"Yes, it's me," said the man, "aren't you going to say hello?"
He laughed.
"Wen Chao you despicable bastard. What have you done to Wei Ying?" Shouted Jiang Cheng angrily.
"Oh him..., didn't you hear, he's dead!"
Shock and fear rippled through the group. Lan Wangji tightened his fist around Bichen, knuckles turning white. He glared hard at the Wen boy.
"He can't be , don't lie!" Replied Jiang Cheng a slight tremble in his voice.
"Well, I should know; I was there when we killed him. You should have seen it: his weak and pathetic resistance, his pleading cries for us to end the torture and just kill him. Ha! I've got to give it to him though, even after all that we did to him, he never gave in and told us your location."
"How dare you! You monster!" Roared Jiang Cheng. "How dare you mess with my family?"
"You mean those pitiful clan members we killed, your worthless parents, your protective shixiong, that family? As far as I can recall they're all dead. You failed them all. Isn't it your fault anyway, if you hadn't got caught and dragged back to Lotus Pier, would Wei Ying have had to find you, would he have been in Yiling at the same time as us, would he have died?"
"No!...NO! It wasn't my fault," he was crying now. Huge wet tears rolling down his cheeks.
Wen Chao laughed
"SHUT UP!!," Jiang Cheng screamed uselessly whipping Zidian.
"Shameless!" said Lan Wangji. "What exactly did you do?"
"Wow, I'm surprised. that's the longest sentence I have ever heard you say. Do you really want to know? I guess I'll tell you then - it's not like you can do anything about it now."
"Me and a few of my soldiers were headed to Yiling as we'd heard that there might be some clues on your locations. We had rented out a tea house/ inn for the night and were sat discussing our next move. Looking outside we saw a poorly dressed beggar wearing a large rice hat that covered his features. Just as we were about to go and question him, he walked into the shop and asked for some wine. I bet you can figure out who the man was. It was Wei Wuxian. A few of my guards came and held him down. it was so easy, he didn't even bother to struggle. He was annoying and he wouldn't disclose any information on your whereabouts so we beat him. We kicked him, and punched him, and hit him. We broke his arms, his legs, his ribs... He was unrecognisable by the time we finished! But he still wouldn't shut up. He told me that if he was going to be killed, that I had better do it properly: torture him and put him through hell. So I did. He never even screamed. It was surprisingly unsatisfying, well that was until the dogs. See I could recall somewhere hearing that your little Wei Ying was scared of dogs so I set my most vicious hunting dogs on him. He was terrified."
"Wei Ying... I'm sorry" whispered Wangji. His voice was close to cracking and his eyes were glazed with tears. Inside, it felt like someone had ripped out his heart. He was numb, shaking, a purposeless shadow of his past.
To his right stood Jiang Cheng sobbing and sobbing. Despairing over the loss of his brother.
Wen Chao was delighted. He chuckled gleefully to himself.
"I will continue," he stated,"it wouldn't be fair to you, to not tell you the end. as I was saying, we let the hunting dogs out. He screamed and screamed but he was unable to move away from them. They mauled him. They ripped of his skin and huge chunks of flesh, in some cases even ripping off his limbs. I have a feeling they hacked of his right arm, or maybe his left. Oh well. Anyway, the stubborn bastard still wouldn't die - sure he was pretty close and would die of blood loss soon but that would be too kind and might even give you a sense of closure. We picked him up (as much as we could find of him) and flew on our swords to the burial mounds."
A chorus of gasps could be heard from the disciples.
"Judging by your reactions, you've heard of it. We flew right into the middle and dropped him in. Even if you go in there you wont find his corpse or his soul intact - no cultivator has ever returned from within. I wonder how desperate he was for someone to come save him, to pull him out of that hell, but no-one did."
"You failed him!"