The dungeon did not echo screams.
It absorbed them.
Crimson learned this within the first hour.
Chains bit into his wrists, iron fangs gnawing at bone as he was suspended above a stone floor slick with old blood. The air stank of rust, rot, and something sweeter—decay that had learned patience.
Opposite him, three figures stood in silence.
No insignias. No sect colors.
Executioners.
The Heaven-Binding Alliance did not dirty its hands. It hired shadows to break shadows.
"You killed nine inspectors," one of them said calmly. His voice was thin, like a blade sliding from a sheath. "Seven guards. Two informants."
Crimson did not answer.
A mistake, once, had taught him that words fed them.
The man nodded.
The first strike was not pain.
It was disorientation.
A needle slid beneath Crimson's left collarbone, precise, deliberate. Something cold flowed into his veins. His muscles seized—not with agony, but with betrayal. His body convulsed, locking itself against him.
"Paralytic blend," the second executioner murmured. "Extracted from the Black Marsh Vipers. Non-lethal. Long-lasting."
Crimson's breathing slowed against his will.
Good.
Slow breathing meant slow bleeding.
They did not rush.
The third executioner stepped forward and placed a wooden box on the floor. He opened it.
Inside were tools.
Not blades meant to kill.
Blades meant to teach.
A thin hook slid beneath Crimson's ribs. It did not pierce deeply. It did not tear. It pulled.
Pain arrived then—not sharp, but spreading. Blooming. A flower of fire opening inside his chest.
His vision blurred.
The dungeon walls listened.
"You assassins think suffering makes you strong," the first man continued. "But suffering is a language. And you only speak it when it's done to others."
The hook twisted.
Crimson's jaw clenched so hard a tooth cracked.
Blood spilled from his mouth, dark and thick.
Still, he did not scream.
The second executioner frowned.
"Increase dosage."
Another needle.
This one burned.
Memories rose unbidden.
A boy kneeling in snow.
Hands held over fire.
A voice whispering: Endure. Or die worthless.
Crimson welcomed the memories.
Pain was familiar ground.
Fear was not.
They moved lower.
Slow cuts along the thighs, shallow enough to avoid arteries. Each wound reopened moments later, fingers pressing just enough to keep blood flowing.
Time fractured.
Minutes became eternities.
The third executioner leaned close, whispering into Crimson's ear.
"Where is the Crimson Oath Sect hiding its remnants?"
Crimson spat blood into his mask.
Silence.
The response earned him a hammer.
Not to the bones.
To the joints.
The elbow shattered with a wet sound.
Crimson's breath escaped him in a strangled gasp.
The executioners watched carefully.
Not for screams.
For breaking.
But something inside Crimson did not fracture.
It hardened.
Deep within his dantian, something stirred—faint, suffocating, angry.
A technique he had sworn never to use.
Because it did not end pain.
It fed on it.
The Crimson Oath was not merely a vow.
It was a cultivation method.
One designed for monsters.
Crimson let go.
Pain stopped being something inflicted.
It became something consumed.
His heartbeat slowed.
Blood loss stabilized.
The executioners did not notice immediately.
The third man reached for Crimson's mask.
And froze.
"He's smiling," he said quietly.
Too late.
Crimson inhaled.
The dungeon lights dimmed as if the air itself recoiled.
Chains creaked.
The paralytic blend lost its grip, burned away by internal circulation twisted through forbidden meridians. Crimson flexed.
Iron snapped.
The first executioner barely had time to step back before Crimson's forehead smashed into his face.
Bone collapsed.
Crimson landed hard, broken arm hanging uselessly—but his good hand closed around the fallen man's blade.
The second executioner lunged.
Crimson stepped into the strike.
Steel pierced his side.
He twisted.
The executioner screamed as his wrist rotated beyond human limits.
Crimson did not kill him immediately.
He remembered the hook.
The needles.
The patience.
He dragged the man screaming across the stone floor, slamming his face again and again until teeth scattered like rice.
The third executioner fled.
Crimson followed slowly.
Methodically.
By the time the guards arrived, the dungeon was silent again.
Except for breathing.
One set of breaths stopped.
Then another.
Crimson stood amid the dead, drenched in blood that was not all his own.
He looked down at his shattered arm.
It trembled.
Good.
Pain meant he was still alive.
From the darkness beyond the corridor, bells began to ring.
Alarm bells.
The Heaven-Binding Alliance had noticed.
Crimson smiled beneath his mask.
Let Heaven come.