Chapter 1433: The Slithering in the Darkness!
Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales
Every day, new bodies would be thrown into the pit. All of these corpses were headless.
Sramana was a madman who delighted in the expressions on people’s faces as they neared death. He felt that only pain and despair were the most authentic emotions. Smiles stood for hypocrisy.
He would use his long-range control special ability to slowly crush a person’s bones and organs, and then he would observe the pained looks on their faces. The looks of pain on those people who knew that they were about to die were so wonderful. There was still that tiny shred of hope in their eyes, but their minds had already given up.
Sramana could observe such faces for an entire day, seeking that moment of maximum pain.
Plus.h.!.+
!!
The blade would sweep across the neck of the tormented soul, blood would gush out, and the body would swiftly crumple to the ground and slowly stiffen.
Sramana needed to be fast so that he could forever preserve that most sublime look of pain of the victims. He would encase them in gla.s.s cubes and display them in his bedroom.
The heads of his victims began to acc.u.mulate, and he was forced to change his bedroom twice in order to hold all his trophies.
Sramana had a habit. He needed to see those pained expressions before he could sleep. He would feel fortunate when he knew that others were in pain.
Sramana had enjoyed torturing small animals from a very young age. He would break the legs of dogs or cats and listen to their screams.
The screams would open up every pore on Sramana’s body, giving him an indescribable pleasure. The only thing that displeased him was that the expressions on the faces of those small creatures simply weren’t as rich as those of humans. But to hear the screams and see those despairing eyes still excited him.
Sramana first learned of the ecstasy to be found in the despairing expressions of dying humans when he was nine.
He had gone with a friend into an abandoned mine. A rotting supporting pillar had suddenly collapsed, and the rockfall had crushed his friend’s legs. His friend’s face had twisted in pain and despair, and he cried out to Sramana to seek help, for him to go outside and find someone to save him.
At that moment, Sramana was about to leave in panic, but he quickly calmed down. This was because he noticed that his friend’s face was twisted in pain, his bloodshot eyes, and his despairing cries were all so tantalizing.
The despairing screams were the most beautiful music in the world, and that pained face was the most authentic and moving painting.
Thus, Sramana stopped. He went up to his friend, sat down, and observed his face.
When his friend saw that Sramana was not going to get help, his face was filled with shock and disbelief. He grew angry and cursed at Sramana, but Sramana only found immense satisfaction in his anger.
To think that pain and despair could be so beautiful!
Finally, Sramana understood why he hated the insincere smiles of adults. It was because their smiles weren’t real, so they couldn’t move him.
His heart wanted to experience pain, and the more heart-wrenching the pain, the more fiercely Sramana’s heart beat, and the faster his blood flowed.
But his excitement didn’t last for long. His friend died from excessive blood loss, and the despairing expression vanished from his face, which gradually stiffened.
For a very long time afterwards, Sramana would dream about the pained look on his dying friend’s face. That pained expression became the bedrock of his thoughts.
The temptation of seeing another person’s pained and despairing expression tormented Sramana. Finally, when he was eleven, he used a knife to kill an old beggar under a bridge.
When the dagger stabbed into the beggar’s heart, his sleeping face rapidly distorted, throwing up blood. The many wrinkles all scrunched up together in pain and despair!
Sramana became like a drug addict, seeking out more targets and enjoying the painful looks on their faces as they died.
Humans were creatures who could never be satisfied. Sramana wanted those beautiful instances to last forever, so he used gla.s.s cement to preserve them.
Sramana only appreciated those twisted faces of death, having no interest in the human body. He threw away the bodies of the victims, letting them rot on the side of the road, food for the maggots.
The people of the Outer Frontier had a very obvious difference when compared to people of the Inner Territories. Here, many special ability users opened their seventh brain regions rather late.
Sramana was over twenty years old when he suddenly unlocked his seventh brain region, obtaining the rare Telekinesis special ability.
After becoming a special ability user, Sramana grew even more insane, killing more people to get more despairing expressions. At the same time, he started to learn torture techniques.
Sramana could only get temporary joy if he simply killed his victims. But by slowly tormenting them to death, the Sramana could enjoy the experience over and over, finding even more details and observing even more pained expressions.
Over the last twenty years, Sramana had become an infamous serial killer in the Outer Frontier, leaving headless corpses in many different places.
The Outer Frontier was a remote place, and Sramana received none of the deserved punishment for his cruelty. He even managed to get a job.
Sramana did not know how the Imperial City Steward’s son Padu had found him, but when he was offered a price of two hundred slaves in exchange for Sramana killing one person, Sramana immediately agreed.
He didn’t care who he was killing, only about the expressions of pain and despair as that person died.
Padu quickly sent over the first batch of slaves, which had men and women, both old and young.
Sramana happily followed Padu back to the Chaos Eagle Empire. There, he used a brush dabbed in red ink to write a name on an Ink Eagle’s leg.
That was all he needed for one hundred pained and despairing faces?
Sramana felt like Padu was truly a fool. He invited Padu to enjoy his most cherished work of art together, but Padu paled and firmly refused.
It was also on that day that Sramana suddenly found that Padu’s face was very special: a little chubby, but pure and clean, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with temptation.
One month later, Padu came to Sramana again. This time, the target was the emperor, Skyraiser Eagle.
Sramana barely expended any effort in controlling the emperor to take the poison, killing him.
When he returned, Padu sent him the second batch of slaves. Perhaps because he was afraid that Sramana would be exposed, Padu brought a group of warriors with him and ambushed Sramana.
Alas, Padu did not know that Sramana was far stronger than he had imagined. While traveling the Outer Frontier in search of targets, Sramana had once come upon a fortuitous encounter, and he had become an Advanced Star Domain special ability user.
Padu and his men were simply no match for the monk.
When the battle was over, Sramana didn’t kill Padu, instead locking him up with the slaves.
Sramana thought that he owed a lot to this fool, who had saved him the time of going around hunting for his prey.
The thought of immersing himself in the joy of pained and despairing faces had Sramana trembling with excitement!
Many years of human murder had taught Sramana much. The most wonderful expression was not easily obtained. He first needed to imprison the victims, instilling fear and hunger in them, and then he would torture them. Only then could he obtain the most despairing and most pained expression.
With a clatter, the cage holding the slaves was opened.
Sramana raised an eyebrow as he cast his gaze over the prisoners.
Finally, he found the face he wanted to see, a young mother holding her daughter as she trembled in a corner.
The mother and her child had faces caked in dirt. Their hunger had made them weak and frail, their skin appearing much older than their actual ages.
Sramana stared at the mother and daughter, watching as the mother grimly hugged her daughter while trembling.
Sramana stared at the mother for a long time, making her feel like she had managed to escape this time.
“Yaya, no matter what happens, you have to live. You must survive!
“Nothing is more important than survival! Remember!” the mother whispered into her daughter’s ear in a raspy voice.
The daughter nodded dumbly, and then his young mother closed her eyes in despair, prepared to accept the torture of this devil.
Sramana had set up the torture site right next to the cell, ensuring that everyone in the cage could hear the entire torture process.
Surveillance devices would record how the people in the cell paled, and how the tears poured down their faces.
That was also a form of enjoyment for Sramana. The projector on his dining table was for playing back the suffering of his prisoners, seasoning for Sramana’s meals.
Sramana raised his chin, and the mother let out a crazed and despairing wail!
Her young daughter had floated into the air! The one selected had not been her, but her daughter!
Heavens!
The mother instantly collapsed. It wouldn’t be long before she would hear her daughter being tortured to death by Sramana in the room next door!
There was no human tragedy more painful than that!
The young mother had so ardently hoped that the one Sramana had picked was her! The mother would have done anything for the sake of her daughter living another day!
But the most pious prayers were useless before this devil.
The mother could only watch as her daughter swiftly flew from her embrace. Her hands scratched at her scalp, tearing away hair and blood.
Thump!
Just when the young mother believed that she had lost everything…
Sramana suddenly put Yaya down.
The barefoot girl quickly crawled across the hard ground, the metal sc.r.a.ping her legs and kneecaps, leaving behind a trail of blood. But with a shriek, the girl finally lunged into the embrace of her mother.
The girl’s eyes were blank as she trembled all over. She didn’t cry, for fear had robbed her of all her energy and rendered her mind completely blank.
“Someone’s coming? Who could it be?” Sramana muttered.
He closed the door of the cage and walked out with a frown.
The people in the cage felt like they had been saved, but they all knew that fortune was not in their stars. Just because they had escaped today didn’t mean that they would escape tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow.
So long as this devil lived, they would all die in pain and misery, their heads chopped and turned into gla.s.s cubes.
Sramana walked out of the darkness, moving faster and faster, like a rat crawling through a sewer.
He came up to a metal wall and looked through the spyhole, using it to observe the situation in the mine tunnels.
He saw two people, very young and with very special faces.
One of them had a perpetually sunny smile, while the other cared for nothing at all.
Sramana’s eyes flew open.
The Outer Frontier was impoverished, and he had seen the bitter expressions on many poor people.
But these two young men were from the Inner Territories, with paler skin and cleaner features. The expressions on their faces only needed to be seen once to never be forgotten.
They didn’t try to pretend. That smiler naturally smiled and that uncaring guy was very natural in his lack of concern. Through Sramana’s study of human expressions, he concluded that he could pick out the faces of these two young men out of a crowd of a million people. That was just how unique and clear their faces were.
They were existences that Sraman had been searching for in vain all this time.
If he could torture them, they would definitely leave behind unforgettably marvelous expressions.
In the darkness, Sramana greedily licked his lips.
Like a snake lying in the shadows, he began to slither toward the two young men who had entered the mine.