Chapter 131: The Eight Inner Gates, Open!

Recalling the information about Oomori Yakumo, and connecting it to the professions of Liu Mingming’s parents, Sikong Xu immediately grasped the key to the situation.

"Yamori," this ghoul, was inherently cruel and took great pleasure in torturing others. There was one item indispensable to his torture sessions: pliers.

Years ago, Oomori Yakumo had been brutally tortured by someone else, and the instrument used was a pair of pliers. This trauma had developed into a compulsion to always carry them. Now that he had targeted Liu Mingming’s parents, it was highly likely he intended to use their professional tools to create a new instrument of torture.

Sikong Xu did not know if his deduction was entirely correct, but regardless, he had to go to Liu Mingming’s house to see for himself. Meanwhile, Li Yang’s reply came quickly; his message stated that he would send reinforcements as soon as possible and instructed Sikong Xu to go ahead and stabilize the situation. It was clear that he, too, took this matter very seriously.

...

As night fell, an abandoned repair shop welcomed an uninvited guest. The interior of the workshop was filled with a nauseating stench. Severed limbs were scattered everywhere, and blood that still held a lingering warmth covered the floor.

A few scattered shadows were crouched on the ground, gnawing on something, the wet, tearing sounds echoing through the darkness. Under the cover of night, the noise was bone-chilling. They were all ghouls.

"These pliers are quite comfortable to hold..." a man wearing a hockey mask, about 1.85 meters tall and dressed in a suit, said in a chilling tone.

Before him, a man and a woman were chained to chairs. They looked wretched; there was not a single intact spot on their bodies, covered in gruesome, weeping wounds. Even more tragic was that all their fingers and toes had been crushed off by some rigid tool, and they were still murmuring numbers intermittently. They were on the verge of death.

"Humans really are fragile... just a little bit of fun and they end up like this. Torturing one's own kind is much more interesting, hahahaha!" The man in the hockey mask tilted his head, his body trembling in a spasm of delight. He savored the sensation of the slaughter.

If Sikong Xu had been present, he would have instantly recognized this man in the hockey mask as the very ghoul he was searching for—Oomori Yakumo.

"Well then... only the last toy remains..."

Following Oomori Yakumo’s gaze, one could see a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old girl wearing glasses, also chained to a chair. She had not lost consciousness; at such a tender age, she had witnessed her own parents being tortured to the brink of death. Now, her eyes had rolled back, and her consciousness was fading into a blur.

"Fainted already? How disappointing..." The eyes hidden beneath the hockey mask glowed with a faint red light; his kakugan had emerged due to his excessive excitement. Having been satisfied by the slaughter, he intended to devour the