Han Yu returned to his cave with a heavy mind.
The door slid shut behind him, formations sealing the space as the familiar yellow glow of the spirit lamps flickered to life. The quiet should have been comforting. Instead, it only made his thoughts louder.
Now that he knew the truth, he could no longer pretend ignorance.
The missing slaves were not an administrative anomaly. They were being funneled into the Violet Spirit Quartz mines. And if the sect needed spirit sense guided labor, then any surviving cultivators captured during the purge would inevitably end up there.
Including people he cared about.
Han Yu sat down slowly, elbows resting on his knees, fingers interlaced. His gaze was unfocused, fixed on nothing as his thoughts churned. Meng Jueyan noticed his strange state but kept to herslef while Qing Xuan was just sitting silently like always.
In a twisted way, the situation was both better and worse than Han Yu had feared.
