stoicly, silently, on the Tiger, her arms encircling
the great neck of the wooden beast, tears running down both soft cheeks, her
back and buttocks crimson-streaked, her slender body a-quiver with pain and
apprehension.
"Very well, then. Feng, you may continue!"
The burly torture-master bowed briefly in Ming-tsu's direction. Then he
took a stance from which he would have a good angle at the outer contours of
Liu's bare left leg, which hung down the body of the tiger, and was fettered at
the ankle to a manacle that held her fast to the Tiger's lower flank.
Liu's spirits had plummeted to new depths when she heard Ming-tsu's words
"light a fire". She could not bear to look at the ghastly blackened implements
of iron than hung from the sides of the brazier. But she wasn't permitted much
time to dwell on what the fire portended because just then Feng brutally cracked
the strap over her left thigh, just above the knee. Slowly, meticulously, Feng
the Butcher worked his way up the length of that supple limb, searing Liu's
soft, supple thigh flesh with one scalding salvo after another, as her cries of
distress gradually escalated in volume.
Feng delighted in the way the muscles in Liu's legs oscillated in the wake
of each stroke. Spacing his blows with the precision of a master bricklayer,
each one partially overlapping the preceding one, it took him eighteen punishing
whacks to climb to the top of Liu's honey-gold thigh, meticulously tinting it
with the blushing rosiness resulting from a sound strapping.
When he finished with that leg, at 11:10, Feng the Butcher stalked
ponderously around to the other side of the Tiger, and this time starting at the
apex of Liu's right leg, he blazed a burning trail downward, stroke by vicious
stroke. After half a dozen ferocious strap-lashes, Ming-tsu held up a
scarlet-nailed hand to forestall him, while she put the question to her
suffering prisoner once more, but the gasping young woman remained defiant.
After she gestured to the grim enforcer to continue his unholy ritual, Ming-tsu
walked over to the brazier, checking on the progress of the faintly glowing
coals. Speaking loudly enough for Liu to hear, she instructed him, "The
scorpion, Dao -- do not forget the scorpion."
"Aye, miss," Gap-tooth agreed, and then Liu heard for the first time the
unmistakable sizzle and crackle of the coals he was so conscientiously tending.
By 11:15, according to the clock on the wall, Feng had finished his heinous
assault on Liu's right thigh, coating it with an even glaze of pain, as he had
her left. Liu was by now awash in a sea of agony.
Ming-tsu marveled at the girl's stamina; she herself had taken a punishing
flogging on the Night of the Forty Lashes. But this petite beauty had sustained
more than twice as many blows, and harder ones, than Li had given her. And of
course she, Ming-tsu, hadn't been subjected to an excruciating ride on the
Tiger.
Feng, too, continued to be impressed with Liu's valor. But by his barbaric
standards, the interrogation thus far had only been moderately punitive. He felt
a bit like a general who had been constrained from using his most dangerous
means of attack, his cavalry. It remained to be seen if the lovely young
songbird could continue to hold her tongue once the fearful inquisitor was
granted consent to unleash the most fearful weapon in his dreadful arsenal.
For Liu's sweet young breasts had yet to feel the sting of his lash...
