28 The Dungeon's Torment
The entire He An clan is shrouded in the darkness of yet another quiet and desolate night that has descended upon Longhua Shan Mountain, with the gentle moonlight doing little to provide illumination to the inhabitants below.
Within the clan, the sparse streetlights are few and far between, casting long shadows with large distances between them. The streets are devoid of people at this late hour, with the majority of activity confined to the main thoroughfares passing through key areas of the clan.
Among those who wander the deserted streets of the clan late at night, one will hardly find a woman, only men—most of whom hurry along, concealing their faces. The majority are either engaged in dubious dealings or headed towards the clan's brothels.
But irrelevant to everything happening in the streets of the clan, a man of precarious appearance with a body so thin that all his ribs are visible, along with almost all the bones of his body, lies naked on a stone slab with all his limbs tied by iron chains that restrict him.
If anyone were to see the man in this situation, they would wonder if he had ever eaten in his life before asking what he had done to deserve such torture because his body bears signs of cuts and lashings, but primarily on his arm, there are signs of needle punctures. Next to his slab, there is a plaque with the inscription "Feng Zhi Sai Mo."
The man has lost track of how long he has been in this place, but to him, it feels like decades since he came to this basement to be used as a laboratory rat for nefarious experiments conducted by a demon.
For most of the time, the only thing he hears are the sounds of blood drops falling irregularly from the bodies of the other people in this place.
Although he cannot even turn his head a bit to see who else is with him here after spending so much time here, he knows them either by their screams when they undergo torture or by their cries of despair.
You might wonder why they cannot simply talk to each other. That's because most enemy gu masters who are captured and turned into slaves have their tongues cut out so they cannot communicate or plan a revolt among themselves.
Well, this actually only applies to male gu masters, as for women, their tongues are kept, but this is not out of any mercy or protection for the women; it's simply because the gu masters who buy and obtain sex slaves do not want their products damaged.
He knows this because it's a practice common in all three clans, just like the Feng Zhi clan he belongs to. In fact, despite not being proud of it, he himself has been to one of those brothels with sex slaves more than once.
Perhaps this is the punishment the heavens are giving him for not only witnessing such demonic acts and doing nothing against them, but in fact, joining in just to satisfy the dark desires he had to take over a female gu master's body by force.
Suddenly, he feels a strong burning sensation entering his veins and using his bloodstream to reach his whole body, making him feel as if he had been injected with a dose of deadly poison.
But instead of killing him, this liquid that entered his veins actually provided strength and nourishment for him to continue living. But this did not bring him happiness; in fact, it only increased his melancholy and depression.
This is not the first time this has happened; in fact, when he came to this prison, he had a strong, muscular body, as he had been a slave doing manual labor for over two years.
But during the entire period he spent in this place, he ate nothing and drank not even a drop of water. The only thing keeping him alive is this liquid entering his veins, which he knows from his torturer's words is the effect of a gu created by his torturer.
Blood Nutrition Gu—this is the name of the only thing that both keeps him alive and tortures him the most during the time he has been imprisoned here.
Suddenly, he hears the sound of a door opening with a loud creak, making him extremely panicked as his body trembles in fear. Amidst his terror, he prays it's not the executioner but one of the guards.
"My slut missed me?" The guard, quite drunk, speaks while ignoring all the other prisoners and heading towards a cell where a female prisoner he has a scornful look on his face is.
The gu master of the Feng Zhi clan, called Sai Mo, lying on the slab, breathes a sigh of relief as he feels his whole body relax since the guard came here only to take advantage of the female prisoner, so this has nothing to do with him.
While Sai Mo thanks the heavens for not being the executioner, he begins to hear muffled moans coming from the room where the guard entered. These moans come from only one masculine voice while the female gu master suffers silently as she waits for it to end quickly.
What happens is that he hears the guard leaving the prison a few minutes later, fully satisfied. But both Sai Mo and the female gu master know this is not the end of her suffering, and like them, they expect another guard to enter the prison and quickly go to the cell of the female gu master.
This is a routine he has seen happen on numerous, what he imagines to be, nights for the past two months, to the point where the woman, who at first screamed and tried to resist at all costs while crying in fear to deaf ears, now simply endures all suffering in silence.
But before the second gu master could do anything, a voice that probably sounded like an savior to the female gu master but the worst of demons to him.
"You leave now, I have experiments to conduct." Chen Wei speaks irritably as he quickly enters the dungeon he uses to store his experiments while pushing the guard outside without caring at all about what he would do with the prisoner.
"Yes, young master!" The guard speaks with melancholy as he leaves, thinking how unlucky he was for Chen Wei to arrive just before he could have fun with the prisoner.
Chen Wei begins to check the physical state of all the prisoners while using a gu to record the results of the experiments that have yielded efficient results. This has become a routine almost as natural as breathing for Chen Wei.
"Sai Mo, he has been surviving purely using the Blood Nutrition Gu for four months now, but his condition is critical. I don't think he will survive another month." Chen Wei speaks with a neutral voice, showing neither emotion nor sadness regarding the situation he has put this gu master in, which can be described as horrendous torture.
As soon as Sai Mo heard that he probably won't survive another month, he feels immense euphoria and happiness instead of sadness since it means this torture will finally end, and he can finally rest in peace.
"Unfortunately, I haven't found a way yet to make the nutrients provided enough for an adult to stay healthy, let alone make the process painless." Chen Wei notes all the results he obtained with this research using a specific gu to record only the results of this research as he moves to another prisoner.
"Yun Be still seems not to have adapted to the transplanted arms and legs, and he can't control them." Chen Wei looks at a gu master who is pinned to the wall by his trunk and head.
His arms and legs were torn off by Chen Wei before he transplanted the arms and legs of other people he deemed compatible and tried to use gu from the Blood Path to make a successful transplant. Unfortunately, it seems that it did not work because the limbs did not properly adapt to the body, and now they are necrotizing, and the gu master cannot move those limbs, which is disappointing.
"Well, this is a failure, but I expected it, as I am only at the beginning of my research on blood limbs type gu." This research is very important to Chen Wei, who values his own life greatly, and he has a great desire to replicate the power that the Blood Path presents in the novel, allowing a gu master to heal from just a drop of blood even after their entire body has been destroyed.
After finishing recording the results of this research, he goes to a dimly lit corner of the dungeon where he has something that can be described as a rat paradise, as it is a cage where he breeds rats enough to reach the hundreds, but with a wave of his hand, all the rats that were moving chaotically before stop.
"Blood slave really has an incredible effect, sincerely one of my most ingenious creations." The gu he praises has the effect of using the blood in the victim's body to control them, but the victim remains conscious and unable to act against it as they have lost total control of their body.
"Unfortunately, at rank 1, it only has the capacity to control small animals like rats or similar creatures, but this still has great potential..." This potential is something he is working vehemently to make possible, as it would be a gigantic and even unfair advantage against his enemies.
This is espionage; he could use small rodents as well as small animals to spy on his political enemies and discover all their secrets, but this is still a work in progress for Chen Wei.
As he walks through the dungeon, he reaches the cell of the female gu master whom he saw the guard inside when he came to check on his prisoners and experiments.
"Lin Xi... if I'm not mistaken, she was captured on my first mission." The female gu master is lying on the ground, tears falling from her face as she cries softly.
She is without any clothing, revealing a body that has already been greatly abused, looking at the wounds and bruises.
"I remember almost killing all the guards when I found out what they were doing." This is not because he is a good person, because if he were, this would not be happening, but it was because he thought this was a possible excuse for them to enter here and steal the results of his research, as well as potentially damaging his experiments.
But then he had an inspiration for the creation of a gu that could make even a demon itself recoil at Chen Wei's cruelty.
So, he allowed the guards to enter the dungeon to do whatever they wanted as long as they gave a sample of their blood each time. Of course, Chen Wei set up surveillance measures so they wouldn't touch or see anything else from his other experiments.
Chen Wei approaches Lin Xi and checks if she is pregnant. "Great! I was tired of waiting. Finally, one of these bastards did their job!"
The gu he plans to create has such a demonic aura that if anyone else discovered it, they might never look at him the same way again, they might even try to kill him. "Hmm, if it works, I'll name this gu Bloody Ghost Baby Gu!"
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Guys, I don't know if this was too GrimDark and I exaggerated the cruelty a lot but since this is the Gu world I don't think I exaggerated too much, what do you think?
