The Person in the Cage
Seeing the woman in the cage reach out her hand, the flamingo immediately flew through the narrow gap in the cage and landed on her hand.
The woman held her breath, glanced around to make sure no one was watching her, and then subtly shifted her body to carefully hide the flamingo in her hand.
There was no movement coming from the cages on either side of her, and she knew that the cultivators had fallen into despair. Only from a slightly farther distance away, from the cage that had just been hung up, could she still hear cries.
"Let me out! Do you know who I am? You dare to lock me up here? If my master finds out, he will raze your sect to the ground!" The man shouted for a long time. Luckily, he was a cultivator and his voice wouldn't go hoarse, otherwise, given his agitation, he probably wouldn't have been able to speak for more than a few days.
But the noise from the other party clearly displeased the guards, and those dressed in the robes of the Listening Tide Sect disciples quickly lowered his cage. The male cultivator, thinking his words had worked, immediately adopted an arrogant posture. "Let me tell you, you've gotten yourself into big trouble this time. My master is the Immortal Venerable Jade Cauldron of the Black Tortoise Realm! Your offense has angered me greatly. If you're willing to release the others in this dark room and offer us generous apologies, I might be able to plead for you when my master arrives."
However, after hearing the male cultivator's words, all the guarding disciples laughed.
"We don't care if you're a disciple of the Jade Cauldron or the Iron Cauldron. Once you're in our Listening Tide Sect, you can forget about leaving!" After the disciple finished speaking, a stick as thick as an adult's arm slammed down on him.
The male cultivator was about to use his Spiritual Power to deflect the attack when he unexpectedly found that all the Spiritual Power in his body seemed to have vanished, and he couldn't draw upon even a trace of it!
The male cultivator stared in astonishment, but the stick had already landed on him.
The male cultivator hadn't felt pain in a long time. Ever since he became a disciple and began cultivating, he had almost always lived a life of being pampered.
He thought that with Spiritual Qi protecting him, this kind of damage would be nothing to him, but he obviously did not expect that this heavy blow would hurt so much.
"How could this be? How is this possible?" The male cultivator clenched his hands, somewhat incredulous.
He's Golden Core cultivator, and only one step away from the Nascent Soul stage. Why? Why is this happening?!
"Ha, you outsider fly, now you know fear? Too late!" Another blow landed on him, causing the male cultivator to cry out in pain.
The female cultivator in the cage watched this scene cautiously, unaware that the flamingo perched on her hand seemed to have also taken it in.
The male cultivator wasn't one to be easily subdued. Even after being beaten badly, he gritted his teeth and said, "If you treat me like this, my master will definitely not let you off when he arrives!"
The disciple tightened his grip even more. "You won't see what happens to me, but we know perfectly well what will happen to you. You think your master will come to your rescue after discovering you're in trouble? Dream on! By then, he probably won't even be able to find your remains!"
The disciples' unrestrained laughter echoed throughout the dark room, causing the female cultivator to shrink her head back down and stop looking in that direction.
The flamingo she held in her hand transformed into a line of red characters. The female cultivator stared at the characters, tears streaming down her face uncontrollably.
"Where are you? Your sister is looking for you."
Red Lotus gritted her teeth, trying to keep her voice from escaping. She reached out and touched the line of red characters, her fingertips becoming stained red as well.
Red Lotus was stunned for a moment, then instantly realized what this meant. She immediately raised her finger and hastily wrote a few words after the line of text disappeared.
But her movements were a bit too abrupt. Just as Red Lotus withdrew her fingers and gently squeezed the flamingo back into its original form, a voice suddenly rang out. "Hey you over there, what were you doing just now?!"
Red Lotus trembled with fear. During her time trapped in the dark room, she had already experienced the ruthlessness of these people. Now, the only chance to escape was right in front of her, Red Lotus was unwilling to give it up so easily.
She clutched the tiny flamingo bird tightly in her hand, no longer caring whether she would crush it. She slowly turned around to look at the guard who had questioned her, her heart pounding wildly.
The man slammed his stick against her cage. "I'm asking you! What were you doing, gesturing like that?! Were you trying to contact someone else? Were you trying to escape? You've been locked up for so long, and you still haven't given up. Put her down so I can teach her a lesson!"
The other party didn't give Red Lotus a chance to explain and convicted her on the spot.
However, Red Lotus breathed a sigh of relief when she heard the guard say that. These people despised them, the outside cultivators, and would often find excuses to beat them up.
If they can survive this ordeal and get the flamingo to carry the message out, they will be saved.
Red Lotus bit her lower lip, quietly waiting for the stick that was about to fall on her.
But at that very moment, a voice suddenly came from the cage behind Red Lotus: "What can she do? Just a female cultivator you've driven crazy. What, can't you even find a decent reason to hit someone now? If I had known that the Cloud Mulberry Realm was run by a bunch of disgusting vermin, I would never have come to this wretched place."
The person in the cage seemed to feel that saying these words was not enough to vent their anger, so they immediately spat on the face of the guard disciple.
Now the guard couldn't care less about Red Lotus anymore. He immediately ordered his men to take the male cultivator out of the cage, and a barrage of sticks rained down on him. But the man seemed to be a physical cultivator; even without Spiritual Power, his strong physique made him completely unfazed by the guards' methods.
The male cultivator deliberately raised his arm a few times, and the guards' sticks broke on the spot.
The guard, enraged by the spit, even considered hitting the male cultivator on the head. However, he was stopped by his fellow disciple. "Forget it, why bother arguing with someone who's about to die? The sect leader said these sacrifices need to be alive. If we accidentally kill him, where are we going to find a new cultivator to replace him? Besides, he's a Nascent Soul Cultivator!"
The guards immediately realized that there were unfriendly rumors circulating outside about their sect, so the senior brothers were no longer able to recruit anyone to come to the sect.
If we were to kill the male cultivator at this critical juncture, it would be difficult to explain.
He withdrew his foot and then said fiercely to the male cultivator, "I'll let you go this time. But since you're so stubborn, on the day of the sacrifice, I'll throw you in as the first offering!"
After saying that, she hung the male cultivator back up and then left with the other guards.
Red Lotus seized the opportunity to release the flamingo in her hand. Only after seeing the flamingo successfully leave the dark room with the guards did she finally feel relieved.
I believe my sister will find herself soon!