Immortal Kingdoms

Chains rattled noisily inside a very dim and humid underground cave system.

Two men were walking side by side without saying a word, their figures enshrouded underneath layers of black cloth, only their callus hands visible through the wide sleeves of their uniforms.

One of them was locking his rigid fingers in long strands of silver-white hair, dragging the figure of a naked young man through the shallow waters and dusty ground as they made their way into the depths of the tunnels.

The further they traveled, the more evident a faint sound of the whip striking through the air and muffled groans intermixed with crazy laughter vibrated in their ears, but they nonetheless trudged forward silently.

Very quickly they arrived inside an open underground space where they found a group of similarly dressed silent men and another naked man with long black hair.

The man was hung upside down, a metallic iron hook piercing his ankles as a blade obsidian chain bound him to the ceiling. The length of the chain was calculated so meticulously, leaving half the man's face submerged in water, leaving his chin and mouth outside to breathe.

This man sometimes shouted, sometimes laughed, and sometimes returned to shouting even louder. Anyone who saw this would assume that this man went mad from torture.

As his body writhed around, blood from his split open back and rib cage bones that were snapped apart to jut out into twelve spikes. Countless wriggling worms were gnawing away at the bones and flesh within his body, but the speed was so excruciatingly slow that his minimal self-recovery abilities kept his body from deteriorating to a critical point.

From the front, a heavily spiked whip glistening with poison lashed out at his chest, abdomen, and face without rest.

Even the man striking with the whip had the skin on his hand torn open from the endless striking. Still, whenever his hands were too numb to continue, someone else would take his place.

"Count yourself viscous! Haha! You really think your methods are something, keeping me locked up for who knows how many millennia!"

The man laughed and screamed incoherently.

"The sooner you talk, the less you suffer. Your people obviously don't care about you anymore, otherwise, they'd have long come to save you."

Whack!

Whack!

Whack!

As the man in black spoke, his whip danced and split the naked man's cheek open, digging deep into his bones.

The naked man shuddered violently and spat a mouthful of blood, then continued to laugh crazily.

"My junior brother will be coming soon, then let's see if you can stop us from leaving! Haha!"

Whack!

Pfft!

Whack!

Pfft!

"Junior brother this and that, you've been screaming the same sentence over and over for the past twenty years, where is that junior brother?!"

Whack!

Pfft!

"Haha! Just wait— Pfft! Haha! Haha! Haha!"

…

Splash!

Suddenly, two men entered the room, one of them tossing a young man who was unconscious into the mud, water, and blood on the ground, grunting coldly as though he said something.

"Another one?" The man holding the whip stopped, furrowing his brows to ask.

The other two men to the side and even the other naked man looked this way, confusion in their eyes. Suddenly, Leonardo's body twitched slightly as he could feel a district and familiar yet unfamiliar aura, something that caused the black sea behind the black gate to ripple softly.

Then, an almost imperceptible spiritual fluctuation rippled out from Leonardo's mind's eye, seemingly triggering a mechanism hidden deep within the other naked man's mind eye, causing his laughter to abruptly lag. Then, he laughed even louder.

"Haha! HAHA! HAHAHAHA! Finally! FINALLY!"

As he laughed and screamed, his body began shaking uncontrollably, his once-red blood slowly turning black as his skin cracked and bones splintered.

"Devil blood?" The men in black spoke simultaneously, their tones grave.

"I knew they were a group of devils! They hid themselves too damn well! Do they want to rebuild the Lost Dynasty?! Too naive!"

These weird conversations rushed into Leonardo's ears the moment his consciousness surfaced against his will, confusing him. Then, he saw the man who was laughing while simultaneously breaking down, a sudden wave of inexplicable grief washing his heart.

The man's lips silently moved as he laughed crazily, mouthing the words you've come, little brother. Take care.

Then, the man's heart beat and beat out of control before exploding in his chest, a splash of black blood staining Leonardo's confused face.

"How can he commit suicide?! We didn't extort any valuable information from him yet! Fuck! Chain this kid up before he shuts himself down for me!"

A loud, mind-buzzing voice boomed in the room. Then, everyone felt the entire underground cave system shaking.

First, everyone attributed the shaking to the powerful voice of the divinity. However, they quickly realized that something was wrong, that was precisely because an old man suddenly appeared in their midst.

"Rebirth experts have locked onto this location, hurriedly evacuate!"

The old man shouted sternly, a pair of ephemeral eyes surfacing from the void behind him, the third eye being a dense core not unlike that of a sparkling star, brimming with life.

"Hehe, you're a step too late, old man…" A soft voice that sent chills down everyone's spine echoed in the underground cave, its source a young boy who didn't look older than fourteen years old.

This child had short black hair, inky eyes, and a wicked smile as dark as his long thick coat. The old man didn't have time to turn around before he felt a small hand piercing his back, stabbing his heart, and thrusting its way all the way through his chest to his head, blasting his brain into bits and pieces.

Blood splashed everywhere as the eyes in the void dimmed and the core seemed as though it was about to explode.

"Run!"

One of the men in black shouted. However, he suddenly realized that he couldn't move a muscle.

Whoosh!

The sound of something cutting through the air echoed. Then, the man's body, much like his companions and that unstable core in the sky, crumbled into hundreds of tiny fragments that were evenly diced apart, more blood splashing about.

The kid then gestured with his hand as a black sword cut whizzed in the air before hovering behind him, not a speck of blood could be seen on the cold edge.

"You must be the guy Lord Sin talked about. Haha, you're very good. Ah, my name is too ugly so you can call simply address me as junior brother. For now, we need to leave quickly before they dispatch some competent experts."

Leonardo was still confused about these developments, and his body felt too weak to move. Hence, even as he felt a formless energy wrap around his body and carry him through the air, he had no chance of resisting whatsoever.

The kid then jumped on the surface of his sword as it expanded enough to host Leonardo's stiff body as well, quickly shooting out through the deep hole in the ceiling that led to the outside world through a deep mountain.

The moment they left the formations of the underground cave systems, Leonardo felt waves of heavy energy compressing his body from all sides, his vision filled with radiations of multiple colors that almost blinded him and fried his brain with the endless information his brain attempted to perceive.

The kid simply laughed at Leonardo's discomforted expression, lifting two fingers with a dense concentration of blue ether on their tip.

"Disintegrate!"

He shouted in a low voice, tossing this small sphere of energy into the direction of the deep hole.

…

A thin blue streak of light pierced the clouds and descended into the cave systems. Then, a silent white sphere of boiling energy expanded like a dome, when it disappeared, so did the cave systems and everything that was left behind.

Only two overlapping M characters were left in the center of the crater.

A few moments later when a few old men dressed in red uniforms appeared above the scene, one of them couldn't help but sigh and shake his head.

"Was it necessary to provoke Memento Mori? What's scarier than a mighty Dynasty is a group of mighty cultivators with nothing to lose…"

Ultimately, no one responded to this old man…