A full day of venting left the arena visitors, now victim's relatives, wrung out.
By dusk the crowd moved like men after harvest. Arms heavy. Throats raw. Rage spent down to a dull ache.
They drifted home with bloodied bruised knuckles and the strange calm that came when you finally struck the thing you had been forbidden to strike.
The attendants looked worse. White robed and straight backed, they still carried themselves like court men.
The reason for their fatigue is that their mouths have yapped again and again, telling the onlookers that they were dishing out damage.
"The soul suffers the damage. Each pain you inflict becomes a hundred times more."
Mortals did not quite believe it. Cultivators did not quite believe it either.
Not because they thought the attendants lied. Because the shackled would not let the prisoners bleed or bruise.
That left them unsure whether they had beaten a soul half-dead or only raised a swollen cheek, though their aim had been the former.
