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Directly inside the entrance, displayed with deliberate prominence, hung three female corpses—young women whose beauty remained discernible despite the horrors visited upon them. They had been stripped naked, their bodies covered in lacerations that spoke of extended torture before death finally claimed them. The wounds were fresh, blood still dripping slowly to form small puddles on the ground beneath.

Most disturbing was the care with which they had been arranged—positioned like macabre decorations, their lifeless eyes staring down at all who entered as if in warning of what awaited those who ran afoul of the city's unwritten rules.

Liang Nian'er made a small sound of distress, quickly stifled behind her hand. Tong Xin's expression remained impassive, but her knuckles whitened as she gripped the reins of her horse more tightly. 

Even Li Meixia, for all her diplomatic training and exposure to the harsher realities of the world, could not entirely suppress a grimace of revulsion.

"Keep moving," Driver Mo murmured, his voice low but urgent. "Do not stare. Do not react. Such displays are common here—designed to provoke response and identify those unfamiliar with the city's ways."

They followed his advice, forcing themselves to walk past the grisly tableau with only the briefest acknowledgment. Yet as they moved deeper into the city, it became clear that this was not an isolated atrocity but merely the first of many.

The streets of the City of Sin lived up to its name in ways that defied even their darkest expectations. Death was not hidden away but celebrated, displayed as casually as festival decorations in more civilized locations.

 Bodies in various states of dismemberment lined the main thoroughfare—some fresh, others in advanced stages of decay, creating a miasma of rot that hung in the air like a physical presence.

A man's torso had been impaled on a pike at a street corner, his severed head placed at his feet with a sign in his mouth that read "THIEF" in crude characters. 

Nearby, a woman's body had been split vertically from crown to groin, the two halves spread apart and nailed to a wall like a grotesque butterfly specimen.

 Children—actual children—played in the street beneath, occasionally throwing stones at the corpse in a game whose rules were known only to them.

Further along, they passed a row of severed heads mounted on the wall of what appeared to be a tavern, their expressions frozen in final moments of terror or pain. Some were relatively intact, while others had been mutilated—eyes gouged out, tongues removed, skin flayed away to expose the muscle and bone beneath.

"The Sin Phoenix's work," a passing vendor commented casually, noticing their barely concealed horror. He gestured toward the display with the same nonchalance one might use when pointing out an interesting architectural feature. "She has a particular style—likes to keep the faces recognizable so family members can identify their loved ones. Considerate, in her way."

He chuckled at his own grim joke before continuing on his way, leaving them to process the casual brutality of a place where such displays were considered unremarkable.

As they pressed forward, the sounds of the city assaulted them as relentlessly as the sights—screams of pain or terror mingling with raucous laughter, the clash of weapons, the wailing of mourners, and the constant undercurrent of threats and obscenities that seemed to form the basic vocabulary of the city's inhabitants.

They had traveled perhaps half a mile into this urban nightmare when a commotion ahead drew their attention. A crowd had gathered in a small square, forming a ring around some spectacle that elicited cheers and jeers in equal measure.

Before Driver Mo could warn them to avoid the disturbance, they found themselves caught in the flow of bodies, pushed inexorably toward whatever entertainment had captured the mob's attention.

What they witnessed seared itself into their memories with horrific clarity.

A young woman—barely more than a girl, really—ran naked through the square, her face a mask of terror and her body already marked with cuts and bruises. Pursuing her was a middle-aged man whose expression combined lust and cruelty in equal measure, his movements suggesting the casual confidence of a predator who knows its prey cannot escape.

"Please!" the girl screamed, her voice raw with desperation. "Someone help me! Please!"

But her pleas fell on deaf ears. The crowd that surrounded her did not offer assistance but instead formed a human barrier, preventing escape while cheering her tormentor onward with obscene suggestions and bloodthirsty encouragement.

"Corner her!"

"Show her what happens to runaways!"

"Make her scream louder!"

The man pursuing her seemed to feed on their encouragement, his movements becoming more theatrical as he played to his audience. With a sudden burst of speed, he leaped forward, clearing an impossible distance to land directly in her path.

The girl skidded to a halt, trying desperately to change direction, but it was too late. He seized her by the hair, yanking her head back with enough force that the snap of straining tendons was audible even over the crowd's roar of approval.

What followed was too horrific to describe in detail—a public violation made all the more terrible by the enthusiastic participation of the audience, who shouted suggestions and placed bets on how long the girl would remain conscious.

Liang Chen's hand moved to his sword, his face contorted with a rage that momentarily overcame his caution. "We can't just—"

Wudi Egun's hand closed around his wrist with surprising strength, halting the motion before it could draw attention.

 "You cannot save her," he said, his voice low and devoid of emotion. "But you can ensure the women with us don't suffer the same fate."

He nodded subtly toward where Li Meixia, Liang Nian'er, and Tong Xin sat rigid on their horses, their modified features unable to completely mask their horror and disgust. "Any intervention would mark us as outsiders with moral objections to local customs. In this place, that is equivalent to painting targets on our backs—particularly on theirs."

The cold logic of his assessment cut through Liang Chen's righteous anger, replacing it with a sickening realization. They were deep in enemy territory, surrounded by people who would view their most basic moral instincts as weakness to be exploited. The girl's suffering was terrible, but attempting to help her would likely result in far more victims.

With visible effort, he forced his hand away from his weapon, his jaw clenched so tightly that the muscles stood out like cords beneath his skin. 

"This place..." he whispered, unable to find words adequate to express his revulsion.

"Is exactly what its name suggests," Wudi Egun finished for him, his tone matter-of-fact rather than judgmental. "The sooner we complete our business here, the sooner we can leave it behind."

They turned away from the spectacle, forcing their way through the crowd in the opposite direction. 

As they moved, Li Meixia guided her horse alongside Wudi Egun, her voice barely audible over the continuing sounds of the girl's torment.

"You seem... unsurprised by all this," she observed, her eyes studying his face with careful attention.

Wudi Egun's expression remained as unreadable as ever, his response measured and precise. "Horror exists in all worlds, Young Lady Li. Only its specific manifestations differ."

Something in his phrasing—the reference to "all worlds" rather than "all places"—caught her attention, but before she could pursue it, Driver Mo interrupted with practical concerns.

"We need lodging," the old driver said, his voice low but urgent. "Night falls quickly here, and we do not want to be on these streets after dark."

The wisdom of this suggestion was immediately apparent. Bad as the city seemed in daylight, the furtive preparations visible in every direction—merchants hurriedly closing shops, doors being reinforced with additional bars, weapons being checked and readied—suggested that nightfall brought dangers even the hardened residents feared to face.

"I know a place," Driver Mo continued, already adjusting their course toward what appeared to be a slightly less decrepit section of the city. "The owner is... not completely corrupt. He maintains basic standards and employs enough guards that guests are generally left unmolested."

This qualified endorsement—the best they could hope for in such a location—was accepted without argument. They followed the old driver through increasingly narrow streets, each turn taking them deeper into a labyrinth that would have been impossible to navigate without his guidance.

Finally, they arrived at a three-story building whose relatively intact condition made it stand out amid the surrounding decay. A faded sign above the door depicted a crouching tiger, the paint chipped and weathered but the image still recognizable.

"The Crouching Tiger Inn," Driver Mo announced, his tone suggesting this was as close to a safe haven as they would find in the City of Sin. "Keep your weapons close, your valuables closer, and do not leave your rooms alone under any circumstances."

As they dismounted and prepared to enter, Wudi Egun cast one final glance back toward the direction they had come. In the distance, the sounds of the crowd had changed—the cheers now interspersed with a different quality of excitement that suggested the public violation had escalated to its final, fatal conclusion.

His expression revealed nothing of his thoughts, but for a brief moment, something flickered in his eyes—not compassion or horror, but a cold, calculating assessment, as if he were making mental notes on the precise nature and extent of human depravity for some future reference.

Then the moment passed, his features once again settling into their customary mask of polite interest as he followed the others into the relative sanctuary of the inn, leaving the horrors of the City of Sin temporarily behind them—but not, they all knew, forgotten.