What spilled from the destroyed carriage were not "exotic textiles" or "high-grade ingredients" one would expect to be transported on the civilian express road of the Beast-Cart Promenade. What spilled from the broken carcass of the vehicle were people.
The irony of treating people as goods and using the civilian highway like a public transport was not lost on Seth. He found it very ironic; he just wasn't amused by it. None of them were.
Thrown to the stone pavement by the beast's rampage were over a dozen terrified, bruised, and weeping people who tumbled into the light. Many were mortals of the XiGuang Province, probably refugees that came to Doushi. A couple were low-level cultivators.
But what got Mina especially riled up were the two young beastwomen among the captives. Maybe they were part of a group of people that entered this world through the Pathworks? All of them had a candid relationship with slavery and the involuntary capture of people.
Minas Mar had wiped out several sects to send that message clearly.
Though Mina and Fin never experienced it themselves, as far as he knew, beastpeople were usually one of the first targets of slavery in many system worlds. Mina had experienced her fair share of discrimination while acting as guard for Leana. Apparently, this was another thing that never changed, no matter the world.
They were all bound hand and foot by enchanted copper chains, their mouths stuffed with thick cloth to keep them from screaming for help. The scene kept escalating as, from the wreckage of the driver's seat, a frantic squad of mercenaries scrambled to their feet. As a stunned crowd watched the chain of events, the mercenary leader panicked.
He drew his blade, his eyes darting frantically from the weeping captives to the onlookers. "Kill the cargo!" he roared to his men, stepping toward a chained mortal. "Kill them all! Leave no evidence!"
Inside the cloud-stag carriage, silence. It was already empty.
His unsheathed blade swung down to behead one of the bound captives, only to bounce back from an invisible barrier. The next moment, all mercenaries froze, their weapons raised. Mina had cast her spell, taking control of their shadows, stopping all movement.
Meanwhile, the blacksmith approached the captives bound like cattle. Yet, when he bent down to take a look at the chains, the man looked at him in fear and panic, struggling to stop him from touching the chains. Looking around, all the captives lying in a way that they could see him looked at him in fear and hope.
Seth took another look, this time using
Durability:190/200
1. Reduces the wearer's Movement Speed, Dexterity, and Agility to 0
2. Syndicate Trigger
A heavy, copper chain forged in the foundries of the Iron Claw Syndicate. Heavy iron cuffs at either end are lined with backward-facing, needle-like teeth designed to sink into the wearer's flesh upon closure.>
Syndicate Trigger: Removal without the correct key will send a shock of spiritual essence through the target, bursting their heart and frying their brain.
Welp, that explained why they were so afraid of the blacksmith touching it. If he simply broke the chains by force, they would be dead. Opening these without the right key was impossible, if it wasn't Seth. The blacksmith didn't hesitate and simple-
" It was a similar concept to the auto-looting of the system. Not everyone could be a hunter with the skills and knowledge to properly dismantle an animal; auto-looting was quick and needed no knowledge, but one only gained a fraction of the materials.
Using "Hey, I know you," the blacksmith exclaimed, surprised, after taking the chains off a ragged man, who seemed relatively calm for his situation.
"How would you know me, savior?" he asked, perplexed.
"You were the guy the guard caught at the Stargazing Terrace. How did you end up bound like this?" the bard asked, undoing the chains of another person.
"These guys are the guards...But apparently they sold me off as a slave," the man said with a dreary expression, looking at the situation around them. He described how the guard unlawfully detained him, only to bring him to a hidden prison, with many other people in similar situations.
" I wasn't there for long. They used some weird incense to keep us compliant until the chains were on..." Afterward, he was put on the carriage with the others, which ultimately led to this encounter. The incense reminded Seth of another thing, the Compliance Fume or something he had smelled in the alchemy market. He had already forgotten about it because of the explosion.
Now, things started to fall into place.
Slavery, they had already concluded it. It was not illegal on the Voracious Cloud Continent, obviously. However, according to Master Mountain, it was highly regulated; only criminals or volunteers could enter the status as a slave.
Evidently, these people were neither.
"Die, you beast!" he heard a female slave exclaim. In her hand was an iron shard from the carriage, and she used it like a dagger to attack one of the young beast girls. Before Seth could react, her movement was already bound by shadows.
"Unhand me! It's all the fault of these vile spawns!" she screeched, but was completely frozen. Seth stared at her. Just a moment ago, she had thanked him like a completely normal, innocent person, only to jump at these two girls like a raging fury.
"Shut up," Mina said, annoyed, knocking her out with a backhanded bitch-slap, as she approached Seth together with Fin. She was dragging along the leader of the mercenaries, or guards?
"According to this guy, they are working for a place called Iron Claw," she said, shaking the guy. The man was beaten black and blue, his face swollen like a tomato.
"Checks out, the Chain was made by a place called the Iron Claw Syndicate," Seth shared.
"Oh, no, benefactor, you should flee. The Iron Claw Syndicate is the leader of Daoshi's underbelly. They are powerful, and they have powerful connections! It's said that their leader is a Nascent Soul Power house and that they even have connections to a Soul Severing Elder," the calm man suddenly started rambling exposition.
Although it was a warning, it helped Seth connect the dots. So it was the Iron Claw Syndicate behind some of those weird incidents. Had they blown up the cauldron as a distraction to get the people under the compliance fume out of the plaza, too?
He shared his conclusions with the girls suing their "Well, that's our problem now, but you guys should get out of the city before you get caught again," he shooed the human victims away, while Mina kept the two beastgirls back. They were too suspicious to roam the streets. She also wanted to hear their story.
With the two girls and the leader in tow, they returned to their now slightly fuller carriage.
"Change of destination, get us to the Emerald Terraces," the blacksmith ordered the driver, who didn't even seem half as surprised as the blacksmith would have expected. The path back to their hotel was not as congested, so they were able to leave the scene quickly.
Just before Mina was out of range of her hold spell, the head of all the men, frozen with their raised weapons, made a 360° turn, falling over, dead. She had no mercy for people like that.