Chapter 400 - 173: Interrogation (Part 2)
Some were thinking about the day’s experiences; some were reminiscing about life in the tribe; some were touching their bruises from the beatings; some wanted another bowl of porridge; some were contemplating how to escape alive...
Their minds were a tangle of thoughts, yet no one uttered a word.
They lay on the hard wooden boards, gazing at the night sky, feeling lost about their future and regretting past decisions.
In moments like these, having nothing to do was a torment in itself.
Time seemed to pass excruciatingly slow, causing them to involuntarily pay attention to the details of their surroundings.
The sound of the wind, birds chirping, insects buzzing, wood crackling, breathing, and heartbeats...
They didn’t know if they could fall asleep amidst such torment, nor if sleep would bring another round of beatings.
Lying there in constant fear.
Just as they thought the night would pass this way, accompanied by the summoning of Werner from the cabin by Chen Zhou to the cave and his incomprehensible conversation with Sunday upon return, a new round of torment began.
Sunday’s high-pitched shout was like cold water pouring over their heads, jolting them to their feet like springs.
...
"What does that bastard want now!"
Werner had been tormented for nearly a day. Just as he was about to fall asleep on the wooden boards, Sunday’s voice erased all his drowsiness.
He hated this damn Wild Monkey, wishing he could pin Sunday to the ground and strangle him, but he was utterly powerless.
All he could do was follow the other tribesmen and stand up obediently.
After all, he was the one who had stood out the most.
Moreover, as a "superior person," he considered his life far more valuable than the other tribesmen’s and couldn’t afford to lose it here easily.
...
"You, come out, follow him."
Sunday pointed to the first tribesman on the wooden boards, indicating he should follow Saturday.
The tribesman recalled the three companions who had followed these people in the afternoon and never returned, trembling with fear—
He thought they were going to take him away and eat him.
In terror, he disregarded Sunday’s orders, his legs buckling as he collapsed onto the wooden boards, repeatedly begging Sunday not to kill him.
In the end, he received two loud lashes and Sunday’s assurance— he wouldn’t die.
Uncertain whether to trust these people, but the torn wounds on his back reminded the tribesman that if he didn’t follow the other clothed man, he would be beaten to death right there.
Following the clothed man meant he could live a little longer.
Faced with two miserable choices, the tribesman could only choose the relatively better one.
...
The departure of their companion plunged the tribesmen into a shared sense of collective sorrow.
They heard Sunday’s promises but did not trust him.
After all, Sunday had always suppressed them with violence, not with outstanding credibility.
However, as Chen Zhou once mentioned to Sunday, when dealing with these unmodified, savage tribesmen, violence was often the most effective management method.
...
The tribesman selected to leave closely followed behind Saturday.
The lashings on his back, raw and painful, stimulated his nerves, making his heartbeat race faster.
The oil lamp perpetually lit in the watchtower outside the cave wall illuminated the way up to the platform.
Surrounded by darkness, the tribesman glanced around repeatedly, contemplating escape when Saturday wasn’t paying attention.
But he couldn’t muster the courage to flee, so he obediently followed through the cave entrance, stepping into the storage room, and then through a small door, entering the pitch-black "rat breeding room."
This unadorned room, where many rats had died before, had only a thin wooden board on the floor and was illuminated by a single small oil lamp.
Behind a long table positioned in the room’s center, dividing the room into two sides, there was an armchair.
As soon as the tribesman stepped into the room, Chen Zhou’s large hand gripped the back of his neck.
Like a small chick, he felt weightless as he was tossed to the other side of the long table.
Upon entering the room, Saturday agilely leaped over the long table, pulling the tribesman up and pressing him onto the chair.
...
Before the tribesman could react, coarse hemp ropes bound his hands and feet.
He was forced to press his entire body against the chair back, legs against the chair legs, hands against the armrests, seated upright and directly facing Chen Zhou, half-hidden in the darkness.
Had he not been injured, it wouldn’t be so bad. But having received two whippings from Sunday, the bloody welts on his back stung painfully against the chair, causing him to grimace in pain.
Chen Zhou watched the tribesman’s expression, indifferent to his suffering.
He waved a hand, signaling Saturday to extinguish the oil lamp.
With a "whoosh," the entire room plunged into impenetrable darkness.
In tandem with the darkness, the tribesman’s heart brimmed with fear.
Fear of the unknown made him instinctively start to struggle, attempting to break free from the ropes or topple the chair and find some means of escape.
However, Saturday had already followed Chen Zhou’s prior instructions and tightly restrained the chair, rendering him unable to break free.
The sound of the chair legs scraping against the wooden boards abruptly ceased.
The tribesman’s heavy breathing didn’t last long before Chen Zhou finally succeeded in feeling his way to install the high-intensity flashlight onto the pre-prepared stand.
This flashlight came from a grand package as part of a first-anniversary reward on September 25, 1660, labeled as a "portable" flashlight.
Though termed portable, the flashlight’s cylinder was thicker than Chen Zhou’s forearm, and it was impressively hefty.
Besides pneumatic zoom focusing, it came equipped with a 12,000 mAh lithium battery, and the 80W luminous flux reached up to 10,000 lumens thanks to its white laser diode, essentially a miniature sun.
With abundant grease reserves in the cave, there was enough for the necessary lighting.
Since Chen Zhou typically worked from sunrise to sunset, rarely engaging in outdoor labor in darkness, and since electrical appliances could only be obtained through mysterious rewards, it was a prized possession, carefully stored untouched in a wooden box until now.
Only when he planned to interrogate the tribesman overnight, hoping to glean intel from them in advance, did Chen Zhou recall this high-intensity flashlight.
...
A qualified interrogation room requires more than an enclosed, oppressive environment, a subject teetering on the edge of psychological collapse, and an uncomfortable chair; essential, too, is an intense light source.
Especially light directed onto the face, making it difficult for one to open their eyes, thus magnifying innate fear.
For the likes of these ignorant tribesmen, aside from the sun in the sky, there might not be anything else in the world capable of emitting such dazzling brilliance.
After several measures to increase psychological pressure, finally unveiling the high-intensity flashlight should further enhance the interrogation’s effectiveness.
...
Having pre-tested the flashlight’s functionality and designed a "lamp stand" based on the chair’s placement, Chen Zhou then commanded Saturday to bring in the tribesmen one by one.
In truth, isolating the tribesmen for interrogation was to prevent them from coordinating accounts.
But in Chen Zhou’s view, the possibility of these individuals corroborating accounts was exceedingly slim.
Not to mention that ever since the attack commenced, the tribesmen were in disarray, solely focused on how to flee or resist, with no thought of agreeing on a narrative if captured.
Even if they were given time to coordinate accounts, these tribesmen wouldn’t grasp the concept.
Even in the 21st century, many criminal groups had no prearranged stories and truthfully confessed when caught.
Being captured left the tribesmen little room for interaction.
They not only had to labor but also had to avoid giving Sunday any reason for a beating, leaving them no daring to speak.
Moreover, concealing their reasons for landing and details about the tribe brought them no benefit.
The tribe was merely the earliest stage in humanity’s development process; they didn’t even have a complete concept of family, let alone a sense of tribe, state, or cultural identity.
Such individuals were like highly malleable clay lumps.
Placed among the Angsas, they would think like Angsas; placed in Hua Xia, they would become inclined towards the descendants of the Yan and Huang Emperors.
...
With the click of the flashlight switch, an eye-blinding white beam shone directly onto the tribesman’s face.
The sudden intense light made the entire "interrogation room" appear like daylight.
The 10,000-lumen beam pierced his eyes for an instant, making all visible scenes before the tribesman’s eyes seem to melt, becoming exceedingly blurred.
Driven by his body’s protective instincts, he tightly shut his eyes.
But even with closed eyelids, the intense light made the "world" in front of him fall into an immaculate whiteness.
Utterly terrified already, suddenly exposed to this "miraculous" phenomenon, the tribesman completely lost his ability to think.
When Chen Zhou signaled Saturday to begin asking questions and took out paper and pen to record the tribesman’s "testimony," he, in turn, spilled everything he knew without reservation, like a bamboo tube pouring out beans.