Time passed slowly for the two prisoners, until, a few days later, they heard men at the door of their cell. Someone was pulling away the bricks that barricaded them inside. For a moment, the ladies assumed that Gaozong had had a change of heart, and that, at the very least, their conditions would be improved. However, this turned out to be the cruellest trick of all, as the men at the door were revealed to be servants not of Gaozong, but of Wu. They revealed that they had been ordered to subject both to a hundred lashes – a punishment that could easily kill them.
