Inside the wooden house, the light was dim. An oil lamp flickered in a corner, stretching the shadows into twisted, hideous shapes.
A man blind in his left eye stood in the middle of the room, gripping a bloodstained leather whip, his face a knot of savage flesh.
Yang Jing saw at a glance that the man's Internal Qi was muddled. He was a martial artist who had only just entered bright strength, probably an ordinary leader in the River Gang.
Before him, a thick rope hung from a roof beam, with a young woman bound at its end.
She was thin and frail, her complexion waxy yellow, clearly from prolonged malnutrition.
Her hands were suspended high overhead, and only her toes could barely touch the ground. The single undergarment she wore had long since been whipped to shreds. Crisscrossing lash marks covered her exposed skin, leaving a bloody ruin of flesh. Blood dripped from her wounds onto the floor, gathering into a small, dark red pool.
There was nothing remotely salacious about the scene, only shocking brutality.
The woman had long since lost the strength to struggle. Her head slumped to one side, as though she had passed out.
Yet whenever the whip whistled down onto her body, she still squeezed a faint, piercing cry of pain from her throat.
Yang Jing swiftly swept his gaze around the room, and his brows knotted at once.
Three more bodies lay in the corner. Corpses was a more fitting word.
They were all young women, their bodies likewise covered in lash wounds deep enough to expose bone. They had long since stopped breathing, clearly whipped to death.
"Tsk..."
After several lashes, the one-eyed man stopped. He actually stuck out his tongue and licked the woman's mangled shoulder, his face showing a