The Discipline Hall was a cold fortress, but Deacon Shen's private estate was a gilded cage.
Dver was dragged from the stone floors of the interrogation rooms to a sprawling manor on the inner slopes of the mountain. Here, the air smelled of expensive lotuses and mountain tea, but for a slave, it was more dangerous than the Pit.
"So, this is the 'Lucky Rat' I've heard so much about?"
A woman in flowing, crimson silks stood on the marble veranda, fanning herself with a jade-ribbed fan. This was Madam Shen. Her beauty was sharp, like a glass blade, and her cultivation at the Foundation Establishment stage made her aura feel like a physical weight on Dver's shoulders.
Beside her stood two girls, perhaps seventeen and eighteen. Mei and Ran. They wore matching silk robes and looked at Dver with the same expression one might use for a particularly ugly stray dog.
"He looks... pathetic, Mother," Mei, the elder daughter, sneered. She stepped down from the veranda, her silk slippers clicking on the stone. "Father said he reached Rank 9. He doesn't look like he could reach for a bowl of rice without tripping."
"He is a tripod," Madam Shen laughed, her voice like wind chimes in a graveyard. "A fluke of nature. But he has a sturdy back. Ran, didn't you say your training dummy was falling apart?"
The younger daughter, Ran, smiled. It wasn't a kind smile. "I did. The wooden ones don't scream when I hit the pressure points correctly."
Dver stood in the center of the courtyard, his head bowed, his eyes fixed on the dirt. The Soul-Binding Shackle around his neck hummed with a low, agonizing vibration, suppressing his Qi and keeping his "Asura" muscles soft and sluggish.
"P-please, Ladies..." Dver stammered, his voice trembling. "I am just a humble servant... I only wish to serve Master Shen..."
WHACK.
Ran's jade-encrusted whip lashed out, catching Dver across the cheek. A thin line of blood welled up, dripping onto his black servant's tunic.
"You don't speak unless I ask you a question, dog," Ran chirped. "Now, stand over there by the archery target. I want to see if I can imbue my needles with frost-Qi without killing you instantly."
For the next four hours, Dver was a toy.
Madam Shen forced him to kneel in the sun as a footstool while she drank her tea. Mei practiced her "Palm of the Withered Leaf" on his chest, delighting in the way he gasped for air and rolled in the dirt. And Ran... Ran used him as a pincushion for her poisoned needles, testing how long it took for his Rank 9 body to neutralize the toxins.
Inside Dver's mind, the Void God was no longer screaming. It was silent. A deep, abyssal silence that was far more terrifying.
"Their blood would taste like expensive wine, Vessel," it finally whispered. "The mother first. We should start with her tongue."
No, Dver thought, his mind cold and analytical even as Mei kicked him in the ribs again. The mother is Foundation Establishment. The Deacon is nearby. We are a slave. Slaves are invisible. And invisible things can go anywhere.
"He's boring," Mei complained, wiping her hands on a silk cloth after striking Dver across the face. "He just shakes and cries. He doesn't even fight back."
"That's because he knows what happens if he does," Madam Shen said, rising from her chair. "Ran, stop with the needles. If he dies, your father will be annoyed. He needs this one to carry his palanquin to the Great Sect Banquet tomorrow."
She looked down at Dver, who was curled in a ball on the grass, "weeping" silently.
"Take him to the cellar," Madam Shen ordered a guard. "Give him a cup of water and some stale bread. We wouldn't want our new toy to break before the banquet."
The Cellar.
Dver was thrown into a damp, dark room beneath the manor. The heavy iron door slammed shut, and the bolt slid home.
The moment he was alone, the "pain" vanished.
Dver sat up, his movements fluid and predatory. He reached up to his cheek, wiping away the blood. His skin was already knitting back together. The poisoned needles Ran had stuck in his arms? He pulled them out one by one, watching as the black venom was instantly absorbed and neutralized by the Void within his veins.
He looked at the iron collar around his neck.
"A banquet," Dver whispered.
"The Great Sect Banquet," the Void God hummed. "Every Elder will be there. Every high-ranking disciple. The Saintess. The Grand Elder. A mountain of high-grade Qi, all in one room, distracted by wine and music."
Dver closed his eyes, feeling the layout of the house through the stones. He wasn't just a slave. He was a virus that had just been invited into the heart of the host.
"Let them play with their toy," Dver said, a slow, dark smile spreading across his face in the pitch black of the cellar.