Luo He did not allow the priestess the mercy of a beheading. She was raised upside down on the same post where she had performed her ritual countless times.
Her ancient, skeletal body suspended above the stone altar. Her skull-mask falling away as she was inverted. Revealing a face that was far too old to survive what was about to happen.
"You wanted a thousand cuts," Luo He said. His voice steady and cold. "You will have them." He said confidently. Then he moved. His blade became a blur.
Not theatrical, not for show, but with the precision of a man who understood exactly what he was doing. The cuts came so rapidly that they seemed to happen all at once.
One thousand precise lacerations across her body, each one placed with surgical exactness. Each one positioned to maximize pain without immediately causing death.
But he worked so fast that by the time he had completed all one thousand cuts, the first wound had not yet begun to bleed visibly.
Her body was marked with a thousand lines of red, but the blood had not yet begun its descent from the accumulated injuries. Then Luo He stepped back. And waited.
It took seconds for the blood to begin flowing. Minutes for it to become a stream. And then it was a flood.
Her old body was simply unable to sustain function, as thousands of tiny wounds simultaneously demanded their due.
The priestess screamed, but even her screams seemed to come from very far away. Coming from a mind that was already beginning to shut down under the magnitude of the trauma.
Her curse words spoken in that ancient, incomprehensible language became weaker. Her movements grew sluggish. And then she simply hung there.
Dead and bleeding, while the unified tribal warriors cheered with an intensity that bordered on religious fervor. Luo He did not linger to watch.
He simply withdrew and gestured to the executioners who were waiting. One hundred and thirteen executioners took positions around the massive pit.
They had been selected carefully, the strongest warriors, the most loyal, the ones whose capacity for violence had been tested and proven.
They formed a perimeter around the detention pit, their blades ready, their expressions utterly focused on the work ahead. The first victims were brought forward. Children.
The youngest who had filed teeth were taken first. Some torn from their mothers' arms despite the women's desperate screams.
Some already separated and brought from holding pens, some taken when wandering confused without understanding what was about to happen.
A child perhaps four years old was brought before one executioner. The blade fell. The small head dropped into the pit.
The body followed moments later, hitting the accumulated corpses below with a wet, final sound. Then the next child.
Then the next.
The executioners worked with mechanical efficiency. There was no joy in their faces, no cruelty in their movements, just absolute focus on the task.
Kill. Behead. Drop the head. Drop the body. Move to the next victim. Repeat.
The youngest children died first. All of them.
Every single child with filed teeth, marking them as participants in the cannibal system were executed. The pit began to fill with small bodies.
Hundreds of them, their deaths creating a kind of horrible landscape of consequence. Then came the adolescents. Teenagers who had grown up in the system.
Whose minds had been shaped from birth to accept cannibalism as normal. Whose future would have been one of predation if they had been allowed to survive.
They died next. By the time the adult men were brought forward, the pit was already becoming dangerously full. The executioners had to work faster.
Sometimes throwing bodies in before the men had fully died. Sometimes stacking corpses deliberately to maximize space.
The men of the Blood God tribe died with more resistance.
They fought. They tried to run. Some attempted to overpower their executioners. But the executioners were trained and were numerous.
Every attempt at resistance was quickly and thoroughly suppressed. Then came the women. The adult women, those who had been breeders.
Women those who had participated willingly in the system. Those who had raised children specifically to be cannibals. All were executed with the same mechanical precision.
Their heads fell. Their bodies followed.
The hours stretched. The sun moved across the sky. The pit filled and filled and filled.
Midway through the executions, one of Luo He's warriors made a mistake. A woman from the cannibal tribe. Young, terrified, waiting her turn to be executed.
Was grabbed by a soldier. He dragged her away from the line, his intentions absolutely clear. Other soldiers nearby turned to watch.
Some offering encouragement, some simply observing with interest. Luo He appeared as though from nowhere. His hand gripped the soldier's arm with enough force to shatter bone.
The man screamed and released the woman immediately, falling to his knees as his arm bent at an angle that arms were not meant to bend.
"Bring me every man involved." Luo He said, his voice perfectly calm. The search took minutes. Three dozen soldiers were captured and brought forward.
Some who had participated in the act, some who were waiting for their turn, some who had simply touched and tomented women, finally once who had watched in enjoyment.
Luo He looked at them for a long moment. "You believe the rules of war permit you to take what you wish from the defeated." He asked coldly.
"You believe that victory grants you the right to use woman kind as you see fit." He said, his voice as cold as ice. He paused for a second, and then continued.
"You are no better than the cannibals. You are no better than the creatures who created this nightmare." He said harshly.
The soldiers began to understand what was about to happen.
"Execute them." Luo He ordered. "But chief," one of the remaining officers started to protest. "They are traitors to my command." Luo He said coldly.
"More than that, they are traitors to the unified tribes. They prove that the disease of the Blood God territory can spread to anyone who is allowed to harbor it."
He gestured to his guards. "Don't include them with the others. Have them hanged and their bodies buried." He said with indifference.
And the message was absolutely clear to every remaining soldier. Obedience was not negotiable. Order was not a suggestion. The rules Luo He established were binding on everyone.
The executions continued with renewed focus, with absolutely no further incidents. The detention pit had been designed to hold perhaps five hundred people in crowded conditions.
It had been holding about a thousand, by the time Luo He's army arrived. Now it was being filled with corpses. At first, the bodies were arranged deliberately.
Stacked with some attempt at organization. But as the hours passed and the scale of the killing continued, the executioners simply threw the bodies in without such pretense.
They fell in massive tangles, creating a landscape of death that seemed to grow impossibly higher. By afternoon, the pit was completely filled.
The executioners began directing bodies to the fighting arena instead. The large open area where prisoners had been forced to fight for entertainment.
That pit began to fill as well. Bodies being thrown in, accumulating in grotesque piles. Then, plant oils were poured across the growing mounds of corpses.
Afterwards, torches were applied, and the flames erupted with almost supernatural intensity. The smell of burning flesh.
Thousands of bodies burned as once. Which created a miasma of death that hung over the entire territory. The fires burned through the night, consuming everything.
By dawn, both pits had become massive funeral pyres. The flames still reaching toward the sky. Smoke billowing in columns that could be seen for miles.
But Luo He's own soldiers received different treatment. The approximately one thousand warriors who had died received proper burials.
Men died while crossing the poisoned swamp and talking the city, along with those executed for violating his orders. All were given proper burials.
They were placed in a location separate from the cannibals. Their bodies treated with respect, their deaths acknowledged as sacrifice rather than execution.
Luo He himself performed a blessing over the mass grave. Speaking words in a language that only few understood, but that carried the weight of genuine respect.
These men had died serving the unified tribes. They would be remembered as heroes. The contrast was intentional.
The message was clear.
Serve with honor and you will be honored. Violate the code and you will be discarded like garbage.
By evening, everything was done. The fires still burned, but they were carefully controlled now. The surrounding forest had been cleared to prevent the flames from spreading uncontrollably.
The bodies were consumed. The blood god territory had been systematically dismantled and destroyed.
Luo He ordered the army to march. "We cannot remain here," he announced calmly. "The smell will poison our minds. The memory will corrupt our focus. So we move now." As so they did.