Yi Qinglan exerted all her strength to wrench against the iron chains, trying to free her hands. She tried dozens of times, but it was completely futile.
One end of the chain was securely anchored to the wall, while the other end clamped her hands in a vice-like grip, refusing to let go.
Calming herself down, Yi Qinglan began to analyze her predicament.
Earlier, she had been lured into a formation by a mountain demon (Shan Xiao), and when she woke up, she was already here. That formation must have been a unique teleportation array, capable of instantly transporting someone from one place to another.
Why did the mountain demon transfer her here? Could it be that it held a grudge over their clash at Muyin Mountain?
Steeling her nerves, Yi Qinglan began to carefully observe her surroundings.
In the dimly lit dungeon cell, over twenty young women sat huddled on the floor. Just like Yi Qinglan, their hands and feet were shackled with iron chains, and their clothes were tattered, dirty, and stained. The women leaned silently against the walls, staring blankly at the ground. Occasionally, they would scratch themselves or shift their limbs to change positions.
“Excuse me… what is this place?” Yi Qinglan asked in a tentative tone.
The women had already watched her coldly when she was struggling against the chains. Hearing her voice, a few of them raised their heads and glanced at her. But other than that, no one offered a reply.
Looking at their appearance, it seemed they had been imprisoned here for a very long time.
Undeterred, Yi Qinglan continued, “I am a cultivator from the Jingyun Sect. If you can tell me the reason behind your imprisonment here, I might find a way to get us all out.”
This time, not a single person even looked up.
“Don’t waste your breath,” a faint, barely audible voice finally drifted from a dark corner nearby after a long silence.
“Are you speaking to me?” Yi Qinglan looked in that direction.
She saw a frail figure sitting with her back turned, draped in a shapeless cloak of an indistinguishable color. A wide hood completely concealed her face and head.
Yi Qinglan waited for a while, but no further reply came.
Just as she assumed the other party would remain silent, the eerie voice drifted out once more:
“No matter who you are, once you’re in here, you can never leave.”
“Just what kind of place is this?” Yi Qinglan pressed.
The voice ignored her, continuing to mutter to itself, “It’s fate… it’s all fate…”
The dungeon returned to heavy silence. None of the other women reacted to those words, but Yi Qinglan knew every single one of them had heard.
Perhaps when they first arrived, they had struggled and cried for help just like her. But after being shut away from the light of day for so long, hope gradually withered. Eventually, they stopped speaking altogether. In their eyes, Yi Qinglan’s efforts were nothing but a futile waste of energy.
Just as Yi Qinglan was about to ask more, footsteps echoed from outside the cell.
She instantly became alert. To her surprise, the other women in the cell suddenly perked up at the sound, scrambling toward the door.
Before long, a narrow gap slid open at the bottom of the wall, and a large feeding trough was pushed inside before the opening was tightly locked again.
The moment the food trough slid into the cell, almost everyone pounced on it, fighting and snatching at the food inside, devouring it greedily. Looking closer, Yi Qinglan realized the food was surprisingly lavish. The women stuffed their mouths with meat and vegetables, grease smeared over their faces, eating with sheer delight.
Only the frail figure beside her remained motionless on the ground. She waited until the others had nearly finished the food before crawling over to pick up a few leftover fruits and vegetables, chewing them slowly.
Yi Qinglan had long since achieved Bigu (abstinence from grain/food) and did not need sustenance. Thus, she remained seated where she was. Through her observation, she noticed that with the exception of the frail girl, all the other women in the dungeon were plump and well-fed.
“Hey, hey! Why isn’t this one eating?!” Suddenly, a long pole poked through from outside the cell, jabbing heavily against Yi Qinglan’s back.
Yi Qinglan had not expected that someone outside would be specifically monitoring the women’s food intake. Because she was the only one who hadn’t touched the food, she had immediately become a thorn in the guards’ eyes.
Suddenly, another voice echoed from outside, “Forget it, forget it. This one is new.”
Only then was the long pole withdrawn.
“Whatever! Eat or starve, who cares!” the person outside grumbled. “The hour is almost here, hurry up, hurry up!”
Hurry up and do what?
In a corner of the cell, a small, square hatch slid open. A bowl was slid in from the outside, with a small blade dangling above it.
The woman closest to the hatch, who had been lying on the ground with a bloated belly, got up languidly upon seeing it open and crawled over.
“Move it!” The long pole poked her again.
Yi Qinglan heard the woman mumble in dissatisfaction, but she still deftly slashed her own wrist with the blade. Bright red blood flowed along her arm and into the bowl, continuing until the bowl was full. After shedding the blood, the woman looked utterly exhausted and slumped to one side.
Her wrist, exposed where her sleeve had fallen back, was crisscrossed with countless shocking scars.
“Perk up! This only happens once a month. We don’t feed you lavish meals every day for nothing!” Looking at the full bowl of fresh blood, the guard outside seemed highly pleased. He kicked the woman lightly, took the bowl away, and replaced it with a clean one.
Just like that, one woman after another in the dungeon stepped up, slit their wrists, and drained their blood.
Yi Qinglan watched with a racing heart. This dungeon was brutally bizarre, were they keeping so many women here like cattle just to harvest their blood? She wondered who was pulling the strings behind this and what kind of sinister plot they were hatching.
Soon, it was the frail girl’s turn.
Yi Qinglan watched as she slowly stepped forward and rolled up her sleeve, revealing a skeletal arm. Just as she was about to press the blade against her skin, Yi Qinglan’s finger twitched slightly. With a sharp clink, the blade slipped from the girl’s hand and clattered onto the floor.
Hearing the noise, the guard outside bolted upright and roared, “Can’t even hold a damn knife? Have you been eating our food for nothing?!” With that, he kicked the girl hard. She fell sideways, her face slamming against the ground, taking a long while to crawl back up.
“Make it snappy!”
Seeing this, a surge of anger flared in Yi Qinglan’s chest. She quietly slipped toward the door, channeling spiritual energy into her hand, intending to take down the guards in one fell swoop.
She had already formed the hand seal for the Fire-Condensing Incantation, and her spiritual energy was gathering, yet the flame refused to manifest.
Meanwhile, the frail girl had climbed back up and slit her wrist.
How could this be?!
Yi Qinglan stared at her own hand in disbelief, cold sweat breaking out on her forehead. The fiery attack she had envisioned showed no sign of life whatsoever.
She had cast the Fire Condensing Incantation thousands of times, it was an easy, natural technique for her, as if it had been tailor made for her soul. Even her Master had praised her exceptional talent the very first time she used it.
What went wrong?! She was a golden core stage cultivator with a fire spiritual root, how could she fail to summon even a spark?
Could this be another trick played by the mountain demon?
By now, the bowl in front of the frail woman was half-full of blood, and her breath had become paper thin.
Yi Qinglan channeled her spiritual energy again, trying dozens of times, but there was still no response. On her final attempt, a sudden, searing pain ripped through her dantian, as if it were about to tear apart.
Something was churning violently inside her dantian, one force was her own spiritual Qi, while the other was an extremely foreign, hostile energy.
“Ah!”
As the two forces battled, the agony became too much to bear, and Yi Qinglan let out a sharp cry.
The long pole thrust in without hesitation, hitting her. “What are you screaming for?! You’re next!”
What should I do?
The frail girl had finally finished bleeding, collapsing onto the ground motionless, seemingly unconscious.
Enduring the pain, Yi Qinglan dragged herself toward the hatch under the guard’s impatient urging.
“Hurry up!” the guard snarled.
Holding the blade, Yi Qinglan brought it toward her wrist, but her sharp eyes darted outside, locking onto the guards’ positions.
There were two guards, both ordinary men. They would be easy to handle.
She stole another glance, but the guard suddenly turned and walked right up to her.
“Why aren’t you bleeding yet?! Looking for a beating?!” the guard threatened viciously.
“I didn’t mean to,” Yi Qinglan feigned a pitiful, helpless expression. “Please look, why is this blade so blunt?”
“Huh? Really?” The guard squatted down in front of her. “I warn you, you’d better not play any tricks, otherwise…”
Just as Yi Qinglan gripped the blade, preparing to strike with all her might, the guard suddenly turned his head and stood up to walk away.
“Why is the blood collection taking so long today?” A third guard’s voice echoed from a distance.
Yi Qinglan frowned slightly. Dealing with three opponents instead of two significantly lowered her chances of success.
“Stop fussing,” the third guard’s voice drew closer. “Just hurry up and deliver what we have. They’re waiting urgently on the other side.”
The two guards quickly complied.
“Don’t you guys know? In the future, we probably won’t have to do this tedious blood-letting work anymore,” the newcomer said casually.
“Really?” The other two guards looked surprised.
“Oh, you guys spend all day watching the cells, haven’t you heard?” The third man sat down, sprawling his legs comfortably. “Inside scoop from the higher-ups. They say that soon, we won’t have to deal with these trivial matters. We’re moving on to the big leagues.”
“What big league? Come on, tell us!”
While the three guards chatted enthusiastically, they busy themselves packing up the buckets of blood to carry them away. Soon, silence returned to the corridor outside. In their haste, they had actually forgotten to lock the hatch.
Still holding the blade, Yi Qinglan squeezed it hard, bending it into a thin, wire like shape, and inserted it into the keyhole of her chains.
After some lock picking, a soft click sounded, and the iron chains fell away.
Without a second thought, Yi Qinglan used the same method to unlock all the chains on the other women in the cell. She then delivered a heavy kick to the cell door. With a deafening crash, the heavy iron door collapsed outward.
The women stared blankly, not yet realizing what was happening.
“Hurry, run!” Yi Qinglan urged, pushing them toward the exit one by one. “Before they come back!”
As if waking from a dream, the women suddenly realized they were finally free after who knew how long. They began scrambling frantically toward the exit.
The frail girl waited until everyone else had fled. She looked left, right, back, and forth, making sure the coast was clear before creeping to the doorway. Then, like a startled mouse, she darted out.
However, a few women remained lying in the cell, refusing to leave even with the door wide open, choosing to sleep instead.
Yi Qinglan tried her best to persuade them, barely managed to drag them to the doorway, but with no other options, she had to run out on her own.
Perhaps to these people, being fed was more important than anything else, including freedom.
Following a dark, hidden passage up to the surface, Yi Qinglan discovered that this place was disguised as an incredibly ordinary civilian residence, looking no different from any other house. Shockingly, the location was not remote at all, it was situated right in a bustling part of the city, with crowds of people walking by on the streets.
To think someone would dare to run such a heinous operation right under the sun in the middle of the city!
Yi Qinglan frowned, recalling what the guards had said about the “big league.” She was certain it boded nothing good. While this batch of women had been saved by chance, others would surely fall victim in the future.
As a cultivator, it was her duty to eliminate evil and help the weak. But right now, the priority was to figure out how she had ended up here.
The physical exertion of running had agitated her dantian again. The searing pain returned, forcing her to find an secluded alleyway to sit down and regulate her breath.
Even after her breathing stabilized, she still felt something was amiss. Though she had suppressed the foreign, malevolent Qi with her spiritual energy, she had not eradicated it. The two opposing forces were still locked in a fierce, chaotic battle inside her.
Suddenly, a slight rustle came from behind her.
“Who is it?!”
A head poked out from behind Yi Qinglan, looking incredibly suspicious and timid.
“Heroine, it’s me, it’s me!”
Yi Qinglan looked closely. It was the frail woman she had rescued from the dungeon.
Because the dungeon had been too dark, Yi Qinglan hadn’t been able to see her face clearly. Now that she saw her in daylight, she couldn’t help but feel startled.
Above her skeletal body sat a head that was practically skin and bones. Her frame suggested she was only in her twenties, yet her face was haggard, sunken, and exhausted. Her hair was extremely sparse, with only a few strands remaining, making her look like a refugee who had gone without food for a very long time.