With her eyes closed, Lan Waihu continued, "He went out with his men in search of food. I was worried about him, so I tailed them. I wanted to help but ended up being captured. They took me into a s.h.i.+p and tied to a pillar. They made fun of me and even insulted me. Then, I saw him by the window. He pa.s.sed by the s.h.i.+p, so I quickly cried out loudly, hoping that he would hear me. I wanted to get his attention, but he never looked my way."Yan Chen listened quietly, but his heart ached with her every word. He knew that she was recalling the incident of the day she was taken away. He had heard her calling out to him, and he went looking for her, which led him all the way to the fake Lan Waihu, who he had brought back instead.
"They almost raped me that day. I just wanted to die. But suddenly, they stopped hara.s.sing me and took me to the base of the Blue Fox family. They told me that we used to be people of the same race, about 10,000 years ago. They told me to help my own kind by spilling the secrets to opening Tianju Hall"s wizardry barrier. I refused, so they sent me into a pitch-black ice cellar."
Yan Chen felt terrible. He knew how much she was scared of the cold and the dark. Those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds seemed to have noticed her weaknesses. She must have been so scared while being held captive, all alone in the dark.
"The ice cellar was so dark and so, so cold. I tried to meditate to keep the cold away, but my thin clothes were not very helpful. I was frozen in fear, but I could not cry, for all my tears would become icicles and hurt my eyes even more. In the ice cellar, there were also needles that they would use to poke at me every few hours."
Lan Waihu subconsciously curled her body into a ball. She was once again trapped in her darkest and coldest days.
"Those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" Tears were rolling in Yan Chen"s eyes.
"They would send someone into my cell every day to ask if I was ready to surrender. I refused to become one of them. I am a disciple of Tianju Hall. I shall never surrender. I shall never betray my friends! I endured the pain, hoping that one day Yan Chen would come and save me. I thought that he would not give up on me. I was sure that he would come."
"I am sorry."
For the entire time that Lan Waihu was held captive, he was out spending time with the fake Lan Waihu. He treated her with care and gentleness. Never had he thought that the woman that he truly loved was actually trapped, waiting for him to save her from a living h.e.l.l.
"They kept persuading me. They said if Yan Chen knew that I was the same as them, he would no longer look at me the same way. The people of Tianju Hall would no longer accept me. Yet, they were the only ones who could ensure my survival. I wanted to go back because I knew Yan Chen would never abandon me. He would not abandon me because of something I did not do. But, he never showed up, so I thought that something must have held him back, or that he was injured. After a month of excruciating pain, they finally got bored of me. They let their guards down, so I took the chance and escaped."
"I ran away from the base of the Blue Fox family towards Tianju Hall. I kept running and running. I had not eaten anything for days and got very hungry. At some point, I even doubted if I was ever going to make it back to Tianju Hall. Then, I found a rabbit. I was so hungry that I wanted just to drink its blood. Initially, I wanted to grill its meat, but I could not wait any longer. That was when Yan Chen showed up. I was so happy to see him. I could not wait to tell him how badly I had been treated, but he pushed me away. He looked at me like I was trash."
Yan Chen closed his eyes in agony. "He was trash. He could not even recognize his own wife."
Lan Waihu continued, "He said that I was an imposter and told me that his wife had never left his side. He said he loved her, which left me so frustrated."