Chapter 738: 738

Chapter 738: Arena and Death-Row Prisoners

The darkness that engulfed Zhang Heng faded like the tide .

Before he opened his eyes, he heard deafening cheers and screams . The sound was coming from the top of his head, and mixed within it were the roaring of beasts . These beasts seemed to be just one meter away from him .

Even Zhang Heng, who had always been calm, was taken aback .

What did it mean by being one meter away from the ferocious beasts? A beast like a lion and a tiger could kill him with a single pounce . If he was anticipating them, he might be able to dodge the attack . However, he did not know their exact location right now, and the countdown was about to end in five seconds . Zhang Heng’s eyes still needed to adjust to the brightness around him . A delay of even a second would significantly increase Zhang Heng’s mortality rate .

If the situation was what he imagined, then there was a high chance he would die at the beginning of this quest . Logically speaking, since he had just accepted an ordinary survival quest, he should not be placed in such a dangerous scenario right at the start .

In the next second, Zhang Heng resumed his vision .

The first thing he saw was the lion in front of him . The cheering had agitated it further, and it stood up, growling menacingly at him . It looked as though it would attack once the cage was opened . He was safe for now since the lion was still locked inside the cage .

Zhang Heng breathed a sigh of relief when he saw this . After that, he found himself standing in a dark and smelly room . Those cheers continued to come from above him, and there was another person beside him, holding a ceramic bowl full of raw meat, looking at the lion in the cage in fear .

Judging by the man’s outfit, he should be a slave . Wearing a short-sleeved long robe and a pair of slippers, Zhang Heng found that he, too, was dressed in the same attire . Before he even had the chance to greet the man, another man with a whip came in, lashing it while yelling at the top of his lungs .

Zhang Heng was glad that he had spent considerable time learning other languages during the Black Sail quest . One of them happened to be Latin, the lingua franca of ancient Rome .

After more than a thousand years, the language would have morphed through time, and huge differences in terms of pronunciation and accent would have occurred . The ancient Romans, for instance, pronounced ‘a’ and ‘e’ separately, and when they pronounced ‘c,’ it sounded a lot like ‘k . ’ Besides, their speech had a lot of rising and falling in cadence .

Zhang Heng felt as though he was listening to a dialect he had never heard before . Having had to guess what the person was talking about, it seemed he was asking them why they were not done with feeding Quinta .

Needless to say, Quinta was the name of the lion in the cage before him . Immediately, Zhang Heng took the bowl of meat from his partner and poured it into the cage .

Quinta finally stopped growling after getting its fill of meat .

However, the overseer was still dissatisfied with them . He yelled again and was prepared to lash his whip . The man beside Zhang Heng immediately lowered his head and ran out of the place in a hurry . Zhang Heng quickly followed behind him . Once they were away from the overseer, Zhang Heng took the initiative to ask the man a question . “Hey, what is your name?”

The other party did not seem to understand, so Zhang Heng repeated the question again .

“You know how to speak Latin?” This time, the man finally understood Zhang Heng’s question . With a surprised look on his face, he answered, “I’m Varo, how about you?”

“My name is Zhang Heng . ”

Zhang Heng gave a simple introduction but paused at the end . “Please slow down when you speak . My Latin is not very good . ”

“Okay, okay… it’s nice to meet you, Zhang Heng . No, I should say that it is unfortunate to meet you here . ” Varo put on a sad smile .

“Are we in an arena now?”

“Yes . To be more precise, we are now in the arena’s underground . ”

“No wonder I could hear all that noise . What are they cheering about?”

“Don’t you know? They are executing the death row prisoners . I used to be among that audience, cheering together with the others . ” Varo looked sad as he reminisced about the past . “…but now…”

“Do the Romans execute death row prisoners in the arena?” Zhang Heng asked .

“Yes, it is a tradition of theirs . They’ll let the wild beasts loose and devour them . Those unfortunate enough would be brought here . By the way, let’s talk as we walk . Partita wants us to clean up the mess . He will whip us again if the gladiator performance is delayed . ”

Zhang Heng noticed how Varo’s eyes trembled in fear when he mentioned the gladiator performance . This wasn’t the time to ask him about it, though . Zhang Heng still followed him closely, and the two quickly walked through the tunnel with oil lamps and arrived at the ground .

This arena they were in wasn’t that large . Clearly, this was not the famous colosseum in Rome .

There were still several terraces of seats, however, and could contain at least seven thousand spectators . Almost all the seats were occupied . This was where the cheers and screams came from . The audience chanted in a repetitive staccato, “Kill him! Kill him!!!”

Everyone’s faces were filled with excitement as though they were witnessing a grandiose stage play .

And one of the two protagonists’ throats was bitten off by the beast . The leopard then sliced his stomach with its paws and began tearing up his internal organs . The blood gushing out of his body gathered into a stream . His face was disfigured . His nose and eyes could barely be seen anymore, while his skull began to expose itself to the audience .

Although the other death-row prisoner is still alive, fear had overtaken him . He was paralyzed on the other side of the arena . It seemed like he had lived a good life before he became a death-row prisoner . All the fat on his body was jiggling nonstop . He watched in horror as the cheetah was devouring another death-row inmate . The arena deliberately starved the cheetah for some time to increase the cheetah’s aggressiveness . It could further increase the performance’s entertainment value .

Although the audience in the stands had just witnessed a person’s death, they still seemed dissatisfied . The fat man on the other side of the arena was still alive . So they began to urge the trainers to make the leopard kill him . The two trainers then used a long pole to poke the leopard, interrupting its dinner and forcing it to attack the other prisoner .

The fat man wanted to get up and run for his life when he saw the feline coming for him . However, his legs had become so weak that he failed to get up even after two attempts . His antics caused the audience to burst out in mocking laughter .

Finally, the fat man stood up . Unfortunately for him, the leopard was getting closer . With no hesitation, he around and started to run . Clearly, he could never outrun the leopard . The fat man’s escape had triggered the leopard’s hunting instinct, and before anyone could react, it pounced on the fat man mercilessly .

By that time, Zhang Heng felt that it was pointless watching the leopard make another kill .

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