Pain! A piercing, bone-deep pain! It felt as if countless red-hot knives were slicing away at his bones inch by inch, tearing at his muscles, while his internal organs were crushed and stomped to mush. Wu Zhankui suddenly sprang up from the chaos. A hoarse roar burst from his throat, rough as a broken gong. Blood and phlegm caught in his throat, making him cough so hard that his whole body convulsed.
Before him was not that mountain of corpses and sea of blood. It wasn’t Zhao Wuji’s revolting, knife-smiling face, nor Liu Ruyan’s shameless figure standing by and watching coldly, without a shred of pity. And it wasn’t the hellish scene of those scum from the Xuantian Sect surrounding him, slowly pulling out his tendons and peeling off his skin.
He propped himself up on his arms and looked down. His hands were young, with clearly defined knuckles and the slightness of a sixteen-year-old boy, not the ghastly, fleshless, bloodied hands of his previous life after being tortured. He wore a coarse cloth shirt covered in patches, and lay on dry, hard firewood that dug painfully into his back. The air was thick with the choking smell of mold and smoke from the woodshed.
