Then the priestess began. She used a blade no larger than a finger. Made from sharpened bone, and made the first cut across his chest. Not deep.
Just enough to open the skin. The blood began to flow immediately, trickling down the man's body. Dripping from his nose and mouth, pooling on the stone below.
Cut after cut. A thousand deliberate wounds, each one precise, each one positioned to keep the victim alive and conscious for as long as possible.
The man's screams were the most terrible sound Luo He had ever heard. Not the sudden cry of someone experiencing acute injury.
But the prolonged, agonized wail of someone being unmade piece by piece.
It took hours. The sun moved across the sky while the priestess worked.
Her movements becoming almost meditative, as though this was a spiritual practice as much as a execution.
When the man finally died his body simply unable to sustain function despite his mind's continued awareness. Then he was left a lone hanging till tomorrows sacrifice.
Luo He watch, to gather information. The prisoners who had been captured were kept here deliberately.
Their blood were sometimes drained carefully in smaller quantities to avoid waste. The same way one might milk livestock.
When children reach four or five years of age, their teeth are filed into points. At the same time, they undergo relentless indoctrination.
Until cannibalism becomes, as ordinary and natural as eating bread. They were given small doses of human flesh mixed with other foods.
Conditioning them from childhood to view their own species as sustenance.
It was a complete system. Efficient. Horrible.
Utterly committed to the complete reversal of human morality. And then Luo He discovered something that changed everything.
In a structure that served as a kind of temple and school, Luo He found him.
An old man. Ancient, skeletal, with eyes that seemed to look through the physical world into something beyond.
His fingers were stained with substances that no traditional dye could create. The air around him seemed to shimmer slightly, as though reality itself was uncertain in his presence.
This was the Poison Marsh Elder. Level 8 in basic sorcery, with a specialization in poisons that made him perhaps the most dangerous non-warrior in the entire region.
Luo He watched from the shadows as the elder performed a ritual. Drawing patterns in ash, speaking words in a language that predated any of the modern tribes.
Making small gestures that seemed to ripple through the air like waves. The connection was undeniable. The poisoning of the swamp was his work no doubt in that.
Not through conventional means, but through magic. A system of knowledge that Luo He understood existed, but had not fully encountered until this moment.
And more importantly, there was no antidote. The poisoning was not temporary. It was not a condition that would fade.
The Poison Marsh Elder had transformed that entire ecosystem into a barrier that would remain lethal indefinitely unless he actively reversed the spell.
Which meant the problem was not solved. Luo He returned to the Black Cloud Shuttle and made his way back to the camp. Already calculating the implications.
Six thousand warriors could not simply cross a poisoned swamp. They could not circumvent it either. The terrain was too extensive.
And they could not wait indefinitely while the Blood God tribe prepared stronger defenses. The solution was both simple and brutal.
That night, while the unified tribal army slept, the Blood God warriors conducted another raid. They killed strategically infiltrating the camp.
Targeting leaders, creating maximum psychological damage before vanishing back into the darkness. By the time the camp woke, two hundred more warriors were dead.
Nearly six hundred warriors lost to the poison or the night raids. The army was bleeding. Thus Luo He issued new orders.
"Cut the forest. Build a crossing." He commended, guiding the men along the way. For two days, his warriors worked with frantic urgency.
Trees fell like wheat before scythes. Wood was shaped into massive plank structures, floating platforms large enough to support dozens of warriors at once.
Connected by rope lines to prevent them from separating. The construction was crude but functional.
On the third day, the first contingent of warriors began to cross using the wooden structures.
They stayed on the planks, staying above the poisoned water. Moving with careful precision. The process was slow. Excruciatingly slow. But it worked.
As the first wave reached the far side and established a foothold, the Blood God tribe had realized, that the barrier could be overcomed.
They launched a massive counterattack. Warriors pouring from their settlements and charging toward the crossing points.
Attempting to collapse the wooden structures before they could be fully utilized. What followed was close to slaughter.
But it was the Blood God tribe doing the slaughtering. Warriors fighting on the wooden planks had nowhere to retreat.
Warriors trying to defend against attackers coming from the far bank were trapped between the poisoned water and the enemy spears.
But as the battle wore on, the tide began to turn. The superior equipment, training, and tactics of Luo He's warriors had earned their reputation for a reason.
The first men to reach the shore fought as scattered individuals, and the casualties among them were severe.
Yet with every boat that landed, more soldiers poured onto the ground. Gradually they organized themselves into disciplined spear formations.
Soon establishing a defensive perimeter around the landing sites and protecting the arrival of reinforcements. The fighting remained fierce, and blood flowed freely in the early stages of the assault.
However as time passed, fewer and fewer defenders arrived to oppose them. Barely a thousand warriors managed to reach the battlefield.
The rest had been delayed, scattered, or drawn away by the chaos erupting across their lands. Once the foothold was secure, the outcome was no longer in doubt.
Luo He's fully armed and armored forces advanced inland against a society that had been caught utterly unprepared.
Most of the able bodied warriors were scattered, leaving behind only the elderly, the wounded, many women, and children.
What followed was not a battle but a massacre. Shield walls advanced relentlessly through villages while spear formations drove back every desperate attempt at resistance.
Those who stood and fought were cut down. Those who fled were hunted. House after house fell as Luo He's soldiers swept across the settlement with grim efficiency.
Crushing organized resistance wherever it appeared. By the end of the day, the defenders had ceased to exist as a fighting force.
The fate of the settlement had been decided the moment Luo He's men secured the foothold.
Everything that followed was merely the execution of that victory. Within hours, nearly all of the left over Blood God warriors were dead or imprisoned.
Around a thousand of the Blood God tribe's finest warriors lay corpses in the swamp water, adding their dissolved bodies to the contamination.
Around another thousand Blood God woriors were dead on the streets. And close to ten thousand prisoners were captured.
The slaves were freed from the detention pit. Emaciated, traumatized, but alive.
Luo He assembled them in the arena where they had been forced to fight for entertainment.
The freed prisoners looked at him with expressions that cycled between hope and confusion. Many expected mercy.
Some expected that the outsider who had freed them would attempt to integrate them into his army or society.
But Luo He just gave them freedom, with no demands.
Instead, he announced his judgment on other things. "All who have filed teeth will be executed." Luo He said, his voice carrying across the arena.
"All cannibals will be executed. All priests and priestesses will be executed. All who willingly participated in the rituals will be executed." His voice was cold.
Silence.
Then horror, as the implications became clear. Shirshir stood beside Luo He and openly began to weep. "These are also children." She said, her voice breaking.
"Some of them are only four years old. They did not choose this. They did not..."
She started crying with full tears now.
"They will be cannibals within a year or two." Luo He said simply. "If they survive. Allowing them to live is allowing the contamination to continue. The mindset has been installed. It will spread." His words carried some truth.
Su Kim stood motionless, her face a mask, but her hands were shaking. Xu Mun's expression was utterly blank but not with acceptance.
"This is genocide." Su Kim said quietly.
"This is prevention." Luo He replied. But even as he said it, she could see something in his eyes.
Not satisfaction. Not cruelty for its own sake. Simply, absolute certainty. The certainty of a man who had made a calculation and was willing to accept whatever moral cost came with it.
The executions began systematically.
Children with filed teeth were brought forth. Some cried. Some did not seem to understand what was happening.