Cold air.
There was a sound of dripping water in the distance.
The sound echoed between the stone walls, and other than that, there was a dead silence all around.
This was a corner deep in the prison, as if isolated from the world, with no sunlight able to penetrate, only the faint light reflected from the other side of the corner.
The walls were covered with mold spots, and wet water droplets seeped out from the cracks in the bricks from time to time.
This prison didn't seem to be built for humans, but more like a confinement for some kind of evil beast. The air was filled with a stale smell, faintly revealing the breath of blood and despair.
Gao Changgong slowly woke up in this cold cell, his whole body aching so much that he could hardly move. The pain in his limbs was like endless needles, and every time he moved his body slightly, his nerves would tense up - although he didn't resist, he was not short of being beaten on the way to the prison.
Compared with the torture of the body, the pain of the soul was more unbearable. It was as if a heavy hammer of fate had hit him from the peak of his military exploits into an endless abyss. He closed his eyes, and the recent events emerged in his mind. From the glory of returning from the triumph, to the spread of rumors, to Bai Lian's previous warnings, everything seemed to be gradually pieced together into a complete situation. Bai Lian had reminded him to pay attention to the traitors around him, but he had never thought deeply about those signs. Now, all the warnings have come true. The emperor's banquet, the counselor's tricks, and the secret letter finally pushed him into this bottomless abyss. He asked himself why he didn't notice it earlier, but everything was irreversible.
After a while, Gao Changgong forced himself to pull his thoughts back to reality. He slowly opened his eyes, his eyes wandering in the dark cell, trying to figure out where he was. The cell was extremely narrow, the walls around were mottled and cold, and the iron bars were covered with rust. He looked around and found that he was the only one here. There was no sign of the jailer, and even other prisoners had not heard any movement. This lonely environment made him feel uneasy, as if this prison had been forgotten by the entire court, and he was the only one here to slowly decay.
Time became blurred in such an environment. Without light, sound, or any external prompts, he almost lost the concept of time. Every day seemed like an endless night, and he had no idea how long he had spent in this cold cell. One day? Two days? Or a week? Everything lost its meaning.
Gao Changgong almost felt that he was gradually sliding towards the edge of madness. The silence around him was like an invisible oppression, gradually eroding his sanity. He tried to concentrate and try not to think about those mind-breaking thoughts. He began to count the sound of each drop of water falling, using these faint sounds to time and maintain his last bit of clarity.
Every time he woke up, he tried to find any changes in the deep darkness, but it seemed that nothing had changed. The jailer had never appeared, and there was no movement outside the cell. The entire Tianlao seemed like an isolated island completely isolated from the outside world. Gao Changgong was trapped in this invisible cage, lonely like a piece of debris floating in an endless ocean. He wanted to shout several times to attract the attention of the jailer, but the only response to him was endless echoes.
When he didn't know how to spend time, he recalled Bai Lian's warning again, and those details that seemed to have been ignored by him became particularly important at this time. The traitor she mentioned and the complicated relationship between him and the emperor now seemed to be gradually revealed. He began to reflect on the behavior and motives of everyone around him, suspecting that he had been caught in a huge conspiracy invisibly.
During the long wait, Gao Changgong could only stay awake through meditation and speculation. He even suspected that he was still connected to the real world, but the cruel facts reminded him again and again that he could no longer escape this carefully designed trap. In any case, he must remain rational and wait for the opportunity to come.
In this way, in this dark and cold Tianlao, Gao Changgong was accompanied by silence, enduring the double torture of loneliness and pain.