Courtyard Houses: Longevity Since the War of Resistance

Money!

This time, I decided to try something different. I went to the back of the storage room and scanned all the iron contraptions piled up in the corner. Furnaces, anvils, chains, hooks, boxes... and several sealed iron cans. I shook them, and the liquid inside rattled.

Let's start with this.

I picked up a metal can; it was quite heavy. I opened the lid, and inside was a shiny silver liquid. It sloshed around like water, but was much heavier. Mercury.

I didn't look for the familiar faces first; my gaze swept across the room and landed on a young Japanese man in a white lab coat. This guy was called Kobayashi Suke; the file said he was in charge of the initial physical examination and classification of specially transferred personnel. Simply put, he decided who went to the lab first.

He huddled in the corner, hugging his knees, his head down.

I walked over and kicked him in the shoulder. He fell backward, looking at me in horror.

"You," I crouched down, "like taking blood pressure, right? Like listening to your heartbeat, right?"

He shook his head and tried to scoot back.

I dragged him to the middle of the hall and laid him flat. Then I straddled him, pressing my knees down on his arms. I pinched his nose with my left hand, forcing him to breathe through his mouth.

He picked up the mercury can with his right hand and aimed the opening at his open mouth.

Mercury is heavy, and it flows out as a thin, silvery stream. The first drop entered his mouth, and his eyes widened instantly, making a gurgling sound in his throat.

The sensation of mercury going down the esophagus must have been strange—cold and heavy. I poured it slowly, letting him swallow it little by little.

He drank about a third of the can, and his belly swelled up slightly. I released my grip on his nose.

He immediately turned his head to gag, but nothing came out; only saliva mixed with a few tiny beads of mercury slid out from the corner of his mouth. The mercury was too heavy and had already gone into his stomach.

He started coughing, his face turning red. He tried to cover his stomach with his hand, but I pressed it down. The mercury felt heavy and cold in his stomach, and it was poisonous. His body began to twitch slightly, and saliva dribbled from the corner of his mouth, glistening with silver.

Okay, let's leave this for now.

The second one I set my sights on was a short, stout officer named Matsumoto Ichiro. He was the logistics director here, and all experimental consumables, including those for living people, had to be allocated through him. In his file photos, he always had a smiling face.

He couldn't laugh anymore. He was leaning against the wall, and when he saw me coming, he tried to crawl to the side.

I stepped on his ankle, and he cried out in pain. I dragged him to the metal box, which was rectangular, like a small coffin, but with a sealable lid. The inside of the box was made of smooth sheet metal.

I stood the box up and opened the lid. Then I stuffed Matsumoto Ichiro inside headfirst. The box was just big enough for him, packed full. His legs were still kicking wildly outside.

The lid was put on, but not locked; a gap was left so he could breathe.

Then I found an iron bar and inserted it into a ring on the side of the box. Using the iron bar as a pry bar, I began to slowly turn the box.

The box was made of iron and was very heavy. I spun it, and Matsumoto Ichiro inside spun around upside down. At first, it spun slowly, and he could still make noises. But later it spun faster and faster, and the box became a spinning top.

A muffled thud and screams came from inside. He felt dizzy and disoriented, his brain almost spinning out. The metal box slammed against the ground with a loud clang.

After spinning for about two minutes, I stopped and opened the lid.

Matsumoto Ichiro slid out and collapsed to the ground. His face was a deep purplish-red, his eyes rolled back, and he was spitting out white foam mixed with blood. He lay there dry heaving, his body limp as a noodle, unable to stand up.

The third was a technician named Koji Sato. He was responsible for maintaining the laboratory's ventilation system. The exhaust fumes from the toxic gas experiments were all discharged through the pipes he managed. An indirect executioner.

He was hiding under the table, and I dragged him out by the foot. I pressed him down onto the anvil. The anvil was cold and hard. Then I picked up a small hammer and grabbed a handful of cast iron nails. The nails were about the length of my little finger, with one pointed end.

Pick up an iron nail and aim it at the nail crease of his left thumb.

He seemed to understand and desperately tried to pull his hand back. I stepped on his wrist, the sharp nail pressed against the edge of his fingernails.

"When you're expelling toxic fumes," I said, "have you ever thought about how those people feel when they can't breathe?"

After I finished speaking, I hammered the end of the nail.

"ah!!!"

Koji Sato's scream rose eight octaves as the nail pierced his fingernail and dug into the tender flesh beneath. His fingers were connected to his heart; this was going to be excruciating.

I didn't stop. I picked up the second nail, aimed it at the nail between his index fingernails, and hammered it again.

Then came the middle finger, ring finger, and little finger. On each of the five fingers of the left hand, a nail was driven into the nail bed. The nail tips protruded slightly from the fingertips, stained with beads of blood.

His left hand lay on the anvil, his five fingers pierced by nails, unable to move. Blood dripped down the nails, pooling on the anvil.

My right hand was fine, so I pulled it over and did the same. All five nails were there, not one missing.

Now both his hands were nailed to the anvil, his fingers were in excruciating pain. He couldn't clench his fists or straighten his arms. He could only remain in that strange position, his whole body trembling like a leaf, screaming one after another.

The fourth was a military doctor named Shin Takahashi. He was very senior, and many young doctors were trained by him. Many of those cruel surgical techniques were taught to him through his own experience.

I dragged him to the furnace, where the fire was blazing and several iron bars were burning inside. The iron bars were already red-hot, emitting an orange glow.

They used pliers to pull out a piece of iron. The iron bar was about the thickness of a little finger, a meter long, and glowed red-hot, radiating heat. They forced Takahashi Shin to his knees and, from behind, used the red-hot iron bar to strangle him.

*Sizzle!*

A puff of white smoke rose up, and the stench of burning flesh instantly filled the air.

Takahashi Shin let out a bloodcurdling scream. He tried to struggle, but I pinned him down with my knee. The red-hot iron bar sizzled as it dug into the flesh of his neck.

The heat from the iron bar also burned his trachea and throat.

I held the iron bar for ten seconds before removing it. A ring of charred marks remained on his neck, the flesh torn open, deep enough to expose the bone. He lay on the ground coughing, each cough frothing with blood, writhing in pain.

The fifth was a young guard named Takeshi Tanaka. He was responsible for dragging unruly test subjects away for special processing; his photo in the file showed a fierce look in his eyes.

His eyes were no longer fierce, only filled with fear. They dragged him to a pile of chains, each chain as thick as a thumb, linked together.

I tied him to an iron pillar supporting the roof. First, I wrapped the chain tightly around his ankles, then wound it upwards, layer by layer—his calves, knees, thighs, waist, and chest. Like binding a mummy, I bound him to the iron pillar.

The chains were cold and hard, digging into his flesh. I wrapped them very tightly, so much so that the gaps between the chains made his skin bulge out.

By the time the chains were wrapped around his neck, his face had turned purple. The chains were pressing on his trachea and blood vessels, making it difficult for him to breathe, and he began to feel dizzy.

Finally, I hung a heavy iron chain around his neck, like a dog leash. The other end of the chain was tied to a pillar, so he couldn't lift his head; it just drooped down.

He was chained from head to toe to the pillar, unable to move, struggling to breathe, with a heavy burden hanging around his neck. As time passed, the pressure from the chains grew stronger.

There were dozens of other people, and I dealt with them one by one.

The young nurse also participated in the injection experiment. I found several of the largest metal syringes, removed the needles, and inserted the syringes directly into her mouth, then pushed the plunger. Cold saline solution was forcibly poured into her stomach until her belly swelled up like a balloon, at which point she fainted from the pain of suffocation and internal organ compression.

I locked the bespectacled bacteria culture technician in a sealed metal cabinet. I lined the inside of the cabinet with thin metal sheets. Then I hammered the cabinet from the outside.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

The sound echoed and amplified within the sealed metal cabinet, deafeningly loud. He screamed inside, covering his ears, but his voice was drowned out by the banging. After five minutes of banging, the cabinet was opened, and when he emerged, he was limp, blood seeping from his ears, eyes, and nose—he had been violently shaken to his core.

The chubby cook was in charge of preparing meals for the researchers, and of course, handling some special waste. I stuffed him into a large iron barrel, first pouring in half a barrel of cold iron filings. Then I put the lid on and started rolling the barrel around.

The iron bucket rolled on the concrete floor, the iron filings inside making a rattling sound as they rubbed against his body. The iron filings were hard and rough, quickly turning his skin into a bloody mess. After rolling for ten minutes, when he was emptied out, he looked like a bloodied mess, not a single patch of his skin unscathed.

There is only one element left in the Five Elements.

earth.