《Routine inspection of foot itching facilities》

[hzh231]

Hello, friends from the forum! I'm an author from China.😀 I usually write articles about girls tickling each other or girls tormenting each other. Recently, I tried using an AI tool to translate one of my articles about "itching on the soles of the feet being tormenting". Then I thought of posting this article on the forum so that people in other languages around the world could also read it. The general content of the article is that a female supervisor went to inspect the facility where many girls were detained. The girls there were suffering from itching and scratching on their feet (mainly itching).Anyway, I hope you all will like this article. (Since I used an AI tool for translation, I found that the AI modified many of my expressions, but it had no significant impact on the overall plot. If you want to read the original Chinese text or use other software for more accurate translation, you can go here →https://www.pixiv.net/novel/show.php?id=27954730)

《Routine inspection of foot itching facilities》

速泄家—阻冲之


Part One：

Brrring-brrring-brrring~ Brrring-brrring~

Early in the morning, Zhang Kexin was jolted awake by the alarm clock. She usually hated being dragged out of sleep for work, but today her mood was unusually good—the rude awakening barely fazed her. After all, today's assignment was a once-a-year event.

Right as she stretched and moved to get out of bed, she noticed a mosquito bite by her heel. To her, this was an absolutely colossal deal. She glanced at the two wallfoots flanking the bed, one on each wall. The 42-size soles, their toes immobilized, were now teeming with over a dozen mosquitoes and covered in dozens of angry red welts. Soaked in a solution designed to attract the insects, these feet were acting as living mosquito incense, doing their job perfectly. But for Zhang Kexin, that one bite on her own heel was damning proof that the sisters' work was far from flawless.

“Cough, cough—good morning！” Zhang Kexin flipped on the intercom mic connecting to the wallfoot compartments and greeted her two “mosquito coils.” At the sound of her voice, their feet began to tremble uncontrollably. Yet the shaking was too weak to shoo away a single mosquito, a testament to just how perfectly the wallfoots held them in place.

“How about some good news？ I've decided to release you sisters today~ Exciting, isn't it？ Of course, I've got some bad news too. Last night, a mosquito took a bite out of my heel~ You know what that means, don't you？ Hohoho, why are your feet shaking so violently all of a sudden？ And the sweat is just gushing out now, dripping all the way down to the floor. You really don't have to get this excited about the good news.”

The sisters' size 42 soles thrashed wildly, but the mosquitoes didn't budge a single leg. The sweat beading on their skin grew heavier and heavier, swelling into large droplets that traced paths down the flushed crimson landscape of their soles before splashing off. The sisters' lives would be ended for good today.

"I told you before, you're already the eighth batch of 'Sole Mosquito Coils' I've cycled through. With such big, size-42 feet, I thought you'd attract plenty of bugs—that's the only reason I allowed you the honor of this post and granted you a break from the daily tickle torture in the labs. But you two have honestly disappointed me. In just a single month, I've been bitten five times. Five separate failures on the job, and after each one, I was merciful. I put glass domes over your feet and let a hundred Jungle Poison Mosquitoes—the most venomous, the most unbearably itchy—feast on your soles for a whole day. Yet that reflection didn't improve your work attitude at all. But that's fine. Today marks the fifth failure, and per our contract, you'll be going to that place. You can finally quit！" Zhang Kexin's gaze traced the frantic convulsions of the sisters' feet as she spoke. She couldn't hear the howls from inside the unit, but she knew the script by heart. Silent tears, constant begging, any desperate offer to escape that fate. After all, the seven batches of 'Sole Mosquito Coils' before them had all done the exact same thing, right before they were sent there.

"PLEEEEASE! AHHHH, MASTER, FORGIVE ME! JUST THIS ONCE! I'LL WORK HARDER, I SWEAR! PLEASE, ANYWHERE BUT THERE! DON'T SEND ME THERE, I'M BEGGING YOU! AAAHHH!!"

"I'M BEGGING YOU! LET THOSE VENOMOUS MOSQUITOES BITE MY SOLES EVERY SINGLE DAY! JUST NOT THAT PLACE! AS LONG AS IT'S NOT THAT PLACE, I'LL DO ANYTHING! AAAAAAAAAHH!!!!"

But Zhang Kexin had already left the room. She was off to wash up, eat breakfast, and change into her work uniform, with no time to waste on how these two objects pleaded with her. Their fate had been sealed. But the sisters didn't need to cling to thoughts of Zhang Kexin; they would see her again soon, in the very place she worked.

Having slipped into her white coat and clipped on her ID, Zhang Kexin arrived at her laboratory. A swipe of her card granted her access. The badge made her rank clear: Supervisor. Several colleagues in the corridor greeted her as she passed. At her station, she kicked off her shoes and slid her feet into flip-flops. At her level, she could dress as she pleased—the cool air against her toes was a crisp, refreshing comfort. She then retrieved a special ID card from the safe and prepared to head deep into the facility, to the Foot Stock Room, for inventory and inspection. The feet there provided a constant stream of data for the lab's mainframe, and required an annual maintenance check to ensure nothing had gone wrong.

In the deepest, most remote corner of the facility's bottom floor stood a heavily guarded door. After her identity was verified multiple times, Zhang Kexin finally stood before the card reader and swiped the card she used only once a year. As the massive door slowly slid open, a blast of hot, humid air, thick with the smell of countless soles and stale sweat, washed over her.

After entering the room, the previously dim space immediately became bright. The once-a-year operating lighting fixtures generously spread the light throughout every corner of this room. Entering the room was a 10-meter-wide corridor, with 5x50-meter walls on both sides. There were estimated hundreds of pairs of wet-looking feet on the walls, each foot having a space of 50x50 centimeters. That is to say, with 5-meter-high and 50-meter-wide walls, there were 1,000 feet. The two sides added up to 2,000 pairs. The toes of these poor feet were forcibly fixed and opened, and the two feet almost touched each other, but there was actually a 0.5-centimeter gap in the middle. Under the light, these feet emitted a shiny reflection. If you looked closely, you could see that these feet were over 40 yards long, some were just under 30 yards, some had wrinkles of flesh, some were very smooth, some were very white and tender, and some were slightly yellow. In short, everything you could imagine about feet was here.

But regardless of whether these feet were used for dancing, for practicing taekwondo, or for seducing others, or perhaps hidden inside the shoes where few could see them, here everyone was treated the same. Every 16 hours, a mechanical arm with a nozzle would extend out and immediately spray a special itching liquid mixed with potato juice and some allergic fluids onto their feet. Since it was controlled by a machine, it ensured that every inch of the tender flesh on their feet was covered by these damned fluids. Then, within a few seconds, perhaps even shorter, every inch of the tender flesh on their feet would become itchy. As for the degree of itching, the display screen shows 10%, meaning that at this moment, the itching on their feet is 10 times that of the all-round skin allergy on their feet. And every second, the data of their foot itching and their reactions, etc., would be transmitted to a computer, and analyzed day after day. All they needed to do was provide the data. Before this, Zhang Kexin had checked some data and the language analysis of their brains. The itching made them try to rub their feet to relieve the itch, or tremble to rub the air to relieve the itch. In short, anything to get a little friction on their feet, they were willing to do. But these were all their fantasies. Even if they recited these begging words in their minds thousands of times every day, no one would care. They couldn't even say out their humble requests, nor could they utter a single moan. Constrained by every inch of their muscles, they could do nothing.

Worse still, each spray cycle bumped the concentration up by 0.1%. It sounds negligible, but this incremental, remorseless creep was designed to short-circuit any desperate hope of neurological adaptation. Just as the nerve endings in their soles might have numbed for a fleeting second, the intensifying liquid would sear them with fresh, uncharted agony. Yet, in this cruel logic, there was a twisted mercy: a constant 100% dose was unsurvivable. So, the system was programmed to reset to 10% the moment it peaked. But the catch? Each full cycle raised the baseline by 1% and cut the spray interval by one hour, marching relentlessly toward a 10-minute minimum gap.

Translated into their reality: after just 10 cycles, their 'relief' baseline would already be a brutal 20%. While momentarily cooler and less frantic than the climax, it would claw its way back up to 100% with savage speed. The interval, once a lazy 24 hours, would compress to a punishing 14. Zhang Kexin's mind would often drift to the machine's theoretical apex: a 99% baseline, a spray every 10 minutes. For 100 minutes, the liquid would bake into the skin, a rising tide of madness until it hit the absolute 100%. Then—snap—reset to 99%. Just to start the climb again. These girls would be broken, their minds reduced to static—forced to take it all on their soles. Nothing allowed. Even with their feet a torturous 0.5 centimeters apart, close enough to feel the phantom warmth from the other's arch, there would be no salvation, not even a twitch. That thought alone made Zhang Kexin's own toes curl into a tight, scratching ball inside her boots. The mere phantom idea was enough to trigger a deep, sympathetic itch. That ultimate day was still a distant future, but their life-support ensured they would arrive there intact. Still, she thought, they should be grateful. The machine was not yet at full hellish throttle when they were first mounted here.

And so, day after day, for an entire year, those soles endured their solitary torment. In their sealed, silent pods, their minds and feet drowned together in the sensation, utterly forgotten. No one cared. No one remembered. It was as if they'd been deleted from the Earth itself. Only on this single day of the year did Zhang Kexin's gaze fall upon their soles. Truth be told, the ones tucked far in the corners might go unnoticed for several annual visits. To be seen by her eyes, to have her gaze trace the lines of their cracking skin and glistening residue, was a macabre honor—a rare recognition in their infinite, maddening limbo.

Before heading further in, Zhang Kexin decided to check on the soles of these poor little things. After all, a whole year had passed without a single soul caring about them. Today, she was going to pick out a few lucky ones and give them some proper, personal attention.

The first to catch her eye was No. A148. As Zhang Kexin walked past, the feet twitched with a visible, eager reflex. In this place, even the airflow was a rigid constant. The faint breeze stirred up by her walking was a shock to those soles, a sensation No. A148 hadn't felt in a year---the ghost of a passing wind. But the moment she paused for a closer look, the feet froze, stiff and uncertain, like a petrified animal.

Leaning in, she found the soles were far more tender than she’d imagined. It was their size, a mere 34, paired with a disproportionately large big toe that had snagged her gaze. Her face drew close, close enough to feel the radiant body heat washing from the soles, carrying a rich, mellow scent---a girl's natural, intoxicating musk, not the sour funk of sweat. A truly high-quality pair. The skin’s natural lines were delicate and evenly spaced, the flesh of the arches looking baby-smooth. They would have been a milky, porcelain white, she was sure, if not for the angry, allergic flush. The Itching Liquid had soaked in deep, setting the skin ablaze with irritation, turning the soles slick with a frantic, itchy sweat that just wouldn't stop. The spaces between her toes were a far deeper, angrier red than the rest. Most of the Wallfeet were the same. The liquid pooled in those sensitive crevices, refusing to drain, trapped right in that impossibly ticklish webbing---the place most girls can't stand, the place that makes them rub their toes together in a futile, desperate attempt to kill the itch. She watched the forced-open toes twitch and strain against their bonds, struggling to close, to rub. It wasn’t even a conscious decision anymore, just a raw, uncontrollable spasm. A silent, frantic sob from the soles themselves.

A small funnel-shaped collector sat directly beneath each sole, designed to catch the frantic sweat that streamed down whenever the itch struck, preventing even a single drop from landing on the soles suspended below and giving them an accidental jolt of sensation. Right now, her feet were gushing sweat, driven wild by the mere disturbance of the airflow—a steady, glistening sheen that rolled down her arch in rivulets and gathered in slick beads at her heel. That sweat, now chemically saturated with the Itching Liquid, was being recycled in real-time, reprocessed into a fresh dose and sprayed back onto her soles without a second’s delay. The thin, shining film currently coating her skin likely contained compounds her own feet had secreted god knows how long ago, now returning as an instrument of her own torment. A small tattoo marked the center of her arch, minimalistic data for identification and escape prevention. The scant information was a testament to how little these soles, and their owners, truly mattered to anyone here.

“Subject ID: 148. Name: Pan Xueyi. Age: 21. Foot size: 34. Status: Female university student. Storage commenced: September, 2329.” Which meant these soles had been marinating in this hell for over three years. This was the first year Zhang Kexin had really noticed them, and quite possibly her last. The corridor was lined with hundreds of pairs of feet; some years, Zhang Kexin would simply walk right by them, her gaze drifting deeper into the facility. She pulled up Pan Xueyi’s full file on her phone. The photos showed a strikingly beautiful girl with a sunny, radiant smile, the type who lived in sneakers and canvas shoes. She never wore sandals, never bared her feet in public. Zhang Kexin adored girls like that the most. Right now, their soles were forcefully bared, exposed for an accumulated time that had likely eclipsed every second they had ever been seen since birth. But now, right at this moment, no one’s eyes were on her feet. And that complete, utter oblivion was, for her, a unique catastrophe. Every fiber of her being must be screaming for someone, anyone, to touch the soles she had once guarded so fiercely, to play with the skin she had adamantly refused to reveal—because for a girl barely in her twenties, with soles this baby-soft, this level of itch had already plunged straight into the depths of hell.

The system log showed Pan Xueyi had been assigned here directly after a month of sole conditioning. Zhang Kexin suspected the owner of these feet had been scammed, probably lured in with dreams of a prestigious university life, only to end up here as a test subject for harvesting data. But that was just Zhang Kexin's guess. She didn't care how these girls got here, or how happy they once were. Their outcome was all the same now. All she had to do was stand here quietly and watch those feet tremble in agony. That had become the entire reason for these feet’s, and Pan Xueyi’s, existence. Soon enough, Pan Xueyi felt the air around her feet grow still again. After three years, for Pan Xueyi, that brief gust was just a random draft. No one was paying attention to her feet. She had long since abandoned any hope of release.

“Whoa！ These feet are huge！” Zhang Kexin's eyes locked onto a pair that looked to be about size 43. Because of their size, the sensitive flesh of the soles spread out, offering more real estate to torment, and the larger surface area soaked up more Itching Liquid, turning them a deeper, angrier shade of red than the others. She must absolutely hate her massive feet right now, cursing why they had to grow so damn big！

“ID: A1351. Name: Feng Liqi, Age 28, Shoe Size: 43, Status: Company President, Storage Commencement: August, 2332.”

This woman had only arrived eight days ago. As a company president, she had ruthlessly exploited her subordinates with draconian rules, deeming any uncivilized behavior like taking off shoes or scratching feet at the workstation a violation. Yet she was a hypocrite who would freely kick off her heels in her private office, prop her feet up on the desk, and scratch them as she pleased while watching her female employees on the monitor, forced to endure the stinging itch in their feet while she got a sick thrill from it. On a business trip overseas, she was finally targeted by Zhang Kexin's lab. Now, the itch she endured was a hundred, a thousand times worse than what her employees suffered—constant, with no relief. The privilege of scratching she once abused had been completely stripped away inside this facility. Now, it was her turn to use those size 43 soles for reflection, to get a real taste of being the one under control.

Zhang Kexin was certain: in just two short weeks, Feng Liqi hadn’t adapted to life here at all. The way her feet wrenched and buckled, twitching as if electrified, betrayed a thread of hope still clinging to the desperate possibility of escape. Or perhaps, it was simply the reality that she could not endure this itch that gnawed down to the marrow, a torment that had her soul screaming to scratch. She craved to dig her sharp nails in, to rake them furiously across her soles, wishing, with every fraying nerve, that someone would come and save her. Maybe she thought it was just a nightmare, that she’d soon reclaim her right to scratch, and would no longer have to suffer this full-spectrum, sole-penetrating agony she’d never felt in her life. Zhang Kexin could read her mind clearly, knowing these newcomers inside and out, and knowing precisely the shape Feng Liqi would eventually be molded into after a long, long time.

Her gaze drifted to a pair of size 40 feet fixed quietly beside Feng Liqi's. At a glance, they looked unremarkable, but a closer look at the digital readout above them revealed a staggering truth: these feet had been here for eight years. For eight years, those soles had existed in a permanent state of blistering itch. Had it not been for Feng Liqi’s thrashing size 43s today, Zhang Kexin might never have noticed this silent veteran. The info on the arch read Zhou Xueying. She was 25 now, but her experience far outweighed that of the 28-year-old Feng Liqi. Her feet lay totally still in their restraints, yielding no reaction save for a constant sheen of sweat. Zhang Kexin fanned a gentle breeze towards their soles. Such a reward—if one could call it that—always came at a cost, but right now, she just wanted to observe. The moment Feng Liqi sensed a presence before her feet, she began thrashing with insane violence, a frantic, tethered signal, desperate to seize any lifeline, however thin, blind to who was on the other side. Her size 43 soles instantly flooded, sweat burst forth like a sudden monsoon, every pore breaching its banks in sheer, panicked exhilaration. But beside her, Zhou Xueying’s feet remained utterly silent. Apart from a single new wave of sweat that spilled over her soles the instant the fanning began, there was no other motion. Not a single twitch. She knew this was forever. She had completely surrendered to her fate, bore no hope of rescue, and needed to beg for nothing. She needed only to lie still and let her soles silently endure.

Zhang Kexin was certain that, given enough time, Feng Liqi would end up exactly like Zhou Xueying. After that brief reward, Zhang Kexin pressed a red button next to their pairs of feet. The moment it clicked, the itching liquid spray system dedicated to their soles kicked into overdrive, cycling a concentration of 99% to 100% every 10 minutes. Even for a veteran like Zhou Xueying, the instant the mist hit her heels, her entire foot jerked violently. There was no endurance left in her, no composure to maintain. Poor Feng Liqi beside her had no idea what hell she was about to face, though that was none of Zhang Kexin's concern. If she remembered later, she might come back to turn off the punishment switch for the two of them. Truthfully, along the dozen meters Zhang Kexin had just walked, hundreds of feet already had that very punishment button pressed, their torment unresolved. She had long forgotten whether she had pressed them, or when. If luck permitted, she might notice these forgotten soles still in the throes of their endless cycle. But since it never interfered with data collection or analysis, she had no real reason to care.

She strode deeper into the corridor. The stirred air currents triggered a frantic reaction in the feet lining the walls on either side. Unaccustomed to such direct stimulation, their soles began sweating profusely, as if putting on a desperate, glistening performance to catch her attention under the harsh lights. It was then that a pungent odor slammed into Zhang Kexin’s senses.

"What the hell is that stench? Disgusting!" Pinching her nose, Zhang Kexin tracked the smell to a spot on the left wall near the end of the corridor. She pulled out her phone and checked the real-time bioscan data for the feet in this section. The readings pinpointed the source immediately: Subject No. A1872. For a girl like her, being noticed by Zhang Kexin was never a good thing. But Zhang Kexin quickly found the reason on the logs: this pair of feet had been locked in punishment mode for the past year. No wonder the smell hadn't registered before. Without hesitation, Zhang Kexin tapped one of the many buttons on the control panel beneath the soles, activating a one-way microphone to listen in.

“Ahem... sorry about this, No. A1872. I forgot why I activated your punishment mode last year and just left it running, though that hardly matters now. After a full year of penalization, even with that daily spray of shower-gel-mixed itching liquid as a foot wash, your soles reek to high heaven—but hey, that stench is exactly what made me notice you.” Zhang Kexin observed the instant nervous twitch in the girl’s feet, a clear sign she was still lucid and hanging on every word. “Alright, let me lay it out for you: I'm going to deactivate this punishment mode. However...” That single, drawn-out “However” from Zhang Kexin was a loaded gun pressed to the psyche, pure dread. Judging by the frantic sweat now beading and rolling off her soles, the girl was strung tighter than a wire. “...I’ll be moving you to a much deeper place. Oh？ Your feet are shaking violently! No need to tremble with such excitement—at least you won't be enduring this maddening penalization anymore, right？” The moment Zhang Kexin pressed the black button on the panel, her wallfoot vanished from the surface. If luck was on her side, she might just run into No. A1872 later in Zone B.

Come to think of it, Zhang Kexin knew perfectly well what the thousand-odd girls trapped here wished for most each day. They were surely praying for a total blackout, a power failure that would stop the automatic spraying of itching liquid onto their soles. Sure, their feet would still be saturated with the liquid, every pore and crevice of their skin fully invaded by it, but at least the itch wouldn't actively intensify. Or better yet, a blackout long enough to kill the life-support systems, granting them a final release from this misery. In reality, though, every single Wall Foot Pod in this facility had a backup power supply. The systems would only fail if an outage lasted over a month, while actual blackouts were never longer than half an hour—specific technicians rushed to repair them immediately. （Note： This text is completely free; if you paid for it, you got ripped off.）

Just as Zhang Kexin swiped her card to enter Zone B, the itching liquid spray cycle in Zone A activated. Mechanical arms extended slowly and silently from both sides of each pair of feet, so smoothly the girls felt no vibration at all. Their soles, which had only just begun to adapt to the lingering itch after absorbing so much liquid, were promptly coated with a fresh, even more potent layer, a merciless full-coverage application. Across the two vast walls, thousands of feet began to quiver erratically in a synchronized wave of pure, agonizing reflex; the scene was monumental, a cascading ripple of twitching flesh and soles. Under the intense lighting, their sweat-drenched feet gleamed a pale, wet sheen, and with their wild trembling, the entire wall seemed to glitter and flash. This spectacle repeated itself every single day, though no one was ever around to witness it...

Part Two：

She stepped into Zone B. Compared to the mundane torture of Zone A, the methods here were far more varied and horrifying. Without a doubt, this was Zhang Kexin’s favorite sector, the place where she kept some of her closest acquaintances.

Zhang Kexin stopped before the pair of feet labeled B156. She remembered this girl with perfect clarity. Just last year, she had stepped into university life, barely getting a taste of it before volunteering—or being volunteered—to come here. The silver lining was thin but real: if she completed her service, she could go home. A stroke of luck, all things considered.

"Well, Hu Yueyan? Managing to hold still?" Zhang Kexin's gaze locked onto the soles on display. Even after a year, those feet were impossible to ignore. Under the stark white lights, the girl's soles seemed to glow, smooth and pink and utterly defenseless. Through the glass partition, a dark swarm flickered. Hundreds of tiny black dots. A closer look revealed them clearly: the lab's signature venomous mosquitoes, bred specifically to target bare soles. They didn”t draw blood. Hunger was their driver, an insatiable, programmed urge that would keep them drilling their proboscises into exposed, immobilized feet all day long. Toes, the tender webs between them, the sensitive pads, the deep arch of the sole—every millimeter of skin was relentlessly, ravenously targeted. No rest. No pause. The itch from about ten of these bites rivaled the full-body agony of the 10% concentration Itching Liquid sprayed in the first chamber. And this tank held far, far more than ten mosquitoes.

The sight flicked a switch in Zhang Kexin's memory. She recalled a social media post Hu Yueyan had made ages ago, a complaint that a single, ordinary mosquito bite on her arch had felt like pure torture. That was one normal bite. On her arch. Now, she wasn't dealing with a lone pest. These weren't ordinary mosquitoes. These were weapons-grade insects, engineered for the sole purpose of interrogating a girl's soles. A full-scale, no-escape assault on every nerve ending. What did that feel like now？ Zhang Kexin's lips curved slightly. Would Hu Yueyan trade anything, beg for the chance to just have a single nightly mosquito on her arch, if it meant she could leave this glass hell？

"Ahem. The terms were clearly stated. Remember？"

As Zhang Kexin's words faded into the background, Hu Yueyan's world shrank to a single, maddening point: a pulsing itch that ignited between the toes of her left foot. It was a sudden, biting summons she couldn't ignore. Before her brain could even scream a warning, her toes clamped together in a violent, spasmodic reflex. The two toe rings pinning her digits immediately glowed with a crimson light, triggering the penalty. With a soft hiss, two more venomous mosquitoes were released into the compartment. A moment later, she felt the gossamer crawl of tiny legs tracking across her sole, already a swollen landscape of bites. That delicate, tactile torture was all it took. A subconscious, desperate urge to rub her sole flared, and all ten toe rings flared red in unison. The punishment escalated: ten more mosquitoes joined the swarm. The more her feet were bitten, the more they sweat, growing slick and salty—an irresistible lure. The mosquitoes honed in on her most sensitive, unbearable sweet spot: the arches of her feet, which were now being mercilessly feasted upon. Every single moment was sheer, mind-shattering itch！！！ Yet, the promise remained: if she endured 24 hours without a single twitch, she would be freed immediately！

"Let me check your record... Last year, your longest time was... 15 minutes！！！ So, one year equals 15 minutes of endurance, two years makes 30. At this rate, you'll nail those 24 hours in no time！ Then you can go reunite with all your little friends. See you next year！" Just like the experiments in Zone A, a frantic thought screamed through Hu Yueyan's brain—thrash her feet wildly, anything to grab Zhang Kexin's attention, to force out another garbled plea for mercy. But this was a trap; every desperate twitch of her toes was a fresh betrayal, stacking up a bill of torment she could never pay. And by the time that desperate thought surfaced, Zhang Kexin's gaze had already drifted away, coldly appraising the next pair of feet in the line...

The owner of these feet was a Taekwondo instructor and a yoga teacher named Wang Jialu. Shoe size 38, age 23, she'd been locked away here for two full years. As someone in those professions, no doubt she'd flashed those soles often enough in her past life. Now, dressed in her black-belt Taekwondo uniform, Wang Jialu was frozen in the yoga Lotus Pose, soles facing straight up. Her entire body was drenched in Styling Gel. Even her eyeballs were locked rigid, forcing her gaze on nothing but the bottoms of her own feet. Compared to the test subjects kept in absolute darkness, staring at her own soles was just another way to kill time. Zhang Kexin joined her in the viewing, watching feet that had once, supposedly, beaten countless opponents. They were now swarming with hundreds of engineered Red Fire Ants, creatures modified to target only the soles with single-minded aggression, utterly ignoring the rest of the body. Cold-resistant, heat-proof, and unnervingly tough, their sting was a nightmare over ten times worse than any venomous mosquito. The searing, itching, swollen misery it delivered was so severe that anyone bitten once would do anything to never feel it again. But Wang Jialu had no choice in the matter. Her soles were already scattered with angry red welts, proof she was being treated to an exquisite sensation. Even worse, the ants' legs were barbed with microscopic hairs. A single one could trigger an allergic reaction across several square centimeters of her sole, a histamine fire that demanded immediate scratching, or it would burn on and on. Zhang Kexin was sure that countless loose hairs had fallen into every groove of her foot's prints, and with every crawl of the ants, brand new, inflamed red trails were being etched into her skin. It was a truly fascinating sight.

"A genuine Taekwondo black belt, and yet here you are, utterly powerless, just watching these tiny, insignificant ants crawl all over your soles and between your toes. Tsk, tsk. Weren't your feet supposed to be lethal weapons? Why don't you just... brush them off? Oh, I'm sure you just don't want to, right?" Zhang Kexin also noted the ants' primary congregation points: the arches of her feet and the tight spaces between her toes. It was a glaring map of her weakest spots. Before victims of the Red Fire Ant sole punishment were locked in, those specific vulnerability zones were thoroughly saturated with a pheromone attractant, ensuring the sweat glands permanently secreted a sweat laced with it. After that, they were caged here, forced to watch daily as their most sensitive areas received this undivided, focused attention. Right now, Wang Jialu's toe gaps were clogged with a mass of Fire Ants. The skin of each crevice was completely blanketed, the ants in a mad, ceaseless frenzy of biting. But she couldn't even clench her toes together to try and crush them or drive them away. Day after day, she could only stare, her own soles a battlefield she had absolutely no power to influence.

“Such pathetic little toe clefts, they must be absolutely screaming with an unbearable itch inside. I bet you’d kill to scrub them together, wouldn’t you? To rub them raw and red, till every last trace of the itch is gone and you’re left feeling so, so good.” The more Zhang Kexin spoke, the more profusely Wang Jialu's feet perspired, the sheen of sweat growing more and more obvious. She reveled in tormenting a once-invincible woman to this degree. And as a parting gift for this powerhouse's feet, Zhang Kexin doubled the number of red fire ants swarming them. If she were truly strong enough, she should have used her own feet to defeat these ants. Since she could not, she would simply have to endure the punishment reserved for the weak！

The next person to catch Zhang Kexin's eye was a girl with size 37.5 feet. Zhang Kexin didn't bother noting the girl’s name; to be honest, there was no need to learn the names of these objects. However, a detail did pique her interest: this girl had once filmed foot-tickling videos.

Her feet were secured, soles facing up, while her body was held in a prostrate position. Only her feet were exposed, her ankles and each individual toe locked firmly in place. The system display indicated the balls of her feet were her primary weakness. Zhang Kexin also noticed how fleshy and broad they were, a canvas that appeared perfectly engineered for tickling torment. But right now, tickling was a luxury she would not be afforded. There was only the itch. A 99% Concentration Itching Liquid had saturated every centimeter of her soles. And what made it infinitely worse were the numerous heating rods positioned around her feet, amplifying every sensation on her skin. The actual level of itching she was enduring was likely five times the baseline, if not more. It was no wonder her soles were so much redder than those merely doused with the concentrated liquid, and why her sweating was so theatrical, gushing out like an unstanchable spring.

Zhang Kexin knew exactly how this facility handled girls who had filmed tickle videos. They were forced to watch their own old footage, nothing but extreme close-ups of their soles, amplifying the sheer despair and humiliation of their current predicament. Their feet used to be scratched by fingernails, scraped by toothpicks, scrubbed by brushes... but now? Now, there was nothing. However, the system did offer a form of 'relief' — the instruments were two impossibly soft feathers, coated in a thick layer of itching powder. Kexin watched as the mechanical arms brought the feathers into position. A few stray pink particles drifted down and landed on the girl's plump, sweaty forefoot, instantly triggering a violent, spasmodic twitch. When those two feathers finally made contact, dragging a feather-light trail across her crazily perspiring, fleshy soles, every vital sign on the monitor spiked into the red zone. The itching powder was a hyper-allergen, making her skin a thousand times more sensitive, and that gentle scrape offered zero relief—it only ignited a deeper, more maddening craving. More sinisterly, as the feathers tormented her feet, the screen in front of her played a brutal close-up loop of her soles being vigorously scratched and scrubbed, the hardest she'd ever endured. She could only watch, wide-eyed, as her past self experienced that blissful relief, while now she could do nothing. This cruel contrast pushed her to the brink of sanity every single time.

Of course, Kexin had no idea why she was brought here, nor the details of her past crimes or experiences, but she decided to offer her some 'good' news.

"Hello there！ I'm the supervisor here. We've decided to release you. Your ordeal is over. From today, you can go back to scratching your own feet, digging those sharp fingernails right into your itchy soles, enjoying every relief you can give yourself. Your soles will be yours again！ I'm going to press the release button now... are you ready for this moment? Please, give me an answer. Just think it in your head." Kexin spoke into the microphone, her tone dripping with performative warmth. The system immediately displayed the girl's frantic internal monologue, a desperate loop of "I'm ready, please, please let me go..." She still had remnants of reason left. And Kexin was going to obliterate every last shred.

"Ah... I'm so sorry. The release isn't for you. I read the screen wrong. My sincerest apologies. Oh, and I just checked the updated schedule. Starting today, your soles are getting an extra dose of treatment: the Red Fire Ant Torture and the Venomous Mosquito Bite Torture. Wait... what's happening to your brain scan？ It's looking all scrambled. Don't be so glum! Maybe you'll be released next year. Please, stay optimistic! And don't worry, we'll keep providing you with all those... scratching... your... soles... videos you made!" Kexin deliberately hammered the last words, savoring the psychic collapse on the monitor.

The euphoria of her supposed release shattered in an instant, replaced by the cold dread of an even more sadistic tickle sentence. This wasn't just a fall from grace; it was a psychological annihilation, a joke so cruel it could clinically break a mind. Zhang Kexin savored this ritual, annually tantalizing her prisoners with a mirage of hope before drowning them in absolute despair. It was absolutely exquisite. The sheer thrill of it suddenly unearthed a memory, a fond recollection of a few old friends from four years ago. Without this little emotional vivisection, she might have completely forgotten about those four girls.

One of those 'old friends' was Specimen B746, a 26-year-old dancer named Tang Lingran. Her body was a temple of flexibility, her delicate size 37 soles a masterpiece of self-care. She had always been proud of her feet, and just before their graduation trip, she had indulged in a final vanity: a fresh set of silver holographic nails, each fingertip crowned with delicate diamond-flower ornaments that glittered with a frosty light. To Zhang Kexin, those feet were a particularly satisfying masterpiece. As the former dorm leader and class president, Lingran found a twisted comfort in still being with her roommates after graduation. Yes, the entire dormitory of four had been harvested together, destined to be test subjects. But at least here, in this hell, they could be haunted by a familiar face—their own dorm leader. It was far more than any other specimen could hope for.

Now, Tang Lingran was locked into the Guanyin Sitting on Lotus pose, suspended within her own coffin-like container. Her soles, painted with a volatile 60% concentration of Itching Liquid, were a testament to her lead role in this nightmare; her roommates' feet were only slicked at a merciful 20%. A shell of Styling Gel paralyzed her body, though her lips and the intimate arches of her feet twitched with agonizing freedom. Her eyes could still dart, scanning the lab or fixing a desperate gaze upon her own defenseless soles. In her line of sight, perfectly framed like a grotesque portrait, were her three roommates, locked down across from her, each frozen in the same obscene, praying pose.

Suddenly, two mechanical Bionic Hands descended from the darkness, stopping mere centimeters above the bare soles of her first roommate. Tang Lingran’s heart slammed against her ribs. This was it—the annual, one and only Itch Relief Session! Since her soles weren't coated with Styling Gel, the roommate frantically strained every muscle, desperately trying to lift her arch and press the sensitive, fleshy sole against the cold metal fingers hovering above. The prize for a single touch of her sole’s flesh to the hand was an entire day of unbridled sole-tickling. An insanely rich reward! But her window of opportunity was brutally short, the seconds purchased with a year of sheer, silent hell. Every single day, they endured the maddening Sole Itch Punishment without a single sound—no whimpers, no moans allowed. A successful daily challenge banked just one second. But failure? That meant a cascade of horrors: venomous mosquito bites, Red Fire Ant stings, the hellish blazing heat of full-sole flame torture, and a dousing in the highest concentration Itching Liquid. The next day’s challenge would then randomly add one of these torments as a persistent debuff. If she endured through that extra punishment, only then would the third day return to the baseline, insanity-inducing, scream-choking sole torture. A single day's failure could shatter weeks of future endurance.

Her first roommate had gritted her teeth for 3 days, banking a precious 3-second attempt. And she nailed it. The Bionic Hand latched on, its metal digits beginning to mercilessly dig and scrape across her sole. Forget the victim’s own sensations—just witnessing this sight sent Tang Lingran’s excitement surging! In this living hell, such relief was rarer than water. For an entire year, Tang Lingran had dreamed only of this moment: the sweet, savage ecstasy of her soles finally being scratched. Roommate two followed, then roommate three. All succeeded. Counting this year, they were four-for-four. Watching their eyes roll back into their heads in sheer, white-eyed ecstasy and the frantic sweat beading on their tortured soles, Tang Lingran’s arousal peaked. She was next. This year, she had to succeed. She had to taste that blissful, never-before-experienced relief. Failure and its escalating torments were unthinkable.

Her first year, she failed the Sole Finger-Rubbing Challenge. By the rules, a permanent punishment was added. In the random draw for her personalized hell, Tang Lingran pulled 'Itching Liquid Concentration Increase'—her baseline torture jumped from a 20% solution to a searing 40%. The second year, she failed again. The concentration spiked to a nerve-frying 60%. Last year, she got a twisted stroke of luck. Although she failed the challenge, the concentration didn't rise! Her drawn punishment was far more insidious: every 24 hours of endurance now earned her not 1 second of relief, but a pathetic 0.1 seconds. Her suffering had been officially, devastatingly devalued.

In the past year, Miss Tang Lingran had stockpiled a mere 10 seconds for today's Itch Relief Session, each one purchased with 100 full days of absolute, silent endurance under the maddening itch. A feat beyond belief.

Then Zhang Kexin stopped in front of her. Her turn had arrived. Two Bionic Hands, each tipped with wickedly sharp fingernails, descended with a low hum. Just the sight of them seared into Tang Lingran's mind, projecting a visceral image of those claws raking across her arch for an entire day, gouging deep. She was a top-tier girl, perfect in form; there was no doubt she could pass this test and claim her reward.

"Starting... now. Ten... nine..." Each digit Zhang Kexin sang out represented 10 days of her own agony, 240 hours of silent endurance, compressed into a fleeting, worthless second. With every count, Zhang Kexin was leisurely gliding her sole against the Bionic Hand, a casual, unearned pleasure. Every time Tang Lingran witnessed this, a wave of pure jealousy crashed over her, a far cry from the days she'd dismissed this 'sole-rubbing' privilege with contempt. Now, she was pouring every ounce of strength into lifting the pad of her foot, straining to make contact. Her arched instep was deep, a sculpted perfection ideal for a dancer, but right now, Zhang Kexin was certain she was cursing its very existence as her trembling sole crept upward by millimeters, a desperate stretch of glistening, tensed muscle.

"Five... four..." The earlier confidence on her face had crumbled into sheer panic, beads of sweat sliding down her forehead. The instant Zhang Kexin sang out "Zero!" with a burst of glee, the Bionic Hand retracted in a flash. Zhang Kexin's eyes fixed on the trembling, yearning arch of Tang Lingran's foot. So close. A pathetic sliver of space had ruined everything.

"Such a damn shame. Failed again! You trained for a whole year, so how can you still be this useless? An entire year of suffering, confiscated. All of it, null and void! Now, watch your roommates closely. Watch their soles soaking up the pleasure you'll never feel. Their flesh, saturated with the itching liquid, is turning every scratch from those sharp nails into a maddening cascade of ecstasy. This year, your lack of effort is costing you everything. But don't worry, I'll give you a new trial next year. All you have to do is endure another 365 days. That's it."

Zhang Kexin couldn't hear a single sound from inside, but reading Tang Lingran's contorted expression, she knew the girl was trapped in a silent scream of pure anguish. A flicker of doubt crossed her mind—had she been too cruel? The girl had worked so brutally hard, only to be denied relief year after year. After a moment's pause, she slowly raised the microphone once more.

Don't mope, baby. Tell you what. Since your feet are so damn pretty, how about I throw in an extra 5 seconds？ But it's not free. If you fail, you rack up 5 more Permanent Additional Punishments this year. If you succeed, well, it's my treat. She dangled a sliver of hope right at the brink of despair, knowing Tang Lingran would claw at it with everything she had. Once Tang Lingran nodded her hollow agreement, the Bionic Hand hummed back down, lowering itself right over her arches. Technically, she shouldn't have seen this sight until next year, but now Zhang Kexin was pitying her with a 5-second gamble.

5... 4... Every single second was bought with a Permanent Additional Punishment Tang Lingran prayed she wouldn't have to pay. Zhang Kexin knew, just knew, that Tang Lingran was channeling every last reserve of strength, every shattered nerve, into lifting her soles those final few millimeters. But it wasn't enough. It was never enough. Zhang Kexin peered at the gap. The distance between her arch and the metal fingertips was down to just the thickness of a couple of toothpicks. One more desperate push, and her world would have been bliss. When Zhang Kexin clicked her tongue to a final '0', the game ended. The Bionic Hand retracted. Tang Lingran had lost. Again. A High-speed Camera had captured every microsecond. Zooming in on the playback, Zhang Kexin saw that in the last instant, the gap between sole and steel was no thicker than a single strand of hair. This 5-second clip would be looped for Tang Lingran, over and over, zoomed in tight, searing into her brain exactly how pathetically close she had come to a relief she'd never know.

What a shame. But you have to take your medicine, right？ To be honest, Zhang Kexin did think about just letting those cold fingers graze her soles for a few seconds of relief. But she didn't have clearance for pleasure. Only punishment.

Minutes later, Tang Lingran blindly completed her punishment lot-draw. Five fresh Permanent Additional Punishments. One: Itching Liquid concentration jacked up to eighty percent. Two: Random Soft Feather Scraping Punishment added. Three: Random Foot Sole Electric Shock Punishment activated. Four: Poisonous Mosquito Bite Punishment enabled. Five: Suffocation Punishment. Randomized breathing blockages, 3 to 15 seconds each, effective instantly. She could only stare, hollow-eyed, as her roommate's feet writhed in blissful satisfaction. She was a loser, saddled with a fresh load of insanity-inducing torture. The crushing contrast of that despair, perhaps, was a flavor only Tang Lingran could ever truly taste.

But was that really the truth？ Were her roommate's soles truly being pleasured？ No, they were not. The glass in front of Tang Lingran was actually a display screen. Her roommates weren't in front of her getting their feet tickled; they were in adjacent cubicles. All of them had failed this year, too. In fact, none of them had ever actually succeeded. The screens in front of them just cycled AI-generated footage of others succeeding. Every year, they believed their roommates were blessed with the bliss of relief on their soles, and only they themselves had failed. Worse still, convinced that everyone else had earned their release, they would grit their teeth and endure an entire year before cashing in their hours for another shot at this utterly impossible challenge.

Before leaving, Zhang Kexin made a point to check the permanent penalties her roommates had drawn this year. The first roommate's challenge was now updated: from here on out, success required pressing her soles against a super-electric shock device for 3 seconds. The second roommate had been saddled with a permanent Red Fire Ant Torture routine on her soles. The third was now fated to have 99% concentrated Itching Liquid poured over her soles during the final hour of the 24-hour endurance challenge. They all thought they were the only unlucky one, the only one who hadn't tried hard enough. But in reality, they were all in the exact same boat~

Still, during the 0-to-8 AM rest period, they were granted a brief reprieve. A screen in front of them would play scenes from their past performances on stage, old life photos, or even vlogs from their daily lives. These were snapshots of freedom and joy, captured before they lost their liberty and came here. Now, the screen was the only window they had left. Every time they saw these images, they couldn't stop the quiet sobs from escaping. Of course, if the sound of their weeping broke the silence, it would count as a failure too~ Naturally, the footage of their own failure—those exact few seconds—was also looped on the display. If they ever gave up on participating in the endurance challenge, that fleeting chance for relief would be revoked forever, condemning them to all punishments for eternity！ The cost was simply too great. In fact, there were already people in this facility who had been participating for 19 consecutive years. These girls were only in their fourth year, and Zhang Kexin figured they had the strength to carry on.

As for Tang Lingran, Zhang Kexin saw her in a completely new light today. She had shattered the facility's all-time record. The distance between her sole and the hand was just a hair's breadth—so impossibly, agonizingly close. No one in over a decade had ever come so near. She truly lived up to her potential as a talented dancer. Yet, this was the closest distance between a sole and the metallic hand that anyone would ever achieve. No matter how hard they tried, their soles would never, ever be able to brush against it. It was all pre-programmed, down to the last micrometer.

Now, Zhang Kexin was about to visit an old acquaintance—a former investigator and lawyer. Zhang Kexin had always been especially fond of this one. Her feet were just so exceptionally soft, so exceptionally tender. She had been raised as a pampered little princess, spoiled rotten since birth, never knowing a single hardship. Because of a distinct little mole on the side of her sole, Zhang Kexin could spot her in a crowd. Sure enough, after walking past over a hundred pairs of feet, she found her. The information plaque read: Name—Zuo Yetong, Age—35. But in reality, thanks to the life-support systems, she hadn't aged a day since her capture; she looked exactly as she did at twenty-five. Her size 37 feet had perfectly proportioned toes, like tender bamboo shoots—truly, unbelievably tempting. Ten years ago, her background as a lawyer led her to investigate this very facility. When Zuo Yetong sent Zhang Kexin a photo of her own bare soles via text, Zhang Kexin genuinely thought she was doomed. She never imagined she’d be exposed, and intellectually, she was no match for the brilliant Zuo Yetong. However, Zuo Yetong’s unbearably sensitive, tender soles betrayed her during the capture. Just as Zuo Yetong moved to apprehend Zhang Kexin, Zhang Kexin tore off her shoes, baring her black-stockinged soles. The moment fingernails raked across Zuo Yetong’s arches, her entire body just... liquefied. She’d never endured that kind of tickling stimulation before. Since childhood, she had never even let anyone touch her feet, pampering them with daily care.

For the entire year that followed, Zuo Yetong’s soles received Zhang Kexin’s personal, special attention. Her feet were subjected to interrogation-grade tickle torture every single day. Eventually, Zhang Kexin knew the texture of Zuo Yetong’s soles better than Zuo Yetong herself—she practically had every single crease memorized. Completely and utterly broken, Zuo Yetong finally signed the Lifetime Tickling Slave Agreement, her soles now Zhang Kexin’s to play with as she pleased. Moreover, to atone and earn Zhang Kexin’s forgiveness, her entire fortune was liquidated through various channels and surrendered to the organization. The very facility Zuo Yetong now 'enjoyed' was, in fact, built entirely with her own money.

After receiving magnanimous forgiveness from Zhang Kexin, Zuo Yetong was now sealed within the wall, with only her bare feet protruding. A condensed itching liquid had been drizzled over her vulnerable soles, a sadistic concoction boasting a potency roughly ten times that of the standard 100% formula!!! Trapped inside, forced to stare at a screen, Zuo Yetong was subjected to an endless loop of her previous tickle-torture close-ups—every twitch, every desperate wrinkle of her sole played back in high definition—interspliced with footage from her days as a pampered heiress. She had been so blissfully happy back then. When the sleep cycle hit from 0:00 to 8:00 AM, the screens would mercifully shut off to protect her eyes, but the torment simply shifted to psychological audio warfare. The speakers would pipe in the maddening scratch of a brush against a sole, the chipper voices of female dominants dissecting the best methods to tickle feet, and layered subliminal inductions urging her to scratch. Unlike most other girls, however, Zhang Kexin granted Zuo Yetong a poisonous right to relief. In her hand was a button. Pressing it would trigger a mechanical arm inside the pod to touch her foot and grant a moment of salvation, but at a cost: 2 to 24 uses were allotted per day, and every single press added a full day to her Wallfoot imprisonment. Her original reflective sentence was a mere 7 days. She broke by the second. The itching was so catastrophic, a neural firestorm she’d never even dreamed possible, that bartering a whole day of confinement for one fleeting gasp of relief seemed like a rational trade. Moreover, every use of the device raised the itching liquid’s concentration by another 1%, a chemical hook designed to force her thumb down on that button again and again.

As for the relief tool, Zhang Kexin had initially rewarded her with a brush. Oh, that generous brush. Each button press dragged its hundred-plus bristles across her tingling soles in a single, firm stroke, a sensation so rapturous it could satisfy her for over an hour, leaving her panting in the dark. But the cruel genius of the system was its degradation. Every tool wore out its welcome after exactly 100 uses, permanently rotating to the next, less satisfying implement in the queue. The mechanism had long since cycled all the way down to a single, flimsy toothpick. Against the memory of that lush brush, the toothpick’s pinprick of contact was a joke, a negligible scratch that barely interrupted the chemical fire eating her soles alive. To chase even that pathetic shadow of comfort, she had to slam the button with desperate frequency, ballooning her sentence. Zhang Kexin pulled up the status monitor, a faint smile playing on her lips. Zuo Yetong’s release date now stood at a distant 2,956 days.

Today, however, the random number generator had blessed Zuo Yetong with incredible luck, rolling the maximum on her daily relief attempts: 24. But the psychological trap had already snapped shut. For safety’s sake, most captives rigidly limited themselves to just 2 presses, no matter how high the number flashed. Even though the monitor showed 11 free uses remaining, Zuo Yetong’s trembling thumb hovered paralyzed over the button. She didn’t dare. The phantom memory of the punishment protocol was a deeper terror than the unrelenting itch itself.
Because when those daily uses were exhausted, a single extra push meant catastrophe. The punishment routine would trigger; tomorrow’s allotted relief count would be brutally halved, and the current tool’s usage counter would violently leap forward by 50 ticks. Even if it was her very first interaction with a new tool, the system would artificially age it to 51/100 uses, robbing her of any fresh reprieve. Thinking about this exquisite machinery of suffering, Zhang Kexin’s mind drifted to Tang Lingran. If possible, Zhang Kexin genuinely suspected Tang Lingran would volunteer for this very prison. After all, being sealed in the Wallfoot meant a daily, guaranteed chance to scratch her unbearable soles. For her, that was infinitely better than her current hell: a single, precious annual opportunity to find true relief. A year of pent-up torment for one fleeting brushstroke—compared to that, this cage was a paradise.

Zuo Yetong had drawn insanely lucky today: her daily relief quota had rolled the maximum 24 times. But the system was a miser. It showed 24/24 uses remaining at the stroke of midnight, and by 1 AM, the counter had already plummeted to 23/24. An entire hour of frantic, desperate scratching relief, burning through nearly all her allotted mercy in sixty minutes. Each press of the button didn't just kill the itch—it added a full day to her sentence. In one hour, while watching old clips of her foot care routines, the phantom itch had grown so ravenous that she traded 23 days of her life just to quiet her screaming soles. Now, over ten hours had crawled by, and she had only used one more press. Her sanity was a brittle thread stretched taut over the next dozen hours. Zhang Kexin watched the numbers, a thin smile forming. So close to the edge. A little nudge was all it would take to make her slip.

A mechanical arm descended with a sterile hiss, halting right in front of Zuo Yetong's bare arch. Pinched in its pincers were two slender barrels, the size of a pinky finger, each filled with a liquid that caught the light like viscous amber. It was an undiluted concentrate—a single drop smeared on an elephant's hide would send the beast into a fit of such blinding, bone-deep pruritus it would batter itself unconscious against its restraints. Zhang Kexin intended to inject this raw agony directly into the sweat-sheened, hyper-sensitive skin of Zuo's sole. With life support keeping her nerve endings raw and her mind a pristine mirror for every searing sensation, she would be wide awake for every second of the fire. She would break. She would hammer that relief button. But even Zhang Kexin felt a flicker of hesitation—this concentrate was usually diluted a dozen times over and reduced to a mere vapor for interrogations; direct injection was a different realm of cruelty. She fished a coin from her pocket. Old-fashioned justice. She flipped it into the air, the metal glinting coldly. Heads, the needle would kiss the soft, trembling arch. Tails, maybe just the steam.

Unfortunately, Zuo Yetong was still twitching her feet around, completely oblivious to the woman right in front of her, deciding the fate of her soles. The moment the coin landed in her palm, Zhang Kexin glanced at it and, without a shred of hesitation, slammed the injection button. Zuo Yetong's foot jolted as if electrically shocked—a violent, reflexive spasm—before falling eerily still. That silence didn't last. An itch so devastating it could kill bloomed from the depths of her soles and detonated against her brain. Her finger hammered the relief button purely on spinal reflex. The display panel instantly updated: Relief Count now at 75/24! Just how insane must the itching have been to make her press it that fast? Zuo Yetong's soles blazed a fierce, throbbing red. Sweat erupted from her heels like a fully opened faucet, converging into a thin, steady stream that trickled down in a viscous line. And because she had exceeded the relief limit, the relief she so desperately sought never came. Instead, the punishment module activated. A nightmare cocktail of red fire ants, a heating rod set to maximum, high-concentration capsaicin, and over a dozen other torture protocols were unleashed upon her soles all at once, catapulting her suffering into an entirely new dimension. Zhang Kexin was absolutely certain: no human language could ever accurately describe the sensations ravaging Zuo Yetong’s feet at that moment. The one sliver of good news was the drug's potency—the peak itch would only last 24 hours. Truth be told, if Zuo Yetong had endured the initial itch without pressing the button for just 7 days from the very start, she could have avoided today's harrowing torture and her sentence wouldn't have spiraled out of control. It was all her own doing. But then again, looking back even further, if she just hadn't chosen to investigate Zhang Kexin all those years ago, none of this would be happening now. Lost in thought, Zhang Kexin glanced down at the coin resting on her hand—tails facing up. That’s right, the flip had actually dictated no injection. But Zuo Yetong's soles had long ago been surrendered as Zhang Kexin's property, to do with as she pleased. Even if fate itself had favored Zuo Yetong, Zhang Kexin would still forcibly rewrite, seize, and absolutely dominate her destiny.

Before leaving, Zhang Kexin noted tomorrow's configuration for Zuo Yetong: a measly 1 relief chance, and the implement swapped from a toothpick all the way down to just a feather root. Zuo Yetong should cherish these last few moments where relief is even possible, because it's about to get a whole lot less comfortable from here on out. With the tool rotations coming, the future might hold things like ultrasoft feathers coated in itching powder, where pressing the button only grants a 10-second pause from the sweeping torture on her soles. Or maybe each press simply removes a single red fire ant from the horde crawling across her feet. Perhaps pressing it only lowers the temperature of the heating rod in front of her soles by a single degree. Either way, it would have absolutely nothing to do with actual relief anymore. Moreover, Zhang Kexin had recorded a vast collection of sole-rubbing and scratching videos—a little parting gift for Zuo Yetong. Just watching those videos of her was enough to make even Zhang Kexin unconsciously rub her own soles together under the table.

With time ticking away, Zhang Kexin had conducted a thorough enough inspection and decided to have lunch right there. Before her meal, her gaze landed on the pair of sisters in her bedroom, the ones treated as living mosquito coils. They were now confined in a tiny compartment in Zone B. Their two pairs of feet were crammed together inside, their toes forcibly restrained and splayed open as they underwent the Poisonous Mosquito Bite Torture. It suited them perfectly. They no longer needed to work or think about anything else; all they had to do was relish the sensation of mosquitoes biting their soles. The indicator lights on the toe restraints were blinking frantically, proof that they were still desperately trying to curl their toes—the same thing they loved doing when they served as Sole Mosquito Coils. Whether to kill time or vent frustration, it changed nothing about the reality of their bitten feet. But here, things were different. They couldn't recklessly curl their toes anymore, not without learning a harsh lesson from the ever-growing swarm of venomous mosquitoes. Back when they worked at Zhang Kexin's home, the bites only came at night, leaving days for rest. Here, they could savor the bites around the clock. The two sisters could stay together, enduring it together, forever.

Right next to the sisters, Zhang Kexin’s attention shifted to No. A1872—the woman with the foul-smelling feet. Her soles were now slathered with 99% Concentration Itching Liquid. Two electric prods designed for livestock, like those used on sows, were positioned right in front of her soles, delivering random jolts to the tender flesh. She had no way of knowing when the next jolt would hit, where on her soles it would land, or how intense it would be, despite those feet belonging to her. Zhang Kexin, however, could see clearly as one of the prods now aimed right into the crevice between the big toe and second toe of her left foot, while the victim’s attention was still foolishly fixed on the arch of her foot. An electric arc landed with pinpoint accuracy on that tender gap. The indicator light on her toe restraint blazed to life instantly, and then, the number of prods doubled to four. Zhang Kexin estimated that soon, the electrodes would completely blanket her soles, relentlessly shocking every inch of the soft flesh. Her feet had nowhere to go. And with how much foot sweat she produced, it would only amplify the electrical sensations. A tube from her breathing apparatus now extended directly beside her feet. If she failed to use her nose diligently to deodorize them, an additional punishment would be added to the mix. Zhang Kexin didn't particularly care what that punishment was, though injecting a couple shots of itching serum directly into her sweaty soles seemed like an excellent choice. The electric prods would keep covering every inch of her soles, right up until the next day.

Next, Zhang Kexin was going to have her lunch right here. Her eyes drifted to the rows of Wallfoot units revealing heads and feet. She stopped in front of one of the poor, pathetic things, and forced her to watch as she rubbed her own feet together while eating. Making these hopeless wretches watch her casually rubbing her toes together and wiggling her feet—enjoying a simple right their own feet would never experience—always made Zhang Kexin feel absolutely fantastic.

Just soaking in the sight of all those miserable, tortured feet while casually picking at her own between bites was a sublime feeling. She possessed a seemingly trivial freedom that not a single other girl here had. In moments like these, every second of Zhang Kexin’s life felt exquisitely beautiful. For these girls and their feet, on the other hand, every single second was a maddening, unbearable ordeal...

Part Three：

Zhang Kexin’s mood was remarkably good after her meal, so much so that she decided to give a random reward to one of the tortured Wallfoot units before her inspection. Very quickly, she spotted the palest and most tender-looking pair among them. That girl should thank her feet for being so pretty, for getting them noticed by Zhang Kexin. She then unlocked the clamps binding that girl’s toes and made some adjustments. In no time at all, semi-circular baffles were added to the outer sides of her big and little toes, blocking the tops and outer edges of those toes. This effectively limited any sideways or forward movement. After that, Zhang Kexin carefully tucked little grape-like objects between each of her toe crevices. Inside their thin, frosted protective shells was a syrupy, concentrated itch liquid. No girl in her right mind would want that gunk sticking to her skin, much less between her toes！

"Hey, bitch. You’re a lucky one. I’m going to go take care of the other worthless sluts now. In the meantime, you’d better make sure your toes don’t pop any of those little balls with the itch liquid concentrate inside. Otherwise, those toe cleavages of yours will be going absolutely insane with pleasure！ If I come back and these little balls are still all intact, I might just be inclined to let you rub your soles together for a dozen seconds. Got it?"

From the increasing tremble running through her feet, Zhang Kexin was certain she’d heard. Just a single thin layer of protection was all that stood between her and a liquid capable of driving her mad for a lifetime. Perhaps she might think to splay her toes and let the little balls just drop out. But her big and little toes were already restrained, pinned in place. Spreading them open simply wasn't an option.

“Ah, right. I figured you might get bored, so I prepared this！” A device bristling with ten sharp-tipped feathers was positioned directly in front of her feet, those feather tips bobbing up and down rhythmically, relentlessly teasing the hypersensitive hollows where her toes met her foot—virgin territory that had barely been stimulated before. And with the soles of her feet still in that hypersensitive, ticklish flare-up, the touch of those feathers felt like a swarm of ants crawling incessantly between her toes. The only silver lining? If she could crush every single one of those little balls wedged between her digits, she could clamp her toes together and shield herself from this feathery torment.

“Alright, just sit tight like this until I get back！” Before leaving, Zhang Kexin leaned in close, a sadistic glee twisting her features. She pursed her lips and blew a sharp stream of air directly into the girl’s vulnerable toe gaps. She watched as the girl’s twitching toes made those little balls pulse and quiver with every spasm. It was truly amusing. To Zhang Kexin, tormenting this girl’s feet was no different from handling a slab of meat—if anything, her feet were worth even less than a fresh cut of pork. Right now, Kexin’s mind was already shifting gears, mentally reviewing her afternoon inspection roster. She still had at least eight more targets to check on. She decided to head down first to inspect a few slaves sentenced to "volunteer" here for their crimes, before dropping by the lab to check on some of their directly-hired "employees."

Zhang Kexin now stood in a space that felt eerily like a museum, lined with glass display cases arranged with a far more orderly precision than the area she had just passed through. She browsed the contents like a curator examining an exhibit, and after a brief search, she stopped in front of a female student to observe her. The girl was still wearing the uniform of the high school she once attended. Were it not for the information tag dangling from her neck, it would be impossible to imagine that this broken thing—eyes rolled back to the whites, tongue lolling out like a slack, wet slug—was a twenty-year-old student.

“B751, Name: Chen Lifei, Age: 20, Shoe Size: 36...” Zhang Kexin murmured the details aloud to herself. Four years ago, Chen Lifei had traveled abroad, ready to enjoy her high school life. Not long after arriving, local authorities uncovered her involvement in drug trafficking, kidnapping, and a shooting spree. She was swiftly arrested, tried, and ultimately confessed to her crimes. In a closed, unpublicized trial, she was sentenced to death on the spot. However, because she was a minor at the time, the sentence was commuted to serving as a permanent tickle-test volunteer in the lab. The information on her tag indicated that she was only transferred to this facility last year to begin her sentence of relentless tickle-torture.

Finished with the basic data, her gaze sharpened back onto Chen Lifei. The girl was secured in a brutal hogtie restraint onto a slowly revolving turntable. A leather head harness connected by a strap to her bound ankles forced her spine into a vicious, O-shaped back arch posture, muscles screaming in silent protest. As the display rotated to a certain angle, Zhang Kexin had a clear view of her feet. The soles were pressed flush against a round wooden board, each of her ten toes trapped in individual restraint rings that pried them wide open. Squinting at the entire sole, she could just make out a transparent patch clinging to the skin—the Nettle Mosquito Itch Patch. She knew its secret well: soaked in concentrated nettle extract and covered in countless, mosquito-proboscis-fine micro-needles, the patch adhered perfectly. Those micro-needles pierced the skin, instantly raising a field of insanely itchy welts, each one like a fresh mosquito bite. Through the perfectly adhered transparent film, the raised bumps were starkly visible, and a violent, angry allergic reaction from the nettle had turned the entire sole a splotchy, inflamed mess. A new patch was applied daily, without fail, just to maintain this constant state of agony.

Of course, the Nettle Mosquito Itch Patch could only perfectly hug the soles, cruelly neglecting the sensitive spaces between the toes. That job fell to a row of small metal faucets positioned directly above each toe gap. At irregular intervals, they'd drip a viscous, undiluted Itch Concentrate—the kind the manual strictly advised mixing 1:10 with water. The raw liquid dripped out, glazing her toes like a thick, pink cream. Gravity pulled the heavy concentrate along the curve of her toes, funneling it directly into the tender clefts. Once there, it clung stubbornly, a cloying layer of concentrated torment eating into the hypersensitive flesh and raw nerves until they were completely hypersensitized. Zhang Kexin was certain that if you scraped away that layer of pink, cream-like concentrate from between her toes, the flesh underneath would be an infernal, boiled red. A pair of feet subjected to such refined cruelty, and Chen Lifei was even denied the mercy of seeing them. Though, she could still feel every unadulterated, unfiltered sensation screaming up from her soles, her brain a perfect, helpless receptor for the torment.

For a demon who dabbled in shootouts, robbery, and kidnapping, this torment was clearly insufficient. That's why two launchers were aimed directly at her soles. The moment they detected her toes twitching, they'd fire plastic pellets at her soles—a game of 'Sole Target Practice.' The pellets hitting the arch were pure agony. Even slaves who had suffered itchy soles for over a decade refused this method to scratch the itch. As the pellets struck home, they drove the microscopic needles of the Nettle Mosquito Itch Patch even deeper. A violent allergic reaction bloomed instantly, drowning the targeted patch of tender flesh in a dual onslaught of maddening itch and sharp, bruising pain. Her instinct was to curl her toes, to clench the foot against the pain—but that only triggered the motion sensors. Another salvo fired. Another. The situation spiraled, a feedback loop of agony with no way out.

After observing for a while, Zhang Kexin unlatched the glass display case. She had good news for Chen Lifei today. The moment she registered a human presence, Chen Lifei reacted on pure, drilled-in reflex. Her voice, strained by her contorted posture, started spilling out.

“I’m your worthless slave Chen Lifei! I love having my soles tortured! Please, master, torture me!”

“My, my, aren't you just adorable~ Here, a reward. You get to smell my foot！” Zhang Kexin lifted her own foot and placed it just in front of Chen Lifei's face. Chen Lifei—who had been trained specifically for deodorization duty countless times—immediately leaned in. She inhaled with desperate, violent effort, a pre-programmed machine executing its sole function, desperately pulling the scent into her lungs.

“Baby, I want to see those wrinkles on your soles. Show them to me. Now.” The command hit her brain before thought could form. Chen Lifei crumpled her ten toes inward, clenching them tight. Instantly, a dense web of soft, fleshy wrinkles creased her soles. At the exact same moment, the motion sensors locked onto the curling and twisting of her toes. Without a shred of mercy or emotion, the two launchers discharged. Hard, painful plastic pellets slapped against Chen Lifei’s hyper-sensitive, soft soles with a rhythmic, wet “thwack-thwack-thwack.’ Shallow, soft dents bloomed across the doughy, sweat-slicked flesh, the sound of impact echoing off her sticky skin, a true symphony of suffering.

“Good. Keep them just like that. I want to admire every single line on your soles. Now, while you hold that, I have great news. Remember all those crimes you were involved in? The investigation had a breakthrough. The judge realized that the only evidence—matching the whiteness of your feet with the criminal’s feet on surveillance footage—was, well, a bit flimsy. So, due to insufficient and unreliable evidence, the decision has been overturned! You are now officially innocent! What do you think? Any feelings you’d like to share?” Zhang Kexin finished, then stared in genuine surprise. There wasn't a ripple of emotion on Chen Lifei’s face. She just lay there, silently, methodically, curling her toes, devotedly fulfilling her duty: being nothing more than a target for itchy, tortured soles.

For any ordinary tickle-slave, a pardon like this would be euphoric, a one-way ticket to bliss. But Chen Lifei merely stood there, her voice as flat as a pre-recorded loop: “I'm Chen Lifei, your filthy slave. Nothing pleases me more than having my soles tortured. Please, Master, torture me more！” The words dropped from her lips, not as a plea, but as the only identity she had left.

Zhang Kexin tilted her head, a cynical smile playing on her lips. “Honestly, a schoolgirl like you? How could you have actually committed all those crimes? If you'd just endured those first few months of foot interrogation, if you hadn't confessed... well, we wouldn't be here, right? None of this would have happened.”

A flicker of something—fear?—crossed Chen Lifei's face, a raw panic that her only reason for existing was about to be dismantled. Her throat worked, and she blurted out the only defense she knew, the words a shield: “I'm Chen Lifei, your filthy slave. Nothing pleases me more than having my soles tortured. Please, Master, torture me more！”

She just repeated the same damn sentence, again. Nothing else. After her initial sentencing, where she'd been 'volunteered' for tickle torture in this lab, Chen Lifei had been subjected to relentless, high-intensity sessions by its female dominants. Her soles had served every purpose but walking: they'd been scratching posts for their nails, fleshy targets for their guns, and sweet-scented bait for hordes of mosquitoes. She herself had been developed into a human deodorizing device, her breath solely for stripping the stench from other girls' feet. Three years of this. Now, she was just a machine, built for tickling and torment, with no emotion left in the circuits. The women had gotten bored of their toy, which is why she was transferred here.

Zhang Kexin's voice dropped into a silken, seductive register, trying to find some last, working gear in the girl's mind. “Don't you want to be released? Go back to a normal life, rejoin the world, be genuinely free? Every single day, no torment for your soles. If they itch, you can scratch. You can scrape. You can do anything to them. The right to use them, the ownership of them—all of it would be yours again.” She’d hoped to ignite a spark of reason. Instead, raw, animal terror flooded Chen Lifei's eyes, as if she’d just been told her entire world was about to be skinned alive. A normal life was the nightmare.

A convulsion ripped through Chen Lifei's body. Her back arched, and her scream was a wet, ragged tear in the air, a sound of pure, primal desperation. “NO! NO, NO, NO!! I'M CHEN LIFEI, YOUR FILTHY SLAVE!! NOTHING PLEASES ME MORE THAN HAVING MY SOLES TORTURED!! PLEASE, MASTER, JUST TORTURE ME!!!!”

Zhang Kexin lowered her foot, a slow, deliberate motion. She leaned in, her warm breath ghosting over the shell of Chen Lifei's ear, and spoke in a voice thick with lust and finality. “If that's the case, then we'll just lock you away forever. We'll torment your feet, every single day, every single hour. We'll strip you and your soles of every last shred of freedom, and keep them trapped in an eternity of pure, maddening itch and agony. And you'll never, ever reach them. You won't even be allowed to rub them against the air.” Instead of despair, a violent shudder of pure elation ran through the slave. Her pupils dilated. A broken, ecstatic smile cracked her face. This wasn't a punishment. This was the promise she'd been praying for.

The confirmation was enough. Her voice, now raw and frayed from screaming, found a new, frantic energy. The words began to tumble out, a self-soothing mantra, a religious chant that defined her universe. “I'm Chen Lifei, your filthy slave! Nothing pleases me more than having my soles tortured! Please, Master, torture me! I'm Chen Lifei, your filthy slave, nothing pleases me more, please torture my soles, please, please!!!”

A cold wave of realization washed over Zhang Kexin. It wasn't just the years of torture. It was that, combined with the cruel, random shock of a false accusation. The two had fused, short-circuiting Chen Lifei's brain entirely. Her thinking was no longer human; she was a tool, polished to a lethal edge for one purpose alone. Her mind could only process the simplest of commands, running on a single, fiery track of pure, self-annihilating devotion. Reason was a ghost the girl no longer believed in.

"Tsk~ Looks like she's completely broken now. Makes things much easier this way~" Since Chen Lifei, even after being fully informed of her acquittal, still chose to spend the rest of her life inside this facility, Zhang Kexin would naturally honor her wishes. The glass display case door glided shut and locked with a definitive click. Chen Lifei, who had just missed the final escape from this hellhole in her lifetime, remained frozen in place, her toes curled so tight the joints had gone bone-white. Her soles endured the relentless impact of plastic pellets fired one after another from the embedded launchers. Without a command from her "Master," her mind—now devoid of independent thought—would obey that single order for the rest of her existence, toes perpetually curled in this exact posture.


Zhang Kexin moved on to inspect a female S—Li Qianyi. Number B887, age 34, shoe size 39. In the decade-plus before her arrest, she had imprisoned dozens of girls in the basement beneath her house, subjecting them daily to every imaginable form of cruel conditioning. Had one girl not managed to escape and alert the police, the secrets of that basement might have stayed buried forever. After her arrest and prosecution, she was sentenced to death, but the girls she had held captive unanimously decided to send her to this laboratory for the rest of her life instead. In court, when she heard she was being sent here, she actually requested immediate execution. Fortunately, the judge, showing considerable humanity, approved the girls' decision and sent her here—a gesture Li Qianyi will surely learn to appreciate, given that these girls she once conditioned so generously granted her a second life.

Li Qianyi was bound in the Guanyin Sitting on Lotus position, a breathing mask strapped tight over her face. Even with the mask obscuring her features, the look in her eyes alone carried a bone-deep chill that made your skin crawl. Suspended above each of her immobilized feet was a device resembling a feather teaser, like those on cat wands—one positioned precisely over each sole. When the soft feathers merely rested against the reddened, allergic flesh of her soles, she could only feel a faint, ghostly touch. But synchronized with that breathing mask? That became something else entirely. The sole-scanning device tracked her every breath, synchronizing the rhythm so the two clusters of feathers swept back and forth across her soles in perfect time with her breathing pattern, triggering an allergic itch that felt like every nerve ending in her feet igniting in sequence. The feathers themselves were synthetic constructs, manufactured using extracts from mites, rove beetles, and various other allergenic materials—merely brushing them across skin would leave visible red welts and rashes within seconds. Before each session, the feathers would also be dipped in itching powder, so even just resting motionless against her soles would be enough to make her feel like peeling her nerves and skin apart layer by layer just to scrub them raw with a wire brush. And now they were sweeping back and forth. Back and forth.

At times, Li Qianyi found every single breath so unbearable—each one a fresh wave of torture across her soles—that she would hold her breath, desperately trying to give her feet a moment's rest. But the moment her oxygen ran out, she would inevitably gasp for air, her body completely forgetting its rhythm. That violent panting dragged the feather across her soles in a frantic, high-speed sweep, condensing minutes of agony into a few explosive seconds of release. It left her far more frantic and on the verge of madness. Even if she tried to pass out, the relentless tickling of the feather never stopped, inevitably torturing her back to consciousness and yanking her back into reality.

But if that were all, it would be letting a demon who'd imprisoned so many girls off far too easy. First, the air she breathes is processed through a container filled with the shoes, socks, insoles, and underwear of the girls she held captive, laced with the sour, nostril-stinging stench that hits you the moment you get a whiff. On top of that, she's stuck in a bikini with her hands locked behind her head, leaving all her ticklish spots—armpits, ribs, waist—completely exposed. Sometimes, the mechanical arms behind her will suddenly spring to life and give those neglected, under-exercised tickle spots a good massage. Just like now: two mechanical arms have stretched the skin of her armpits completely taut, while another arm with a brush is scrubbing back and forth inside her hollow, and yet another is kneading her ribs with smooth pebbles, totally shattering her breathing rhythm.

"God！ That's gotta be ticklish enough to kill！" Zhang Kexin's attention was utterly hijacked by the sight of the two feather clumps darting erratically across those soles. The scene was so morbidly fascinating, she completely forgot a living, breathing woman was enduring torment right in front of her. The already hypersensitive soles, stimulated by the feathers' rapid strokes, were like a sponge saturated with water, slowly oozing liquid. Even as her soles surrendered completely, offering up a tribute of flustered sweat with every stroke of the feather to beg for a shred of mercy, the insatiable feathers just kept viciously milking the precious nectar hidden deep within her skin. Those sole-flesh probably never dreamed that the feathers torturing them were being controlled by Li Qianyi's own tickle-hijacked breathing. If Zhang Kexin didn't have a task today, she could have stayed and watched those feathers brush Li Qianyi's soles all day long.

After a while, the upper-body tickling tools paused, having left a mass of red welts all over Li Qianyi's body and numbed every inch of her ticklish flesh. Now, it was Zhang Kexin's turn to take over.

“That was a truly spectacular performance！” Zhang Kexin announced, swinging open the glass door at the front of the display case and addressing Li Qianyi directly. Before her breathing had even steadied, the two puffs of feathers on Li Qianyi’s soles began swirling erratically, their strings yanked tight by the sight of her visitor.

“WMMMMMPH！！！ NNNNNNGH！！！！” The nerves in her soles, which had just barely begun to relax, exploded back into excruciating life and spasmed uncontrollably, betrayed by their own master's reaction. A fresh wave of devastating tickling erupted, dragging her muffled screams right back up from her gut.

“Haha, there's no need to get so worked up just for me, is there？” Zhang Kexin deliberately waited until Li Qianyi had recovered enough for the feathers' sweeping to slow down before temporarily removing them. Now, Li Qianyi could finally gulp down steady breaths. She had never, ever felt anything so glorious as this simple act of breathing, not with the rhythm of her diaphragm long since wired directly to the torturous sensations in her soles. And it remained blissful, even as the air she sucked in was thick with the concentrated, nostril-searing stench of acid and stale sweat.

“Today’s a good day for you. I checked the established agreement, and today, I’m going to relieve the itch on your soles.” Zhang Kexin said matter-of-factly, eyes scanning her phone. A glance showed that a full decade had technically passed since the last time. She looked closer; no, a miscalculation—such a gap would have driven anyone insane. It had only been nine years. Li Qianyi was far more fortunate than she had imagined. Li Qianyi’s entire body began to shudder, trembling with an anticipation so intense it was almost violent. She had waited for this day. She still remembered the last time: ten scratches. The inspector had scraped her soles, and she could still recall the sublime, crisp relief and the raw, glorious sensation of nails raking across her arch.

Zhang Kexin pulled on the thick rubber gloves typically used for handling waste, ready to begin the ritual of relief. And then, she pressed a single, gloved index finger directly into the warm, yielding hollow of Li Qianyi’s arch. The softness and damp heat met her touch, and she found herself thinking: If these feet were a tool for tickle torture, what absolute perfection they would be. On the other side, Li Qianyi was frozen, braced for the scraping, her nerves screaming for it. But for a dozen long, agonizing seconds, Zhang Kexin’s finger remained perfectly still.

“Ten seconds of your one-minute relief session are already gone~ Hurry up, make the flesh of your arch tremble and rub against my finger for relief.” Li Qianyi was stunned. Bracing for the scrape of a fingernail to finally scratch her itch, she never imagined this sweet-looking girl in her twenties would be even more devious than herself. This so-called relief demanded that she, with her feet immobilized, grind her helpless sole against a finger that could pull away at any moment. But this was her once-in-nine-years chance. Driven by the mirage of relief and the torment searing her arch, she actually did it. The flesh of her sole began to quiver and twitch, actively seeking friction against Zhang Kexin’s finger, a pathetic, useless attempt to scratch an itch that yielded almost no relief. Zhang Kexin, for her part, found the sensation delightful, clearly feeling the flesh of Li Qianyi's arch jumping and twitching, pulsing like a living heartbeat beneath her fingertip.

“Ten seconds left！！” The instant Zhang Kexin spoke, the flesh under her finger convulsed violently. Li Qianyi shook her head frantically, a silent, desperate plea. But Zhang Kexin offered no extra mercy. The moment time expired, her finger detached from the arch without a shred of pity, leaving behind a sole that had felt almost no friction, still twitching and spasming in conditioned reflex. It was over. For the first time, this dominant woman knew what it meant to be completely controlled and played with.

“Alright, let’s reconnect your breathing tube now!” As Zhang Kexin was about to wrap up, Li Qianyi began making muffled “Mm-mm!” sounds, clearly desperate to say something. Curious, Zhang Kexin pulled off her mask.

“Please! I’m begging you!” The words rushed out in a torrent. “I can’t take this life where every breath makes the soles of my feet itch worse! It’s a living nightmare... Even when I pass out, a feather brushing my soles yanks me back awake with the sheer ticklish agony! Please, grant me this request! Remove this contraption, even if it makes my feet itch a hundred times worse, I’ll pay that price willingly!” Having tasted even a mirage of relief, Li Qianyi was utterly broken, unable to return to her existence from just minutes ago. Seeing the desperate sincerity and terror contorting Li Qianyi’s face, a flicker of pity stirred in Zhang Kexin’s heart, and she decided to grant her wish.

“Fine. Seeing how sincere you are, I can grant it.”

“Oh god, thank you! Thank you! I’ll never forget this mercy you’ve shown my soles! Thank you, truly, thank you!!” Li Qianyi’s excitement soared past language, her gratitude a raw, unhinged babble.

“But you just blurted out two wishes at once. So, I’ll just grant you the second one: ‘make my soles itch even more.’”

“NOOOOOO! AHHHHH! You bitch, you filthy **********! I’ll fucking kill you! I’ll make you lick the gunk from between my toes, I’ll slaughter you! SLAAUGHTER YOU!!!” The notion of pleading humbly for Zhang Kexin’s sliver of mercy had been utterly naive. She’d been ruthlessly toyed with, her desperation treated as a joke. Li Qianyi tore off her mask of submission, screaming raw abuse to vent the inferno raging in her chest, but the outburst was pitifully futile, unable to alter the fresh hell awaiting her helpless soles.

Zhang Kexin ignored the shrill cursing, her fingers moving with clinical efficiency to finish calibrating the machine. The basic rhythm remained: as long as Li Qianyi breathed, the feathers would sweep slowly across her soles. But a cruel twist had been added. Now, every sixty seconds, the mask would seal for fifteen seconds of absolute suffocation. During that oxygen-starved window, the feathers would lock onto their current target spot and erupt into a rapid, drilling rotation, a relentless zero-respite torment. Holding her breath to find a moment's peace was now a death trap, as any voluntary pause would trigger the same localized drilling. Her only hope was the cold mercy of chance, praying the random stop landed on the relatively less sensitive curve of her heel rather than the nerve-dense cradle of her arch or the hypersensitive beds of her toes.

Satisfied, Zhang Kexin leaned in for a final observation, a connoisseur appraising her work. The feathers glided silkily over Li Qianyi’s sweat-slicked, glistening soles, painting a path of tingling dread. Just as Li Qianyi pushed out a complete exhale, the mask snapped shut with a mechanical hiss, vacuum-sealing against her face. Her lungs, now completely empty, burned as they convulsed against the void, unable to draw a single molecule of air. Worse, the feathers had frozen dead-center on the most vulnerable, nerve-packed hollow of her arch, the thin skin there hypersensitive. A split second later, they burst to life, spinning and drilling into that single, screaming point of vulnerability.

“OOOOH-HOH-HOH-HOOOOOH!!! OOOOOH!!!” The rotating feathers bored into the pent-up itch deep within the muscle of her arch, ruthless picks levering out every dormant, hideous tickle until they spilled over into a raging, live-wire agony. Her toes convulsed in a mad, frenzied attempt to wrinkle the smooth skin, to create even a single crease that might throw off the laser-focused assault, but her slick, taut sole offered no salvation. The trapped tickle fermented instantly, a chain reaction detonating along her neural pathways. And suspended in this breathless, lung-burning void, her last shreds of endurance were atomized within seconds, leaving only a raw, exposed nerve ending.

The fifteen-second eternity finally passed. At her absolute limit, Li Qianyi heaved in a violent, desperate gasp as the mask finally allowed air through. The tainted oxygen, thick with the rubbery reek of her own shoes, flooded her nasal passages and inflated her starving lungs. To her, in that moment, it was a sweetness more delicious than alpine spring water. As the haze of primal relief cleared and her mind returned to her body, she registered the soft, final click of the glass door sealing shut. The observation was over. Now, it was just her and the machine, alone.

As Zhang Kexin walked away, a cold shiver of relief ran down her spine. Thank god Li Qianyi would be locked up here forever. If the tables were turned and she somehow ended up as Li Qianyi's slave, she knew with absolute certainty that she'd be broken beyond repair by the next day. That smug face would make sure of it. But none of that would ever happen.

While Zhang Kexin was busy inspecting Li Qianyi, in a nearby display case, a girl was murmuring a desperate prayer under her breath.

"God, please... let my soles have it easy today. I'm begging you！" But the glass case didn't show a girl, just a pair of bare feet pressed soles-up against the glass. She was clearly restrained upside down, or maybe even buried inside. The posture was agonizing. A placard in front detailed her info: Liang Shimin, ID B1022, age 27, shoe size 39. A few years back, drowning in gambling debts, she'd tried to cheat at a casino to make a quick buck. She got caught. The court ordered her to pay up, but she had nothing to her name. Nothing, that is, except for a pair of incredibly soft, tender feet. The final ruling: she would be sold, and the proceeds used to settle her debt to the casino.

That was how Liang Shimin ended up here. And by some stroke of twisted luck, she met Zhang Kexin, who was also a newbie back then！ Zhang Kexin personally designed a delightfully playful torture regimen for her, the very one she was "enjoying" right now.

After the morning rest period ended, she was forced to play the Sole Gambling Game designed by Zhang Kexin. At the start of each round, the system randomly picked one unlucky foot. Say, the left one this time. That meant a random punishment awaited it: electric shocks, a feather tracing her sole, plastic pellets peppering her arch, a blast of itching spray, or maybe even a swarm of red fire ants or venomous mosquitoes. She never knew which foot was on the chopping block. Two rings circled her toes: one at the base to control side-to-side movement, and one in the middle to make them curl. Right above her two big toes hung two cattle prod shockers. The round began the moment the curling ring on her big toes was removed. If she used her left big toe to touch the shocker, she won the bet. Score one point. Then, her big toe was locked down while the chosen foot got a one-minute punishment. But if she twitched her right big toe to the shocker, she lost. One point deducted, and the chosen foot got a grueling ten-minute session.

At the end of each day, the score was tallied. If positive, a lottery wheel would spin, its prizes a cruel joke: a solid hour of feathers fluttering across raw soles, a sixty-minute dose of electroshock calibrated just below the threshold of real damage. The "rewards" were simply the lesser of various evils—a mere ten deliberate, counted taps on her arches, or a dialing-down of the next day's voltage. But among these, Zhang Kexin had placed two grand prizes, each glittering with a deceptive, sadistic allure. The odds of landing on one were a statistical blip, a brutal 0.1%. The first prize was "Full Ensemble: A Week". Every device, drug, and insect in the arsenal, one after another, in a ceaseless, screaming rotation. The second prize was shorter, but infinitely more visceral: "Toilet Brush Scrub: One Minute". Just a single, unthinkable minute of stiff plastic bristles grinding across hyper-sensitized, sole-softened skin. A losing score meant no lottery. Fail, and the machine would select a single torment from Zhang Kexin's hundred-folder, and it would run, without pause, from dusk until dawn. The worst-case scenario was zero. A score of zero triggered a single, final, fate-deciding gamble—a microcosm of the whole macabre system—that would dictate the entire night's flavor: mercy, or madness.

Zhang Kexin had just passed by the display case when her eyes snagged on something. A shiver of familiarity, like recognizing your own handwriting years later, crawled down her spine. She stopped. It all flooded back: the design, the gleam in her eye as she'd laid out the schematics. The victim's name had long since dissolved from memory, leaving only the cold designation of her catalog number: B1022. She wasn't even assigned to inspect this unit next, but the urge was magnetic. She had to see her masterpiece in motion. Through the glass, she could see B1022's bare, upturned feet in a frantic, silent ballet of agony. Delicate ankles twisted uselessly. The reason was clear: a previous bet had scored, and her left sole was now a twitching canvas, absorbing a solid minute of pelted torture as a stream of hard plastic BBs drummed a staccato rhythm against the flushed, sweat-slick skin. The one-minute mechanical assault soon clicked to a halt, giving her only a few ragged breaths of respite before the next round began. A polished metal prod, a cattle-prod shocker, descended with a soft hydraulic hiss. It didn't touch the still-stinging left foot. Instead, it kissed the arch of her right foot, making the sole flinch. The target for this round was set.

"The right foot, sweetheart！ The right one！" Zhang Kexin whispered, her voice barely a puff of air against the glass. Inside the blacked-out glass case, B1022 couldn't see a thing. Her two big toes, jointed and trembling with the effort, were poised beneath their own shockers. The control rings around their midsections made them twitch with a mind of their own. They shifted left, then right, the fleshy little nubs shaking with indecision, paralyzed by a 50/50 chance. Kexin's breath fogged the glass. She was right there, practically giving the answer, her lips curling into a small, fond smile.

"Oh God... just tell me. Is it the left, or the right?" The thought was a desperate, formless prayer in the silent, total darkness of B1022's world. There was no divine whisper, only the slick squelch of her own sweaty soles against the restraints as she tensed. Her toes curled in agonizing hesitation. The choice, when it came, was a spasm of despair. She chose the left. She slammed her big toe up against the cold, unforgiving metal of the shocker. The wrong one. Outside, Zhang Kexin let out a soft, disappointed sigh, the sound of an artist watching their finest work be appreciated through a clumsy, self-destructive action. She had tried to help.

“Bzzzt—” A savage jolt of electricity bit deep into the meat of her left big toe. Before the spasm could fully register, the locks snapped back over both her toes, and the prod on her right foot began its merciless sweep. Violet-blue arcs skittered wildly across the flushed, sweat-slicked sole of Liang Shimin. Her damp, heated skin registered each pinpoint impact as a needle-sharp sting, a sensation that didn't stop at the surface but seared inward, hunting down and torching every last well-protected nerve ending. Over a minute had passed when the realization of her wrong choice hit her—and with it, an uncontrollable spasm seized both feet. The dim, flickering arcs danced and chased across her soles in chaotic loops. This was going to last for nine unbroken minutes. She prayed to God. God, however, had no signal to offer her. Despite the failure, an oddly firm expectation bloomed in her chest. Ever since morning, she'd felt a strange connection, a secret promise that today her soles would enjoy a rare, soothing calm. The hunch was so intense it felt real. And judging by the scoreboard beside her twitching feet, she was right. Thirty-two points. As long as she didn't catastrophically screw up now, she was practically guaranteed a draw at the lottery tonight.

Some might wonder what happens if she simply refuses to choose. Zhang Kexin had already factored that in. She only has ten seconds to decide. If that countdown hits zero without a choice, it counts as an automatic failure, unleashing a dual punishment on both feet at once. This scenario wasn't uncommon for Liang Shimin—not out of defiance, but because a prior ten-minute torture session would sometimes knock her out cold. The next round's punishment would be the thing to jolt her back awake. Other times, sheer panic would make both her big toes brush the contact points simultaneously. Same result: failure. Same consequence: double the agony. Letting this thought linger, Zhang Kexin, as she admired the spectacle, felt a swell of pride in her own design.

“Poor thing. Has her right foot cramped up already？ Ha ha ha! Looks like the intensity is just perfect for her.” Idly observing the torture of Liang Shimin's soles, a sudden realization struck Zhang Kexin: she finally understood why these feet could be collateral for such monstrous gambling debts. They were truly, captivatingly tender, like peaches steeped in milk, their flesh as plush and jiggly as gelatin. If she had become a foot model, she could have made a fortune and lived a splendid life. But for now, using these feet in this 'Sole Gamble' was an excellent alternative. And she gets to play this game for free, for the rest of her life. For a gambler like her, isn't that a form of ultimate bliss？

Just then, she remembered wanting to check today's raffle prize. She tapped the control panel linked to the torture rig, and the screen displayed exactly what 'reward' would be drawn tonight. The truth was, the outcome of the 'Sole Gamble' was sealed the very second it began. Liang Shimin had been toiling away all day, desperate to discover what she thought was an unknown. But her prize had already been decided long ago.

“Wha...？ No way!” Zhang Kexin couldn't believe her eyes. The 0.1% chance mega prize, the legendary one-minute Toilet Brush Foot Scrubbing, had actually landed on Liang Shimin's soles today. She’d never thought it was actually possible. This was the jackpot Liang Shimin craved more than anything. Years ago, when the machine was new, Kexin had scrubbed Shimin's soles just a few times to relieve an itch with that very brush, and it had sent the girl straight into a full-body convulsion of pure ecstasy. From that day on, her soles and her brain have been forever addicted to that raw, bristly sensation. Honestly, Shimin endured this hell every single day for one reason only: this one moment, this super jackpot!

Now, Zhang Kexin hesitated. She didn't want Liang Shimin to win it. Her first thought was that she simply didn't want those two toilet brushes dirtied by Shimin's soles—no way was it because she was envious of how soft and tantalizing Shimin's feet were and wanted them to suffer more. But, this was her own game design; changing the rules now felt like admitting defeat. Kexin quickly found her self-serving justification. She decided to swap the prize. On the same ultra-rare 0.1% probability, she”d rig the draw to the other option: Total Item Foot Torture Rotation for one week！ Shimin would never know she had already won, never know she was just one step away from feeling that glorious scratching relief on her arch. Her fate was now being toyed with on a whim. The thought of Shimin enduring a full day of agony, her soles screaming in pain, all for a reward that was nothing more than even greater suffering—the sheer irony was so deliciously cruel. Kexin could barely contain her excitement, picturing the moment Shimin would see her twisted "prize."


Next on Zhang Kexin’s inspection list was a thief, a 23-year-old female named Liang Xueying, ID B1321, shoe size 38. Her MO before getting caught was breaking into houses while wearing socks, making her footsteps silent and leaving no prints. Her technique was clever, but unfortunately for her, her last job was at an employee's home from this very lab. With her accumulated theft being astronomically high, she got a life sentence and a new role as a test subject. Through the glass, Kexin could clearly see a head sticking out from the angled top of a glass chamber. Below that head, completely unrestrained, were a pair of feet encased in green Split-Toe Socks. The fabric was thoroughly soaked with a high-concentration Itching Liquid. If she was stupid enough to rub her feet together to scratch, the friction would only make the maddening itch explode to an unbearable level.

Above her head, a pair of fully exposed, immovably secured Wallfeet were on display. These biomechanical replicas, developed by the lab, were a perfect 1:1 double. Any twitch of her real feet moved the fakes, and any sensation inflicted on the fakes shot straight into her nervous system. Right now, those replica soles were under siege. An electric file burrowed deep between her synthetic toes, grinding back and forth, while an electric toothbrush hammered relentlessly against the plush, sensitive pads and the vulnerable undersides of each digit. A steel fork’s tines jabbed and flicked over the prominent balls of her feet. But the most devastating touch was saved for her arches, where a stiff-bristled brush, soaked in aromatic oils, violated every single nerve hidden within the fine lines and creases of her soles. And then came the fluid—the 10x Sensitivity Liquid splashed across the silicone skin in sickly green splashes, so potent that even the faintest whisper of moving air would feel like raw, electric tickling. But tormenting the Wallfeet brought no relief. Her real feet, the source of this ceaseless agony, remained imprisoned within the Itch Socks—stifling, drenched, and simmering in their own sweat and the amplified itching liquid. Not a breath of air reached them. This dual assault was a perfect trap, a one-two punch of sensation that left Liang Xueying torn between the maddening tickling she could feel and the maddening itch she couldn't scratch.

“SHEEHEEHEEHAHAHAHA!! BETWEEN MY TOES HAHAHAHA!! STOHOHOP PLEEEEHEEEASE!!!”

The tools worked over her Wallfeet, and her brain, a slave to the feedback loop, ordered her toes to curl and clamp shut, a useless reflex to shield flesh that wasn't real. At the same time, the unbearable, deep-seated itch in her socked feet screamed at her to rub them together. The compulsion was primal, a desperate, all-consuming need to just scratch. But she fought it, tooth and nail, using shreds of reason to cage the animal instinct. She would have given anything—anything—for Zhang Kexin to just lock her real, sock-clad feet into a vice, to rob her of that wretched freedom forever. The freedom to rub, a right any other girl would treasure, was nothing but a sadistic instrument of mental torture for her. Just then, the glass panel of the display case slid open with a cold hiss.

“Hello there！ Liang Xueying. It’s been a year. How are we feeling？” Zhang Kexin asked, her voice a mockery of pleasantry as she surveyed the glistening mask of tears, sweat, and drool plastered across the prisoner’s face.

“GUHUHUHAHAHA!! EHEEHEEHAHAHA!! AH HAHAHAHA!!”

"I still remember your request from last year," Zhang Kexin said, temporarily shutting down the foot-tickling device. "You said you couldn't stand the itch socks anymore and begged me to take them off. It's really strange. You loved wearing socks so much when you were out stealing, and now you hate them..."

Liang Xueying remembered it vividly. Last year, Zhang Kexin had tickled her prosthetic feet for over half an hour and ordered her not to make a single sound. Her soles were already horrendously sensitive and terrified of being tickled, but for the chance to free them from those damned itch socks—where any friction made the itch exponentially worse—she had gritted her teeth and held her breath until she passed out cold. Afterwards, Zhang Kexin said she'd grant the promise next year. And against all odds, Liang Xueying had actually made it to this day.

"Alright, I'll grant your wish today. But you must keep your feet perfectly still." The words hit Liang Xueying like a jolt of pure ecstasy. She watched, her heart hammering, as Zhang Kexin's fingers reached for the damp, rolled cuff of the stocking. With the meticulous care of peeling the skin off a ripe fruit, Zhang Kexin peeled the Itch Sock away from her hyper-sensitive sole. The technique was flawless; not a single thread dragged across her skin, granting her none of that satisfying, scratching relief. But it didn't matter. In that moment, her bare sole broke free from its textile prison. Every single cell, every raw nerve ending on her tortured foot gasped for the deliciously cool air, drinking it in with an almost audible sigh of pleasure.

"Of course, this freedom comes with a little price. Surely you understand？" Zhang Kexin presented a transparent container filled with writhing Red Fire Ants. A quick thought flashed through Liang Xueying's mind. Sure, having these things crawl over her soles, maybe even bite, would be its own special kind of hell, but it couldn't possibly be worse than those suffocating, chafing Itch Socks. So, she offered no resistance. She just watched, mesmerized and horrified, as Zhang Kexin tipped the container, spilling the lab-modified ants directly onto her bare skin. She felt the frantic, feather-light skittering as they traced every line of her footprint, a few brave explorers already navigating the sensitive ravines between her toes.

"Sssss-- ahhh! Oh god, it's so ticklish, they're crawling everywhere!" Liang Xueying's breath hitched. The sensation was a maddening, prickling, numbing itch that danced across her soles, a chaotic pattern she couldn't predict. But she quickly swallowed her panic, forcing herself to believe this was still a paradise compared to the socks.

"Now, close your eyes. I have a surprise for you." Zhang Kexin's voice was smooth as silk. Her guard completely shattered by the brief reprieve, Liang Xueying obediently let her eyelids flutter shut. A second later, she felt a familiar, soft embrace sliding over her foot. Her eyes snapped open. A new pair of Itch Socks—pink, this time—were now hugging her feet like a second skin.

"AAAAHHH！ NO！！！ NOT THAT！ WHY?！ YOU TOOK THEM OFF！ WHY?！?！" The scream tore from her throat. The brief respite of cool air was instantly suffocated by the returning, familiar heat. This was worse. The old socks had been saturated with her sweat, the maddening compound diluted by hours of foot perspiration. But these new ones were fresh, their chemical kiss exponentially more potent. The dry, maddening heat ignited instantly, a thousand times more intense than before.

Ever since Liang Xueying confessed her hatred for the Itch Socks a year ago, Zhang Kexin had spent twelve long months pondering the root cause. Her final, definitive conclusion was simple and absolute: Liang Xueying simply hadn't liked the color. So, she had a new, pink pair specially prepared, just for her.

“There. Wish granted. Now just lie back and enjoy the ride！” Zhang Kexin cinched the sock’s opening tight with a zip tie, her fingers swift and practiced. She then clicked two transparent tubes into the ports on the outer ankle, their sealed conduits ready to deliver fresh Red Fire Ants. Because the connectors sat flush against the ankle bone, no amount of frantic rubbing from Liang Xueying could scrape them off.

“NO!!! Those damn ants—they’re biting between my toes!!! Aaaah, make them stop! Oh god, MAKE THEM STOP!!” Liang Xueying’s feet broke into a wild, spastic jitter. Her soles ground against each other in a frantic, friction-fueled struggle, the fresh socks hissing with every slide. She’d never felt a fire ant’s sting before—it was a burning, nerve-deep drilling far more vicious than anything she had imagined. In her desperate, all-consuming panic, her brain had completely short-circuited; she forgot the one crucial rule: rubbing the Itching Socks only spreads the powder, making the itch a hundred times worse.

 

[hzh231]

Part Four：

After inspecting the four slaves who had “volunteered” to atone through this service, Zhang Kexin still had four more targets on her list. She decided to check on her contracted “employees” next. The thought immediately brought a specific ID to the forefront of her mind: B1421 （S）, the Escape Art master—Li Jingwen.

Back then, the lab had signed Li Jingwen, a true master of escape artistry with countless stunning performances under her belt, under the pretense of forming a traveling show. They locked her into a solid 5-year contract. For these past five years, Li Jingwen’s “grand performance” has been unceasing, taking place entirely inside a single transparent glass display case.

“Mmm~ Let me have a really good look.” The once-renowned escape artist was frozen inside the transparent cell, her body locked in a Guanyin Sitting on Lotus pose. An almost full-body iron carapace swallowed her form, leaving only two details visible: her feet, each toe captured and restrained by individual metal rings, and her eyes, which rolled back into her head every few seconds from the relentless, phantom tickling. It seemed that even after all these years, she was still diligently performing her Escape Art here. Just without an audience. Currently, her allergic, reddened, sweat-slicked soles were merely coated with a thin film of Itching Liquid, left otherwise unstimulated—a paradise compared to the other girls. But Zhang Kexin knew the truth was far from that simple.

Just then, a red light on the cabinet blazed to life, and Zhang Kexin saw Li Jingwen's pupils instantly contract. A violent tremor wracked her body. Two mechanical arms descended slowly from the ceiling, methodically sprinkling a pinch of white sugar onto each of her heels. From that moment on, Li Jingwen's eyes were locked, unblinking, in a death stare at her own soles.

A tiny tube was wedged between each of her toes. Every hour, on the hour, these tubes would open, releasing the Red Fire Ants to forage. The ants would march across the entire expanse of her sole, drawn to the sugar on her heels. Then, compelled by instinct, they'd crawl back from heel to arch to the ball of her foot, returning to the gaps between her toes. These mindless, primal creatures were driven by pure, unthinking impulse. They had no concept of the agony they inflicted with every single step across Li Jingwen's hypersensitive soles. The only twisted mercy was that these modified ants, upon sensing her foot sweat, would launch an attack over the entire sole. Their stings provided a sharp, localized pain that, for a fleeting moment, drowned out the maddening sensation of crawling.

Over ten seconds passed. The tube openings remained sealed. Staring maniacally at the gaps between her toes, Li Jingwen's mind raced with fragile hopes. Maybe, this time, the mechanism had failed. Maybe, just this once, the ants wouldn't come pouring out to torture her！

Then, without ceremony, the tubes opened. A few Red Fire Ants crawled out, their antennae twitching as they began their methodical search for food, heading straight for her heels. Her fantasy shattered into a million pieces. Zhang Kexin watched her reaction closely, seeing Li Jingwen's pupils tracking the ants with absolute, naked terror. She was silently begging them with her eyes, a desperate, useless prayer for them not to take another step.

Having sensed the sugar on her heels, their prize, the main force emerged. Not just a few, but hundreds of ants boiled out from the tubes between her toes in a churning, rust-colored cascade. Li Jingwen's eyes rolled back in pure despair. Her fantasy was dead, again. It was the same as always. Instantly, a wave of stimulation crashed over her soles—the ceaseless, tiny skittering of countless legs and the sharp, piercing jolts of their bites. The minute, unbroken crawling didn't relieve any itch; it amplified the sensation several times over, a perfect, torturous frequency hitting every single one of her most sensitive, itching nerve endings. As for the stings, they were a concentrated, exploding itch, an agonizing pinpoint that even after the initial bite subsided, left behind a persistent, allergic, and unbearable prickle.

Her entire soles were already trapped in this tragic state. This master, who had once unpicked impossible restraints, couldn't budge her feet even a single millimeter against the onslaught of hundreds of Fire Ants. She could only let them ravage every sensitive inch of her soles without mercy. Beyond the reflexive, uncontrollable spasms that wracked her arches, she could offer no real resistance. As the maddening stimulation intensified, her soles tried a naive, last-ditch defense: they began to sweat, attempting to flush the ants away. This only provoked the ants into a more brutal, stinging frenzy. The increased attacks made her feet sweat even more, ensnaring them in an inescapable, worsening spiral of agony.

Zhang Kexin savored this spectacle for about ten minutes. Once the sugar grains on Li Jingwen's heel had been carried away, the Red Fire Ants dutifully retreated into the pipe, temporarily recalled. In the wake of the torment, Li Jingwen's once-lush soles were now a deeper, angrier shade of red. A chaotic constellation of crimson sting marks dotted the surface like scattered coals, each one a pulsing epicenter of an even fiercer, maddening itch. She now had four point five hours to rest—or in other words, four point five hours to savor the intensified, burning itch that now throbbed across her soles.

During this seemingly restful interlude, Zhang Kexin noticed Li Jingwen convulsing in little jerks, her eyes repeatedly darting down toward her own feet with a taut, manic focus. Curiosity piqued, Zhang Kexin followed her captive’s gaze. A single Red Fire Ant had avoided recall. It was rampaging across the sweat-slicked arch of Li Jingwen’s left foot, now trapped and enraged by its inability to find the way home. It bit furiously, its microscopic mandibles tearing into flesh already tenderized and glistening with moisture. Worse still, in its erratic rampage, the ant was scuttling straight for the most delicate, nerve-dense territory: the fragile crevice between her toes.

“Mmmmph!!! Nnnnngghhh!!!” A straggler incident was an occasional inevitability, and Li Jingwen’s current reaction broadcast her horror with absolute clarity. Beyond the immediate torture, a secondary layer of dread kicked in: if the system detected a missing ant during the recall count, it would be logged as a loss, and the machine would automatically deploy an additional ten ants into the nest. But cold logistics weren't on her mind right now; her entire being was consumed by a single, terrifying problem—how to survive the next hour with this one, solitary monster.

Hissss-click. Right as despair and frustration peaked, the glass cabinet door directly in front of her slid open. There stood Zhang Kexin！

“Hey there, babe！ Did you notice a Red Fire Ant crawling into your toe cleavage? Look, right there！ If it crawls over your skin, you know it’ll get all allergic and itchy, right?” Zhang Kexin cooed, her finger pointing with theatrical helpfulness into the crevice. The Red Fire Ant, following its inevitable course, crawled onto the centermost, most tender patch of skin between Li Jingwen’s toes—a spot usually shielded and protected by the press of flesh against flesh. Now it was completely exposed, defenseless, and the bound woman could do nothing but watch with bulging, horrified eyes！

“Hurry up and stop it!” Zhang Kexin warned, her voice dripping with sweet, false concern. “Or it’s gonna start stinging. You know how that is—a Red Fire Ant sting gets all inflamed and itchy, it can drive a person absolutely bonkers.” Even with such 'kindly' advice, Li Jingwen could only remain motionless. And so, the lost Red Fire Ant, true to its nature, discharged its fury by sinking its stinger deep into that ultra-sensitive webbing between her toes.

“Ooooh!!! Uuugh! Oooooooh!!!!!” Even just a few bites deep in the crevice between her toes sent a violent spasm through her body. Zhang Kexin could feel the entire display case shudder from the convulsion of pure agony.

“Here, let me teach you. You should do it like this!” The utterly sadistic Zhang Kexin lifted one of her own feet, flaunting it right before Li Jingwen’s eyes. Her toes clamped tightly together, then began to rub against each other in a slow, deliberate friction. Li Jingwen, whose own toes were forcibly held wide open, was forced to watch. Yes, simply copying Zhang Kexin—closing her toes and rubbing them together—would easily chase the ant away. It was so simple. Yet, the former escape master Li Jingwen now couldn’t do a thing about it. Why were another girl’s toes allowed to close at will, to rub and knead freely, while her own were denied that simple right? It was utterly, brutally unfair! During this lovely demonstration, several red welts had already blossomed between Li Jingwen’s toes from the ant’s bites. It seemed she hadn’t learned a thing.

“Why don’t you stop it? You know the itch from a bite will drive you mad！” In truth, during the time Zhang Kexin had been admiring her feet, Li Jingwen’s toes had been twitching with every ounce of her strength, desperately trying to repel that damn Red Fire Ant. But from Zhang Kexin’s perspective, her toes barely seemed to tremble. For Li Jingwen, pinned down and immobilized with absolute precision, that minuscule tremble was the absolute limit of her struggle.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. So, this is the famous Escape Art Master? Can’t even chase away a little ant, much less escape its bite~” Despite the venomous mockery dripping from her lips, the surprisingly “kind-hearted” Zhang Kexin decided to offer some help： “Do you need me to get rid of this ant for you?” This so-called Escape Master had never been personally “cared for” by Zhang Kexin in the past five years, so she was completely clueless about her true nature. The pain and maddening itch from the ant’s venom had already hijacked her sanity; her pleading, desperate eyes signaled for Zhang Kexin to hurry up and help.

“Mmm, of course, I’ll help chase it away. But I don’t want to touch your cheap, worthless feet with my hands. Let’s use this instead...” With that, Zhang Kexin produced a single, incredibly soft-looking goose feather. She then began to trace it across the sole of Li Jingwen’s right foot, the one without the ant. In all this time, Li Jingwen had never, ever had the nerves in her soles awakened like this.

“Ooohhh! It tickles! N-no, it iiitches!” A raw, guttural scream tore from Li Jingwen’s throat. It was the same hellish sensation—the ghost of the Red Fire Ant crawling on her sole. Every stroke of the feather sent the soft flesh of her arch into involuntary, violent spasms. The entire plane of her sole seized up, each individual muscle fiber twitching and writhing as if trying to tear itself free from the bone to escape the maddening caress. And when the fine tip of the feather traced over one of the swollen, red bite marks, her body arched off the rack in a brutal convulsion, her eyes rolling back into her skull until only the whites showed.

“If this is too uncomfortable, your foot is free to pull away,” Zhang Kexin stated, her voice dripping with feigned concern. The words hung in the air, a blatant lie. Li Jingwen’s sole, however, remained locked in place, a trembling, paralyzed slab of flesh. It didn’t withdraw from the torment, a silent, forced declaration that she could still—just barely—endure it.

The feather traced a slow, predatory path from her heel to the ball of her foot and back again in an unbroken, agonizing cycle. Sometimes it would freeze in the hollow of her arch, the soft plume drawing slow, deliberate circles on the hypersensitive skin. Li Jingwen’s wild eyes tracked the feather’s every microscopic movement. As it finally drifted towards the burning, bitten cleft between her toes, a desperate, feral hope ignited in her gaze. But in the next heartbeat, the feather cruelly retreated back towards her heel, and that hope was snuffed out, replaced by a despair that crashed over her. The nerve endings in that crevice had been primed for contact, the craving for relief dialed to a fever pitch. Zhang Kexin was a virtuoso of this torment. The moment the feather withdrew, the sensation of betrayal amplified the itching tenfold, a merciless echo. After who knew how many cycles of this exquisite torture, the feather finally began its true work, methodically cleaning between each toe, deliberately saving the one harboring the ant for last.

“Mmmmph! Nnnnghh!!” The muffled, guttural sounds were the only things escaping Li Jingwen’s clenched throat as the soft feather invaded the sensitive webs between her toes. It twisted and rotated, scouring the delicate, itching flesh. It would alternate to a sawing, up-and-down thrust, each technique designed to maximize the sensory overload, driving her to the brink of madness. Her mind screamed for her toes to clamp shut, to grind against each other in a desperate bid for relief. She was barely holding onto a thread of resistance when the feather finally, finally, dipped into the cleft where the ant was lodged. But there was no salvation. The feather circled the insect’s body in a maddening halo, teasing the perimeter of the bite without dislodging it. Then, the stimulation stopped. Zhang Kexin held the feather perfectly still, resting it right beside the ant that was still burrowed into her flesh, a promise of relief that would never come.

Just as she'd predicted. Li Jingwen saw the feather hovering right beside the ant. She threw all her effort into clenching the muscles between her toes. Zhang Kexin watched the feather's tip tremble in sync with the desperate twitch. But just when the soft edge was a millimeter from touching the ant... it retreated. The feather pulled away from her toes, dragging a long, taunting line all the way back down to her heel. The whole cycle started over. So close. She had been a single heartbeat from relief. A fraction of a breath.

Zhang Kexin was utterly absorbed in this sadistic loop for over ten minutes. She only decided to finally evict that Red Fire Ant when the soles of Li Jingwen's feet had been conditioned into pure reflex. Even with the feather stopped, the soles glistened, sweat still seeping out in endless rivulets. Her arches twitched and jumped, a muscle memory loop that couldn't shut off. With one casual flick, Zhang Kexin dislodged the ant. A single, simple motion. For Li Jingwen, pinned and helpless, it was a Herculean task she could never achieve. And Zhang Kexin had luxuriated for a quarter of an hour just to perform that one trivial act. But the greater horror was now the itch. Coating layer upon maddening layer over her nerve-fried soles, a raw, oversized sensitivity that drowned her mind. If given another choice, she'd beg for the ant to bite her foot for another hour straight. It took a full sixty seconds after the feather stopped for any sliver of sanity to crawl back into her brain.

"Alright, let's get down to business. Your 5-year contract is expiring, you know." The words hit Li Jingwen like a physical slap. She was sure she'd misheard. Five years. She'd been tricked into this place five years ago, and every single day since, the soles of her feet had been tortured. Now, finally, the contract was ending. She was already falling into a daydream—a normal life, back in the real world. "If you'd rather not renew, just sign here." Zhang Kexin slid the contract termination papers into view... right in front of Li Jingwen's feet. Just sign, and she could walk out of this hell forever. But she was bolted down so completely she couldn't even twitch a finger. How was she supposed to sign?

"Mmmghh?！ NNnngh！ MMMMMGHHH！！" Her muffled voice pitched from confusion into a raw, frantic scream. She wrenched her shoulders and twisted her bound ankles in a violent, useless spasm.

“Oh, right—I forgot you can’t exactly sign anything while you’re all tied up like that.” Because the contract hadn’t completely expired yet, Zhang Kexin couldn’t actively release her from the restraints. But she could lower the escape difficulty a tiny bit. She fully understood that even an escape artist couldn’t break out of every situation, so lowering the bar a little was only fair. A moment later, the toe ring on Li Jingwen’s left pinky was removed. Now, she only needed to break free from the remaining nine toe rings to free her feet—a solid 10% reduction in difficulty. As an extra generous bonus, Zhang Kexin placed the key meant to unlock that full-body “armor” of hers directly onto the exact center of Li Jingwen’s right sole. As for the keyhole itself, Zhang Kexin kindly informed her it was located on the back plate of the armor. Regardless, the odds of escaping were definitely better than before.

“Alright then, just bring the signed paper to me once you’re done and you’re free to leave~ If time runs out and you still haven’t handed it over, the contract auto-renews for five more years! That’s it for now—byeee!” Ignoring Li Jingwen’s muffled gagging pleas, Zhang Kexin shut the door with cold finality and secured it with several heavy locks. Shortly after, she stood before the glass observation case to watch. She noticed Li Jingwen was actually trying to use the muscles on her arch to nudge the key, while her now-freed left pinky toe twisted and wriggled incessantly, as if hoping that one relatively free digit could help her entire body escape. Sadly, her effort barely lasted a minute before she gave up completely. Had she tried hard enough, Zhang Kexin genuinely believed her captive could break free. But then, Zhang Kexin reconsidered—perhaps she was just a total masochist, someone who really enjoyed the life of being tormented by Red Fire Ants and relentless tickling. Maybe she simply didn’t want to escape. At that very moment, a red light flickered to life directly in front of Li Jingwen, and then—a cascade of white sugar was sprinkled down right onto her bare heels, signaling a brand-new round of torment. If she failed to sign her name within the grace period before the countdown ended, she’d get to enjoy this exact life for another five years under automatic renewal! Just thinking about it, this kind of existence must be pure bliss for a masochistic slut like her.

The second employee Zhang Kexin visited was Lin Ziting, ID B1538（S）, the former supervisor, 23 years old. Although they had known each other since childhood, their relationship had always been toxic; purely sour glances and mutual hatred. Lin Ziting had been a smooth-sailing supervisor until a few years ago when she secretly photographed the soles of the Secret Photography Lab’s director. Discovered and reported by Zhang Kexin, Lin Ziting was stripped of all her duties and sent here for her remaining employment term to undergo Sole Itching Reflection. Spying on the director’s soles was one of the gravest crimes here, treated as outright espionage. The thought made Zhang Kexin’s lips curl with disgust. Her sneaking technique was pathetic. Zhang Kexin herself had frequently taken secret photos and recordings of the director’s soles but never once been caught. Even now, she still spent her nights staring at photos of that usually imposing director’s bare soles, fantasizing about all the exquisite ways she would torment them.

The glass display case holding Lin Ziting was massive. The former supervisor was inverted and strapped to a device shaped like the Greek letter Pi, an eerie, modern guillotine. Her body now formed an agonized 'X', her arms firmly tied to each pillar. Directly beneath this apparatus sat a square recess, a grotesque pit stuffed with a multitude of discarded women’s socks and insoles. A closer look revealed a sensory nightmare: dancer's ballet shoes, silk stockings from office ladies stiffened at the toes with who-knew-how-many days of sweat, and worn-out insoles stamped with dark brown footprints and friction marks. Just staring at that horrifying, overstuffed heap was enough to make Zhang Kexin involuntarily hold her breath. As for Lin Ziting, her head was completely buried right in the middle of that abyss. She could see the pile of fabric undulating with each strained inhale and exhale. After being fermented with all that filth, the concentrated stench had such a high offensive density, just one whiff would probably short-circuit your brain instantly.

Of course, her feet were the true focal point of the torture. Lin Ziting's feet were currently encased in rubber shoes with the soles completely hollowed out, leaving her bare soles exposed and pointed towards the ceiling. Her toes were individually locked by iron rings inside the shoes, a precise measure designed to prevent even the slightest self-soothing twitch or curl. Just by looking at the reddened, inflamed skin of her soles, glistening under a thin, dewy sheen of sweat, it was achingly clear that her sensitive flesh was trapped in a full-blown allergic reaction alongside every other girl here. From the tips of her toes to the moist crevices between them, from the balls of her feet across the arch and all the way down to her heels, every nerve receptor screamed with an itch that had long since seeped deep into the dermis. Hovering directly above her vulnerable feet was a long, horizontal rectangular device. From it, hanging stalks of nettle swayed and danced with the ambient air currents, their microscopic needles gently rasping across the hypersensitive skin with every pass, igniting fresh trails of allergic pruritus on contact. On top of this constant, feather-light torture, a mechanism would periodically dust her soles with a fine layer of itching powder, its application as meticulous and even as a chef seasoning a perfectly seared steak with ground pepper. The true horror, however, lay in the device's design: this was merely one of five separate zones. The entire rectangular mechanism was segmented into five distinct areas, each primed to subject her soles to a uniquely calibrated, escalating form of agony.

A pulley system was integrated into the rubber shoes strapped to Lin Ziting's feet. The mechanism was brutally straightforward: as she spread her legs wider apart, her entire body would be winched upward. In doing so, her head would gradually rise from the fetid pile of socks, allowing her to breathe relatively fresher air. The cost for this reprieve was, of course, immediately apparent. The moment her feet parted and entered the second zone, sensors would detect her soles' position. With a wet, gushing sound, the device above would drench them in an even, unmissable coat of warm, viscous yam juice. The slightly thick, body-temperature liquid would sluice over every contour of her foot, seeping between her toes and blanketing every inch of already-irritated skin, layering on a deep, pulsating itch that compounded the existing torment. She had to remain in a zone for at least ten seconds before the roller lock on the shoe mechanism would disengage, allowing her to move forward. If the path ahead seemed too daunting, she could also retreat. When her feet inevitably progressed to the third zone, they would face a heating rod and a warm air blower. The rod's scorching heat would relentlessly sear her soles, the dry, intense temperature baking the yam juice residue and the deeply embedded itching powder into her flesh, catapulting the maddening sensation to a blistering new peak. With the added stimulation of the warm air caressing the tortured skin, it wouldn't take long for the victim's higher brain functions to simply melt into a puddle of white-hot sensation. The fourth zone was a minefield of irregularly shaped electro-shock nodes, capable of arcing over a hundred simultaneous tendrils of electricity across the sole in a single, blinding flash. Zhang Kexin knew that just a single arc would be enough to turn her own legs to jelly. Finally, the fifth and last zone: when Lin Ziting's feet finally crawled their way into this area, her head would be completely freed from the stinking pile of socks, granting her access to that slightly fresher air. She would have a precious window of 5 to 30 seconds to just breathe and remember what sanity felt like. The duration was random. But if the timer ran out and her feet had not yet retreated from this final zone, the most horrific punishment the machine could offer would be visited upon her soles...

“Gah, it stinks!!! I can”t take it!!! Mmmph!!!” Her mouth gagged, her whole head buried in the mound of used socks, Lin Ziting could not endure it any longer. The reek was utterly blinding. And at the exact same time, she could not ignore the subtle, scraping sensation dancing across her soles. That intolerable itch constantly nipping at her, making her desperate to scrape her own feet raw against anything she could find. She had reached her absolute limit. She had to give her burning, tingling soles some relief. With that final decision, she forced her aching, trembling legs to open wide.

Her soles quickly slid into the second zone. The warm, gooey yam juice spread evenly over her sensitive skin, like basting a roast, and she knew a fresh, maddening layer of itch would soon bloom across the surface. Then, her feet entered the third zone, and she felt the heat rods were about to scorch her soles to a crisp. She desperately jerked her feet back and forth, trying to get some air flow to cool the burning skin, but she could not escape the hell of heat and hot wind. In the fourth zone, it was the most intense. Electric arcs crackled and snapped against the nerves of her soles, sending her body into wild, convulsive jerks, shaking like a live wire hitting water, the restraints groaning in protest. The mere sound of violet sparks popping against bare skin made Zhang Kexin curl her own toes tightly inside her shoes. But finally, Lin Ziting’s feet reached the fifth zone. She could have a brief rest.

“Ah... my legs are so sore...” After her soles had endured that trial, and with her legs bearing almost her entire body weight, she now had 5 to 30 seconds to savor the exquisite feeling of her itching soles being free from any stimulus. She didn’t know how many seconds the random timer would give her this time, but she was desperate enough to gamble. She would stay here for a few more precious seconds.

Clank！ A sharp, metallic locking sound, just six seconds into her respite, ripped Lin Ziting from a pleasure-soaked heaven into a fear-drenched hell. She had exceeded the system”s permitted rest duration this time, and she knew exactly what that meant.

“No！！！！ NO, PLEASE, NOOOOO！！！！！” Lin Ziting’s screams were raw and frantic. She couldn’t believe this was real. The pitiable girl, strung up and inverted, struggled more violently than ever before, the entire frame groaning and shrieking with the sound of straining metal. Her legs desperately tried to pull together, to withdraw her soles from hell, but the pulley was locked tight. Her feet could only obediently wait there, unable to move even a millimeter, for the arrival of the ‘most terrible torture.’ Just six seconds ago, she had been wondering how long this bliss would last. But now, for exceeding the permitted rest time, punishment was an absolute certainty.

When faced with tragedy, people go through five stages： ① Denial ② Anger ③ Bargaining ④ Depression ⑤ Acceptance. She bypassed all of that and accepted her fate in under ten seconds. But looking on the bright side, trading ten full minutes of punishment for that one extra second of relief was a hell of a bargain in this torture chamber. Right above her soles, a device resembling a pastry piping bag slowly descended, its cylinder loaded with hot, freshly concentrated itch essence. Through multiple rounds of compression and extraction, the raw liquid had been reduced into a potent paste—even Zhang Kexin had no idea how intense the itch truly was. Rumor had it that a single cotton swab's worth smeared on an adult elephant could drive it into a frenzy. The machine traced its pre-set path to her heel, and with the precision of frosting a cake, squeezed out a tiny, steaming dollop of the pink paste. Mixed with a rapid-absorption agent, the substance melted into her skin on contact, dissolving like a vanishing snowdrift against the flushed skin of her heel.

And that single, small dollop on her heel was all it took. Instantly, Lin Ziting, who had just accepted her fate, was screaming with uncontrollable, feral rage.

“OOOOHHHH AAAAAHHHHH!!! IT ITCHES! ITCHY ITCHY ITCHY! IT'S KILLING MEEEEE!!” Lin Ziting's eyes rolled back, her mind gone. Feral instinct took over, her body desperately trying to pull her legs apart or jerk her soles, as if she could rub them against the air itself to scrape the infernal paste from her heel. Her brain had been completely hijacked by her feet; relieving that itch became the absolute priority, far beyond even the need to breathe. The fate she had just accepted now felt like a lie she had tried to sell herself, but the bone-deep, maddening itch surging through her senses, wave after wave, screamed that this was real. And the true horror was just beginning. The Itch Paste Dispenser would follow its programmed track, systematically coating every millimeter of her soles over the next ten minutes, enough time for multiple full cycles. Unable to process this reality, Lin Ziting thrashed violently for a time before her entire body went slack, utterly spent.

“哎呀，不会是活生生痒晕过去了吧？”受刑者在滚烫的浓缩瘙痒膏作用下直接昏厥，是再正常不过的生理过载反应。所以，晕过去是被规则允许的，当然，这昏迷的片刻不会计入10分钟的惩罚倒计时。允许她晕过去的另一个原因是，要不了多久，脚下那股地狱般的瘙痒就会粗暴地把她的大脑皮层重新“点亮”。果不其然，仅仅几秒之后，她那双被固定住的脚丫开始剧烈地抽搐，脚趾如同触电般痉挛开合。紧接着，她整个人像被电流击中一样，猛地弹回清醒状态，爆发出不亚于之前的癫狂挣扎与嘶吼。简直难以想象，一旦那浓缩瘙痒膏彻底涂满整只脚底，会痒到什么惨绝人寰的地步。到那时，理智恐怕会被直接碾碎，大脑彻底沦为一团只会感受痒意的浆糊。还好，这不是张可欣需要头疼的问题。

在长达10分钟的惩罚结束后，她的那双脚将带着满脚的狼藉与余痒，“满载而归”地被强行拖回第一区域，重新接受荨麻草的锋利刮擦；她的头也会再次被深深埋进那堆散发着刺鼻气味的臭袜子当中。理论上，如果她愿意，她的脚可以立刻启程，前往第五区域展开新的“冒险”。但很多时候，这根本由不得她“想”，而是那双痒得几乎要烧起来的脚底，会彻底劫持她的大脑，用一阵阵崩坏的神经信号“催促”着她去做这件事。

第三个接受检定的“员工”名叫瑶瑶，编号B1698（S）。她是某所大学的瑜伽教师，几年前被实验室以三年合约聘请来担任瑜伽教练。而现在，这位瑜伽教练正在进行她的“教学展示”——表演瑜伽中的“静坐”。张可欣对她的印象尤为深刻，因为她拥有一双足足42码的大脚。脚码越大，意味着可供折磨的娇嫩脚肉和密集神经就越多。此刻，瑶瑶那双泛着潮红的42码脚底，和其他女生一样，被喷洒上了一层薄如蝉翼的瘙痒液。药液迅速被脚底的皮肤吸收，每分每秒都在催生出令人发狂的无尽痒意。这双42码脚丫的面积，远超其他那些三十几码的女生，这客观的优势，也导致她所承受的瘙痒总量与强度，远超其他人。而被牢牢拘束的瑶瑶，不仅要咬牙忍受这蚀骨的痒感，还必须强行控制住自己扭动或蜷缩脚趾的原始冲动。只要她脚趾上的拘束环检测到任何一丝蜷曲的企图，对应的脚趾环就会立刻亮起刺眼的红灯，并冷酷地计入一次失败次数。

“啧啧啧，光是看着就觉得痒得要命，她的脚趾都在那一抽一抽地狂抖，可惜啊，就是一根都不能往里缩。”蜷缩脚趾，是女生脚底发痒时最自然、最廉价、也最立竿见影的止痒本能。但如今，有了那个专门侦测脚趾蜷缩的脚趾环，瑶瑶的任务已不再是简单的“忍痒”，而是在强行对抗身体最原始的求生本能，用理智去镇压那一波波痒到骨髓的生理反射。

Since the ‘Silent Sitting’ was so brutally difficult, she was only permitted twelve foot-twitches or toe-curls for the entire year. In other words, only twelve failures. Exceed that cap, and every extra blunder automatically tacked another month onto her contract. So far this year she still had ten failures left.

“The longer I look, the more fun you look. Let’s play with you today！” Zhang Kexin was downright giddy to stress‑test this university’s big‑foot yoga instructor. The second she swung open the cabinet door, Yaoyao — who had been pouring every speck of willpower into fighting her own toe‑curling reflexes — jolted so hard her whole body shuddered. Yet even that shock didn’t coax a single twitch or curl from her toes. After so many years of grinding endurance, she had actually gotten fairly good at locking down her own foot muscles. Zhang Kexin, however, wasn’t buying it. She was already bent close, blowing steady and then stuttering streams of breath across Yaoyao’s flushed, heat‑radiating soles, deliberately trying to rouse every hypersensitive itch‑nerve just beneath the skin.

“Eeek—! St-stop blowing— sssss— ooohhh!!” Anyone who saw the way the yoga coach was nearly gnashing her own teeth would know exactly how much this was wrecking her. When the soles are already hypersensitised by the itch serum, every nerve sits right at the surface. The uneven pressure of Zhang Kexin’s breath rushed across the skin and instantly spread the steady itch outward, amplifying it into something sharper — like countless fine needles lightly needling the arches. Worst of all was when the air dragged through the gaps between her toes; the itch that scraped awake felt savage enough to eat through every single nerve between those digits until they were totally unusable. In moments like this, the most immediate and intense physical reflex was to curl her toes, grind them together, and scrub the itch away — but she had to ram that impulse back down with pure willpower, every single second pulling against her own instincts in a tug‑of‑war. After three years of this training her willpower had hardened enough. Had it been her first day here, the moment that breath hit her soles, every toe would have surrendered and curled without a fight.

“Oh my, you actually held out.” Zhang Kexin’s voice carried a touch of genuine regret as she watched Yaoyao panting as if she’d just escaped death. But she quickly thought up another trick. Pulling on several layers of gloves, she lifted out a bottle of Itch Concentrate. Even that high‑school girl who had been fully broken into a foot‑slave and itch‑slave shook uncontrollably the instant a single drop touched her toe‑gap — let alone this still‑lucid yoga coach. And Zhang Kexin was malicious enough to dangle the bottle right in front of Yaoyao’s face, forcing her to read every single horrifying word on the label, one character at a time.

“This product must be diluted before use.” “It is recommended to wear at least three layers of rubber gloves when handling.” “In case of accidental skin contact, flush the affected area with running water for at least half an hour, then seek immediate medical attention. If continuous contact lasts for 2 hours, we suggest amputation to stop the itch.” Yaoyao’s face twisted in sheer horror as she took in each and every word on the label. Yet, a desperate, stubborn hope still sputtered within her chest—a naive prayer that this terrifying substance would not be used on her feet！

“Everything in this bottle is going onto your soles in a minute. If you want to get out of this, just curl all ten of your toes right now. Maybe I’ll let you off.” Zhang Kexin’s voice was a sweet, mocking balm, as if she had peered directly into Yaoyao’s soul just to relish crushing that tiny, fragile spark of hope. But faced with this monstrous threat, Yaoyao refused to bend. Desperate to never endure this again, she fought against every primal instinct screaming at her to surrender, keeping her toes stubbornly, impossibly straight.

“You’ve brought this on yourself, you know. With feet as big as yours, all this ample, yielding sole meat… I’m afraid I might need to use the whole bottle.” With a soft pop, she twisted the cap off. To Yaoyao, it was the unmistakable sound of Pandora’s Box cracking open. Then, Zhang Kexin began to pour. It wasn’t a simple application; it was a glazing. She drizzled the Itch Concentrate with the same delicate, deliberate cruelty one might use to coat seared, tenderized cuts of meat with honey syrup. Her unstable hand, however, tipped the bottle too far over the left foot. A thick, glistening pool of the concentrate flooded the sole, burying the toes under an obscene, translucent layer of liquid. Realizing the overpour, a new, twisted idea lit up Zhang Kexin’s eyes. Instead of wiping it off, she decided on a perverse solution to make Yaoyao feel better: she would simply make the other foot match perfectly, ensuring the poor girl wouldn't feel unbalanced.

“Nnnggghhh!!!! Sh-shhhhhaaaaahhh!!!” The concentrate didn’t just sit on the skin; it was a catalyst injected into an allergic inferno already raging. The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic. Yaoyao’s consciousness fractured; her world narrowed to a pinprick of pure, unmitigated sensation. Her eyes shot wide open, the irises rolling back into her skull, leaving only the shuddering whites visible above a lip bitten so hard it trembled uncontrollably. Worse still, the itch wasn’t a static peak—it was a living, escalating horror. It crashed over her in relentless, drowning waves, each surge stronger than the last, battering against the very last breaking point of her endurance.

"Don't you just want to claw at your soles? Rub them against something nice and rough? Remember how it felt the last time?" Zhang Kexin murmured, her eyes glued to the spectacle of Yaoyao's foot, each muscle fiber twitching beneath skin saturated with the Itch Concentrate. A deep certainty coiled in Kexin’s gut—those toes would soon spasm into a helpless clench. The reality was playing out exactly as she’d predicted. Yaoyao’s soles were screaming, flooding her brain with a relentless, primal signal: SCRATCH. RUB. FIND SOMETHING. ANYTHING. The raw, animal need to quell the itch was eclipsing all reason. But if she curled her toes... the ruin of her life would be absolute.

"Want me to give them a little scratch？"

"OHHH! AHHH! Please, I'm begging you, just do it, just help me! I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE, AHHHH!!" The words tore from Yaoyao”s throat without a single conscious thought, a testament to the sheer agony she was in.

"As you wish..." Kexin’s fingers landed on the back of Yaoyao’s toes, initiating a gentle caress. The spot that truly craved her touch was just on the other side, the raw, itching underside, but from this angle, Yaoyao couldn't even dream of reaching it. Slowly, Kexin’s fingers probed deeper, sliding into the tender spaces between her toes, stroking the sensitive flanks. The skin there wasn't the primary source of the itch, but it was a hair's breadth from the inflamed, screaming flesh of her soles, the nerves a tangled, screaming web. The lightest touch here was a masterstroke of torment, an exquisite lure coaxing her toes to twist, to instinctively try and rub those maddeningly itchy spots against Kexin’s fingers.

She followed with a whole repertoire of temptations designed to break her. At one point, she held a vibrating electric toothbrush so close to Yaoyao’s toes that a simple, almost involuntary twitch—just a tiny press of toe-flesh against the buzzing head—would have brought blessed relief. The muscles in her toes actually lurched towards it, a reflex her conscious mind had to brutally crush. Kexin even resorted to the hog prod, jabbing the high-voltage crackle against Yaoyao’s soles and toes, but nothing could make her curl them. Her willpower was a fortress far exceeding Kexin’s most sadistic estimates.

"Well, look at you, a real endurance champion. Let's call it a day." A faint note of disappointment colored Kexin’s voice. For Yaoyao, however, those words were a choir of angels. A tidal wave of relief and giddy disbelief washed over her. She’d done it. She’d actually endured. She hadn't wasted her one chance to curl her toes, and now she wouldn't have to see Zhang Kexin, this demon in human skin, for an entire year.

“Ah~ I almost forgot about this！” A sudden thought flashed through Zhang Kexin’s mind, and she extended a single finger from her right hand, making a slow, deliberate scratching motion in the air. From her lips came a soft, teasing “Kitchy-kitchy-coo...” The sound seemed to reach directly into some primal fear encoded in Yaoyao’s very DNA. She sucked in a sharp, violent breath, her ten toes instantly curling into a tight, white-knuckled clench that lasted several seconds！！！ All of that torment and temptation just now, and she hadn't curled a single toe. Yet this one action, with no physical contact whatsoever, made her toes spasm into a protective ball. The sheer absurdity of it would be hilarious if it weren't actually happening.

“AAAAAAHHHHHHHH！！！！！”

Years ago, Yaoyao had been subjected to the torment of two female dominants in the lab whose tickling techniques were nothing short of fiendish. They were experts on the soles of the feet, and they loved to torment hers. Every single morning, those two sadists would wake her with that same “kitchy-kitchy-coo,” and every time, her toes would snap into this exact defensive curl. Whenever they were about to start their work, they’d give her that same air-scratching gesture as a warning. Day after day, the relentless, all-day tickling torture had seared the sensation of each of their fingers digging into her soles into her memory. She had come to this place to escape those two tickle-obsessed deviants, but even after years of other training, that bone-deep, genetic terror hadn't faded. So now, seeing that familiar gesture and hearing that familiar sound, her body reacted on pure, conditioned reflex. Fortunately for Zhang Kexin, as the supervisor, she had access to the pasts of certain slaves and knew exactly which weaknesses could shatter their defenses. Had it been anyone else, Yaoyao might have gotten away with it.

But at that moment, Zhang Kexin noticed something odd. When Yaoyao's toes had curled, the indicator lights on those toe rings hadn't lit up. She glanced around, checking the equipment, and found the culprit: at some unknown point, the plug for the toe-curling sensor had come loose. This meant that from the moment the plug fell out, Yaoyao had actually had countless opportunities to break the rules and find some relief for her aching soles and toes, and none of them would have been detected！ Like all those chances just moments ago, all of them endured, her own willpower actively rejecting the chance for relief！ If Yaoyao knew the truth, she'd probably spend every day just rubbing her soles and toes against the air in pure, blissful scratching. She can't even imagine how much sweet, lost time for scratching she had truly sacrificed.

After recalibrating the equipment, Zhang Kexin decided to impose a penalty. She deducted ten credits from Yaoyao's toe-curling allowance. After all, Yaoyao had just curled all ten toes right under her nose. This meant that for the rest of the year, her allowance was zero. Every single time she curled her toes from now on, her contract would be automatically extended by a month. Furthermore, to help Yaoyao escape her lingering trauma, Zhang Kexin initiated a desensitization regimen. She strapped a pair of headphones onto Yaoyao, programmed to randomly emit that high-pitched "Kree Kree" sound. The idea was to blast her with it during moments of total relaxation, hoping that over time, the reflex would burn itself out.

"Alright, that's it for now！ See you next year~" Just as Zhang Kexin was second-guessing the effectiveness of the headphones, all ten lights on Yaoyao's toes flared to life in an instant. The feedback was undeniable—the device was functioning perfectly.

The last person on Zhang Kexin's inspection list was her high school homeroom teacher—Chen Wenhua. Though, Zhang Kexin much preferred calling her by her designation: B1576 （S）. Three years ago, the lab had lured her in with the false promise of a high-paying teaching position and a three-year contract. She had absolutely no idea where she would end up, and by now, there was no way back. Zhang Kexin's memory of this teacher was incredibly vivid. Fresh out of university, Chen Wenhua had been a strict disciplinarian, particularly hard on the unruly Zhang Kexin. By a cruel twist of fate, Chen Wenhua also happened to be a coach at the very Taekwondo dojo where Zhang Kexin trained. This gave the overbearing teacher the perfect, legitimate excuse to physically punish her. She loved tormenting Zhang Kexin's bare feet. The punishments were creative: forcing Zhang Kexin to hold a plank or push-up position while Chen Wenhua lashed her taut, stretched soles with a stick; making her kick an electric prod with bare flesh; treating her soles like scratch paper or a claw-sharpening board. She even once forced Zhang Kexin to run barefoot across a field of stinging nettles. Just recalling those experiences made Zhang Kexin's soles prickle with a phantom, agonizing discomfort.

Inside a glass display case, Chen Wenhua was fulfilling her duty as a teacher while enduring a relentless, itching torment on her soles. A small screen directly in front of her displayed a massive block of text. Her task was to read the entire passage aloud, perfectly fluently, without a single mistake.

"I remember when the first hour passed, my soles were completely dead. No, not dead—it was a numbness born from an itch so extreme it drove you mad. Those two slabs of flesh no longer felt like they were mine. They seemed to grow their own alien will, a single, screaming desire to be scratched raw, to be dug into." The article Chen Wenhua was reading was full of prepared confessions like this, gleaned from other inmates driven insane by tickle torture. Reciting this forced her focus back onto her own itching soles, amplifying the torment. Sometimes, the system threw in testimonials from girls who'd found relief. That was the cruelest joke: feeling her own soles burn with unsatisfied need while her lips shaped words like, "My soles feel so cool and smooth now, it's pure bliss." If she stumbled, if a single word was wrong or a beat was missed... her soles would pay.

Just as Chen Wenhua was deep in concentration, the glass door hissed open without warning. Zhang Kexin's head popped in. Year after year, this was the moment pure, primal terror hit. Chen Wenhua's mind blanked with a white-hot flash of panic, a silent scream caught in her throat, freezing the flow of words instantly. The consequence was immediate: her soles were now wide open for punishment.

"NO!!! She's here!! What will she do？ She'll tell me the itching can be cured this year, she'll build up my hope and then… and then she'll tell me it's all a lie! Or she'll force me to watch as she slowly, meticulously digs her nails into her own soles! Or—or chili oil! She'll smear it all over my soles and call it 'relief'!! She's going to ravage them with her nails!" In a few frantic seconds, Chen Wenhua's mind, conditioned by years of this, had already spawned a hurricane of torment scenarios, each more vivid and horrifying than the last.

The system, having detected the fatal interruption in her recitation, acted. Two thin pads, perfectly molded to her soles and studded with hundreds of electro-convex points, whirred downward. They halted with terrifying precision just five millimeters from her awaiting skin. Then, without a sound, they released their payload.

Crackle-crack... Pop-pop-pop!

Hundreds of purplish-blue arcs spat out, a chaotic swarm of lightning snapping violently against the dense nerve clusters in her soles. "Gah—HOOOOOAAAHHH!!" The sensation was a million needle-sharp jabs exploding across the tender flesh of her arch and heel, a deep, invasive sting that wrenched an uncontrollable raw howl from Chen Wenhua's throat. The only way to stop the current was to resume the perfect, fluent recitation, and to keep it up for ten full seconds. Three years of this hell had taught her well, though. After a few seconds of choked, agonized gasping, she fought to steady her breath, forcing the words out in a clear stream, even as the savage electricity continued its dance on her defenseless soles. As for Zhang Kexin, she merely glanced at the soles writhing under the storm of sparks. Instead of extending the torture, she closed the glass door gently and disappeared.

Watching Zhang Kexin inspect her soles, only for the condition of her feet to somehow not get worse, was enough to make her genuinely happy and relieved for days. In previous years, the torture would have dragged on for at least another half hour before she was satisfied. Maybe this year, her feet had lost their appeal. Maybe she no longer found any amusement in toying with her. Whatever the reason, she felt much more at ease now. It was in this exact moment, just as she had fully relaxed and assumed everything would soon return to the usual routine, that the door of the glass display case slid open again.

"Oh, I almost forgot to show some affection to my dear B1576~!"

"Oh god, why is she back again?!" Chen Wenhua's mind flooded with sheer disbelief as the jolting electricity seared through her soles once more. For the next several minutes, Zhang Kexin simply admired her teacher”s feet with rapturous attention. In truth, she had never before scrutinized them so meticulously, especially not the soles. During class hours, Chen Wenhua adored wearing her transparent crystal high-heeled sandals; Zhang Kexin could never resist stealing glances at those toes painted in black nail polish whenever the teacher was distracted, or catching glimpses of her flushed, rosy soles through the gaps of the shoes. Even during Taekwondo lessons, her attention was often shattered by how distractingly beautiful those feet were. But no matter the past, Zhang Kexin decided this sight—bare, slick, and coated in the itching liquid—was the absolute best. Once she had drunk in the view to her satisfaction, she voluntarily switched off the device. She was ready to have some real fun with those soles now.

"Haah... haah..." Having recited texts all day and endured lengthy electrical shocks to her soles, Chen Wenhua gasped desperately, struggling to reclaim a steady rhythm for her breathing.

"B1576, let me ask you a question. If you get it right, how about I help scratch an itch on the soles of your feet？" The sight of Zhang Kexin”s impish expression as she said this filled Chen Wenhua with a deep, unsettling dread, though she knew that failing to play along would make things much, much worse.

"O... okay..."

"Tell me, I'm thinking of a number from one to a hundred. Which one is it？"

Chen Wenhua’s heart lurched violently. She knew it, she just knew Zhang Kexin was about to mess with her with that twisted sense of humor of hers. Amidst a churning pit of anxiety, she blurted out the number thirty-seven. Unfortunately, she was agonizingly close. The number Zhang Kexin had in mind was thirty-six.

"Well, since you practically missed it, I won't be scratching that itch just yet. And considering how filthy and drenched in sweat your soles are right now, let's start with a high-temperature sterilization using these two heating rods, you slave." Two heating rods were clamped horizontally into position, fixed directly above Chen Wenhua”s soles. Determined to speed up the process so the teacher wouldn't suffer too long—or so she claimed—Zhang Kexin cranked the dial straight to its maximum setting.

"STOP! IT'S BURNING! AHHHHHHHH! IT ITCHES! IT BURNS AND ITCHES SO GOOD!!!" Under the scorching heat, the nerves already screaming with itch now flared into a hypersensitive frenzy. An unbearable prickly heat flooded in, making the soles of her feet sweat even more profusely. Zhang Kexin didn't care at all.

"Oh my, you're screaming so passionately, maybe I should call you 'Teacher' again for a bit~ Ah, Teacher, it's been so long, and you're still so beautiful. Do you remember when you made me hold the 'Guanyin Sitting on Lotus' pose, just so I could watch helplessly as you tortured the soles of my feet？ My sensitive, exposed soles were right there, completely defenseless. Then you took a brush, dipped it in essential oil, and traced it from my toes all the way down to my heel, and then back up again..."

"NO!!!! DON'T SAY IT!!! AHHHHH!!!" Just hearing Zhang Kexin recount those moments immediately focused all of Chen Wenhua's brainpower onto her maddeningly itchy soles. Worse, her mind began auto-simulating the ticklish pleasure of a brush making contact, scrubbing away—a brutal phantom relief. But in reality, her soles touched nothing, the itch only amplified and deepened under the relentless heat. Zhang Kexin ignored Chen Wenhua's state completely, continuing her vivid narration with savage detail, especially relishing how the nettle allergy made the flesh so swollen and tender before Chen Wenhua”s own sharp fingernails scratched and dug into her arches. It was sadistic mockery—like describing the ecstasy of drinking water to a man dying of thirst, or the bliss of a gourmet meal to someone who hasn't eaten in days. She was forcing Chen Wenhua to intimately understand how unbearably itchy her own feet were, how divinely good it would feel to scratch them, yet forbidding any relief! Within minutes, Chen Wenhua's mind was so fried by the itch, Zhang Kexin's words turned to meaningless, fuzzy noise.

"Oh~ Where was I just now？ Hm, never mind, that's enough for this part~" Zhang Kexin removed the two heating devices. Now, the bound soles looked like steaming, delicious cuts of meat. In the aftermath of the heat, Chen Wenhua felt every sensory receptor in her feet magnified. Every cell, every single nerve ending, had woken up and was now able to detect the itch with terrifying new clarity. If she could just shake her feet right now and let the cool air lick against them, she knew she'd scream out from the sheer, slutty pleasure.

"So, how is it? Your soles are terribly itchy, right? So itchy that you're crying buckets of tears, hmm? Do you want your feet to have a little freedom, to scratch them and finally get some comfy, comfy relief? If Teacher wants it, I can give her that chance." Her brain having long since been eroded to nothing by the itch, Chen Wenhua heard the words 'freedom' and 'relief'—things her feet had been denied for years—and nodded frantically without a single conscious thought.

After entering the room, the previously dim space immediately became bright. The once-a-year operating lighting fixtures generously spread the light to every corner of this room. Entering the room was a 10-meter-wide corridor, with 5x50-meter walls on both sides, on which there were estimated hundreds of pairs of seemingly wet-looking "teachers selling good friends or female classmates and so on, providing information about them to facilitate our subsequent capture of them. Every time you sell someone, I will help you relieve one of the restraints on your toes."

Upon hearing Zhang Kexin's conditions, Chen Wenhua, whose rationality had slightly gained the upper hand, became a little hesitant again. Selling her close friends and female classmates to this hell and sending them there - such an act was too much against her conscience for her.

"10... 9..." Zhang Kexin's voice slithered through the air as her eyes locked onto Chen Wenhua's flicker of hesitation. The countdown hit like a physical blow, snapping the tension taut. Faced with a chance at freedom for her feet -- something that might only come once in years -- she didn't just cave. She threw every last bond onto the fire. One by one, she bargained away the closest friends she'd grown up with, her college roommates, even the young women she'd once taught. Each name came with a soft, mechanical click as another toe restraint disengaged. The pressure lifted, a ghost of circulation tingling back into the captive digit, even as the weight of betrayal settled colder in her chest. Those poor girls had no clue their futures were being silently auctioned off in exchange for the simple, ecstatic liberty of ten toes. How pathetically tragic.

"Well, well, Teacher~ how does toe freedom feel？ Let me reward you with a nice, helpless ten-second wiggle of those bare soles."

Just hearing that she could make the soles of her feet tremble sent a jolt right through Chen Wenhua's spine. She couldn't hide her excitement, her breathing instantly turning ragged as she ached to mobilize every single muscle fiber in her feet, making them shudder at maximum amplitude just to feel the friction of the cool air against them. Through it all, Chen Wenhua stared at her own feet, watching them move freely. Just the sight of them obeying her will flooded her with a happiness so intense it was dizzying, let alone the actual sensation itself. At this moment, she felt bliss because her toes could wriggle. Pure bliss because her soles could graze the air at will. She was so blissful she felt faint, her brain buzzing with a joy she had never tasted before！ A right so simple and trivial to others felt, to her, like ascending to heaven itself. As for Zhang Kexin, who was watching her teacher savor this charitable privilege, she just rubbed the sole of one foot against the other. Unfortunately, she couldn't extract even a fraction of her teacher's ecstasy from such a worthless entitlement.

"Time”s up, stop！" The satisfied Chen Wenhua couldn't help but let out a long, drawn-out moan. The aftereffects crashed over her, refusing to fade, leaving her body trembling in the aftershock.

"Zhang Kexin, we agreed earlier. You can help me scratch the soles of my feet to relieve the itch now, right？" Having just tasted the appetizer, Chen Wenhua was already impatient to try the main course.

"Teacher, by betraying those ten people just now, you've only earned the right to have ten of your toes freed~" Zhang Kexin looked at Chen Wenhua, her smirk widening mischievously.

"Ohhh！！！ No！！！ Don't do this, Zhang Kexin, I beg you, I beg you！！！ I really can't take it anymore, I want my soles scratched so bad ahhh！！！" If it were anyone else, Zhang Kexin would have already locked all her toes back up. But seeing as Chen Wenhua was her teacher, she decided to give her a chance.

"Teacher, I heard you have a sister in college, right?"

"No！！！ I will absolutely never sell out my little sister！ Don't even think about it！！！" The moment she realized Zhang Kexin was eyeing her sister, Chen Wenhua's agitation spiked instantly. This was the sister she had practically raised since childhood, someone she would never, under any circumstances, let suffer here. She'd rather endure double the torment herself！ But faced with such absolute temptation, could she really hold onto that thought？

Click! The toes that had barely been free for over a minute were immediately locked back into place. Refusing to accept the reality, Chen Wenhua desperately twitched her feet, praying it was all a hallucination. When she looked up, she saw Zhang Kexin now holding two stiff-bristled brushes, each as big as her own soles. Zhang Kexin then hovered the bristles right above the bare flesh of Chen's soles, stopping a mere centimeter away.

"No！ Don't！！ Don't tempt me with that ahhh！！！" Seeing the brushes about to press against her soles, the skin on her feet instantly reacted. Like a sponge completely saturated with water, it began to uncontrollably seep out liquid, sweat beading up and dripping down her sensitive arches.

"Teacher, I'll give you just 3 seconds to think. If you sell out your sister, I'll use these brushes—ones that can scratch the itch out from even the deepest grooves of your soles—on your itching feet for a full 10 seconds. 3... 2..."

Just 3 seconds to think, not even enough time to form a single complete sentence, yet she had to make such a monumental decision. It felt like those 3 seconds were designed to completely squeeze every last drop of reason from her brain cells. Suddenly, two distinct voices started screaming in her head.

"Your soles are unbearably itchy, right？ Stop resisting~ Just sell out your little sister, and your aching, itching soles can finally be pleasured by that stiff-bristled brush you've been dreaming of. Imagine the bristles gliding along every groove of your foot, the sensation of that deep itch being slowly scratched away into pure, melting bliss~"

"It's fine, just keep enduring this maddening itch. You absolutely cannot betray your sister. Selling out your own sister just so your soles can feel the comfort of a good scratch? Just thinking about that makes you feel like the cheapest, most despicable slut, doesn't it?"

"No！！！ Shut up！！！" Chen Wenhua's eyes rolled back, white overtaking her pupils as she muttered desperately to herself.

"Your soles are itching to death, your soles are itching to death, your soles are itching to death！！ Scratching soles feels so good, scratching soles feels so good, scratching soles feels so good！！"

"You must endure！ You must endure！ You must endure！！！"

It was at that precise moment that the brush barely grazed the sole of Chen Wenhua's foot. Her nerves had already been stretched to their absolute limit; the soles, already trembling with an unbearable, maddening itch, now felt the stimulation of the bristles. The wave of relief that crashed over her instantly shattered every last shred of her reason and restraint. The soles of her feet hijacked her brain completely, leaving only a single, brutal, and direct thought: scratch her soles, viciously, right now.

"Aaaahhh, I can't take it anymore—oooohhh！！！！ I'll talk, I'll talk aaaahh！！ My younger sister, her name is Chen Wenxin, she's 19 this year, her shoe size is......" An overwhelming drive to survive and a desperate craving for relief forced her into a decision she would regret with agonizing bitterness for the rest of her life. Right then, for Chen Wenhua, those distant concepts like familial love or the sisterly bond they once shared were nothing compared to the immediate, alluring promise of scratching that itch. Swamped with remorse, she spilled every detail about her sister, word by word. Soon, her sister would be snatched up by the lab.

The very instant Chen Wenhua finished speaking, Zhang Kexin pressed both of her brushes against the red, hypersensitive soles and began a ten-second, excruciatingly slow, thorough brushing.

"HOOUUOOOHHHH, SO GOOD, AAAAAHHH! SO GOOD, YEEAAHHHH! I'M GONNA FEEL SO GOOD I COULD DIE, OOOOOHHHH!!!" A surge of pure, cleansing relief shot straight from her soles to her brain, sending a violent tremor through her entire body. The thick, stiff bristles scraped mercilessly over her irritated, itchy arch; the dull, pent-up itch accumulated deep within every line and crease of her sole was scraped clean, obliterated by the trespass of those hard bristles. When the brush swept over the ball of her foot, the bristles wrapped fully around its curve and crushed the itch into powder. But the ultimate bliss came when the brush reached her toes. Thousands of bristles touched the base of her toes, snuck into the gaps between them, and glided over each toe, as if every single fiber was precisely nailing the single most itchy spot. Eyes rolled back, spilling out obscene, guttural moans, she wanted nothing more than to be submerged and drowned by this wave of pleasurable relief—even breathing felt like an unnecessary distraction. Poor Chen Wenxin had no idea that her own sister had just sold her out, trading her life for these mere ten seconds of bliss...

"Haahaha. Teacher, please, try to be a little more ladylike. Getting your unbearably itchy soles—ones that haven't known relief for years—scratched just a little, and you're already making noises like a sow in heat. It's honestly embarrassing." Mentally ticking down the seconds, Zhang Kexin thought to herself that Chen Wenhua was truly lucky. Most of the girls here could go their whole lives without ever even seeing a brush, let alone having one applied to soothe their itchy soles.

"Time's almost up~."

“HOOOOOOOOHHH!!! OOOOOOHHHH!!!!!” The warning that her time was almost up made Chen Wenhua desperate to feel every frame of the brush scrubbing her soles. She wanted to burn the sensation into every single brain cell and every nerve ending in her feet, because this ecstasy was bought and paid for with her own sister’s future. As the brush finally pulled away, it dragged with it glistening threads of sweat from her well-soaked soles, as if it were pulling out every last drop of relief right along with them. Her soles, still craving more, spasmed uncontrollably, twitching toward the retreating brush, pathetically chasing that orgasmic relief from the itch. But the relief faded fast, and the maddening hypersensitivity came roaring back like a tidal wave, reclaiming every inch of her sole, inch by agonizing inch, even more intensely than before.

“Hiiiissss... OOOOHHH!!! My soles... so itchy... AAAAAHHH SO ITCHY! Why is it even worse now?! OOOOHHHHH!!!”

“Ha ha ha, so, Teacher, how was that feeling? Did you enjoy it? You do remember you bought that little break by selling out your own sister, right? You really ought to thank her, you know~”

“AHHH!!? W-WHAT?! NO! My sister! Please, I’m begging you, spare her! She’s just a kid, she can’t come here—NOOOOO, NOT THE RODS—GYAAAAAAAHHH!!!!!” The two Heating Rods, still carrying the heat from her soles, were placed right back on top of her feet. The unbearable itch that had only just been pacified was now amplified exponentially by the scorching heat, instantly engulfing and erasing the fleeting memory of relief. The sensation was pure, unadulterated torment.

“Oops, sorry there, Teacher！ You only paid for a 10-second break from the itch. I can’t just let your feet be comfy for a few extra seconds, now can I? Oh, and about your little sister... I’ve decided. I’ll start by breaking her with tickle torture, probably for a few years. Every day, a new and unique kind of hell for the most sensitive spots on her feet, until she’s trained into the perfect little tickle toy. And then, once she’s nice and ripe... I’ll send her right here, so she can get a real good taste of the same torture her big sister went through.” Zhang Kexin’s face was a mask of blissful satisfaction as she mapped out her future project. Chen Wenhua, on the other hand, was drowning in a fresh hell of regret for having sold out her own flesh and blood.

“Oh, right, Teacher, one more thing... That little bit of relief you just got? That was the last one you’ll ever feel~ Since your contract is up, we’re shipping you off to Zone C after it expires. And today... is your last day.” The color instantly drained from Chen Wenhua’s face, a visceral shock so profound that for a split second, it even overpowered the infernal itch in her feet. She knew exactly what Zone C was, and the knowledge made this current hell feel like a paradise. For the next several minutes, she abandoned all dignity, shamelessly begging Zhang Kexin, even offering to personally assist in training her own sister.

“Oh, Professor, that was such an earnest plea. It nearly made me want to let you off the hook. But...” Zhang Kexin’s finger hovered over the remote, her voice a purr of pure excitement. “I’ll see you in Zone C.” A press of the button, and the professor’s form dissolved, teleported away. Zhang Kexin made her final checkmark on the digital clipboard with a flourish. A job well done. Her work was, for now, complete. A playful thought struck her. She decided she’d head to Zone C anyway, a little after-action checkup. Her real motive was a visit to specimen B1576(S), just to see how she was holding up. Or not.

Part 5：

Zone C hummed with the low drone of life-support. The corridor stretched on, lined with chambers like solitary cells. Inside each, a cold, coffin-like capsule hummed, its occupant sealed within. Only their feet were visible, protruding from a pair of sealed rectangular boxes at the base. The systems hooked into the prisoners’ bodies didn’t just suspend their aging indefinitely; they shut down reality, plunging each woman deep into a personalized, waking dream. And the script for that dream was a menu of exquisite agony. Time’s viscosity was its cruelest feature: every minute of real-time stretched into a full day of subjective torment for the mind trapped inside. A single half-hour out here meant an entire month of unadulterated, customized hell within their skulls.

Peering through the narrow glass window of each cell door, Zhang Kexin searched for her professor when another nameplate caught her eye and froze her in place. Specification: C253. Female, 24 years old. Shoe size: 38. Hu Yaying. A vivid memory snapped into place. Those feet. She remembered the case file photos. An ex-cop, a model officer, just a year on the job before being fast-tracked for the title of “Model Officer.” Her feet were breathtaking, and she damn well knew it. The intel report had even included her casual remark about people trying to snap secret photos of them when she was out. Her fatal mistake? Getting assigned to investigate this very lab. She was never even interrogated. The director himself, apparently, harbored a special, envious resentment for a pair of feet that pretty. She went straight from abduction to the dream-coffin of Zone C.

Zhang Kexin swiped the access panel, the cell door hissing open. She pulled up the punishment protocol for C253 on the external monitor. A shiver of twisted delight ran through her. The ex-model-cop’s pride and joy, those stunning soles, were the main event. The system would run her through the gauntlet: her feet as target practice for cons, testing the sting of plastic bullets; a 24/7 tickle-torture marathon after being “caught” by prison escapees; becoming a public ‘Itch Receptacle,’ displayed on a simulated street corner for endless degradation; and, a masterstroke, a scenario where she fails a mission, and her own colleagues turn her into a stress-relief tool. A thin, cruel smile played on Zhang Kexin’s lips. That ex-cop must despise her own gorgeous feet by now. She loathes them with every fiber of her simulated being.

Now, those very same feet—the ones that had tempted countless eyes and lenses—were locked away inside the two rectangular boxes at the capsule’s foot. A low hiss of superheated steam leaked from within, a constant torment designed to keep her soles hypersensitive, inflamed, and primed for agony. The mere mental image of Hu Yaying’s feet sent a shot of pure, potent arousal straight through Zhang Kexin’s core. Her hand moved of its own accord. She needed to see them. The temptation was too much, the allure too sickly sweet. She had to open the box for a peek, to drink in the sight of those soles in the flesh. It was just too beautiful, too desperately, dangerously tempting.

The lid snapped open and a wave of scorching steam blasted her face, gushing out like the breath of a boiler. As the clouds parted, Zhang Kexin’s eyes locked onto a spectacle of glossy, flushed pink foot flesh. Even though the soles were violently allergic and irritated, the feet remained delicately pale, arching into a flawless, translucent blush. A thick sheen of sweat lacquered the tender soles, making every faintly glowing texture and crease look as if they had been glazed in syrup. She wanted to memorize every single sinful ridge. But as she stared, a knot of cold, bitter jealousy tightened in her gut. She finally understood the rumor—that the lab director had thrown this woman straight into hell simply out of envy for her perfect feet. It was such a waste, Kexin thought, these stunningly beautiful feet born only to suffer, yet they didn’t belong to her.

A vicious little thought coiled up from her brain: she would punish these seductive feet. Kexin retrieved a container of Red Fire Ants, a swarm of mosquitoes, and a special breed of leech bred specifically to nibble softly at the delicate sole flesh while secreting an allergic, itch-inducing neural toxin. She tipped them in, watching the creatures cascade over the damp, pink skin. The time differential was the cruelest part—a single minute out here stretched into a twenty-four hour cycle of agony in the dream. Kexin’s lips curled as she imagined it: the former officer trapped in a nightmare, desperate enough to claw the flesh right off her own bones, yet utterly unable to relieve the maddening, burrowing itch that would cling to the nerve endings forever.

Kexin slammed the lock shut and walked away. After all, her mission was to find her teacher in Zone C. But as she walked, regret crept in, cold and fast. Had she gone too far? The officer hadn’t wronged her; she had simply been tortured because of her beautiful feet. The cruelty was purely born from Kexin’s own sick envy. Guilt pricked her conscience hard enough that she turned around, deciding to go back and remove the leeches and the worst of the ants. But the resolution evaporated in an instant because, right there and then, she spotted her teacher.

Farther down the row, a coffin-like device held Chen Wenhua’s bare feet locked in rigid stocks, a dense web of electrode pads pasted across the sensitive soles. But that wasn’t the focus. Kexin hurried over, eager to check the status of the punishment protocol she had spent over ten agonizing days designing. Inside the dreamscape, Chen Wenhua was being broken by dozens—scores—of Kexins, each one twisting her mind in a different brutal symphony of training and violation. A single Kexin was already a relentless nightmare; dozens would shatter her into a twitching, empty shell. Beyond that lay hundreds of meticulously designed atrocities, perverted scenarios that could never, ever exist in reality.

“Done！ Settings locked！” Zhang Kexin tapped at the control panel, inputting the numbers that directly set the Itch Value for Chen Wenhua's soles. A single mosquito bite held a value of 1. Zhang Kexin punched in 99999999. In truth, until she walked away, she never realized she had actually keyed in one extra digit. Unless someone came along to reset that number, the soles of her feet in the dream would remain at this level of unrelenting, incurable itch.


Just as Zhang Kexin was drinking in the sight of her teacher's torment with a look of pure satisfaction, another girl nearby had already reached her absolute limit.

“God, the gaps between my toes itch so damn much！！ I just want to rub them against those water balloons squeezed between them！！！” The girl, abandoned for countless hours, had spiraled into a state of pure mania. The feather teasing the base of her toes and the relentless, throbbing itch deep within the spaces between them filled her mind with a mad, intrusive thought: burst the water balloons and grind her toes together in blissful, scratching relief.

“Ssssss— ahhhh!!! When the hell is she coming back?! It itches so bad, I can't take it anymore!!!!” For two whole hours, she had fought to control her toes, struggling to endure the feather's stimulation. Now, they were beginning to spasm and twitch uncontrollably. Pushed past all endurance, a dark thought crept in: what if the utterly malicious Zhang Kexin had already left? What if she was never coming back? What if she had simply given her an impossible task with no reward before leaving, just to watch her suffer pointlessly? Maybe, right now, Zhang Kexin was relaxing comfortably, laughing at her futile, meaningless endurance of this maddening itch.

In reality, she was making Zhang Kexin out to be far worse than she was. Right now, Zhang Kexin was standing directly in front of her feet, a hog prod in each hand, her voice counting down！

“3... 2... 1!!!!” The instant the electric prods made contact with the girl's arches, her toes curled in a defensive spasm, a desperate reflex to shield her shocked soles. But guarding her arches meant abandoning her toe gaps. The tiny water balloons, clamped between them and filled with Itch Concentrate, were instantly crushed by the violent clenching of her toes. It was like unleashing a demon straight from Pandora's Box. Within seconds, Zhang Kexin watched her ten toes begin to scrub against each other in a frantic, manic blur. But that instinctive attempt at relief only smeared the itch concentrate deeper and more evenly into every crevice. Zhang Kexin noticed, with a surge of delight, that her desperate, forceful squeeze had even splattered droplets of the concentrate onto the innocent skin of the surrounding feet.

“What a shame. You just couldn’t hold out until the end. Alright, stop！ Spread your toes apart; I’m going to lock them up one by one.” Zhang Kexin spat out the order, but the ten toes before her, scrunched and rubbing together with every ounce of their strength, showed no intention of stopping. By now, she was probably desperate enough to sandpaper the insufferable itches between her toes.

“I’ll give you one more chance. Stop that rubbing in three seconds, and spread your fucking toes！ Or you will deeply regret it.” But even after Zhang Kexin’s warning, she still ignored the command. Such a defiant girl was a rare find. A flicker of irritation sparked into genuine anger, and Zhang Kexin decided to administer a real lesson—to teach her how to obey. She punished her by shipping her straight off to Zone C.

A few minutes after dealing with her, it suddenly dawned on Zhang Kexin. She hadn’t actually turned on the microphone just now. No wonder the girl hadn’t followed her orders. She shrugged it off. It didn’t matter; the girl was nothing but an object here, hers to play with and dispose of as she pleased.

Every time the inspection period drew to an end and she had to leave, Zhang Kexin felt a sharp pang of genuine regret. There were still so many more girls to play with, so many feet she hadn’t yet properly attended to. Hours later, the wall-bound soles in Zone A felt another gust of air and assumed it was Zhang Kexin finally departing. In the face of her absence, each girl grappled with her own distinct flavor of despair. Some hoped she would return to relieve the relentless itching on their soles, dreading the thought of being abandoned and ignored. Others celebrated her departure as a stroke of luck, viewing the neglect as their only possible salvation. Still others froze with tension, their raw fear spiking at the chance their feet might become her final target at the last conceivable second. In truth, Zhang Kexin had long since gone. The sensation they’d just felt was nothing but a brief gust from the exhaust fan. Yet even that stray puff of wind was enough to amplify the inner horror to a maddening peak for these eternally tormented girls, who lived every second of their existence in this helpless, agonizing state.

The facility’s heavy door locked shut once more—it would likely be another full year before these feet drew any attention again. Zhang Kexin savored the lingering bouquet of those tormented soles, the exquisite, redolent scent of “agony.’ To her, that aroma was absolutely divine. Now, it was time to head back and indulge in some well-earned rest. She was looking forward to having her own feet thoroughly massaged, a basic luxury these slaves would never, in their entire miserable lives, be granted. After that, she’d check on the latest batch of “Sole Mosquito Coils’ for quality control. Her expectations for the evening’s festivities were sky-high！

But just as Zhang Kexin stepped out the door, two guards immediately seized her, locking their arms around her.

“Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?! Is this a mutiny?!”

“Our apologies, miss. Orders from the Director.”

“Oh, how gracious of me—seeing as your entire life is about to be over, I’ll do you the favor of an explanation. That little stunt you pulled, secretly filming the Director’s feet? Your two ‘Sole Mosquito Coils’ already ratted you out. While you were busy with your inspection, we had the pleasure of thoroughly searching your home.”

Zhang Kexin’s brain just blue-screened. She knew exactly what those words meant! Lin Ziting’s face flashed into her mind, but a sickening certainty washed over her: her own fate would be so much worse.

“No！！ Give me a chance！！ I’ll confess everything, I’ll spill it all！！” Her legs were already jelly, and the two guards had to practically carry her down the hall toward the torture chamber.

“No need, sweetheart. Your soles will tell us everything we need to know. I’m going to have a nice, long chat with them... for a few days.”

“Oh, absolutely. We’ve had our eyes on those slutty little feet for a while now. Word is you’re crazy ticklish, and you just hate it, right？ Ohh, I’m getting so many ideas right now!”

“STOOOP AAAAAAAHHH!!!! LET ME SCRATCH ONE MORE TIME! JUST LET ME SCRATCH MY STINKY FEET AAAHH!! PLEASE DON'T TAKE ME THERE, I BEG YOU AAAAAHHH!!!!” Zhang Kexin’s screams faded as they dragged her down the corridor. Yet, for many days to come, her voice never stopped echoing down that hall...