The Villain's Sword Is Sharp

Isaac grabbed the man he'd knocked out and propped him up against the wall of his house. Then he dragged the two women inside and placed them next to him. After that, Isaac rummaged through one of his cupboards and found a long coil of rope, which he used to tie the trio up.

When they were all bound, Isaac moved the battering ram inside and stowed it away – he could sell it later. When he'd done that, he went back to cultivating. He didn't want to waste the most effective period of the pill, so he spent another hour meditating.

When the pill finally left his stomach, Isaac decided to properly deal with the trio. He grabbed a pail of cold water and threw it over his captives.

"Urgh..."

*Cough*

*Hack* *Hack*

All 3 of them woke up, and 2 of them started coughing as water splashed into their mouths. Isaac waited for them to become fully conscious, then he spoke,

"You three... you came here to steal from me, didn't you? You thought you could covet what was mine, didn't you? So what I'm going to do now is use you as an example; an example of what happens to those who dare to cross me. I'm going to make a mess out of you. I'm going to make a mess out of each of you – and no matter how you scream or plead, I won't stop. And then when I'm done, I'll display you for the sect to see, and people will learn. They will learn that the consequences for crossing Isaac Dahl are not light ones."

With that, Isaac got to work. His cold, cruel imagination made him look like an experienced torturer as he dealt with the trio. Their screams of agony filled the streets for the next hour or so.

After a while, Isaac went back to cultivation. There were still some benefits left in the pill and he didn't want to waste them, so he spent most of the next 5 hours cultivating. However, Isaac occasionally got bored or broke out of meditation. Whenever that happened, he would go to torture the trio again and screams would fill the house.

Finally, Isaac took a break from his cycle of meditation and torture. He'd fully absorbed the pill and, as he had promised, the trio had become a mess. Blood, tears and snot caked their faces while their bodies were covered in all manner of burns, cuts, contusions and broken bones.

All of them had fallen unconscious from the pain of Isaac's torture and were slumped in the corner of the room. Isaac walked over to Jakob, then he grabbed him by the legs and pulled him outside.

Then Isaac undid the rope around his feet, but he wasn't setting Jakob free. Not at all. Instead, he found another, longer piece of rope.

He tied part of the rope around Jakob's feet, but there was still a long length of the rope left. Isaac held the end of it as he clambered up the front of his house until he could reach the thick piece of timber which supported his roof. Then Isaac looped the rope over the large timber beam and climbed down. When he got back to the ground, Isaac began to pull on the rope.

One tug – Jakob's feet rose off the ground.

Two tugs – Jakob's lower body was pulled into the air.

Three tugs – only Jakob's head and upper back were still touching the ground.

Four tugs – Jakob was pulled completely into the air and was dangling upside-down.

Five, six, seven, eight, nine tugs – Jakob was hanging 5 foot above the ground. He was stripped completely naked, exposing his flesh to the bitter cold and displaying all the injuries Isaac had inflicted on him. His hands were bound behind his back and there was a rope tied around his legs. One end of this rope looped over the thick wooden beam above, then ran all the way back down into Isaac's hand.

Isaac was currently in the process of tying the rope to the wooden decking beneath him so it would hold Jakob in place. After tying the rope, Isaac gave it a couple of pulls to make sure it was secure. The he went back inside to grab the 2 women. Just like he'd done to Jakob, he stripped them naked and then hung them upside-down outside his house.

He had not laid a hand on them with any kind of perverse intent, since he had no interest in such crude pleasures. However, he had not shown any mercy to them either. Their injuries were just as grievous as Jakob's and anybody who walked by would surely look at the 3 of them and wonder which demon had done this to them.

Isaac had done this to achieve precisely that effect. He wanted the new disciples to fear him, which would stop them from robbing or ambushing him later on. It would also have other effects, such as making the disciples more likely to obey him and less likely to defy him if he asked them to do something.

In fact, Isaac had made Sanna spread the rumour about him earning some reward points to entice people to come and rob him. Then he would catch them and use them to build the kind of reputation that he wanted.

It wasn't enough to just punish them. He had to clearly show the new disciples that he punished them, and he had to show how severely he had punished them. This was what he was doing by hanging them outside his house.

When he'd hung the trio up next to each other, Isaac went back into his house. It was just past 3 pm right now, so he still had a lot of the day left. However, he didn't want to leave his house in case the prisoners escaped or something happened in the street. Therefore, he decided to try and fix up his home.

First, Isaac used resin as glue to stick his door back in place and then fortified it using some planks. It was nowhere near as strong as when he'd used special fastener made from Rank 1 plants, but resin was still a strong adhesive so it'd do for now.

Then Isaac tidied up some of the mess which still hadn't been cleared after he was robbed by Sanna's group. It was quite a large amount of mess so it took Isaac a while to clear it. As he was doing so, he could hear a commotion in the streets outside. A crowd was gathering outside his house, looking at the 3 people hung there.

However, this was just what Isaac wanted. He needed lots of people to see it and then start spreading rumours about how cruel he was. In fact, Isaac was just about to go outside and show everyone he was the person that had done this. However, he stopped after hearing some of the shouts in the street. Everything was noisy so it was hard to make out exactly what was being said, but Isaac caught a sentence fragment,

"Look, this is the house, we just have to..."

Isaac opened the only window which wasn't boarded up and tried to look out into the street. There was a large crowd outside – maybe 40 people strong. Near the back of the crowd was a rather conspicuous group of 7 who were trying to push their way forwards.

Isaac didn't recognise any of them, but they all looked pretty angry. When they pushed to the front of the crowd, one of them got out a knife and began cutting the rope which was tied to the decking. After a few seconds of work, the rope was cut and the black-haired woman dropped down. One of the group caught her and lowered her unconscious body to the floor.

When Isaac saw this, he hopped out of his window and into the alley beside his house.

"Did I give you permission to set them free?"