Cellmate

Heart-rending cries of pain tore through his ears. Yin Xuege's body convulsed, and he woke from unconsciousness.

Keeping his eyes closed, he cautiously moved his hands and feet, then slowly pushed himself upright inch by inch. His whole body was lively and strong; he had suffered no further injuries. Only then did Yin Xuege open his eyes and survey his surroundings.

This was a prison cell, a prison cell cast from metal.

The ceiling was barely three meters high. A hanging lamp dangled from its center, two candle flames wavering within it and illuminating this cell, roughly five meters long and wide. Heavy black metal walls surrounded him, densely inscribed with countless sealing runes. Yin Xuege moved his body and felt as though he were carrying a burden of several hundred pounds, every movement sluggish and hindered.

There was a small door in one wall, with a palm-sized air vent set into it.

Yin Xuege quickly walked over, rose onto his toes, and peered through the vent. Outside lay a dimly lit tunnel. From where he stood, he could see three small doors on the wall opposite the tunnel, spaced several meters apart. Clearly, there was more than one prison cell here.

Miserable howls came from Yin Xuege's right, less than a hundred meters away. Listening carefully, he could hear whips lashing flesh, as well as the sizzling sounds of flames scorching a body. Yin Xuege twitched his nose. The air carried an unpleasant stench of charred blood and flesh.

Just then, a tremendous crash came from the door opposite Yin Xuege. A green eyeball the size of an infant's fist appeared in its air vent. The eye rolled wildly, and a savage, violent, feral Sha Qi rushed straight at him, frightening Yin Xuege into instinctively taking a step back.

"Hey, brat! You new here?" The owner of that eye roared in a deep, booming voice.

Approaching the door warily, Yin Xuege pressed his eye to the vent and looked across for a while before asking in a low voice, "What is this place?"

The green eye rolled once, and that muffled voice broke into a gleeful laugh. "Welcome to Blood Prison. This is where those damned humans imprison us foreign races! Hmm, you don't carry that fishy stench of my clansmen. Are you from the Blood Demon Clan?"

A low wolf howl came from the cell opposite. Soon, an enormous dog nose poked through the air vent. The wet tip twitched hard several times, and its owner muttered in surprise.

"But you don't have that gloomy smell blood demons carry either. What the hell are you, brat?"

Yin Xuege strictly followed certain lessons from the Children's Hall and revealed nothing whatsoever about himself. Looking at the enormous dog nose protruding from the vent, though he had already guessed the man's identity, he still deliberately feigned ignorance and muttered to himself, "So it's a big dog? With a nose that huge, your body must be pretty big too!"

"Dog?" The dog nose swiftly withdrew. A green eye blazing with mad fury abruptly appeared behind the vent, and the man roared in a towering rage, "Dog? You actually called me a dog? Damned brat, I am the noble Silver Wolf Commander Wumu! I am a noble werewolf, a descendant of the Ancient Wolf God!"

Wumu hammered furiously against his cell door, kicking the alloy door until it rang with thud, thud. He let out shrill, ear-piercing wolf howls, then bellowed in exasperation, "You must be a sinister, treacherous vampire! A wretched, cowardly little bat! Damn you, what right do you have to be locked in here? This is the deepest part of Blood Prison. Only important figures like me are qualified to come here!"

Yin Xuege shrugged, too lazy to pay attention to this Wumu, who seemed to have something wrong with his head.

They had already been locked in this damned place, yet he was still fussing over status. Wasn't that water in his brain?

Ignoring Wumu's shouting and furious curses, Yin Xuege began pacing around the cramped cell. The Children's Hall's courses contained no knowledge on escaping imprisonment. After all, weak children would not lightly leave their Lineage's territory or depart from the protection of their elders. Since ancient times, very few children had ever been captured.

Yin Xuege's mind was blank. He lacked the knowledge and experience to guide him out of this predicament. He could only wander instinctively around the cell, hoping against hope that perhaps he might find a path of escape here.

The floor was a metal plate of unknown thickness, engraved with numerous sealing talismans. Reinforced by the sealing talismans, the floor cast from an unknown alloy was as hard as diamond and could also block the assault of all kinds of power. With Yin Xuege's current strength, he could not leave even the faintest mark upon it.

The four walls had been cast from the same material. Judging from what Yin Xuege had seen through the vent earlier, if every cell here was five meters long and wide, then the small doors in the tunnel opposite were spaced nearly ten meters apart. In other words, the walls between cells were several meters thick—equally impossible for Yin Xuege to break through.

As for the ceiling...

Yin Xuege's figure blurred, and both feet had already planted themselves on the ceiling as he hung upside down. Bending over, he carefully inspected the ceiling's construction and thickness before helplessly dropping back to the floor. There was not even the slightest crack between the walls in every direction. There was simply nowhere he could exploit.

The small cell contained only a narrow bed, a toilet and washbasin for relieving oneself, and a faucet above them that ran clear water. That was all there was. To Yin Xuege, none of it seemed useful either.

The cell's only weak point might be its small door.

But when Yin Xuege walked to it and lightly tapped the door with his fingers, he could not help but smile bitterly. He struck it hard, yet it made no sound at all. The door was at least two feet thick, and he could not shake it either.

"Brat, feeling despair now?" Wumu's laughter rumbled over. He laughed until he was almost out of breath, only managing with great difficulty to squeeze out a few words. "Lord Wumu has been locked up here for twenty-five years. I've eaten eighteen of the jailers who guarded me, but I've never escaped this place. You little runt should stop wasting your strength."

Hearing Wumu's words, Yin Xuege could not help sighing. He stood on tiptoe and peered through the vent toward the opposite side, only to discover that Wumu was also staring at him with one enormous green eye. The two stared at each other, big eyes meeting small eyes, for a while before Wumu finally lost patience and shouted.

"Brat, what Lineage's little bat are you? How did you end up locked in here? Looking at that tiny body of yours, you wouldn't even fill Lord Wumu's teeth. How were you so unlucky as to be thrown in here?"

Before Yin Xuege could speak, Wumu burst into laughter again. "What an unlucky little fellow. You were locked in here before your feathers even grew in. Your parents must be worried sick, huh? Hahaha! Who's your father? Maybe I know his name?"

Yin Xuege remained silent. Wumu waited a long while without receiving a reply, then impatiently yelled, "Hey, brat, make a sound! Being locked in here isn't all bad. At least it's quiet, right? Keep me company. Who's your father? Maybe among the little bats whose bones I bit through back then, one was your father?"

Drawing a deep breath, Yin Xuege gripped the jade cicada at his chest tightly and said coldly, "I don't have a father."

"Whoa, you don't have a father!" Wumu exclaimed loudly. Then he suddenly gave a great roar and spat repeatedly. "Bastard, you little bastard! If you didn't have a father, how did your mother give birth to you?"

After another stretch of silence, Yin Xuege finally said slowly, "I don't know who my father is!"

Wumu fell silent for a long time, then gave a strange "heh heh" laugh. He switched to another eye and glared at Yin Xuege through the vent. Green light flickered repeatedly in his pupils, and his voice became somewhat odd. "You don't know who your father is? That happens all the time among the tribes of us great descendants of the Wolf God, but aren't you little bats the ones who care most about bloodlines and rank?"

Gripping the air vent with both hands, Yin Xuege's eyes rolled as he cautiously watched the tunnel outside. The miserable cries from the far end of the tunnel gradually ceased, while the smell of scorched flesh in the air grew stronger. He was busy listening to the sounds over there and had no attention to spare for Wumu.

But Wumu had clearly been lonely for far too long. Yin Xuege ignored him, yet he insisted on provoking Yin Xuege.

"So, who's your mother? Maybe I know your mother's name! Hey, brat, which Lineage's child are you?"

Yin Xuege ignored him. He focused all his attention on his ears, using the Blood Demon Clan's innate talent to eavesdrop with all his strength on the sounds coming from the other end of the tunnel. He could hear the groans of the person being tortured, as well as the executioners' curses and demands. Those people seemed to be interrogating the whereabouts of some treasure.

The Blood Chalice? Yin Xuege's heart suddenly clenched. If he had heard correctly, those people were interrogating someone about the Blood Chalice's whereabouts? That was one of the thirteen most important inherited sacred artifacts of the Blood Demon Clan in legend. Only the Blood Demon Clan's oldest Lineages, those with the noblest bloodlines, were qualified to hold one such inherited sacred artifact!

After obtaining the Blood Demon Saint Blood, the Yin Clan had forcibly transformed human bodies into the Blood Demon Physique while retaining the identity of Eastern cultivators. To the Blood Demon Clan, the Yin Clan was an alien outsider. Though the Yin Clan's influence had gradually grown over the past several centuries, it had no right to control the Blood Demon Clan's inherited sacred artifacts!

At the Children's Hall, Yin Xuege had once overheard the stewards casually reveal a few fragments—seemingly, the Yin Clan had made quite a few moves to lay its hands on the Blood Demon Clan's inherited sacred artifacts. Someone closely connected to Yin Xuege had even been sacrificed because of certain ambitions of the Yin Clan.

******

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