Li Yuan spent two weeks in Shacun, observing with a deepening grimness. He saw how the "merchandise" arrived—some brought by merchants returning from the desert, others bought from local kidnappers who raided remote villages, and still others were captives from small wars in the surrounding region.
He saw how they were sorted—the young and healthy were separated into one warehouse to be sold at a premium price, the old or sick into another at a lower price, and those too weak to survive the desert journey... they were not spoken of loudly, but Li Yuan knew from the chilling silence what happened to them.
Through his Wenjing Realm, he heard it all: the silent suffering of those who were chained, the cold satisfaction of the merchants calculating their profits, the suppressed discomfort of the town residents who had learned not to see, not to ask.
And on the fifteenth day, the great caravan finally gathered to depart across the desert.
Li Yuan stood at the edge of the city as dawn broke, observing the final preparations. There were thirty merchants with their goods—cloth, spices, metals, ceramics. There were twenty armed guards to protect the caravan from desert bandits. There were a hundred camels and donkeys to carry the loads.
And there were one hundred twenty humans chained together in small groups, their necks connected with iron chains that ensured they could not escape without escaping together—which was impossible in the barren desert.
Li Yuan saw their faces: most had skin as dark as ebony or fertile soil, but there were also lighter-skinned ones—brown, olive, even a few who were pale. Different races, different languages, but all with the same expression: a despair that had turned into emotional paralysis.
The men with muscles that were still strong despite the lack of food—they would be sold for forced labor in mines or construction. The young women with faces that still held a trace of beauty behind the dirt and bruises—they would be sold for... other purposes. And the children—children who stared with eyes that were too old for their age, who had lost the ability to cry.
The caravan leader—a portly man named Kasim in expensive clothes and a gold ring on his fingers—shouted the final orders.
"Move out! We must reach the Red Oasis before the sun reaches its zenith tomorrow!"
The caravan began to move slowly—camels burdened with goods, guards walking on the sides, and behind, the groups of chained humans, forced to walk with bare feet on the hot sand.
Li Yuan followed from a distance, unseen, inconspicuous. His consciousness body left no tracks in the sand, needed no water or food, and was unaffected by the heat that began to increase as the sun rose.
But what he witnessed left a much deeper mark on a soul that had existed for fifteen thousand years.
The first day was the worst for those who were not accustomed to the desert. The heat increased quickly—not like the humid heat in a forest or the dry heat on a plain, but a piercing heat that made every breath feel like inhaling fire.
The chained humans were not given enough water. The merchants gave them just enough to keep them alive—too much water would reduce the profit by having to carry more supplies, too little would cause too many to die before reaching the market.
A cold calculation. A business calculation.
Li Yuan saw an old man—maybe in his fifties, with skin wrinkled by years of working under the sun—stumble and fall. The chain on his neck pulled the people connected to him, forcing them to stop.
A guard walked closer with a stick.
"Get up!" he shouted, hitting the man's back with the stick.
The old man tried to get up, but his legs trembled too hard. He fell again.
The guard hit him again, harder this time. And again. And again.
Finally, the other men in the group—even though they themselves were barely able to stand—helped lift the old man. They supported him between them, sharing the burden of his weak body, helping each other because no one else would help.
Through his Wenjing Realm, Li Yuan heard the guard's intention: no personal hatred, no sadistic cruelty—just professional indifference. This was a job. Ensuring the "merchandise" arrived in a sellable condition.
This is what happens, Li Yuan mused with a coldness that was crystallizing, when humans no longer see other humans as human. When they become "units," "merchandise," "investments." When their value is measured only in gold coins.
On the afternoon of the first day, the caravan stopped at a rock formation that provided a little shade from the scorching sun. The merchants and guards set up tents, prepared food, and drank fresh water from the water skins they carried.
The chained humans were left to sit on the hot sand, still connected by the neck chains. They were given water—a small ladle for every five people. Food—hard bread that was almost impossible to chew, a little dried vegetable.
Li Yuan observed from the shadow of the rock, unseen. He saw how they shared—those who were stronger gave some of their water to the weaker ones, children were given priority by parents who didn't even know them.
In the midst of dehumanization, he realized with something close to a painful admiration, they still maintained their humanity. They still cared for each other, still shared, still showed compassion even though no one showed compassion to them.
Night fell quickly in the desert, and with night came a sharp coldness—an extreme contrast to the daytime heat. The merchants and guards slept inside tents with thick blankets.
The chained humans slept on the open sand, without protection from the cold, hugging each other for warmth, their trembling bodies united in shared suffering.
Li Yuan did not sleep—he did not need to. He only sat in silence, listening through his Wenjing Realm to the symphony of silent suffering: sobs that were held back so as not to attract the attention of the guards, prayers whispered in different languages to gods who did not answer, and here and there, the whisper of escape plans that would never succeed.
The second day brought a small sandstorm. The wind increased suddenly, carrying sand that stung the eyes and filled the nose and mouth.
The merchants and guards covered their faces with cloth, taking shelter behind camels or inside strongly tied tents.
The chained humans had no protection. They could only cover their eyes and mouths with their bound hands, hunching against the wind, trying to breathe through the small gaps between their fingers.
Some did not succeed. Li Yuan saw a young woman—maybe in her twenties, with a face that was once beautiful—choke on the sand, cough hard, and finally stop moving.
When the storm subsided, the guards checked her body in a cold and efficient manner—no pulse. They unchained her from her neck and dragged the body to the side, leaving it to be eaten by the desert scavengers.
There was no ceremony. No words. No acknowledgment that a human had died.
Only a lost investment. A reduced profit.
Kasim, the caravan leader, quickly calculated in his notebook, muttering about shrinking profit margins.
Li Yuan felt something inside him—something that had been calm for thousands of years—begin to stir. Anger. Not an anger that exploded and lost control, but a cold and controlled anger, an anger born from an all-too-clear understanding of systematic injustice.
His Understanding of Water worked hard to suppress that anger, to maintain balance. But even water can boil when the heat is intense enough.
On the third day, they reached the Red Oasis—one of the few water sources in the desert, controlled by a local clan that levied a tribute on all passing caravans.
The oasis itself was a sight in sharp contrast to the surrounding desert: towering palm trees, a clear pool of water, lush green vegetation. But that beauty was stained by what was happening there.
At the edge of the oasis, there was a wooden structure—a pen, actually. A place where the chained humans were "stored" while the merchants negotiated with the local clan and refilled their supplies.
Li Yuan saw that other pens were also there—other caravans that had stopped at this oasis, with their own "merchandise." Hundreds of humans, chained, penned like animals, waiting with silent despair for the journey to continue.
But what made Li Yuan's anger almost surpass his control was what he saw on the other side of the oasis.
A wooden platform. And on that platform, a man—dark-skinned, with a body that was still strong despite obvious wounds—was displayed for "entertainment."
A group of merchants gathered, watching with laughter and cheers as a guard tortured the man in ways that Li Yuan could not—would not—describe in detail. This was not torture for information or even for punishment. This was torture for pure entertainment.
"Torture for sport."
The words from an instruction he had received echoed in his mind.
This was no longer just slavery as an economic institution. This was complete dehumanization, where the suffering of another human became a source of entertainment.
Li Yuan turned and walked away before he did something he would regret—or maybe not regret, and that was what worried him.
He found a quiet place behind a rock formation, far from the oasis and the cruelty happening there. He sat down, closed his eyes, and let his Understanding of Water flow through his consciousness with an intensity he rarely needed.
Calm, he reminded himself. You must remain calm. You must understand this system completely before deciding on any action. Anger without understanding will only create chaos that might make the situation worse.
But even as he repeated this mantra, he knew that something had changed within him. In his fifteen thousand years of life, he had seen many cruelties—war, massacres, oppression. But never before had he seen dehumanization that was so systematic, so casual, so accepted as normal.
And he knew—with a cold and final certainty—that he could not just walk away from this.
The question was not whether he would act.
The question was how—and with what consequences.
That night, as the caravans prepared to sleep around the oasis, Li Yuan sat in the darkness, contemplating what he had witnessed.
In three days of travel, he had seen enough to understand that this was not just about a few evil individual merchants or isolated incidents. This was a system—a system supported by the economy, by laws (or the lack of laws that protected the weak), by a culture that had learned not to see certain humans as human at all.
And a system like that could not be overthrown by simply punishing a few evil merchants. It required a more fundamental transformation—a change in how people think, in how society is structured, in how values are defined.
But how does one change a system that has existed for generations? How does one make people who have benefited from this cruelty see that what they are doing is wrong?
And the most disturbing question: how many more would suffer even more while change slowly happened?
Li Yuan did not have the answers to these questions. Not yet.
But he knew that this journey was not over. He had to see more—had to understand every aspect of this system of slavery before he could decide on the right course of action.
So tomorrow, he would continue to follow the caravan. He would continue to witness the cruelty. He would continue to listen through his Wenjing Realm to the suffering of those who had no voice and the cold satisfaction of those who exploited.
And at some point—he didn't know when, but he knew it would come—his patience that had endured for fifteen thousand years would reach its limit.
And when that happened, this world would learn what happens when someone who understands the Dao with an unimaginable depth finally loses patience with systematic cruelty.
But for now, he waited. Observed. Understood.
Because true justice requires more than just anger—it requires the wisdom to know when, how, and with what consequences to act.
And Li Yuan, in all his thousands of years of experience, had never faced a dilemma as complex and terrifying as this.