Chapter 148: Torture.

There was no longer anything to be done. Her life was taken in the blink of an eye. Haru still stood there in the compound and waited a while longer to give himself some time to recover to his usual self. When he had to kill people, his whole mindset changed and he was easily agitated.

He thought it would be for the best to let his anger settle for a few minutes before going back outside. He then scanned the compound to make sure that he hadn't missed anyone. He let his Qi spread out across the compound using his spiritual sense.

He didn't feel anything at first but as his searched narrowed down to his immediate location, he felt the presence of Qi beneath his feet. He looked down but there was nothing there only the stone floor. He then directed his sense to whatever was beneath the floor.

"Strange… It's like there is a room there…" He said out loud before kicking the woman's body out of the way and then striking the ground with his fist as he punched a hole through it. The ground opened up like a sinkhole and he dropped down what must have been twenty feet into a temple-like room.

The ground looked to be stained with blood and in the centre of the room, there was what seemed to be a marble altar. It was the alter that the witch would use to perform sacrifices.

As he looked around the room he picked up a groan of pain calling out from the shadows as the sound of a chain rattled back and forth. He took his eyes off the alter and then turned to see a man who looked to be in his thirties chained to a wall.

Haru couldn't quite make out very many features apart from slightly wrinkled skin from the darkness so once again he used Kun's golden flames but this time as a torch, not a weapon and then illuminated the room.

The man was stripped completely naked and had shackles on both his hands and feet to keep him restrained against the wall. His skin looked raw like he had been dragged across the stone floor many many times and his fingernails were worn down and scabbed over the skin from his constant scratching against the ground.

Haru looked up to his face to a metal contraption of some kind hung around his neck and then tied to his face to pry open his mouth so that he couldn't speak. His eyes looked both bloodshot and void of any feeling. He looked at Haru with anger and began to scratch the floor like a wild animal once he had made eye contact with him.

"This is worse than I thought…" Haru said to himself and then walked over to the man that was chained to the wall.

"It's going to be okay, I promise you." He reassured the man but it didn't work. The man looked up at Haru with nothing but hatred and began to grunt as he cut open the wounds on the tips of his fingers once again. Blood began to trail as he reached out toward Haru and scraped where his nails should have been across the floor.

"I'm sorry about this but it is for your own good," Haru announced to the man and then struck him in the back of the neck with the lower part of his palm. His groans grew silent as his body fell forward.

His face was heading straight for the floor before it stopped suddenly. Haru put an arm underneath his chest and slowly lowered him to the ground to avoid any further injuries. As the man slept on the ground he made quick work of removing the gag from his mouth and then broke off the shackles with a strike from his shadow blade technique at the lock so there was nothing to bind the man when he woke up.

As he did so the man's breathing pattern changed significantly, It was almost like he knew he was saved despite being unconscious. Haru felt relief, He might have felt bad in the future for slaughtering a sect that didn't even have the chance to fight back against him.

"Hello? Is somebody there?" The voice of an old man called out. His voice seemed confused and both scared. Haru then turned back to the opposite side of the room to where the voice had called out. He used Kun's flames to light the way before he spotted the old man who was also chained to the wall.

He was fully clothed and looked had no damage on his body at all but as Haru got closer he noticed the obvious result of the sect's torture on his face. The man sat with his back to the wall with a bandage wrapped around his head. He had been treated better than the man on the other side of the room for sure but where the bandage covered his eyes there was a deep crimson stain.

It was obvious that they had ripped out his eyes even from the distance that Haru was stood.

"I'm sorry I couldn't have gotten here any sooner…" Haru stated with regret as he heard the old man click his tongue to judge where everything in the room was with the reflection of sound. The man's head then shifted to exactly where Haru was stood.

"Oh, you have no need to feel sorry for an old man like me." He stated with a gentle and calm voice. It seemed like he had accepted the thought of his own death with just a few words that he spoke.

"You should focus your attention to the locked door to your left. That is where they keep the rest of us." The old man stated in a matter of fact tone.

Haru looked to the left of the room to where he saw a wooden door with a large padlock on the outside of it. Although the old man had lost his vision he seemed to have good spacial awareness.

"I will do that after I make sure that you are okay," Haru said and then cut the shackles that held the man to the wall and then helped him to his feet. He let go of his hand with a bit of hesitation as he expected him to fall over as soon as he did so but to Haru's surprise, he seemed to balance himself as soon as he let go.

He then used his Qi to make sure the man had no more injuries. There were no more injuries at all. He then looked at the old man and decided to request something of him.

"Can you sit with the man over there while I check the locked room? You might be able to keep him calm if he wakes up. He is sure to be confused and will need someone to comfort him." Haru asked of him.

It didn't even take a second for the old man to decide.

"Of course I will. You should prepare yourself though. I doubt you have ever seen anything like what you will see in that room. I for one will never forget what I saw even if I don't have my eyes anymore." The old man warned him and then made his way across the room without any help. But he occasionally clicked his tongue to make sure he was heading in the right direction.

Haru took the man's warning lightly since he was more focused on the way the man spoke. He was calm and seemed to have his thoughts collected yet still seemed like his body was in shock. He was worried that the old man was just clinging to life by a thread despite how he looked but he had no choice to make sure he was okay since he also felt the dozens of people in the room behind the locked door.

He then made his way over to the door and cut the lock in two with his shadow blade. The two chunks of metal dropped to the ground and rolled for a moment before he pushed the door open.

The smell that emerged from the previously locked door was nauseating, It would be enough to make any normal person but Haru recognised the smell. It was the smell of rotting flesh. He didn't let them deter him though as he made his way further into the room.

There were no lights to be seen so he decided to produce another flame from his hand and leave the one he used in the alter room floating where it was so the man would have a bit of light in case he woke up.

As he set foot into the room he immediately saw his breath in front of his face. The room was both cold and damp and the smell of the rotting flesh mixed with the smell of mould that was stuck to each wall. The room was small and full of straw on the ground like the inside of a stable and there was torture equipment laying everywhere.

There were chairs with nails poking in all directions and coffins with spikes stuck to the door. There was even a pool of water in one corner of the room with someone leaning over face down in the water. The was no Qi surrounding them and their skin had turned blue and began to peel away from the flesh.

Whoever that was they were long dead. There was no point in checking on them especially since Qi flooded out from a staircase in one corner of the room, hidden behind a half-closed hatch. Haru then made his way over to the hatch and began to walk down into the room below.