The torture in ancient times was very strange, not to mention seeing, or listening to it was very maddening.
For example, the "grooming" of one of the most famous tortures in the Ming Dynasty was as terrible as Ling Chi.
To put it simply, grooming is not to brush the hair, but to comb the skin and flesh of the sinner with a comb made of iron nails, and the person who is tortured by this torture will eventually be combed all the skin and flesh, and before it is over, the person will die of anger.
The earliest record of "grooming" is in the Old Book of Tang, when the Tang Dynasty minister Wu Sansi framed Huan Yanfan, the son of the chancellor, saying that he had framed Empress Wei, and Emperor Zhongzong exiled her, and Wu Sansi sent Zhou Lizhen to assassinate Huan Yanfan.
When Zhou Lizhen caught Huan Yanfan, he placed it on a bamboo bed full of sharpened bamboo skewers, and then dragged it around, so that Huan Yanfan's skin and flesh were scraped off by the bamboo skewers, revealing white bones, which was the earliest grooming punishment.
Because Zhou Lizhen's methods against Huan Yanfan were too cruel, this punishment was widely criticized, so no one would use it later, originally thought that the punishment of grooming disappeared, but did not expect that after the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, grooming appeared again.
After Zhu Yuanzhang ascended the throne, in order to maintain his imperial power, he took various cruel measures against his enemies and suspicious people in the imperial court, and resumed a large number of tortures, including the creepy-sounding punishment of grooming.
According to the relevant records of the "Records of the First Politics of the Holy Emperor", the grooming of the Ming Dynasty was even more frightening than the original version of the Tang Dynasty, and when the tortured person was removed from the execution room, all his clothes had to be removed, and the red stripes were tied to the tin bed.
The grooming of the Ming Dynasty was not to drag people, but to comb the skin and flesh with an iron nail comb, and before the execution, it was poured several times on the sinner's body with boiling boiling water, just like slaughtering a pig, and therefore, before the punishment was carried out, the sinner was actually dead.
During the Ming Dynasty, institutions such as dongchang and Jinyiwei had extremely numerous punishments, such as sausage pumping, lingchi, and lighting sky lanterns, which were only general operations, such as grooming, which also abounded.
Whether it was at that time or today, even if you didn't see it, just listening to the description, you felt very terrible back chills, and because of this, the sinners who were sentenced to this punishment in the Ming Dynasty were already scared and trembling like chaff before they could be tortured.