Source: The Internet
The wealthy tycoon Mr. Tse Chu Fong, who was bandaged around his head and wrist, leaned against the window of the hospital ward watching his beloved 18-year-old son, Chi Heung. Although Chi Heung was already in a coma, he still suffered from momentary spasms and perspired out cold sweat. Moreover, his body was fully covered with red spots; it looked like they were fresh wounds, with no sign of normal skin.
This was Tse Chi Heung’s strange illness. Initially, it was the servant who gave him a bowl of freshly cut fish fillet congee. When he saw the slices of fish, he immediately vomited, and then felt pain through his whole body, his skin was like on fire. Next, he would roll around on the floor, bang his head against the wall, cry out in spasms, curl up in pain,... until finally he would faint into unconsciousness, just as if he were dead. Every time when his father, Tse Chu Fong, heard his beloved son’s deplorable cries, he felt as if his heart was cut into a thousand pieces. He wished that he could suffer the pain instead of his son, however, illness and pain cannot be exchanged. This was Tse Chu Fong’s biggest punishment, just like a torture.
On some occasions, Chi Heung was left with a very weak pulse. His doctors were amongst the best and the most well known ones in the city. A lot of money was spent before he could be pulled back from the gates of death and back to this world. However, tonight’s incident at the hospital was a completely different matter.
Tse Chi Heung was taken to hospital at midnight under suspicion after taking an “e” tablet at a rave party. He had lost control and ended up in a fight in the men’s toilet injuring two people, one of them being his father. At the time of the incident, his father Tse Chu Fong was in an overnight management meeting at his company. One of the subsidiary companies, specialising in information technology and web business was put on the market a year ago. However, it was continuously losing money, heavily burdened with loans and the plan was to put the company into liquidation. Faced with the biggest business “nightmare” yet, Tse Chu Fong was suddenly informed of his son’s involvement in taking “e” tablets and being in a fight. He immediately rushed to the scene. “Retribution” is hard like steel, unbiased, cold faced and without feelings. It will not relent to an individual’s grave emotions and will not ease in the slightest way whatsoever. When one faces “retribution”, there is just no way of escape.
This was the start of the downfall of Tse Chu Fong’s fame and fortune.
Tse Chu Fong saw his beloved son, covered in blood, being carried out by a few policemen. He struggled continuously, tossing and turning, grinding his teeth with saliva dripping from his mouth. A dummy hung around his bare chest; it looked as if it was for sucking as his saliva dripped out. His jeans covered half his legs; it was stained, probably due to the loss of control over his bladder and legs. When he saw his son in such a state, he felt such an indescribable pain, hence, disregarding his own “face” he took off his jacket, worth several thousand dollars, and wrapped it around his son’s head and face. Who would have guessed that his beloved son, not appreciating this, raised his fist, knocked his father down and kicked violently, losing total control.
The reporters kept asking Tse Chu Fong questions and kept taking photographs.
“Mr. Tse, John is a regular customer at rave party, how do you feel about his misuse of soft drugs?”
“Was it right that he was hit by one of his fellow drug takers in the toilet, that was why he fought back?”
“Does this incident involve jealousy between his gay love affairs?”
“Has John got a girlfriend? Being a man of such high status such as you, do you feel a bit disappointed with your son’s involvement in this incident?”
Tse Chu Fong maintained his silence and did not say a word.
Once they arrived at the hospital, in private, the doctor told Tse Chu Fong, “We will examine your son carefully. The betrayal man injured in the party was a registered AIDS carrier. He admitted that they both had sex in the toilet......” The doctor looked serious and continued, “However, everything is just an assumption until the results come out. You just need to be psychologically prepared.” The doctor also said, “Your son hit you to the ground, his blood might have contacted your wound......”
Tse Chu Fong could not believe what the doctor had just said. The grand businessman, Tse Chu Fong, who was always the commander in the field, shrewd and capable, wealthy and successful was now similar to a walking corpse, empty, covered in blood, and disfigured. At the golden age of forty-seven, he looked more like seventy-four. All the hard work throughout his life, his wealth and hopes, all disintegrated this very night, destroyed in the hands of his beloved son! On reflection he had done nothing wrong throughout his life, he must have just misheard the doctor.
Both the pronunciations of the Chinese name Chi Heung and the English name John were perfectly chosen with a lot of money. Chi Heung was truly the sole focus in his father’s life, as he was the only son in the Tse family, the only one who could inherit the Tse lineage. His mother died at childbirth. Tse Chu Fong was extremely tormented and focussed all his love for his wife onto his son. He loved his son so much that it was more a case of “drowning” his son with his love. When Chi Heung was ten years old, the family chauffeur ganged up with criminals and kidnapped him. Tse Chu Fong paid ten million dollars ransom and was only relieved when his son returned home safely. What was money worth to him anyway?
Chi Heung was generally a weak child. Whenever his illness appeared, his whole body would be covered in red rashes, his temper would flare up, he would break all the valuables in the house, and nobody would be able to stop him. All the Ching Dynasty antiques were broken to pieces. When Chi Heung rolled around on the floor in spasms, it was like the return of some kind of torture and torment. His father’s heart would be shattered into even more pieces than the broken antiques.
Chi Heung’s strange illness would flare up now and again, as if meeting with evil. Tse Chu Fong therefore consulted a retired fortune-teller for a “Military Consultant Chugoh Leung’s Horse Fore-war Assessment”. The eighty-year-old Master Hung shook his head and said, “You’d better let him have his own way, treat him well and give him whatever he wants and see if this will solve the problem.” Tse Chu Fong asked, “Solve what problem?” Master Hung did not give an answer but said, “To repay a loan! All children are their parents’ creditors, they’ve come back for their debts, haven’t they?”
The Chinese scholar often says, “To find out the cause in the previous life, the answer is in the recipient of the present life; to find out the effect in the next life, the answer is in the performer of the present life.” This kind of Buddhist doctrine on the truth of karma is very much well known and experienced.
Tse Chu Fong thought to himself: “Repay a loan? What nonsense! I am lucky, with business acumen and successful investments, and I am accumulating wealth. All these must have been brought to me by my fortunate son; he has brought me immeasurable wealth. I started my business from scratch and I have not committed any evil deeds during my lifetime. My wife was a kind person, how could she have given birth to an evil son? It is such nonsense.”
The only sacrifice he made in his life was that he never remarried; this was so as not to upset his son and to relieve his own guilt. Moreover, Chi Heung strongly insisted that he “did not want a second mother”. Tse Chu Fong therefore led a life of pleasure and promiscuity on the outside; hence there was only a lack of family warmth. It was beyond belief that an 18 years old young man, with a gold key in his mouth and was smart as well as handsome, would end up with a “gay boyfriend”. He led a destructive and ridiculous life and became a drug addict. His future was bleak and now he had probably caught AIDS!
Tse Chu Fong’s mind was totally confused. It was all just like a nightmare, with one bad thing happening after another and his “reality” was basically the nightmare. He had lost his wife, his business had failed, he had gone into bankruptcy, he had lost his friends and family, he had lost everything, and now finally, he was about to lose his beloved son. What was more, he himself had probably caught the AIDS virus for no reason whatsoever......
“What have I done wrong?” he shouted towards the sky in stark silence. In total despair, he opened the door of his son’s room in the hospital, walked in and mumbled to himself, “Tell me! Tell me!”
Chi Heung, whose whole body was covered in a red rash and was curled up like a ball, suddenly awoke. He had a strange smile at the corner of his mouth and said to his father,“You...... do you recognise me?”
“John, please do not frighten your daddy......”
“No, you must look carefully,” Chi Heung rolled his eyeballs towards the sky, gritting his teeth and said, “I am Pu Siao!”
“Who?” Tse Chu Fong was shocked.
“Diu Do (Do in Chinese means knife)! I said that I would come back to be your son in the next life! Have you forgotten?”
Tse Chu Fong was stunned and fell backwards, as if struck by lightning. His eyes were fixated on the bed; in utter confusion he stared at his own son “Tse Chi Heung”, whose whole body was covered in a red rash, still holding onto his last breath, and who was meant to be his successor. In a flash, the words “In the next life I will come back to be your son!” sounded very familiar and an image appeared in his mind. It was Pu Siao. He remembered!
The four white walls of the hospital room suddenly changed into an execution ground. The scene right before his eyes was as clear as reality.
In the fourth year of the Tong-ji period during the Ch’ing Dynasty, Tse Chu Fong was named Diu Do and was an executioner of capital punishment specialising in “death by slow torture”. His work was meticulous and accurate. During an execution, he never struck too much or too little; if he was asked to use his knife fourteen times, it was exactly fourteen times; one hundred and eighty times and it was exactly one hundred and eighty times. He was greedy, nasty and cold-blooded by nature. Every time before an execution he would ask for bribes from the criminal or his family. Everyone called him “The Knife Master”.
At dawn, executioner Diu Do was responsible for escorting the death convict, Pu Siao, to be executed at the 4th pavillion which was under the 14th bridge in the west of the palace in Beijing.
Pu Siao was a member of the dissident revolutionary army in the farmer’s division of the Heavenly Kingdom of Peace. Originally, in the third year of the Ham-feng period, the revolutionary army invaded Guangling (now called Nanjing) and set their capital city there. Fourteen years later, the farmer Pu Siao was promoted as the leader of one of the armies. However, in the fourth year of the Tong-ji period on the 6th June of the Chinese lunar calendar, the commander Tsang Kwok Fan led the Ch’ing army and, via an underground channel, successfully invaded the gateway of Nanjing, and captured all the leaders of the revolutionary army.
“Death by slow torture” was one of the most gory, most cruel and most inhumane forms of capital punishment of the Ch’ing Dynasty. The process was to peel and cut off human flesh piece by piece. In this way, the criminal would suffer maximum pain whilst he was still in full consciousness. All his faculties, like his heart, liver, vision and hearing, would still work, but at the same time, his body would be cut to the bare bones. The excruciating pain would linger on. Every member of dissident army caught in uniform would have received this treatment.
Pu Siao knew that he could not escape this inhumane form of slow capital punishment. In jail, Diu Do leaned against the door of the cell and mentioned his price list, “As I have already explained, give me five thousand taels of gold and you will die after ten slices with a stab at the heart; three thousand taels of gold and I will cut faster; a thousand taels of gold, the process will remain the same, but I will use a sharp knife.”
“Peh!” the prisioner Pu Siao spat in his face and said: “You Ch’ing dog! You and I are both Han people, killing each other, and now you’re blackmailing me! Are you human?”
Diu Do replied, “Ha, ha! The Revolutionary Army tried to overthrow the Ch’ing Dynasty and all the people suffered. You, the low-class farmer, was it not yourselves that created this commotion and killed each other? ‘Alight the skylight’, ‘Skin-peeling’, ‘Split into pieces by five horses’...... these were the Revolutionary Army’s own specialties and all these were invented to punish your own people.”
Pu Siao turned and said to his wife, who was biting her lips and holding back her tears, “Don’t give this Ch’ing dog any money! Go quickly! Go!” Pu Siao forced her to go.
Diu Do got very angry. Yet with a slight smile, he said, “You cannot escape death. You want to die faster, but the Knife Master wants you to die slowly so that you can enjoy your punishment.” Showing no emotion whatsoever, he escorted Pu Siao to the 4th pavilion, stripped him naked and tied him to a wooden cross. He signalled to his assistants to sharpen the small knives laid on top of the stone.
The place was completely packed with spectators and traffic was completely blocked.
Pu Siao closed his eyes and waited to be tortured. After three canon shots, Diu Do signalled commencement. He demanded, “Since there will be three hundred and sixty cuts, each cut can only be a small piece. We will need some tools to assist.” His assistants brought over a fish net. They covered Pu Siao with the fish net and tied tightly around him. In this way, the flesh of the criminal would be squeezed out from the net, bit by bit, and spread evenly.
Pu Siao could smell the bloodstained fish net and he could hear Diu Do’s hushed voice in the background. As he shivered and trembled, the hushed voice, full of evil intent, whispered in his ear, “Where will the first slice be?”
He used a blunt knife to tap Pu Siao’s head, face, chest, abdomen and four limbs. He delayed laying the first cut so as to prolong his fear. After waiting for a while, he suddenly gave a shout and started on the nipples on his chest. And then, from the left and right sides of the chest, ten small slices of flesh, the size of one’s fingernails, were squeezed out of the fish net and were cut. At first, blood dripped; however, the prisoner was in excruciating pain after thirty cuts. He stopped breathing, bit his teeth and tried hard to endure the pain. Blood flowed back into the body and nothing dripped out. Diu Do was too experienced. He changed the direction of his cut. He moved towards the abdomen, gave it one sharp cut and blood gushed out.
The knife was blunt and Diu Do’s movements were slow. He would not stab at the heart. However, Pu Siao suffered the pain by biting his tongue until the blood flowed, he did not make a single sound, he did not shout in pain, nor did he scream in agony. His strength made Diu Do rage in anger. After one hundred and eighty cuts, Diu Do decided that after every ten cuts he would take a rest and drink some tea. Pu Siao could not move at all within the net, blood and flesh were smeared in a mess, just like a freshly cut fish, with his mouth opening and closing. In an attempt to relieve some of the pain, only his head could be “twitched”, jerking from left to right continuously in difficulty.
Every ten cuts there would be a break, ten cuts and a break......, this process continued until dusk. The flesh was in “small slices like fish scales” and any movement made the pain even worse. There was no way to escape, it was better to be dead than alive.
Diu Do said: “Do you want it to end with just one stab? If you beg me, I just might consider it.”
Pu Siao’s whole body was covered in a red rash of blood, with no sign of normal skin. He opened both eyes so widely, as if they were about to explode, and in a state of deep rage, he shouted, “Ch’ing dog!”
Diu Do screamed, “The three hundred and sixtieth cut!” This last cut went straight into the heart.
Pu Siao twitched in spasms, with both eyes rolled up towards the sky, he said while gritting his teeth, “In the next life I will come back to be your son!” Diu Do laughed out loudly, “Do you repent? Do you surrender? Good! Come back to look after me in the next life! Good, good, good! Ha ha ha!”
Ha ha ha! Tse Chu Fong recognised the sound of his own laughter; it was so full of contentment, satisfaction and victory. An executioner was victorious over such a strong-willed criminal who in the next life would call him “Daddy”.
Terrified, he said, “You are Pu Siao?” He picked up a small fruit knife from the small table and held it tightly in his hand. He has come back to take revenge, he has come back to take my life....... No, I need to kill him first.
The eighteen years old young man lying on the sick bed, weak and feeble; the beloved son who had made him lose all fame, fortune and everything. The beloved son, holding onto his last breath, murmured faintly, “Father, I’m thirsty, I’m in pain!”, and then screamed wildly, “Give me an e-tablet! I want to be high and ‘forget me’!”
Tse Chu Fong was lost in a trance of cause and effect. Who are you? Who am I?
“Father, Father, Daddy,......”
