Chapter 3898: Possible Cannibals

Lin Mu stepped inside the cell as the Night Pearl illuminated every scattered bone. His eyes narrowed and he crouched beside one of the detached arms. The familiar grooves immediately appeared.

"Teeth marks."

Only... These differed.

The spacing, depth, shape and angle of the teeth marks... Everything felt wrong.

Lin Mu picked up the arm bone and carefully examined it under the brilliant white glow. Silence filled the prison as several long moments passed. Then... Lin Mu’s expression slowly became grave.

"These teeth marks..." He looked across the scattered remains once more.

Every detached limb carried the same pattern. It was different from the rats and different from ordinary scavengers.

Lin Mu quietly lowered the bone. "...They’re human."

Lin Mu remained crouched inside the prison cell, the detached arm bone still resting in his hand. His eyes slowly traced the deep bite marks carved into its surface. Every groove, every fractured edge and every indentation.

Years of experience examining corpses made the conclusion painfully obvious. These marks had not been left behind by rats, nor by any ordinary beast. The spacing between the teeth. The shape of the jaw. Even the pressure applied while biting...

Everything matched a human mouth. Or more accurately... An immortal’s.

Lin Mu slowly placed the bone back onto the ground as his expression became considerably more serious.

"So..." He quietly muttered. "It really came to this."

The answer hardly required further thought. He had already questioned how the prisoners survived. Now the evidence stood directly before him. His gaze drifted toward the scattered remains.

’Do they not provide any food at all?’ The possibility immediately explained everything.

No guards, no supply routes, certainly no kitchens or storage rooms either. Nothing of aid was present here. His thoughts rapidly connected one clue after another.

"If there isn’t any food... then..." His eyes hardened. "...the prisoners eat each other."

Silence filled the abandoned prison corridor and even Lin Mu found the realization unsettling.

He had witnessed countless horrors during his cultivation journey. Battlefields where mountains of corpses reached the heavens. Entire sects exterminated. Cities consumed by calamities. And evil cultivators refining millions of souls.

Compared to those... Cannibalism hardly ranked among the worst crimes.

Yet, there remained something profoundly disturbing about this place. These prisoners had not become monsters through cultivation techniques, nor through demonic arts. Simple desperation appeared to have pushed them toward it.

Hunger... An enemy older than civilization itself.

Given enough time even immortals could become beasts. Lin Mu quietly exhaled. His own safety barely entered his thoughts. Personally, he held little fear. The shackles restricted him, they certainly did.

Even then... They remained far from sufficient to truly imprison him.

If his life genuinely became endangered he possessed dozens of methods to escape. His concern instead drifted elsewhere, Little Bull.

An ordinary disciple.

Any genuine disciple framed exactly as Taegong intended... Would almost certainly die here.

The sequence unfolded clearly inside Lin Mu’s mind. The prisoner would first be thrown down the shaft. The violent descent alone might leave them with broken bones. Perhaps internal injuries or perhaps worse.

Then they would awaken inside an unfamiliar underground labyrinth, completely alone. They’d be without food, without guidance and without any understanding where they had arrived.

Eventually they would begin wandering, feeling confused, weakening over time and getting hungry. And somewhere within the darkness the true prisoners would notice them. An ambush would follow and the injured newcomer would possess little chance of resistance.

Their belongings, their shackles and their very flesh... Everything would become resources.

Lin Mu slowly closed his eyes. Taegong had never intended to simply imprison Little Bull. He had sentenced him to a slow death. A death hidden beneath layers of secrecy. One that could conveniently be blamed upon the dangers of the Mad Demon Depths.

No one would ever question it and no one would ever know.

The realization strengthened Lin Mu’s resolve.

"I’ll have to be more careful." His voice remained barely above a whisper.

Until now he had intentionally limited himself to abilities fitting Little Bull’s identity. That restraint could no longer remain absolute. The prisoners hidden somewhere within these tunnels knew nothing about Little Bull.

And they knew absolutely nothing about Lin Mu.

If circumstances demanded he would gladly reveal greater physical strength. Perhaps faster movement, and perhaps sharper senses. Whatever proved necessary would be used. Maintaining the disguise held value. Remaining alive held greater value.

After all... Dead men uncovered no conspiracies.

Lin Mu’s attention returned toward the skeleton as another detail suddenly stood out. The wrists were empty. He looked toward the ankles that were also empty. His brows slowly furrowed.

"The shackles, they’re gone." His eyes shifted toward several neighboring skeletons inside nearby cells.

Every one of them lacked shackles as well. Earlier he had assumed the prison guards eventually collected them. Now that explanation seemed increasingly unlikely. The first skeleton outside the cells had still worn its restraints.

He had personally removed them.

But the skeletons here possessed nothing.

Another possibility appeared. "The other prisoners, they’ve been taking them."

The thought made perfect sense as Baleful Qi Eater Steel possessed immense value. Even prisoners understood treasure. Perhaps they traded the shackles or repurposed them. Maybe they simply hoarded them.

Whatever the reason, someone had removed them. Which meant someone had visited these corpses.

’Perhaps recently.’ Lin Mu slowly stood.

His movements became considerably lighter and he deliberately adjusted his breathing while reducing the force behind every footstep. The Night Pearl still shone brightly within his hand and he quietly looked at it.

Then shook his head. "This won’t do."

The pearl illuminated the surrounding tunnels wonderfully. But it also announced his position to everyone nearby. Anyone hiding inside the darkness would immediately notice a moving sphere of white light.

Lin Mu extinguished the illumination by returning the pearl to his hidden storage ring and darkness immediately reclaimed the corridor.

This time, he remained unconcerned.

His hand reached into the hidden ring once more and after briefly searching through countless stored treasures, his fingers located something considerably smaller. A simple wooden box.

Lin Mu smiled faintly. "I almost forgot about you."

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