Chapter 51: Failed negotiations.

"I believe that should be enough for today, wouldn't want to go too far and accidentally ruin you."

With a smile, Guo Zhe carefully cleaned the knife he had in his hand. After making sure that the knife was spotless, he placed it back on the table and stored away the entire table. He still held a smile as he turned around, but once his eyes fell on the girl standing behind him, his face immediately turned gloomy.

"I said that you have to watch!"

Guo Zhe shouted and struck out with a fist. His fist hit Guo Luo squarely on the cheek, sending her tumbling down to the floor, blood leaking from her mouth. She had turned her eyes away when Guo Zhe got too into his work, she was unable to stomach the sight.

"We are already turning a blind eye to you sneaking in food to feed this little thing, and now you even refuse to follow my orders again?! If it wasn't for the fact that we still need someone to take care of this prisoner, I would have already asked Young Master Jiahao for permission to kill you!"

Guo Zhe was in a very bad mood. This wasn't the first time he had hit Guo Luo in these last days. They were fine with her sneaking in food to Yao Jun, he had to eat, after all, in return, Guo Zhe had ordered her that she would have to watch from up close whenever he was torturing him.

But she kept looking away with a pale face and red eyes. Seeing someone from the Guo clan be so weak in the face of a bit of torture made Guo Zhe sick. If everyone in the Guo clan was like this, how could they ever hope to expand their clan?

"Clean him up, I'm going to go meet with Young Master Jiahao."

Guo Zhe wiped his hand with a cloth, cleaning away the blood that had stuck to his fist. With a wave of his sleeve, he left the cell, leaving behind the bloodied Yao Jun and Guo Luo. Guo Luo stood up without a word and walked over to Yao Jun, taking out a cloth and a bucket of water, she started to wipe down his body again.

"I'm sorry brother Jun, I'm sorry."

Guo Luo kept apologizing as she wiped away the blood. This was already the fifth day of torture since Yao Jun was brought here, and she had apologized to him at least three times a day, once or twice after every session of torture.

Yao Jun was slightly skinnier than he used to, his torso now filled with a myriad of scars. Guo Zhe's poison was rather insidious, it could even eat away at his flesh and fat, forcibly slimming him down to a seemingly malnourished state. Guo Zhe purposely avoided torturing his face, saying that if he touched his face, Yun Yantian would be unable to recognize him. Of course, that was only what he was saying, Yao Jun guessed that it was more likely that Guo Zhe avoided his face because it would make it harder to see his reactions if he messed up his face.

Yao Jun had already gotten used to Guo Luo apologizing to him with tearful eyes, so he simply ignored it with a thin smile. Over these last five days, he had studied the dungeon very closely, he had even memorized the times when the guards would change. He had also studied the fog in Guo Luo's chest quite a bit, but he was still unable to figure out what it was. It was completely different from the source of power he usually saw in other people, it at times nearly acted like a living thing. The more he saw of it, the more curious he became, and the greater his desire to learn what it became. The fog felt like it was close to him, yet he could not think of any place where he might have seen anything similar.

Five days had already passed, but Yao Jun had been unable to find a proper path he could use to escape this dungeon. Because of this he had come to a decision, if this torture continued for another ten days, he would simply have to risk it and do his best to flee. He could catch Guo Zhe off-guard with an attack and flee after incapacitating him. If his luck and timing were good, he might be able to slip past all the guard and escape the dungeon. Once he was out of the dungeon, he could hop onto Little Gray and fly away, there shouldn't be anyone here who could fly and chase them. The plan relied heavily on luck, but it was better than just waiting here to be tortured to death.

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If possible, he wanted to bring Guo Luo along with him, she had been very kind to him in these five days after all. But just escaping on his own was already very unlikely, bringing along another person would be even harder, so he was considering just chucking her into his God Gate and telling her to stay put while he did his best to flee.

"Why do you keep doing this?"

After Guo Luo had cleaned his body and stuffed some more stale bread into his mouth, Yao Jun opened his mouth and spoke. Spending five days within this cell was extremely boring, so when it was just him and Guo Luo, he would occasionally chat with her to pass the time and see what he could learn.

It was mostly just about some experiences they had when they were younger. Of course, Yao Jun changed the locations to fit the Guanyu continent whenever he talked about his own experiences. Since they knew that Guo Luo snuck in food for him, it was obvious that they were keeping the cell under constant watch so he had to be careful with what he revealed about himself.

Looking at the skinny and scarred girl sitting in front of him, Yao Jun couldn't help but be slightly curious about why she would help him, especially when it caused her to be treated so bad by Guo Zhe. He had been tortured for five days already, but he was certain that the girl in front of him had been treated far worse for several years already. Looking at her he couldn't help but wonder, is this how he would have ended up if his parents didn't move away from the Yao clan when his power was thought to be a dud?

"I pity you. You did nothing wrong, but you still have all these horrible things done to you, all because you are friends with a certain person. I don't think that being friends with someone is a sin, so I wanted to do what I could to help make it easier for you."

Guo Luo sat in front of Yao Jun and held her arms around her knees as she spoke. She liked staying in this cell after she finished cleaning. This cell was one of the few places in the Guo clan where she could be safe and just talk. Looking at Yao Jun, despite the fact that he was currently naked and scarred, she felt safe, just being in his presence filled her chest with a sense of calmness. It was like looking at a mountain that could weather any storm, the stability instilled calmness and peace.

OF course, as a young girl, it was a bit hard for her to look directly at the naked Yao Jun, but as long as she focused on his face it wasn't too much of a problem. She found talking to him to be fun, mainly because there were very few in the Guo clan who would bother listening to her if she talked, there had never been anyone who actually bothered to ask her anything about herself, he had been the first.

"Pity me? This has to be the first time I have been pitied by someone who was worse off than me."

Yao Jun couldn't help but shake his head as he spoke. He had seen how Guo Luo was being treated. Just in these last five days, he had seen her get hit at least twice per day. And looking at the scars on her face, things were clearly much worse when she wasn't in this cell. Yao Jun was used to excessive pain due to his past training, but he guessed that she was used to pain due to having suffered a lot in the past.

"I'm not worse off than you. I might be beaten and abused, but I still have three meals a day and a loving family. My father and mother love me very much, it is not their fault that I was too weak to be of use to the clan."

Guo Luo shook her head at Yao Jun's words, she did not see herself as being worse off than him. She at least had a family that cared about her and fed her. She knew that she was too weak to be of any proper use to the clan, that was why she accepted all the abuse she had been given over the years. The belief that the weak like her were to be used and thrown away when they were no longer useful was deeply ingrained in her mind.

Yao Jun could see what she was thinking from her eyes and her expression, he also saw the hazy fog within her chest tremble in defiance once more when she spoke in a self-deprecating manner. He couldn't help but sigh and shake his head. This girl pitied him for having to endure this torture, but he pitied her for having been treated like this. When he was revealed to have a useless power, while the people of the clan turned colder towards him, it was nowhere near this level, at least, it hadn't been when his parents moved away, there was no telling what might have happened later down the line.

At the same time, he wondered slightly to himself, could it really be said that her parents loved her? They didn't seem to do anything to stop the torment she was experiencing. Why hadn't they moved away or protected their daughter? Why were they allowing her to continue suffering like this?

--

While Yao Jun and Guo Luo were chatting, Guo Zhe had reached the room of Guo Jiahao.

"How goes the talks of the alliance Young Master Jiahao?"

Guo Zhe immediately kneeled and spoke respectfully after he entered. Guo Jiahao had a rather high position in the clan, if he wanted to kill someone, he could do it with just a thought, and no one would question him.

"There will be no alliance. The Yun clan has refused us again. They even had the gall to mock us for using such a worthless and despicable plan like this. Seems like our thinking was wrong about how important Yun Yantian's words were to the clan."

Guo Jiahao was sitting behind a desk, sifting through a large pile of papers as he spoke with a sigh. In their Guo clan, the future patriarch's words were just as important as the current patriarch's, so he had just assumed that the same was true for the Yun clan. But now it seemed like he had been wrong.

He didn't sigh because the alliance failed, they would just have to find a different way to make them accept the alliance, in the worst case scenario, they could just ally with someone else. He sighed because they had wasted five days on Yao Jun.

The only reason they hadn't allied with anyone else yet was that the only other options they had were people that were questionable in moral and reputation, they could even be called downright vile. If they allied with people like that, the reputation of their clan would almost certainly be ruined.

"Then about the prisoner?"

Since they could no longer use Yao Jun to force them into an alliance, there was clearly no longer a need to keep him in the cell, so Guo Zhe decided to ask for instructions about what to do.

"There is no longer a need to keep him. Take an Image Array with you to the center of the town and execute him in public. Send the entire thing to the Yun clan, we can use it to send one last blow to Yun Yantian."

Guo Jiahao's indifferent voice rang out in the room. They had already wasted five days on a pointless endeavor. Killing Yao Jun would allow him to release some of that frustration.