Nightfall

Ning Que frowned tightly, and his face was even paler than Sangsang’s sace. But he never made a sound, for he didn’t want to surrender to her.

Standing on the ground of the divine hall, Sangsang looked up in silence.

Ning Rue’s pants turned into rags and countless thin red lines appeared on his legs.

The invisible blade continued to cut off flesh and blood like butterflies and revealed the bone short after.

Ning Que looked terribly pale, and his eyes and brows twitched due to severe pain. It looked like crying and smiling at the same time. His lips moved slightly as if he wanted to say something.

Sangsang seemed satisfied.

With flesh floating in the air, his legs turned into bones. Ning Que stared at Sangsang and asked, “Don’t you think it’s like peony fish? Do you want to eat some with soy sauce?”

Sangsang was no longer satisfied. A blood line appeared on his throat, cutting off his vocal cord directly. He was not able to make another sound.

The invisible force in the Divine Hall of Light continued to rage. His flesh fell down like snowflakes, revealing the bone gradually and leaving less and less blood.

The most horrible penalty on earth was death by a thousand cuts. Tonight, Ning Que suffered as much as the worst criminals did.

His flesh and blood were all gone. Under endless pain, his consciousness was as badly mutilated as his body was. The divine hall would have echoed with shrill screams if he was able to make a sound. But he couldn’t. The deathly stillness in the divine hall was overwhelmingly disturbing.

Ning Que’s eyes, dimmed to the extreme, were like candles in the wind that were about to die out any minute, or like the creepy scene of the lights of fireflies floating over the old graveyard covered with moss.

Suffering from such severe pain, an ordinary person would have already been dead. Even though Ning Que had cultivated Haoran Qi, he wouldn’t last this long if Sangsang didn’t want him to.

Sangsang wanted him to be alive to feel the pain.

But he still didn’t surrender.

Staring at him with her hands behind back, Sangsang revealed no emotion on her face. But she frowned, for she didn’t expect his resistance to last this long.

From what she remembered, Ning Que had never been an impassioned figure, let alone facing death calmly. He preferred life to dishonor and chose leisure over labour, having no moral bottom line at all.

Why did he still refuse to surrender to me at this moment?

Sangsang was a little frustrated, for she found out that she had never really known this man or perhaps something happened to him while she was away.

A gentle breeze blew through the Divine Hall of Light.

The breeze blew on Ning Que’s body, more gentle than a lover’s hand. But it caused him extreme pain. Then he felt a chill that was hard to resist and began to shiver, breathing out the air mingled with frost.

At this point, he had no inch of intact skin and even his flesh was almost cut off completely. The night wind directly blew into his bone and viscera covered by a thin membrane, causing enormous pain and extreme coldness. People talked about bone-chilling cold, but who could understand it better than he did at this moment?

All of a sudden, Ning Que felt itchy from his scalp to fingertips and to the abdomen, like innumerable ants and bugs were biting him. He barely opened his eyes and looked down to his own body, realizing that it was not a new interesting punishment Sangsang came up with but new flesh growing back on his bones.

The itch came from the bones and flesh growing back.

His body recovered at a rate visible to naked eyes. The bare bones were covered by flesh and skin again. And his new skin had no wounds and it was smooth as a newborn baby’s skin.

Was it a miracle created by Haotian? Ning Que didn’t feel joyful, for he knew that Sangsang didn’t show him mercy. It was just the beginning of next round of torture.

Just as expected, the gentle breeze became swift and fierce again.

With the itch and cold gone, Ning Que only felt pain. The new flesh was being cut off again, falling to the floor like raindrops.

He suffered death by a thousand cuts again.

The magisterial voice echoed in his ocean of consciousness ceaselessly, demanding his surrender.

He expressed his rebellion with silence, and showed his scorn with pride.

The stars outside the divine hall watched the most brutal and bloody scene in silence.

Time passed slowly, and it was undoubtedly the longest night Ning Que had ever went through.

He suffered death by a thousand cuts and then was healed, repeatedly. The extreme anguish made him crave for death. Only then did he understand that death was indeed not the worst thing. However, he was no longer able to die at this point.

His consciousness was distorted and broken due to severe pain, and it gradually blurred. He vaguely remembered the child who cut off his own flesh and returned it to his father, the handsome eunuch who got his feet cut into bare bones the moment he stepped into the desert, Lian Sheng sitting on a mountain of human bones in the Front Gate of Devil’s Doctrine, and the old eunuch who was famous for dying from a thousand cuts.

He didn’t know whether these people and memories were real or fictitious. Many pictures flashed in his mind, making him more miserable rather than comfortable. For some reason, he always kept the last bit of sobriety and stubbornness and refused to surrender to the magisterial voice in his ocean of consciousness.

His forehead had been cut open, with diluted blood dripping down nonstop. Through the bloody curtain, he squinted at the tall, fat woman standing.

Looking at this woman, he had never felt such intense fear in his entire life, and he had never felt such intense anger either.

He stared at Sangsang with blood-red eyes like a dying beast, gasping in pain.

Losing the ability to speak, he could still communicate with her in consciousness.

“Fuck.”

Sangsang looked at him in silence, revealing no emotion on her face.

He stared at her and said, “I’ll fuck you”.

Still no response came from Sangsang.

“You should kill me now,” said Ning Que. “Otherwise I will fuck you nonstop like before.”

Sangsang finally responded, “Stupid human”.

Her voice echoed across the quiet Divine Hall of Light. It was the first time Ning Que heard her voice today, not the voice in consciousness, but her voice in reality.

Ning Que laughed and it sounded like a broken bellows.

“You, Haotian, were fucked by me, a mere mortal…Haotian still can’t avoid karma to change what had happened. Even though you can restore your virginity and forget the history we had, you can’t change the fact that I fucked you. That’s why you are pissed off.”

He stared at her and said, “You made me suffer, and I’d like to return the favor. You are gonna always be angry about it as long as you dare not kill me.”

A sincere smile appeared on his face covered with blood, and his bleak eyes were filled with firm and calmness, which looked extremely wired and daunting.

“You did make me angry,” said Sangsang.

Suddenly, Ning Que felt a chill between his thighs.

Normally, his body should have been numb due to pain and feel nothing at this moment. Thus, the chill were not coming from his body but his mind.

Trying hard to look down, Ning Que found out that his thighs were badly mutilated and a valuable body part there was gone. Then he was hit by overwhelming pain.

The pain was so severe that he almost fainted. His lower abdomen and thighs kept twitching, and the bloody flesh left between his thighs kept swinging.

…

…

Ning Que woke up in pain after a long time. He stared at his badly mutilated thighs, realizing that he was castrated.

Many men were castrated by their wives in history, mostly because of their infidelities. Ning Que couldn’t accept the fact, for he thought he was very faithful to Sangsang.

Besides, while suddenly discovering the fact of becoming an eunuch, any man would try to convince himself it was just an illusion no matter how strong his willpower was.

“I can live with your intention to kill me. I will always treat you as my first love even though you’ve hurt me a thousand times. But what you are doing now is far beyond my limits. I am very upset.”

He spoke to Sangsang sincerely while looking at her.

In Sangsang’s eyes, Ning Que was no different from other stupid and menial human, especially when he tried to irritate her with those profane words.

“I should have known your limits earlier. I am very happy to make you unhappy, and I’d like to know what you can do about it.”

Ning Que said, “As I’ve said repeatedly, I will fuck you”.

“Fucking is the sexual behavior low lives performe to produce offspring. Since you tried so hard to make me remember the sexual relationship we had and threatened me by claiming to restore that relationship in the future, then I must destroy your genitalia. After all, you can’t have sex without your genitalia.”

Sangsang explained and looked at him without any emotion.

Ning Que looked at her quietly and said, “Have you ever heard about sexual fantasies?”

Hearing this, Sangsang’s expression suddenly changed because she felt like she was touched by a pair of hands.

The hands acted indecently and impudently.

The hands were not real and just illusions coming from psyche.

Ning Que’s gaze alighted on her plump breast.

Sangsang frowned tightly and felt the hands reaching into her dress and rubbing her breasts.

She couldn’t cut off the connection with Ning Que due to the reason that she was his natal item. Ning Que’s thoughts were concretely present in her consciousness.

They shared the same sorrows and joys, and of course the same lusts.

While torturing Ning Que, she suffered just as much as Ning Que did. She could take the pain which was too much for human to bear, for she was omnipotent Haotian.

But when it was for lusts, could she still take it?

Parting from the life of being an untrainable loser, Ning Que officially embarked on the journey of cultivation many years ago. While Ning Que was looking for his natal items, Sangsang would often giggle like a silver bell and sometimes even cry out a little in the small yard of Old Brush Pen Shop, because she always thought the young master was tickling her.

His thoughts would fall on her, for she was his natal item.

Even though she was Haotian and beyond his control, he could still touch her like the old days.

He could touch her any time he wanted to.

In the holy Divine Hall of Light tonight, he kept touching her.

However, whether she would touch him back in a moment still remained a mystery.

…

…