"A bloodbath..."

Chu Mu murmured. In his eyes, the drab, yellow mountain of the mine seemed to be veiled in blood.

Although he didn’t know the exact reason... it wasn’t hard to guess.

After all, back when the mine was still relatively peaceful and he was a Guardian there, he had often worried about a rebellion breaking out.

He had read through all sorts of books, and the numerous accounts of past uprisings at the Nanshan Iron Ore confirmed his worries were not unfounded.

And could the Nanshan Iron Ore of today even be compared to what it once was?

In the past, at the Nanshan Iron Ore, they were at least just mining normal iron ore. Any danger to life was largely accidental.

But recently, it was no longer about accidents.

The memory of that day—the hundreds of ice sculptures, the inexplicable chill—was still vivid in his mind.

After all this time, how many more lives had been buried in that sealed-off mining camp?

And how many more would be buried now?

Chu Mu shook his head, unwilling to dwell on it and not caring enough to pay attention.

He retreated into his courtyard and reached out, closing the gate. As it shut, the clamor of the outside world vanished from Chu Mu’s senses.

As if cut off from the world, an inexplicable peace settled over Chu Mu’s heart.

He preferred quiet over commotion.

He had been this way in both his past life and this one.

’This disposition of mine might be a handicap when it comes to dealing with people, but on the path of Cultivation, it should be a perfect fit,’ Chu Mu thought.

’I have patience, and I can endure solitude.’

’Isn’t that what Cultivation is all about?’

The clamor outside continued. Perhaps it was turning into a bloodbath.

In his courtyard, Chu Mu turned a deaf ear to it all, busying himself alone.

Reading, practicing his martial arts.

He processed medicinal herbs and even cleared a small patch of land in the corner of his courtyard, where he planted rice seedlings and some herbs that were easy to grow.

And indeed, just as Chu Mu had expected, a bloodbath had erupted at the Nanshan Iron Ore.

Everyone harbors a bit of wishful thinking. Even in the face of death, people can’t help but hope they’ll be the lucky ones.

In the mining camp of the past, that hope could always exist.

After all, no one was forcing them to their deaths.

But the mining camp of late had utterly crushed that hope.

Those who went in never came out again!

From the bottom of the pits, the black smoke from the daily burning of corpses never ceased!

Once could be a coincidence. But twice? Three times?

Knowing it was a death sentence, who would obediently march to their own execution?

It was so brutal that it wasn’t just the conscripts on Forced Labor who faced certain death; even among the guarding Inspectors, quite a few had deserted over the last half-month.

Though under such a heavy, layered lockdown, their escape attempts only added a few more skeletons to the mining camp.

The sun was just rising, a time that should have been peaceful, but the mining camp was already in absolute chaos.

People have a herd mentality, especially in the early morning when the men on Forced Labor were gathering for work, forming a vast, dense crowd.

During the day, any minor unrest would have likely been suppressed immediately by the Inspectors guarding each mining sector.

But now, with the crowd so vast and dense, chaos from an unknown source was spreading like a virus.

Faced with this sudden chaos, the guarding Inspectors either fled or, on Li Jinghong’s orders, began to suppress and contain the riot.

Although it was the only option, the resulting bloodshed only fueled the chaos, causing it to spread faster.

"Anyone who retreats dies!"

"Hold the line!"

Li Jinghong, leading about a hundred Inspectors, managed to secure the mountain pass leading down to Nanshan Town just in time.

Before them was a sea of rioting laborers, an endless tide of men stretching as far as the eye could see. Li Jinghong and his hastily assembled hundred-odd Inspectors were like a small boat in a raging storm, battered and on the verge of... capsizing at any moment!

But an undeniable truth of any popular uprising is that it needs an instigator—or rather, an agitator.

Followed by a small group of incited, hot-headed followers.

The rest are likely just following the crowd blindly, swept up in the momentum.

In other words, before any large-scale defections from the Official Army, any rebel force born from an uprising is inevitably... a disorganized rabble!

This uprising of the conscripted laborers was no different.

While the Inspectors were mostly commoners themselves, under the organized structure of the Inspection Office, they were a disciplined military force.

They were far from elite, but these hundred-odd organized and disciplined Inspectors, though seemingly on the verge of collapse, held fast to the mountain pass, keeping the vast majority of the rebelling laborers trapped on the mountain.

However, while this pass was the main way down the mountain... it was still just a path.

The mountains stretched on and on. Originally, there were no paths; paths are made by people walking them.

Swept up in the chaos, a man could duck into the mountains and perhaps forge countless new paths.

And so it was with the chaos on the mountain.

While the main body of the riot converged on the mountain pass that Li Jinghong had secured, the chaos also spread elsewhere, with most of the laborers using the confusion to flee in other directions.

Qinghe County was in a mountainous region. To these locals, the deep mountains and dense forests that most people feared were simply where they made their living...

Meanwhile, down below, in the direction of Nanshan Town, hundreds, even thousands of assembled Inspectors charged up the mountain to the sound of roaring commands.

A disorganized rabble facing a well-prepared and heavily armed force.

The process was unclear, but the outcome was certain.

With the arrival of reinforcements, the defensive standoff turned into a bloody and cruel suppression.

"KILL!"

"Kill anyone who dares to resist! No mercy!"

Li Jinghong showed not a shred of pity. The way he looked at the men on Forced Labor, it was as if he wasn’t looking at humans, but at livestock.

Blades flashed and arrows rained down. The iron-fisted suppression became an out-and-out bloodbath!

Especially as the laborers’ initial rush of hot-blooded courage faded, the brutal suppression devolved into a full-blown massacre!

Fleeing, being hunted!

Scenes like this played out all over the mountain.

Rivers of blood flowed, and mutilated corpses littered the ground!

Across the entire mining camp, between the fleeing laborers and the pursuing Inspectors, order completely broke down, step by step.

This spiraling chaos, carried by the laborers fleeing frantically like headless chickens, gradually spread to the place at the very foot of the mountain... Nanshan Town.

"Give it here!"

One of the laborers, who had somehow fled into Nanshan Town, snatched a bamboo basket from a woman’s hands. When she resisted, he smashed her over the head with his pickaxe.

Blood spurted. The woman collapsed to the ground with a THUD, and the laborer immediately began to search her body.

His face alight with glee, the laborer grabbed a handful of Paper Currency and stuffed it into his robes. When he looked out at Nanshan Town again, his eyes burned with a new, crazed greed...

...