Amara's song spread through the city like a fire creeping through dry grass. From one warehouse to another, from cage to cage, slaves who had been silenced for too long began to find their voices again.
Li Yuan did not lead the rebellion. He did not organize, give orders, or direct actions. He simply stood on the sidelines—observing, listening through his Wenjing Realm, and ensuring that no unjust external intervention would destroy the opportunity he had created.
The residual effect of his Sky Comprehension still resonated throughout Zhardar, weak enough not to force action but strong enough to remind everyone—slave and free—that there was something greater than the system they had accepted as inevitable.
And in that resonance, change began to happen.
It started in the warehouse where Amara was. Her song—which she had been singing for twenty years to preserve humanity—was now sung by dozens of voices. Then hundreds, as slaves from other warehouses heard and joined in.
The guards on duty initially tried to stop them. But something had changed. When they raised their clubs to strike, their hands hesitated. When they shouted orders to be silent, their voices sounded hollow even to their own ears.
The residual effect of the Sky Comprehension made their task—guarding slaves, maintaining the system—feel meaningless in a way they could not ignore.
One by one, the guards began to retreat. Some abandoned their posts completely. Others just stood with their clubs drooping, staring with uncertainty as the slaves continued to sing.
In Amara's warehouse, a young man—a slave who had been purchased just a few days ago, his body still strong despite new wounds—stood up and walked to the locked cage door.
"We don't have to stay here," he said in a voice that was trembling but firm. "Nothing forces us but these chains. And chains can be broken."
Amara looked at him with eyes filled with a mixture of hope and fear.
"If we try to escape and fail, they will kill us. Or worse."
"If we don't try," the young man replied, "we are already dead. Only our bodies are still alive, but our souls were buried long ago."
A silence fell over the warehouse as the other slaves processed those words.
Then, with a movement that began as a murmur and grew into a chorus of agreement, they began to work together. Those with freer hands helped those who were more tightly chained. The stronger ones used rocks or pieces of wood to smash the rusted locks.
And slowly—with an effort that took hours, with bleeding fingers and exhausted bodies—the chains began to break.
Word of what was happening spread quickly through the city. Merchants living near the warehouses woke from their sleep to a sound—not a violent shout, but a song that grew louder, more confident.
The Eunuch—the leader of the caravan that had brought the slaves across the desert—ran into the street in his hurried nightclothes, staring in horror as he saw slaves pouring out of the warehouses, broken chains still dangling from their necks or wrists.
"Arrest them!" he shouted to a passing guard. "They are escaping! Stop them!"
But the guard just looked at him with a strange expression—a mix of hesitation and something close to shame.
"By whose order?" one of the guards asked in an unsure voice. "They... they are just walking. They aren't attacking anyone."
"They are property! Wares! They—"
But the Eunuch's words died in his throat as he saw the ever-growing number of slaves. Not dozens, but hundreds. Perhaps thousands. They were coming out of every warehouse, every cage, every place where they had been stored like livestock.
And they walked—not running in a panic, but walking with a quiet determination—towards the central city square where the slave market stood.
Li Yuan followed from a distance, his presence unseen but his Wenjing Realm extended throughout the city. He heard every intention, every decision being made.
He heard the Merchant Council meeting in a state of panic, trying to decide whether to send the guards to stop the rebellion with violence.
He heard individual merchants debating whether to protect their "investment" or let the slaves go.
He heard the ordinary city residents—those not directly involved in the slave trade but who had benefited from it—grappling with moral questions about what was right.
And most importantly, he heard the slaves themselves—their fear, their hope, their determination not to return to chains even if it meant death.
They have made their choice, Li Yuan mused with a cold satisfaction. Now it is time to see if this city will choose violence or wisdom.
The crowd of slaves reached the central square just as the moon was at its peak. Thousands of them—men, women, children of different races, different languages, but united in a common purpose.
Amara, despite her age and physical frailty, stood at the front of the crowd. Her voice—which had sung for twenty years to preserve humanity—now spoke with a strength born from despair that had turned into determination.
"People of Zhardar!" she shouted, her voice reaching every corner of the square. "We have not come with violence. We have not come for revenge. We have come to say one simple thing: we are human. We have names. We have souls. And we will not be property any longer."
The crowd of city residents—merchants, guards, ordinary people—had gathered at the edges of the square, staring with a mixture of fear and uncertainty.
The Eunuch stepped forward from the crowd, his face red with anger.
"You are thieves! You are stealing yourselves from your rightful owners! This is a betrayal of the city's laws!"
Amara looked at him with eyes that carried deep sadness but also an unshakeable strength.
"No human can own another human. No law that says otherwise is legitimate. And if your city's law says we are property, then the law itself is evil, not our resistance."
A moment of tense silence. Then the Eunuch pointed towards the city guards who stood with their weapons.
"Arrest them! Return them to their cages! Use force if necessary!"
But the guards did not move. They looked at the slaves—at the faces they had guarded for years, at the eyes that now carried something they could not ignore: a humanity that could no longer be denied.
The captain of the guards—a middle-aged man named Hasan who had worked in the slave market for twenty years—stepped forward. His voice, when he spoke, carried a deep hesitation.
"They are not attacking anyone. They are just... standing here. Saying they are human."
"They are slaves!" the Eunuch cried desperately. "Property! Wares!"
"No," another voice spoke from the crowd of city residents. A woman—a small shop owner who had lived in Zhardar for years—stepped forward with a trembling courage. "They are human. And I... I am ashamed that it took me so long to admit it."
One by one, other city residents began to speak up. Not all of them—many were still silent, still unsure, still tied to the old system. But enough to show that something had fundamentally changed.
On the balcony of the Merchant Council building, the five Council members stared down at the square with pale faces. They had ordered the guards to stop the rebellion with violence if necessary, but the guards were not moving.
Raheem turned to the other members in desperation.
"We have to do something! If we let this continue, the entire economy will collapse!"
Salma—who had proved to have greater spiritual strength—looked down at the square with a complex expression.
"Perhaps it's too late. Perhaps... perhaps we should have taken the traveler's offer when he gave us the chance."
"It's not too late!" Raheem insisted. "We can call in troops from allied cities. We can—"
But his words stopped when he saw something that made his blood run cold.
Li Yuan was standing in the middle of the square—not among the slaves, not among the city residents, but in the space between the two. His presence, though he said nothing, carried a clear message:
I will not stand in the way of this long-overdue justice.
Raheem looked at Li Yuan with desperate anger.
"This is all your fault! You incited this!"
Li Yuan finally spoke, his voice calm but reaching every corner of the square with perfect clarity.
"I incited nothing. I only reminded them of what they had forgotten: that they are human beings with a dignity that cannot be taken, even by chains."
"The choice to stand up was theirs. The decision about what happens next is also theirs."
He turned to look at the crowd of slaves.
"But I will say this: if anyone tries to use force to return them to chains, they will find that there is a power in this world that does not tolerate systematic cruelty."
The threat was unspoken but clear. And its effect was immediate. Guards who had been considering using force backed away further. Merchants who had been planning to hire mercenaries changed their minds.
Because they had all felt—in the demonstration of the Sky Comprehension—that Li Yuan possessed a power that far exceeded what weapons or numbers could counter.
The night continued with heavy tension. But there was no violence. No attack. Just a silent confrontation between two different visions of the world.
And slowly, as dawn approached, decisions began to be made.
Captain Hasan—the man who had guarded slaves for twenty years—laid down his weapon.
"I will not force them back," he said in a tired but final voice. "If that makes me a traitor, then so be it. But I can no longer pretend that what we are doing here is right."
Other guards, one by one, followed his lead.
And on the balcony, the Merchant Council—facing the reality that their system had collapsed not due to violence but due to a collective refusal to participate—made a decision they never imagined they would have to make.
"Free them," Salma said in a voice filled with exhaustion and perhaps a little redemption. "Announce that the slave trade in Zhardar is over. Effective immediately."
Raheem looked at her in disbelief.
"Are you insane? This will ruin us!"
"We are already ruined," Salma replied with brutal simplicity. "It's just a question of whether we will be ruined with blood on our hands or with a chance to build something different."
And with that decision—not because they had suddenly become good people, but because they realized the alternative was total destruction—the Merchant Council announced the end of the slave trade in Zhardar.
The sun rose over a city that had been changed forever.
And Li Yuan, who had stood as a silent witness through the long night, finally smiled—a smile that carried deep satisfaction.
They did it themselves, he mused with quiet pride. I only provided the opportunity. They were the ones who seized their freedom.
The journey in Zhardar had ended.
But the story of what happened here would spread—to other cities, to other kingdoms, to every place where slavery was still considered normal.
And perhaps—just perhaps—the spark lit here would grow into a fire that would change the entire region.
But that was a story for another day.
For now, Li Yuan turned and began to walk out of Zhardar, leaving the free city behind him.