"Little doggies! Dinner is served!"
Qu Xiaoxiao had been curled inside the cold, narrow cage for nearly five suffocating hours before the sound of footsteps finally broke the silence.
Out from the deep shadows of the vaulted basement glided a woman dressed in ethereal, flowing robes. Even Qu Xiaoxiao—who had spent years evaluating every socialite in Shanghai's nightlife—found her breath catching in her throat at the woman's delicate features and otherworldly grace.
'She looks so breathtaking...' Xiaoxiao thought in sheer disbelief. She had braced herself to face a scarred brute, a burly enforcer, or some greasy syndicate boss, never anticipating that her captor's emissary would be a woman of such staggering elegance.
Yet, as the ethereal figure stepped directly beneath the glare of the halogen spotlight, the illusion of purity violently dissolved.
The flowing white garment was nothing more than a whisper-thin sheet of translucent silk gauze. Through the transparent fabric, every millimeter of the woman's smooth, pale skin and swelling, heavy breasts was laid completely bare—including the thick, solid-gold rings brutally pierced through both of her erect nipples.
'A golden ring pierced right through the flesh?!'
Xiaoxiao's jaw tightened in utter shock. In terms of raw facial beauty and slender proportions, this woman sat at the absolute peak of high-class society. Yet her attire belonged to the most depraved, shameless tier of a private plaything. Even the gaudiest mistresses kept by her father or brother wouldn't dare dress with such brazen degradation!
"Who the hell are you?!" Xiaoxiao grabbed the steel bars, rattling them with frantic fury. "Unlock this gate right now, do you hear me?! If you don't let me out this second, I swear on my life my family will hunt you down and destroy you!"
In the corner behind her, the second Gu Li caught sight of Nan Xiang's hand drifting toward her pocket, a wave of conditioned terror surged through her spine. Without a word, Gu Li shrank back into a tight fetal ball, pressing herself against the damp concrete as far from the bars and Qu Xiaoxiao as physically possible.
"I am giving you one final warning! Why don't you ask around Shanghai and find out who—"
BZZZZZZZZT!
Before Xiaoxiao could finish her threat, an agonizing, high-voltage electrical surge tore through the cage. A shrill, breathy scream ripped from her throat as her spine snapped backward, her styled hair standing on end from the violent current.
"Very good. At least one of you knows how to behave," Nan Xiang remarked softly.
She didn't spare a single glance at Qu Xiaoxiao, who was convulsing violently against the bars, keeping her dark almond eyes fixed entirely on Gu Li huddled on the floor.
"Woof... woof!"
Gu Li barked instantly, her voice trembling with submissive, flattering eagerness.
'I'm not arguing with a lunatic,' Gu Li reminded herself through the fog of terror.
After spending nearly a fortnight locked naked in a steel box, forced to soil herself and endure endless high-voltage discipline, every shred of her aristocratic pride had long been ground to dust. Those who possessed the suicidal obstinacy to starve themselves or fight hopelessly were rare exceptions, and Gu Li had never belonged to that category. Survival always came first.
"Good dog," Nan Xiang smiled. Reaching into a plastic bag, she pulled out two chilled bottles of mineral water and two slabs of cold, rare steak, tossing them directly through the feeding slot onto the grime-coated concrete floor.
"Teach your new roommate how to keep her mouth shut," Nan Xiang added, her finger lingering lightly over the master switch. "Unless, of course, you wish to share her punishment."
Seeing that Qu Xiaoxiao had stopped screaming and lay twitching limply on the bars, Nan Xiang finally cut the power.
"Woof! Woof!" Gu Li nodded frantically, her heart pounding against her ribs. The psychological trauma Nan Xiang had etched into her mind over the past two weeks ran deeper than any physical scar.
The moment Nan Xiang's white silhouette retreated into the darkness, Gu Li scrambled forward on all fours, gathering both bottles of water and both slabs of steak against her bare chest.
Food was delivered only once every twenty-four hours. Even with her naturally small appetite, the prolonged starvation left her perpetually hollow. Now, through sheer fortune, two full rations sat before her!
She twisted off the bottle cap with trembling hands, downing the water in frantic, ravenous gulps before tearing into the cold steak with her teeth, chewing and swallowing like a starving feral beast.
Across the cage, Qu Xiaoxiao remained collapsed in a limp heap, her muscles twitching intermittently from the residual shock, completely oblivious to her surroundings.
Up in the central monitoring suite, Number Seven pointed at the high-definition monitor and chuckled, "Look at her. She eats exactly like an alley mutt."
On screen, Gu Li had devoured every scrap of both steaks down to the gristle. Letting out a quiet, satisfied burp, she wiped her greasy mouth with the back of her forearm, then slowly crawled over to the rear corner of the enclosure. Dropping into a deep, frog-like squat, she thrust her bare hips out through the iron bars and began urinating onto the floor outside the enclosure.
Nan Xiang stepped into the room, tossing the empty bag onto the table and sighing with mild regret. "It's truly a pity. If the Young Master had permitted me to procure two aggressive male hounds to share that cage, the conditioning would be moving twice as fast."
"Ugh... what the hell... you disgusting pervert!"
A weak, hoarse voice broke the silence in the cage below.
Qu Xiaoxiao had been jarred awake by the warm droplets splashing near her face. Wiping her cheek in a daze, she looked up and froze in pure, unadulterated horror at the sight of Gu Li relieving herself through the bars like a farm animal.
Gu Li's only response was a subtle, involuntary shudder that rippled through her thighs.
Over the past three days, the kitchen staff had ceased adding laxatives to her food. Instead, the steaks were marinated in the biological secretions continuously expressed by Qin Yumo.
Because Qin Yumo's breast milk and fluids possessed extraordinary cellular regenerative properties, the domestic handlers constantly demanded fresh yields for their skin-firming routines. Furthermore, Adrian had ordered regular shipments of specialized medicinal milk wine delivered directly to Andy He to manage her neurological anxiety, turning Qin Yumo into the single busiest living fluid extractor in the entire complex.
A subtle byproduct of those extracts, however, was a dense concentration of volatile chemical aphrodisiacs.
As Gu Li finished urinating, an intense, throbbing heat blossomed deep within her lower abdomen.
Over the past few days, her libido had surged out of control. Her nights were consumed by vivid, degrading erotic dreams, and she constantly awoke with her fingers buried between her own thighs. Having studied finance and corporate undercurrents, Gu Li knew with absolute certainty that Nan Xiang was drugging her rations.
Yet, compared to the agony of starvation and dehydration, succumbing to chemical arousal was a trivial price to pay.
'I've already been stripped naked and locked in a dog cage,' she rationalized bitterly. 'What pride is left to salvage?'
Without a single trace of hesitation, Gu Li leaned back against the iron mesh and let her right hand drift downward toward her swollen folds.
"Gu Li, have you completely lost your mind?!" Qu Xiaoxiao scrambled over, grabbing Gu Li's wrist and screaming into her face. "You are the eldest daughter of the Gu Group! You are a human being! Not a fucking animal!"
"The eldest daughter? Hahaha! Miss Gu?!"
Gu Li let out a dry, manic laugh, tears spilling down her grimy cheeks as her composure violently fractured.
"Do you honestly believe you have a single chance in hell of escaping this place?!" she hissed, staring into Xiaoxiao's eyes with venomous intensity. "The Gu Group collapsed weeks ago! And if I'm not mistaken, your precious Qu family has already been wiped off the map! The only reason you and I are still breathing air is because an absolute titan wanted to keep two pedigreed heiresses as caged pets!"
Over her long days of isolation, Gu Li had methodically pieced the entire nightmare together.
Her father had never signed those astronomical corporate loans; the contracts had been expertly forged. Yet the final enforcement order had been stamped directly by the supreme judicial apparatus. The backing behind their captor sat in an administrative realm that common billionaires couldn't even fathom.
Even if they managed to pry open these steel bars, escaping his grasp in the outside world was an absolute impossibility.
"Where is your self-respect?! Where is your shame?!" Qu Xiaoxiao screamed, raising her palm and delivering a sharp, resounding slap across Gu Li's face. "Are you even the same Gu Li I knew?! You don't even have the spine to resist?!"
"Hahaha! Are you terrified, Xiaoxiao? You're terrified you'll end up crawling on your belly just like me!" Gu Li shouted back, letting the slap snap her head to the side without flinching.
Yet, at that exact second, while their chests were pressed tightly together and Gu Li shouted at the top of her lungs to draw the microphones' focus, her left hand pressed firmly against Qu Xiaoxiao's bare abdomen.
With rapid, deliberate pressure, Gu Li's index fingernail began tracing crisp, sequential Chinese characters directly onto the skin of Xiaoxiao's stomach.
Having memorized every angle of the overhead spotlight over the past fortnight, Gu Li was acutely aware of the camera's blind spots. By pulling Qu Xiaoxiao into a violent, face-to-face confrontation, their locked bodies perfectly shielded her hand from the surveillance lens above.
'This is the only blind spot in the entire cage,' Gu Li's eyes flashed with a cold, desperate clarity behind her manic laughter.
Underneath the cover of their screams, her fingernail finished tracing the final stroke of the character for WAIT.
.....
.....
.....
Give me powerstones.
Support me and read advance chapters on patreon.com/ImmortalDaoWriter