Transmigration; Married to My Ex-Fiancé's Uncle-Chapter 403; Black Water Ridge penitentiary maximum

Madam Chen looked even worse. Her hair hung in tangled strings. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying. She held herself protectively, arms wrapped around her torso as if she could shield herself from further harm. When the guards shoved her toward the center of the ring, she stumbled and nearly fell.

A guard stepped forward with a megaphone, addressing the assembled crowd. "Tonight’s entertainment features two special guests, wealthy businesspeople who thought they were above the law. Let’s show them how we treat people who think they’re better than everyone else in Black Water Ridge!"

The crowd roared approval, jeering and shouting insults at the two terrified figures in the ring.

The guard turned to Lin Feng and Madam Chen, his voice carrying through the megaphone. "Here’s how this works. You two fight each other. Really fight, not some half-hearted pushing. We want to see blood, we want to see pain, we want to see one of you broken on that concrete. If you don’t fight hard enough, the guards will come in and make it worse for both of you. Understand?"

Lin Feng’s voice was barely audible even with the ring’s acoustics. "Please, this is insane, we can’t....."

"Oh, you can," the guard interrupted. "And you will. Because the alternative is much worse than fighting your wife. Now, you’ve got ten seconds to start before we get creative with our motivation."

Shuyin leaned forward in her chair, her eyes locked on the scene. This was it. The moment she’d been waiting for without fully realizing it until now.

Lin Feng and Madam Chen stood frozen in the ring, staring at each other with horror and confusion. Neither moved to attack. Neither could comprehend that they were actually expected to hurt each other while a crowd watched and cheered.

"Ten," the guard counted down. "Nine. Eight."

At "three," Lin Feng made a desperate, clumsy lunge toward Madam Chen, not really an attack, more like he was trying to make it look like he was complying without actually hurting her. She stumbled backward, raising her hands defensively.

"That’s pathetic!" the guard shouted. "I said FIGHT, not dance! You want us to show you what real fighting looks like?"

Two guards stepped into the ring, moving toward the cowering couple with obvious intent.

That’s when survival instinct finally overcame Lin Feng’s hesitation. He swung at Madam Chen, a wild, uncoordinated punch that caught her shoulder and spun her around. She shrieked, more from shock than pain, and retaliated with her own desperate strike.

And just like that, the fight truly began.

It wasn’t skilled or strategic. It was pure, desperate survival fighting, two people who’d never experienced physical violence suddenly forced to inflict it on each other. They grappled and scratched and hit with the wild ineffectiveness of those who had no training, no strength, no experience with actual combat.

But the crowd loved it. They cheered every landed blow, laughed at every stumble, roared approval when Madam Chen’s wildly swinging hand connected with Lin Feng’s face hard enough to split his lip. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

Blood dripped onto the concrete. Lin Feng retaliated with a shove that sent Madam Chen crashing to the ground. She scrambled backward, crying, pleading for this to stop, but the guards just laughed and told them to keep going.

Shuyin watched it all with cold, focused attention. She felt Lu Yuze’s hand tighten on hers, asking without words if she was all right, if this was too much.

She squeezed back once, a signal that she was fine, that she needed to see this through.

Lin Feng was crying now too, tears and blood mixing on his face as he grabbed Madam Chen’s hair and pulled, making her scream. She kicked at his legs, her attacks as desperate and unskilled as his, and managed to connect with his knee hard enough to buckle it.

They were both exhausted already, neither having the physical conditioning for sustained fighting. But the guards wouldn’t let them stop, kept shouting at them to continue, threatening worse if they didn’t give the crowd a good show.

At one point, Madam Chen managed to land a lucky hit to Lin Feng’s throat that left him gasping for air. She looked horrified at what she’d done, reached toward him as if to help....

"No mercy!" a guard shouted. "Hit him again while he’s down!"

The crowd took up the chant. "Hit him! Hit him! Hit him!"

Madam Chen stood frozen, unable to follow through on the command. A guard stepped forward with an electric prod, showing it to her. "Do it, or I use this on both of you."

She hit him. A weak, sobbing blow that nonetheless caught Lin Feng’s already injured face and sent him fully to the ground.

Shuyin felt something shift inside her as she watched. She’d thought she wanted to see them suffer, wanted to watch them experience the powerlessness and fear they’d inflicted on her. And part of her did feel satisfied seeing them reduced to this, crying, bleeding, forced to hurt each other while strangers laughed.

But another part of her, a part she hadn’t expected, felt hollow. Watching this didn’t bring back the life they had stolen, Shuyin may never become live. Didn’t undo the death they had caused. Didn’t actually heal anything.

It was justice. It was deserved. But it was also just... sad. Two pathetic people destroying each other because they’d spent their lives destroying others, and now the bill had come due.

The fight continued for another brutal ten minutes before the guards finally called it off, not out of mercy but because both prisoners were too exhausted to continue providing entertainment. They lay on opposite sides of the ring, bruised and bleeding and broken, while the crowd jeered and threw things and expressed disappointment that it was over.

Director Chen appeared beside Shuyin’s chair. "Satisfactory?" he asked quietly.

"Yes," Shuyin said, her voice carrying none of the triumph she’d expected to feel. "It was... exactly what I wanted them to experience."