Courtyard Houses: Longevity Since the War of Resistance

I straightened up and looked at the dozens of Japanese soldiers lying around. The cycle of the Five Elements is over; it's time to switch to the ancestral methods.

One by one? That's too slow.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

"God of Magic - Myriad Avatars!" Hundreds of avatars appeared before the digital army.

"Today, I'll teach you a lesson about the rules of our ancestors."

Standing before Shiro Ishii, I held a thin, willow-leaf-shaped knife in my hand. The blade was narrow, its edge gleaming with a cold, bluish light in the dim light. Without exchanging a word with him, I grabbed his collar with my left hand, and with the tip of the knife in my right hand, I pressed it against his left cheek, an inch below his ear.

The knife tip was gently pushed in, piercing the skin, and then, very slowly, it made a two-inch-long cut horizontally. It wasn't deep; just as the dermis was cut, blood immediately seeped out, forming a thin line.

Shiro Ishii shuddered, trying to scream, but my other clone grabbed his jawbone.

My wrist was incredibly steady, and the blade sliced ​​thinly along the upper edge of the incision, peeling away a layer of skin and flesh. Like slicing roast duck skin, but slower and more meticulous. Where the blade passed, the skin and flesh separated, revealing a pale pink layer of fat and bright red muscle fibers. The blood began to flow more, trickling down his neck.

This is only the first cut; the death by a thousand cuts will require 3,600 cuts.

No rush, there's plenty of time.

In front of Kitano Masaji was a copper pillar, as thick as a child's arm and glowing red-hot. The pillar was stuck in an iron frame, and a charcoal brazier was still burning underneath, the heat making one's face feel hot. The copper pillar was shining red, and a faint crackling sound could be heard if you got close.

I grabbed his right hand, forced him to open his palm, and then pressed it firmly against the red copper pillar.

laugh! !

A plume of smoke shot up, followed by an explosion of the stench of burning flesh. Kitano Seiji's scream was shrill and distorted, as if someone had grabbed his neck and then suddenly released him. He tried to pull his hand away, but my wrist was gripped like an iron clamp, rendering him immobile.

The skin on his palm instantly carbonized, shrank, and stuck to the copper pillar under the high temperature. I held him down, letting his palm remain on the copper pillar for three seconds, before suddenly tearing it off.

With a soft "plop," a layer of charred skin was torn off his palm, revealing the tender, red, twitching flesh beneath, steaming and blistering. In some places, the white metacarpal bones were already visible. His entire hand was strangely curled up, like a roasted chicken claw, trembling violently.

The torture of branding with hot irons had only just begun.

I dragged a heavy wooden donkey toward me. This thing was an old artifact, with a hardwood peg about the size of a bowl and more than a foot long on its back. The peg was sharpened to a point, but it wasn't sharp enough.

I pressed him face down onto the wooden donkey's back, aligning the wooden peg with his groin. Then I lifted my foot, stepped on his back, and pressed down hard!

"Ugh!!!"

Tsuneshige Ikari's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets, and he let out an inhuman howl.

In front of Masuda Tomosada and Yoshimura Hisato, there stood two versions of myself. In our hands, we held specially made thin iron wires, one end of which was sharpened to an extremely fine point.

Masuda Tomosada was forced to kneel on the ground, his head tilted back. One of me held his upper eyelids, while the other "I" aimed the wire tip at the side of his eyeball and slowly, steadily, pierced it in.

puff

A very soft sound. The eyeball was pierced, and fluid from the lens mixed with blood spilled from the wound. The wire continued to penetrate, piercing through the eyeball and exiting from the other side. Then, the two of us worked together, holding both ends of the wire, and began to slowly, like sawing, pull it back and forth.

They pull and stretch the big shovel, while children put on a grand opera at the door.

"Heh...heh..."

Masuda Tomosada's scream was choked in his throat, his body trembling violently as if electrocuted. The wire rubbed against the tissue inside his eyeball, the indescribable, piercing pain making him wish he could die immediately.

This is called Dongyou, which is a cure for blindness in both eyes and mind.

Yoshimura Hisato, standing nearby, wasn't idle either. He used an iron hook to pierce Yoshimura's collarbone, lifting him slightly off the ground. Another man held a small, rough stone shovel, not made of metal. He aimed the shovel at the soles of Yoshimura's feet and began to file them forcefully, stroke by stroke.

The rough stone scraped away a layer of skin and flesh with each stroke, exposing the bright red dermis beneath, causing beads of blood to immediately well up. The soles of the feet are densely packed with nerves, and the pain from this blunt scraping was sharp and persistent, drilling straight into the brain. Yoshimura Hisato writhed in agony, the iron hooks tugging at his collarbone wound only exacerbating the pain.

This is called sawing the foot, which makes you unable to stand or walk.

In the hall, hundreds of versions of myself were simultaneously subjected to hundreds of different punishments, all of which originated from ancient records or folk tales.

There was a clerk in charge of recording things, whom I bound like a rice dumpling with oil-soaked hemp rope, and then lit the rope. The flames slowly scorched his skin, the oil fueling the fire, and his flesh sizzled. The air was filled with the stench of roasted meat and burnt cloth—this is called fire weaving.

I stuffed a young guard into a narrow pit, leaving only his head sticking out. Then I brought in several horses and made them run around the edge of the pit. The horses' hooves kicked up dust, which kept falling into his mouth, nose, and eyes. The dust piled up, making it harder and harder for him to breathe, until he finally suffocated in the dust. This is called burying someone alive.

There was a warehouse manager who was tied to a rack, and with a blunt iron chisel, his teeth were slowly chipped away, bit by bit. It wasn't a sudden smashing; each tooth was carefully loosened and pried off from the root. Each tooth that fell out was accompanied by bloody, raw flesh. His mouth was full of blood, and he wailed and moaned, unable to utter a clear word. This was called "pulling out the roots."

There was a nurse I used to prick the nails of all ten of her fingers, one by one, with a long needle dipped in hot oil. The hot oil flowed into the needle holes, scalding the most delicate nerves beneath the nails. Her fingers were in excruciating pain, swelling up like carrots – this is called oil burns.

……

The Japanese soldiers enjoyed the meticulously prepared traditional hospitality.

The screams were no longer isolated, but rather merged into a continuous, varied symphony of agony. The air was filled with an extremely complex mix of smells: blood, burnt odor, earthy stench, urine, feces, and a bizarre mixture of bodily fluids and chemicals.

I proceeded calmly. My technique was precise, my rhythm steady. I never rushed what needed to be slow, and never carelessly applied what required meticulousness. I ensured that everyone could fully "experience" the essence of the punishment, feeling how every bit of pain was generated, accumulated, and ultimately overwhelmed their sanity.

Time passed little by little.

Hundreds of thin, cicada-wing-like pieces of flesh had been sliced ​​off Shiro Ishii's face and body, making him look like a blood gourd, but he was still alive, his eyes unfocused, and only breathing sounds coming from his throat.

Kitano Masaji's hands were branded onto the copper pillar, his skin and flesh charred and stuck together, exposing the bone.

Tsuneshige Ikari lay lifeless on the wooden donkey, only a slight oozing of blood from his lower body. Tomosada Masuda's eyeball was ripped apart by wire, and the other was dull and lifeless.

Yoshimura Hisato's feet were scraped raw, revealing the bone beneath...

The others also had their own tragic circumstances, none of them were completely unscathed.

almost.

I stopped all of them at the same time.

A powerful force of time enveloped the entire space; all the flowing blood was reversed back to the wound, all the torn flesh flew back to its original place, all the broken bones were mended, all the scattered gazes were refocused, and all the faint breaths became powerful...

In the blink of an eye, the Japanese soldiers reappeared unharmed on the hall floor.

Shiro Ishii huddled in the corner, his hands gripping his face tightly, his fingernails scratching his skin until it bled, muttering incessantly to himself—a mumbled, broken voice.

"One cut... two cuts... three thousand..." he was counting how many cuts he had just received.

Looking at his intact but trembling hands, Kitano Seiji suddenly let out a hoarse, maniacal laugh. As he laughed, he began to gag, vomiting only stomach acid and bile.

I watched this scene quietly; the first round of ancient torture was quite effective.

This is nothing.