Meeting the Father-in-law

The Elephant Demon obeyed Gu Qingfeng's orders and led him to the place where the human slaves were imprisoned.

Along the way, fearing that the Elephant Demon might try to deceive him and waste unnecessary time, Gu Qingfeng forced him to swear an oath of submission.

After the submission, under the hunched and staggering guidance of the Elephant Demon, the man and the demon flew deeper into the spatial rift, passing through layers of floating ruins of buildings, until they finally stopped before an extremely vast abandoned palace.

The abandoned palace shimmered with streams of light, clearly protected by powerful sealing arrays.

The Elephant Demon opened the array seals and led Gu Qingfeng inside.

Once inside, Gu Qingfeng found the interior arranged like a prison, divided into dozens of individual rooms, each isolated by arrays. Inside each room was a captive.

Gu Qingfeng glanced at the nearest person and noticed words carved on the door of their room: [Earth Treasure Body].

He observed that every room had words inscribed on it, each representing the name of a unique physique.

[Innate Dao Body], [Jade Bone Spirit Body], [Star Battle Body], [Triple Sun Right Body]...

The people inside were nearly naked, disheveled, with long, unkempt hair—regardless of gender, their hair was over a meter long, clearly untouched for a long time.

Their bodies were covered in dark red, nearly black scabs, making their faces unrecognizable. The men, in particular, had beards so thick they obscured their entire faces, resembling wild savages.

Around each person’s neck was a cold iron chain, the other end fixed to the wall inside the room, treating them like livestock.

The prison was filled with a deathly silence. The eyes of every captive were hollow, filled with numbness—as if their souls had been stripped away, leaving only despair.

Seeing this, Gu Qingfeng’s expression darkened. He knew exactly who these people were and why they were imprisoned here.

They were once divine realm experts of the Qing Realm, blessed with heaven-defying physiques—peerless geniuses and top-tier powerhouses.

Yet now, they had been reduced to livestock by the Saint Clan, chained like dogs and pigs, their flesh harvested daily for profit.

At this moment, Gu Qingfeng deeply realized how lenient he had been with demons and monsters in the past—merely torturing them for a few hours before killing them. Compared to the Saint Clan, he might as well be called a saint.

Showing kindness to enemies was wrong. That needed to change.

Coincidentally, there were already plenty of demons in the alternate dimension. In the future, he would capture the entire Saint Clan and throw them in as well. When needed, they could fight for him. When not, he could harvest ivory, trunks, and other parts to sell for some extra spending money.

If the Saint Clan enjoyed enslaving humans from the Qing Realm for profit, then he would enslave the Saint Clan in return.

This was what they called reciprocity.

"Remove all the sealing arrays," Gu Qingfeng commanded.

The Elephant Demon hurriedly complied, swiftly dismantling all the array seals.

Yet, strangely, even after the arrays disappeared, the people in the rooms showed no reaction—no movement, as if they were already dead.

Frowning, Gu Qingfeng entered one of the rooms and approached the "savage" curled up in the corner. He waved a hand in front of the man’s eyes.

But the man’s gaze was vacant, unfocused—utterly lifeless, like a walking corpse.

His eyes didn’t even twitch.

Only his lips trembled slightly, murmuring something.

Gu Qingfeng leaned closer and finally heard what the man was saying.

"Kill... me... Kill... me..."

"Can you hear me?"

The man gave no response, as if those were the only words he could say.

At this point, the Elephant Demon spoke up. "Most of these people have been imprisoned for hundreds, even thousands of years. Their minds have already faded—they’re practically the living dead."

As he spoke, the Elephant Demon stole glances at Gu Qingfeng’s expression.

But Gu Qingfeng’s face remained eerily calm.

After staring at the man for a long moment, Gu Qingfeng suddenly moved.

With a flick of his hand, a gust of force struck the man’s body.

The man’s body went limp, his head lolling to the side—dead.

He died peacefully, even with a faint, relieved smile on his lips.

Gu Qingfeng repeated the process, moving from room to room, testing whether any of them retained their sanity. If not, he granted them release.

After making the rounds, he found that nearly all of them had lost their minds. After all, the Saint Clan descended to the lower realm once every hundred years—meaning the shortest any of them had endured this torment was a century.

The one in the best condition still had some semblance of sanity but had gone mad, repeatedly bashing his head against the wall in an attempt to kill himself.

However, his strength was sealed, reducing him to the level of an ordinary person—yet his body remained at divine realm durability, making suicide impossible.

"Where is the Seven Orifices Exquisite Body?"

"The Seven Orifices Exquisite Body enhances comprehension and is extremely valuable, so it’s kept on the second level."

"Take me there."

"Yes, Master."

A short while later, Gu Qingfeng arrived on the second level.

This floor had only a single isolated cell, the door inscribed with: [Seven Orifices Exquisite Body].

Inside lay another person—unkempt, face obscured by tangled hair, eyes lifeless, body exuding a rotting stench.

What set this person apart was the gaping hole in his chest, where his heart should have been.

Around the edges of the wound, tiny tendrils of flesh slowly regrew, attempting to heal.

Gu Qingfeng knew—this was his father-in-law.

But from the looks of it, his mind had long since faded...

"Where is the heart?"

As Gu Qingfeng spoke in that calm tone, the Elephant Demon inexplicably felt the temperature around them drop several degrees.

"The most valuable part of the Seven Orifices Exquisite Body is the heart—known as the Seven Orifices Exquisite Heart. So whenever it regrows, it’s harvested..."

"Harvested here?" Gu Qingfeng asked expressionlessly.

He wanted to retrieve the heart to speed up the recovery process.

"No, it’s done outside. Freshness is best preserved that way."

Gu Qingfeng fell silent. Now he understood how his father-in-law had managed to transmit knowledge of the upper realm to Shang Xinyan—he must have secretly learned it while being taken outside for the heart extraction.

"Open the array."

"Yes, Master."

Once the array was deactivated, Gu Qingfeng stepped inside and crouched beside his father-in-law.

The man lay motionless, like a corpse.

"Can you hear me?"

No response.

Gu Qingfeng sighed. He had arrived too late.

Still, he refused to give up.

"Shang Aobai."

That was his father-in-law’s name.

Still no reaction.

"Shang Xinyan."

The moment those three words were spoken, Shang Aobai stirred. His statue-like body trembled slightly, his pupils gradually focusing as a faint glimmer of awareness returned to his eyes.