The Dawn of the New World Chapter 1531

There was nothing Hao Xuan could do to stop him so in his mind, there was no point putting it off.

He moved to the side, took off his shirt, and turned his back towards Sumeet.

"Get to it, and make it quick. I don't have all day."

Sumeet could hardly contain himself. He licked his lips as his perverse imagination ran free.

"Hehehe...this is it! This is the mark of a real man, am I right? Hehe..."

He flexed the whip before swinging it around a couple of times to make cracking sounds in the air around Hao Xuan, trying to agitate him as much as possible. And to a degree- it did have an effect.

Kneeling on the hot sand waiting for the whip to fall on his skin brought up a host of memories from the countless other lives where he had to go through something similar at least once or twice.

He had done a pretty good job suppressing them so far but when the whip struck him for the first time, all those memories came bubbling to the surface like a dormant volcano erupting after centuries.

Hao Xuan's back arched and muscles flexed to the extreme as he tried to keep himself from making noise.

"MMM!"

With a muffled grunt, he could feel pain running up his spine before shooting straight into the brain like a hot needle.

He gasped for breath trying to cope with the pain when the second lash came down.

"ARGH!"

One of the memories from the other lives suddenly overtook him, pulling Hao Xuan's consciousness inside.

He found himself chained to a stone block with a crowd at his back led by a masked man with a whip.

"THIEF! PUNISH HIM!" one person screamed, eliciting a similar response from a dozen others.

"YEAH! CUT HIS HANDS OFF!"

"MAKE HIM SCREAM!"

Hao Xuan could taste the blood in his mouth, the burning sensation on his back, and the warm tears rolling down his face.

The masked man pulled back and with all his might brought the whip down again, tearing a chunk of his skin off.

"AAAAAAHH!" he screamed with all the air in his lungs.

"PLEASE NO! I WON'T DO IT AGAIN! JUST ONE CHANCE!" he pleaded but they weren't having it.

Many of them laughed, some even mocking him.

"Haha! Go to hell you thieving rat!"

"END THE LITTLE SHIT STAIN!"

"TEN LASHES! I bet five silver he croaks before that!"

"I'll take that bet! I say he will go above that!"

The fourth whip fell and he was pulled into another memory, one that was worse than the last.

He was tied around a tree trunk this time with several men standing behind him. He could see more than a dozen skinned people hanging from the branches above him, others who had met the same fate as him.

"AGAIN!" one of the men ordered from the back, "Make him suffer just as much as his brothers did!"

Hao Xuan braced for impact but no matter how strong his mind sooner or later it was going to break if he kept jumping from one memory to another. Unfortunately, it did not seem like that was going to stop.

Without an ounce of hesitation, the whip repeatedly fell upon his body every single time, bringing him to a new place with new people. He held on for the full duration of the 40 lashes until the pain became too much to handle, and slowly but surely he slipped into the darkness.

The pain began to subside as Hao Xuan opened his eyes somewhere within the Umbral Planes. Confused and a little out of sorts, he examined these new surroundings that were devoid of any strange phenomena- unlike his last two visits.

There was no ocean of fire nor any rivers of unidentified liquids cutting across the sky. It was just a patch of brown dirt and a light blue atmosphere stretching across the horizon.

He stood up and strangely enough, felt no pain anywhere.

"Where am I?" he muttered out loud.

'?!'

"I can talk??"

Before he could only communicate with his thoughts but now he could actually utter the words in a more physical way.

"Is this really the umbral plane?"

He checked his arms and neck which were devoid of the chains Baba Jezda had placed upon him. He didn't even have the pendant that Lord Jyothi had given him as a parting gift (CH 1402) nor any old marks or scars on his body- apart from the meditation scar on the left hand and a small cut on his chest.

Thankfully it wasn't that bad so he couldn't help but let out a breath of relief upon seeing the meditation scar because that meant he could return whenever he wanted.

It was not unheard of for the souls of mortals to become lost and trapped within the Umbral Planes during moments of extreme distress. The mind would try whatever it could to cope with the surplus of emotions and often times it would end up causing the consciousness to wander somewhere it was never meant to.

But thankfully Hao Xuan had a way to get back, an anchor to his physical form.

And it was precisely because of that this place caught his interest.

Hao Xuan was already able to pass through the veil but those visits were for specific purposes. He had a place in mind so that's where he went but somehow he arrived in this place while in extreme pain.

A place devoid of all stimulus.

"Ah, that makes sense!" he exclaimed as it began to make sense.

The jumps from one dreadful memory to another were too much to handle for his mind so his consciousness found solace in this place.