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Graphic depictions of violence, mentions of sexual assault
Wu Ruo woke up and found himself strung up with iron chains in the shape of a cross. In front of his chest was an iron frame, propping his body up in his family’s yard. Countless different kinds of runes were carved on the iron chains and frame.
He pulled on the chains, which clanked, and recalled that he had been drinking with some good friends in the yard, how did he get tied up like this?
“Awake?” a familiar voice came from behind him, and then the person walked over to stand in front of him.
Wu Ruo saw that the person was his best friend, Ruan Zhizheng, and waved around the iron chains on his wrists with a helpless expression: “What are you playing at this time, locking me up like this?”
He grew up with Ruan Zhizheng since they were kids, their friendship was deep, like brothers, and they were willing to cross swords with others just to help each other.
Ruan Zhizheng didn’t smile at him, and asked indifferently: “I’ll only ask you once, where is the book that contains the Shadow Stealing secret technique?”
Wu Ruo was dumbfounded, wrinkling his eyebrows: “You already know, I don’t have it.”
Even though he had the Shadow Stealing secret technique in his head, there were only the words “Shadow Stealing” with no content. However, the whole world was spreading that whoever had the Shadow Stealing secret technique would be invincible. It was being spread like wildfire, and many clans wanted the technique. Even he thought that the technique was especially impressive, but he just didn’t have any way to put it into practice.
He received this technique when he was 25 years old. Before that, he was a loser who couldn’t even cultivate. Only after breaking his longevity plaque by mistake did he realize it wasn’t that he couldn’t cultivate, but that someone had sealed his ability to cultivate and it could only be unsealed by breaking the plaque.
After breaking the seal and accessing his cultivation ability, multiple cultivation techniques appeared in his mind. Other than Shadow Stealing, every technique had detailed descriptions and instructions to learn it, and that was how he started cultivating.
Ruan Zhizheng turned to the guard standing by the gate and ordered: “Bring them in.”
Four bodyguards brought a gagged middle-aged couple in front of Wu Ruo, and then kicked them to their knees with a loud crash.
“Dad? Mum?” Wu Ruo saw that the middle-aged couple was his parents, and felt both shock and anger: “Zhizheng, you’ve gone overboard. Hurry and let go of my parents.”
Wu Ruo’s parents saw that he had been tied up to the iron frame and agitatedly called out to him with muffled sounds.
Zhizheng picked up a large sword and just chopped off Wu Ruo’s father’s arm.
Wu Ruo’s father groaned as his eyes widened, sweat beading at his forehead. It was so painful that he was about to faint.
Wu Ruo’s mother wailed loudly beneath the gag as she looked Wu Ruo’s father.
Wu Ruo was stunned, he was drunk, and couldn’t tell if the situation in front of his eyes was real or fake.
Ruan Zhizheng laughed coldly, and stepped on Wu Ruo’s father’s other arm with his feet: “Wu Ruo, this is what happens when you won’t tell me where the book is.”
Wu Ruo’s father groaned weakly as he fell to the floor, paralyzed.
Wu Ruo murmured to himself: “Ruan Zhizheng, you…”
“Still not talking?” Ruan Zhizheng swung at Wu Ruo’s father’s neck viciously.
In an instant, a head fell to the ground and fresh blood splattered through the air.
Wu Ruo stared at his father’s corpse blankly, unable to believe that his good friend would kill his father.
Before this, this person would still intimately address his father as “uncle”, however, the still-warm drops of blood on Wu Ruo’s face told him that this was reality and not just a dream.
Wu Ruo’s mother made muffled noises beneath the gag. Seeing that Wu Ruo’s father’s head had been chopped off, she broke away from the men holding her back as if possessed and threw herself onto his body with inconsolable grief.
Wu Ruo came back to his senses, eyes reddened with fury, and madly trashed at the iron chains, roaring with grief and indignation: “Ruan Zhizheng, you killed my father, you fucking bastard, I’m going to kill you!”
Ruan Zhizheng’s eyes hardened, and he raised the sword to Wu Ruo’s mother’s neck: “If you still don’t talk, the next one will be your mum.”
Wu Ruo’s eyes that were filled with hatred flashed with panic: “We’ve never kept secrets from each other, wouldn’t you know whether I have the secret technique book or not?”
“Seems like the secret technique is more important than your mum,” Ruan Zhizheng suddenly raised the large sword.
Wu Ruo raised his voice, horrified and shocked: “D-don’t do anything stupid! Ruan Zhizheng, is a secret technique book more important than our friendship of over a decade?”
“Friendship?” Ruan Zhizheng looked at him with ridicule in his gaze: “You really thought I treated you as a friend. Hah, did you know? I only got close to you because you were a loser who couldn’t cultivate. Only in front of you did I feel confident about myself, but I don’t know what kind of goddamned good luck you have. Not only did you gain the ability to cultivate, but your skills also became more and more outstanding. I became like a dog that could only trail behind you pathetically. Other people looked down on me, and I even had to endure their bullying.”
The more he spoke, the angrier he got, and the large sword pressed down even more.
Wu Ruo called out in fear: “Don’t! Don’t kill my mum, if you want the secret technique book, I’ll give it to you. Isn’t it good enough if I just give it to you? Just please, let my mum go.”
“Alright. Seeing as your mum is still is beautiful even though she’s over 50, I’ll spare her life.” Ruan Zhizheng kept his large sword, and said to the four bodyguards: “I’ll gift this madam to the four of you.”
“Thank you, young master,” the four bodyguards hauled Wu Ruo’s mother up, and smiled lewdly: “This old lady is already at this sort of age, but she still looks so tender and supple, like an unmarried young woman.”
One of the bodyguards started kissing Wu Ruo’s mother’s face, another one tore open the upper piece of her clothes, revealing her pale green undergarments. Yet another tore her skirt, and the last one eagerly took off his own pants, revealing his hideously excited manhood.
Wu Ruo’s mother cried, muffled, as she tried to pull away, but the four bodyguards only got more excited and pressed her onto the dining table.
The one who had already taken off his pants pressed forward and forced himself in, then he started thrusting.
Immediately, the whole yard was filled with the sound of lascivious laughter.
“The four of you dare to touch my mum, I’ll let you die in pieces1Chinese believe that it’s disrespectful to dismember a body because then the spirit/soul of a person is incomplete and will not be able to reincarnate!” Wu Ruo howled, crazed: “Guards! Guards, come quick!”
“Don’t bother calling, nobody’s going to come,” Ruan Zhizheng said fearlessly because he knew he had backup: “The Wu family members can’t wait for the lot of you to die, why would they bother coming to save you?”
Wu Ruo glared fiercely with wide eyes: “That can’t be, there’s no way.”
But if it wasn’t like Ruan Zhizheng said, how could there be such a noisy mess, yet no one had come to save them?
“Your uncles have always been suppressed by your father’s skill since they were children and developed jealousy and hatred towards him. It was because of their scheming that your father’s cultivation was destroyed. And your brother, Wu Zhu, do you know how he died?” Ruan Zhizheng brought up Wu Zhu, who had already been dead for many years, and smiled mockingly: “Because the Wu family was jealous of his talent, they took advantage when he went for field training and used other people to kill your older brother.”
“I don’t believe you, you’re just trying to ruin our relationship with each other,” Wu Ruo couldn’t believe that his uncles would be so merciless.
“And your younger sister, Wu Xi, they were the ones who instigated your brother-in-law, Ba Se, to put a love curse on her. That’s why she agreed to marry him, and later when she died, it was because there was an accident when Ba Se tried cultivating her into a marionette.”
“You’re lying, you’re just making all of this up!” Wu Ruo roared.
“It’s up to you whether you want to believe it or not, anyway, the Wu family will not come to save you. And they might just be hiding in a dark corner watching how I kill all of you.”
“Ack!” Suddenly, the bodyguard gave a bloodcurdling scream.
Wu Ruo’s mother, who couldn’t continue enduring being raped, had kicked the bodyguard’s nether regions and used all her strength to break away from the bodyguards. She rushed up towards the wall.
Wu Ruo yelled fearfully: “No, Mum! Don’t—!”
With a loud thump, Wu Ruo’s mother crashed her head against the wall.
Wu Ruo’s face filled with despair: “Mum! Mum!”
The bodyguard went forward to check her breathing: “Dead.”
Wu Ruo looked, full of hate, at the person who used to be his bosom friend and roared: “Ruan Zhizheng, you monster, I hope you die painfully, I won’t let this go!”
Ruan Zhizheng laughed coldly: “Alright, bring it on. Actually, I knew that you don’t have the secret technique book, but I just wanted to use it as an excuse to torture you to my heart’s content. Seeing you in such anguish, I couldn’t be any happier. Keep yelling, yell louder, the louder you yell, the more pain I’ll know you’re in.”
He raised the long sword and viciously chopped off Wu Ruo’s right leg.
Wu Ruo let out a bloodcurdling scream, it was so painful that he almost fainted.
“Haha!” suddenly, someone standing on the yard walls cackled madly: “Wu Ruo, oh Wu Ruo, this day has finally come for you.”
Ruan Zhizheng smiled at the person on the perimeter wall, asking: “Master2师傅 (shifu): a respectful way to refer to a master who takes someone in as an apprentice to teach a specialized craft or set of skills. Not to be confused with servants referring to their employers, does this please you?”
The person wore a black cloak, and because they were standing in the shadows, there was no way to see how they looked like.
“I’m pleased, very pleased, viciously torture him to death for me.” The mysterious person said, filled with enmity: “I want him to wish he was dead.”
“Yes, sir,” Ruan Zhizheng raised the sword again and cut off Wu Ruo’s right hand.
Wu Ruo fainted on the spot.
Ruan Zhizheng got his men to wake Wu Ruo with cold water.
“I hate his eyes, gouge them both out,” the mysterious person said, their tone filled with thick hatred.
Wu Ruo’s breath was thin as gossamer threads: “Who are you?”
He never knew that Ruan Zhizheng had a master, and didn’t know when he could have provoked this person.
“You’re not worthy to know who I am.”
Ruan Zhizheng took out a dagger, and heartlessly dug out Wu Ruo’s eyes. The bloodied eyeballs popped free of their eye sockets. The eye sockets were left with two bloody, gaping holes, and fresh blood flowed freely.
Wu Ruo fainted again.
The mysterious person said: “Don’t let him die yet.”
Ruan Zhizheng fed Wu Ruo a medicine pill3丹药 (danyao): refers to these sorts of old-timey brown chocolate candy-looking pills, and then woke him again.
Wu Ruo felt that the events of the night were inseparable from the mysterious person, and asked with hatred filling his breast: “What have we done? Why would you do this to my family and me?”
“Why?” the mysterious person laughed eerily: “If you have a next life, I’ll tell you. Zhizheng, cut off his tongue, I don’t want to hear his voice anymore.”
“Yes, sir,” Ruan Zhizheng grabbed Wu Ruo’s lower jaw forcefully, and let the bodyguards pull out his tongue.
Just at this moment, a bloodcurdling scream came from afar, someone screamed shrilly: “Help me! It’s Hei Xuanyi, Hei Xuanyi has come!”
The mysterious person became apprehensive: “Hei Xuanyi has arrived, let’s go.”
Wu Ruo was surprised and smiled miserably.
Hei Xuanyi…
The husband that he’s never once truly looked in the eye unexpectedly came all the way here.
It was too bad, it was already too late…
Ruan Zhizheng was not content to just let go of Wu Ruo like this, and stabbed him straight in the heart with the dagger, then set his body on fire.
Wu Ruo bore the pain in every inch of his body, and used his dying breath to swear an oath: “I, Wu Ruo, swear on my spirit not to enter the cycle of reincarnation, swear to turn into an evil spirit, to never let them have peace for generations and generations.”
