What in the actual fuck was I looking at? What was this?

A shaky breath traveled up my throat as I laid eyes on what could only be described as the result of pure madness!

In the first cell we were about to walk past was a thin, corpse-like man. His stomach was open, with his intestines spilling onto the ground. One of those intestines was wrapped around his mouth as a gag to stop him from saying anything.

Flies had gathered around him, and for a second I thought he was dead. However, his body twitched, showing that he was still alive.

Cultivators often had strong vitality and could survive injuries no mortal ever could. I always saw that as an advantage in most cases. Yet, this... death would be better than whatever this was.

Despite the shocking sight, I was left in a trance and followed the Core Elder behind. But my eyes were glued to the cells as the following figure appeared in the second cell.

It was a prisoner with his limbs burned off, just a thin torso and a head. He had a dead-eyed look as he stared at the ceiling, the only sign of life being the rising and falling of his chest as he breathed.

As I walked, I fell into a daze, feeling like I could no longer control my body. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Yet, more and more brutal sights greeted me.

Next was a person stuffed into a tight barrel too small for a human with dried blood on the ground. He resembled a sludge of flesh. His face crunched and crushed as he looked around in terror, unable to do anything.

And so the horrors continued, unimaginable cruelties that no sane mind would ever conjure. It was like looking at insanity itself. As we climbed down, about to reach the ground floor at the bottom of the prison, I was returned to my senses.

That was when I caught sight of a hook piercing through both biceps of a man, holding him in place by the ceiling. Only the meat of his arms held him up. As I walked past his cell, I could hear him breathing heavily, trying to endure the pain without screaming.

Then came the last cell. It was a man tied to a chair, looking at a mirror with a sense of bottomless terror and despair. The top of his head was scalped open, with the top of his skull, bone, and hair nowhere to be seen. He stared at himself in the mirror as a rat gnawed at his brain.

The brain didn't have pain receptors to feel pain... but seeing a rat eating his brain...

The sound of footsteps was the only thing I could hear.

They wouldn't dare do something like this to Song Song, right? After all, it was illogical to cripple someone as talented as her.

But by now, any hope that whoever had made this place worked with a logical mind was thrown out the window. My heart was in my throat, and the only thing I heard was a buzzing sound in my ears.

No, perhaps they didn't need to cripple her. After all, this world had healing pills and artifacts. A chill went down my spine at just the thought of how far someone could go with torture without crippling someone.

This was what happened when a fucked-up person gained ultimate power. This wasn't a prison; this was torture!

Cold sweat ran down my brow as I struggled to calm down.

My goal was to reach Foundation Establishment, where I could read peacefully without anyone bothering me. But would Foundation Establishment be enough to keep me from ending up like this?

...

After some unknown amount of time, the granny walked around the bottom of the prison. The place was dark, and it was often hard to tell where one was going. I could barely see anything and just followed the granny's Qi.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

There was the sound of a creaking door and something opening. It was a large door, big enough to fit a giant, and inside, it led to a place with some light. With how dark it was down here, this light was a welcome sight.

I stayed a step behind the granny as I followed her in. As soon as we were both past the doors, they slammed shut behind us with a thundering sound that startled me.

With no escape in sight, I realized something crucial about this ordeal. I didn't really know this old granny that well. What if she had lured me in here with fake promises? Perhaps Song Song was not even here; this could all be a sick game for them.

But such thoughts disappeared when I saw something. It was a woman's body, tightly draped in dark bandages all over. She was on a cross with nails running through her wrists, blood dripping down the nails and onto the ground, forming a small pool.

Before the cross became a Christian symbol of faith, it was known as a method of torture. Jesus Christ was nailed on the cross as a form of torment. Even Julius Caesar used a similar method against pirates who had captured him. But in this world, it had no religious connotations; it was just pure torture.

The body looked like a doll, and nothing about it was recognizable. The only indication that it was female was the figure's bosom.

Song Song was quite well endowed in that area, though she never showed it since her uniform was loose and thick.

There was no need to speculate much longer as the crucified woman gathered Qi in her maw and shot it outward, creating a hole in the bandages around her mouth.

"Teacher, did you finally decide to come and try to put up those torture arrays?" Song Song asked nonchalantly, her voice a little raspy. She shrugged before adding, "I will admit, it would kind of break the monotony around here. Can we start with the lightning torture arrays? My muscles are sore since, as you can see, I couldn't move my body much."

The granny frowned when she heard that, though I couldn't help but crack a smile.

Right, I had been worried for no reason. Whether they tortured her or not, this was Song Song I was worrying about. She would yawn mid-torture and give some advice to the torturer.

"No, we are here to talk," said her teacher. "Also, torture arrays didn't work on you as a kid either when you killed that concubine. So it would be useless to use them now."

Was she talking about that rumor that Song Song killed one of the Sect Leader's concubines?

"Why are you here then if you're not going to add some torture arrays? It's boring around here, but not boring enough for me to want to listen to you talk. I would rather take the torture," Song Song sighed. "Wait, is your talking going to be the torture method? Can we please not do that and move to the good old tradition of ripping off my nails or something like that? There's only so much of your ranting I can take before I explode the Qi at the back of my throat and kill myself."

Even in these moments, she was being sarcastic. I puckered my lips, trying to hold in the chuckle that almost escaped me. She made me forget what I had seen outside the doors for a second.

"Some people are worried that you might do something thoughtless, like try and escape," the granny said, nudging me forward. "Even your friend came here to advise you against this."

When she heard that, Song Song's mocking smile slipped away. Even though her eyes were covered by those dark bandages, I felt she could still see me.

I stared at the granny and wondered when she last spoke to a normal person. She was clearly out of touch.

What the hell, granny? Did she expect me to just tell Song Song to be a good pet and stay put after everything I saw? How could she even be so calm after this whole ordeal?

Right... She was a monster who had lived hundreds of years. I was looking at this all the wrong way. She must know the people who came up with a place like this. After all, she knew the place intimately. How often had she been here? Hundreds? Thousands of times?

I looked at Song Song and then at her bleeding wrists. What should I tell her? Should I twist the truth and lie since the Core Elder granny was here? Perhaps I could twist my words where they had a hidden meaning that only Song Song would understand.

But... this was how she ended up because she tried saving me. If I caved in now at the slightest bump, then I would regret something like this for the rest of my life. Also, I owed it to her to not lie. She had always been honest with me.

"Let's destroy it all after you are out of here," I said.

The granny's eyes widened when she heard that, and she, before I could even blink, quickly put a hand over my mouth before I could say anything more. She looked at me with a bewildered gaze.

But Song Song wasn't surprised at all. Instead, she agreed, "Yeah, sure. Though rebuilding from the rubble sounds like a chore, I will leave that to you."

I tried to push the granny's hand away to answer back. While her grip was not painful, it was firm, and it felt like I was trying to move away an immovable metal statue. That kind of strength could easily rip my head off.

Though her eyes were covered, Song Song seemed to understand that I couldn't answer, so she said, "When I'm outta here, I will give you access to the entire Song Clan Library. You can nerd out while I go and kill a couple of people."

After a few seconds of silence, Song Song seemed to read my mind and started laughing maniacally. "Hahahaha! We're gonna kill so many people together! We will leave behind a mountain of corpses of anyone who crosses us!"

The granny paled. Whatever plan she had by bringing me here... Well, it had backfired spectacularly.