I waited in comfortable silence, occasionally checking on my captive to ensure he didn't die prematurely. The healing pill I'd given him was working, stabilizing his shattered body enough to keep him conscious and aware.
That was important. I wanted him to witness everything that was coming.
Time passed slowly in the cave. Ten minutes. Twenty. Thirty.
Then the token vibrated.
"Brother Lu, I am at the location you described. But I cannot find the boulder."
I felt it, a spiritual signature approaching rapidly. The bandit leader, his Qi Refining cultivation blazing like a beacon as he rushed toward the location I'd given him.
"Leader, I will send my man to guide you. Wait a moment."
"Alright, brother Lu."
I pocketed the token and stood up, stretching slowly. "Looks like our guest has arrived. Time to play my part."
Then I walked to where the overseer lay on the ground, lifted him without ceremony, and placed him on the rock bed.
"Don't move," I said. "Unless you want more pain."
He blinked once. Slowly.
"Good."
Moving to the entrance, I checked that my mask was properly in place and stepped out of the boulder, just as I went out, a figure burst through the trees. The bandit leader, a rough-looking man in his forties with scarred features and wild eyes.
"Brother Lu!" he called out, scanning the area. "Where are you?"
I deactivated my concealment slightly, allowing him to see me in my disguised state. "Leader! Over here! Quickly, before the overseer recovers!"
He rushed over, his face twisted with vengeful excitement. "You are the one brother Lu sent, right? Where is he? Where's that bastard Zhang Wuhen?"
"Deep inside the cave, leader. He's badly wounded, barely conscious. Accountant Lu was also inside the cave waiting for you at the entrance. This is our chance!"
The bandit leader drew his sword, spiritual energy surging around him. "Finally! After everything he's put us through, it's time for that demon to pay!"
He charged into the cave without hesitation, and I followed calmly behind.
The bandit leader came through the entrance laughing, broad and loud and thoroughly pleased with himself. I followed a step behind him, unhurried. As the leader's eyes adjusted to the interior of the cave and he saw the overseer laid out on the rock bed, his laughter stopped.
"What. Why is he here?" He turned, scanning the space. "And where is brother Lu?"
I placed my hand on his shoulder from behind which seemed like a friendly gesture.
He went still. Then his voice came out low and dangerous. "What are you doing. Do you want to die. You dare to place your hand on me."
"I am going to give you something much sweeter," I said, smiling behind the mask.
The bandit leader's eyes went wide with shock and agony. "What... what are you doing..."
I punched him in the lower abdomen. with the same devastating precision I'd used on Zhang Wuhen.
Crack!
His dantian shattered just like the overseer's had. The force of the blow lifted him into the air, and I caught his upper body with my left hand, preventing him from flying into the wall.
He hung there suspended for few seconds before I released him, letting him crumple to the ground clutching his abdomen. Bestial cries of pain tore from his throat as the reality of his destroyed cultivation sank in.
I checked his dantian with my spiritual sense, confirming it was thoroughly shattered. Then I forced another healing pill into his mouth and sealed his acupoints as well making his body still.
I made him sit against the wall facing the rock bed.
I looked at him. "Watch everything. All of it. If I find your eyes closed or turned away I will put you in his place."
He stared at me with the eyes of a man who believed me completely.
Then I stood and looked at the overseer, who had watched the entire thing without making a sound.
"Now that we have our audience," I said pleasantly, "let us begin the show."
I walked to the center of the room and stood beside the rock bed. I looked down at the overseer and lowered my mask until my face was visible.
"Are you ready for your treatment, patient?"
He made no sound.
"Ah. I forgot to take consent." I removed the blockage from his vocal acupoint.
What came out of him was not dignified, not the voice of a senior cultivator or a man who had once held power over others. It was the voice of something small and cornered.
"Please. Please. Show mercy. Kill me quickly. I am begging you."
I considered this for a moment.
"I have your consent," I said. "You can rest easy."
He heard only what he wanted to hear, and something in his face settled slightly, the way a man's face settles when he thinks the worst is almost over.
He closed his eyes.
Then he felt something like a liquid hit his lower part. He flinched
He did not understand what it was for half a second. Then the burning began, concentrated and absolute, spreading from the most vulnerable point of his body outward, and the sound he made was nothing like a human voice.
AAAhhh!!!
It was a howl pulled from somewhere beneath language, his body convulsing against the rock, his hands scrabbling uselessly at the surface beneath him.
Against the wall the bandit leader's drooping head snapped upright hearing the screams.
He looked at the rock bed where the overseer lower part was set on fire. Sweat beads began to stream down his face and neck in puddles and he started to gulp but he couldn't, not trying to look away from the rock bed because he knew that man's words were not a joke if he finds me looking away, I will also be receiving the same treatment.
I opened another acupoint on the overseer, one that sharpened sensation rather than dulling it, and watched his awareness of what was happening to him become suddenly, terribly clear.
That was fine. I had brought water. I had brought healing powder, ground fine from pills that cost more than most people earned in a month. I had brought a 5% diluted vitality solution I had prepared at home using the vitality drop card, enough to pull a man back from the edge of unconsciousness
and set him at the beginning of the road again.
Each time he began to slip away I brought him back.
Each time his body began to fail I repaired it.
[I have made a vitality solution of 1 litre water mixing with the vitality drop from the green card rewards i got from the harvest of vermillion rice then i diluted them again into another two litter bottles and the remaining into 6 bottles of 5 percent , 2 bottles of 10 percent and 25 percent concentration]
"This," I said, my voice conversational, "is for the comment you made about the envoy. About what she would be good for." I did not look up from what I was doing. "She is going to be mine. You should have kept your thoughts to yourself."
The foundation establishment body was strong. It resisted. It took time to break to let the fire burn his d**k completely.
I sprayed water to put out the fire
I let him rest for a moment in the particular silence of a man who has nothing left to say.
"But that was only the first debt," I continued. "There is another one. Older."
"Confused?" I said to them both who are looking at me in confusion where they have provoked this devil " Let me explain what's happening here."
"Five years ago I had a childhood friend who was slightly older than me by two years, she was like my own sister to me. Her name was Zi Xiaomen. She was killed by bandits who attacked our village one day. One of them didn't just loot, he cut her wrists drained her blood. Slowly." I kept my voice level. "She was a child. She cried, pleading to show mercy for a long time before it was over."
The overseer stared at me from the bed, confused, his mind too fractured to follow the thread.
The bandit leader made a sound. Wet and struggling, his blocked acupoints preventing anything more. His eyes were frantic.
"Oh," I said, looking at him. "Our audience knows the answer."
I sent a thread of energy to open his vocal acupoint just enough.
"Senior." His voice came out in pieces. "It was the previous gang leader. Chen Lingong. He was the only one I ever knew who did that. Who enjoyed it." He swallowed hard. "But he was killed. That overseer killed him."
"Correct," I said. "You have my good grace."
I stood up.
"So I will continue the treatment for you patient but with extra care." I looked at the overseer, who had understood now, whose eyes were wide with the specific horror of a man who realizes that the monster he created unknowingly from his actions in past. "And for our audience, I will make sure it is educational."
What followed I will not record in full.
I had kept the anger in my heart for five years, feeding it nothing, letting it sit in the dark, starved it with hunger it grew dense and cold over time.
Now I opened the door and let it out slowly, with my both hands, the way a craftsman works, without haste, without waste, until there was nothing left of it and nothing left of him that had not been accounted for.
The overseer lost consciousness somewhere in the middle.
I saved him and repeated the process again and again and again hearing his heart wretched screams.
The bandit leader had long since run out of colour from my actions and overseer screams.
"Tell me," I said coldly, my voice cut through the silent cave like a blade. "How did you survive Elder Mu's attack? A Golden Core strike should have killed you instantly."
The overseer's broken body trembled, blood seeping from countless wounds. His voice came out in ragged gasps.
"The... the armour"
"What armour?" I pressed, leaning closer.
"My master... cough... gave it to me... before he died.... His final gift... to his only disciple... gasp... It can withstand attacks... from a Golden Core cultivator...but it was already damaged."
"Why did you do this? "
"Why? After my master died... I was sent to this backwater place by that bastard Elder Huang... cough... even after he obtained the elixir that was originally my master's... cough-cough...fearing that I might attack his grandson in retaliation."
His voice became hoarse, with anger seeping through.
"While I was examining the armour during my hopeless days in the city" His eyes glazed with memory. "I found a hidden compartment... haha... Inside was... a cultivation technique scroll...that changed everything..."
"What technique?" I demanded.
"Nether Blood Fire Art, hehe" he gave me a frenzy smile. "Cough-cough... It uses... virgin female blood... gasp...Which is an excellent yin resource... hah... for yang cultivation...to counter the side effects..."
My killing intent flared, but I forced it down. "And your master? Where did he get this armour? Did he know about this technique?"
Then the overseer's original sinister laugh was replaced by a sad broken face.
"Kah... No. If he'd known, he might have lived... gasp... But knowing him...he probably still would've died for that cursed sect... hah...His loyalty was wasted on ungrateful hypocrites...and those backstabbing elders who didn't deserve it..." he laughed bitterly
"It was my luck that I found it... gasp..."
"During the last sect war... he participated... cough...he killed an elder from the opposing force... hah...got it from his storage bag...So he took it as spoils of war..."
He coughed again, more violently this time. "Cough-cough-cough..."
"But that battle... gasp... left him with injuries that never healed... wheeze..." His voice broke down. " Eventually... they killed him...by taking away his only last chance of survival...after all his sacrifice...after decades of loyalty... cough-cough...they let him die"
His voice grew weaker. "Hah... Just like... gasp...a street dog.."
And after long time silence filled the cave, the bandit leader was trying his best not make a sound or move an inch through out the process.
He had given me the answers I wanted. He'd also spilled the secret of his cultivation technique.
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