A shrill, hoarse scream tore through the silence of the cold canyon. The sound was so horrifying, it sounded like human vocal cords being forcibly stretched to their breaking point. Behind a dark crevice in the cliff, Lin Xuanyin sat hugging her knees, her hands pressed tightly over Lin Tian's ears, while she herself squeezed her eyes shut, trembling violently.In the middle of a pool of blood and the corpses of the tracking squad, Xiao Chen knelt beside Gou Yan, whose legs had been crushed by a rock.The servant-clothed young man wasn't cutting off fingers or skinning the executioner like some low-level torturer. Instead, the two blood-covered fingers of Xiao Chen's left hand were pressing precisely on three acupuncture points centered on Gou Yan's neck and spine.It was the Hell's Reversal Nerve Lock, a basic torture technique from the Holy Realm that relied purely on mortal anatomical precision. By pressing certain nerve clusters, Xiao Chen blocked the pain-relieving hormones in th

Dust mixed with wood splinters and torn tent fabric slowly settled to the ground. In the middle of the night's silence that suddenly felt suffocating, Xiao Chen coughed hard. A thick glob of blood sprayed from his mouth, soaking the sand and gravel beneath him. Every time he took a breath, a pain as sharp as a blade tore through his left chest. Two of his ribs were definitely cracked, pressing against his lungs from the impact of the Qi wave just now. The slash wounds on his left shoulder and right thigh that he had bandaged were now blown wide open. The makeshift bandages were drenched in fresh blood pouring out, mixing with the dirty mud covering his entire body. His Dantian, which was only at the 1st-Class Warrior stage, was bone dry. Without a single drop of Qi to protect his internal organs, this mortal body was nothing more than a lump of meat waiting to be minced. From behind the smoke and the remains of the split