“Yes! Yes! This is it! This was what I have been trying to achieve this entire time. I Finally! But what now? Hmmm… I must think… I must think…. If I slice her open again, she might die. This is no good…. No good at all!” Yuki was half out of it as she slowly woke up to find herself staring at a damp, wet rocky ceiling. For some reason, there was a sharp pain in her abdomen. She went to move her arms only for her eyes to open wide in terror when she realized she was strapped to some kind of bed naked! “What!? What’s going on!? Let me out of here!”

“Oh! You are awake! Good! Good! Don’t worry, I won’t cut you open again, maybe…. The experiment was a success! A success, I tell you! Very good specimen. Very good. You survived. The others…. They…. Well, forget about that. Hahaha! They exploded! Hahaha! I should check…. Yes, I should check! Once I check, I can test more!”

Yuki did not even get to grasp what the old man was talking about when she felt something pierce her skin and then something digging around in her stomach, causing her to cry out in pain: “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!”

She looked down in horror to see an old man stabbing her stomach with a knife and digging inside her abdomen with his old wrinkly hand. Blood spurted out of her wound as her body suddenly felt weak again. She had no idea when she passed out again, but she woke once more to another sensation of something penetrating her skin and cutting her open. “Ahhh! Stop! Stop! Why are you doing this!?”

“Oh? You're awake! Hahaha! Good! Tell me, how do you feel? Are you stronger than before? Are you? Hmmm? Not awake anymore? Humph! Failure! I thought it was a success, but I failed….” The crazy old man began to ramble once more as he put his blood soaked knife down and took out a handful of green pills and shoved them into the now unconscious Yuki’s mouth. The pills dissolved and melted in her mouth, causing the medical fluid inside them to slip down her throat. Her wounds slowly began to heal once more, but even after fully healing, a scar was still left.

Yuki kept being woken up in the same fashion for who knows how long. The pain was so bad with how the old man was poking and prodigy her internals with his own hands that she kept passing out. While she had dealt with even worse pain when opening her meridians, she was in too much of a weak state to even try to deal with it.

This continued on until one day, Yuki no longer made noise when being cut open or when the old man messed with her organs. Her eyes looked lifeless. She no longer cared about what was happening.

As more time passed, Yuki finally woke up on her own one day. The place was dimly lit, but she could tell the room around her looked much different. The room was a mess. Tables were knocked over and scattered all over as if someone was either in a hurry to leave or rummaging through things.

Right now, the only reason Yuki had been willing to take everything that was happening to her was the fact that her own people were counting on her. She had hoped for a chance to escape this place, but because of the daily torture of her body being sliced open over and over again and her organs being poked and prodded each time, her will had long been shattered but now…. Now she saw a ray of hope of being able to escape.

She fiddled with the strap that was binding her wrist to the table and saw that they were actually quite loose. She twisted and turned her arm and pulled hard. She felt a layer of skin being torn off as she slipped her hand free. With her new found freedom in one arm, she quickly undid her other straps. Her whole body felt weak as she slipped off the table and stepped onto the wet rocky floor with her bare feet.

She felt as if she had not eaten for an entire year. She could see that her body was malnourished at this point. Even with spiritual qi supporting her life, her body still needed proper nourishment until she reached the first fate star. Only then could she use food pills to replace normal food. Elder Eijiro had caved and told Yuki many stories about fate star cultivators. He even mentioned that there were higher realms even once you reached the twelfth fate star. Each fate star had nine levels to it, so it was not easy to reach the twelfth fate star. Some would barely live long enough to reach the fifth fate star. Each fate star added an additional hundred years of life. Breaking through would add ten years of life while also gaining an extra ten for becoming a fate star. Then each level thereafter would give ten years of life, making a total of one hundred years. So someone at the peak of the twelfth fate star could live for over one thousand years. Elder Eijiro also mentioned that the realms above that would grant even more years added on to your life.

But at this current moment, never mind reaching such realms, Yuki did not even know if she would live past this day. She took a sheet that was lying on the floor and wrapped herself up in it before looking around. She quickly spotted her things lying in the corner, covered in dust. With no hesitation, she put them on, only to see that they were now slightly too small for her. Seeing this, Yuki realized she had been here for a very long time. At least a year. She had not grown much from what she could tell, but she definitely had grown.

She had her sword, which she got from her father, in her hand and began to look around. She did not know why the old man was torturing her. She only knew that right now, she had to grab what she could and find her way out of this place. Every sound she heard put her on guard and made her twitch as she looked around. After scanning the whole room, she spotted a bunch of porcelain bottles on the ground. She picked one up and opened it to find it filled with pearly white pills…