After four hundred years of service, you shall be granted your freedom.

The middle-aged man called Lao Wang finally woke up leisurely from his daze, rubbing his sleepy eyes.

"Ah? More people arrived so soon?"

"How long did I sleep?"

Old Ghost Li glanced at him, his tone carrying a casualness that showed he could not be bothered to care.

"Who remembers that."

"Probably seven or eight years."

Lao Wang nodded, seemingly having no concept of this amount of time. He stretched his back, his bones letting out a series of crisp pops, before finally turning his gaze to Su Ji and the other two.

Upon looking, the laziness on his face instantly turned into a bit of surprise.

"No way, which lower realm is so weak that people ascend at the Golden Core stage? This is my first time seeing this."

Hearing this, Old Ghost Li also sighed, a visible look of bad luck on his face.

"Terrible luck, not even a single Nascent Soul."

Lao Wang smacked his lips.

"Where should we send them?"

"The third mining area, I suppose."

Old Ghost Li casually decided the fate of the three. His tone was like he was distributing three pieces of worthless cargo.

Hearing this, Lao Wang took out three rings made entirely of an unknown metal from his storage ring.

The surfaces of the rings were branded with complex and obscure runes, emitting a cold and sinister aura.

"These are Spirit-Locking Rings."

Lao Wang's voice still had that half-asleep tone.

"Put them on yourselves."

He tossed them casually, and the three rings traced three arcs in the air, landing precisely at the feet of Su Ji and the others with three clanking sounds.

Su Ji bent down and picked up the ring at his feet.

It felt cold to the touch, and that aura tried to drill into his body through his fingertips.

However, Su Ji felt the overbearing spiritual energy of the Desolate Meteor Fallen Dragon Art automatically circulating, preparing to shatter it.

He quickly stopped this action.

Right now, he could not show anything special.

Then, without hesitation, he cleanly slipped the Spirit-Locking Ring onto his wrist.

The size was neither too big nor too small; it fit perfectly.

But the other two were frozen in place at this moment, violent struggle flickering in their eyes.

The young genius who had been slapped half to death was currently being supported by his companion. He looked at the Spirit-Locking Ring on the ground, and his originally handsome face was now filled only with humiliation and unwillingness.

They were not fools.

They both knew clearly that once they put on this so-called Spirit-Locking Ring, it meant completely becoming slaves. Their proud cultivation would be thoroughly sealed, and for the rest of their lives, they could only be at the mercy of others.

The young genius clenched his fists tightly, his knuckles cracking from the force. His cracked eighth-grade Golden Core seemed to sense its master's unyielding spirit and actually erupted with a faint light once again.

"I..."

He was just about to say something.

Old Ghost Li's plain, almost indifferent voice sounded again.

"Do not waste my time."

Just six simple words, yet they contained an irresistible oppressive might.

The tiny spark of resistance that had just ignited in the young genius was instantly extinguished by this sentence.

The unwillingness on his face ultimately turned into deathly ashes.

He loosened his clenched fists, trembled, bent down, and picked up the Spirit-Locking Ring on the ground.

A moment later, both he and his companion put on the shackles that symbolized slavery.

The runes on the Spirit-Locking Rings flashed, and the spiritual energy fluctuations in their bodies were instantly suppressed to an extremely weak level.

Old Ghost Li finally nodded in satisfaction.

His gaze casually swept over Su Ji, and for the first time, a ripple appeared in his eyes.

"It is quite rare to see a fellow as tactful as you."

"A barking dog, I am not afraid of it biting."

"But a dog that does not bark, I am somewhat afraid of."

He looked at Su Ji, then at the other two ashen-faced unfortunate souls, as if pondering something.

"Forget it, a mere Golden Core wearing a Spirit-Locking Ring, what kind of waves could he possibly make?"

Ultimately, he waved his hand at Lao Wang.

Lao Wang casually waved at Su Ji and the other two, gesturing for them to follow.

The eighth-grade Golden Core genius who had been slapped half to death was being supported by his companion. The proud bones that could suppress an era were long gone from his face, leaving only deathly despair.

The two followed behind Lao Wang mechanically, like walking corpses.

Su Ji, however, still maintained his ordinary appearance. He kept his head down, showing no emotion, and silently followed at the very back.

He could feel the Spirit-Locking Ring on his wrist continuously emitting a cold and sinister aura, attempting to drill into his meridians and seal his sea of Qi.

The overbearing spiritual energy of the Desolate Meteor Fallen Dragon Art circulated automatically, easily blocking that cold aura on the outside.

But Su Ji did not let his spiritual energy shatter it.

He was currently just a newly sorted, lowest-grade piece of cargo.

When the three followed Lao Wang out of the range of the white jade platform...

The surrounding scenery suddenly changed.

The sea of clouds, fairy mountains, and crying cranes... everything silently shattered like an illusion.

Replacing it was a lifeless, grayish-white wasteland stretching to the end of their vision.

The sky was gray, and the ground was gray.

There was no sun and no moon, only a thick layer of clouds emitting a dismal light, pressing heavily above their heads.

The earth beneath their feet was dry and cracked, with hideous ravines crisscrossing, looking like ugly scars left after the earth was torn apart.

Fierce winds swept up gravel, howling past and scraping against their faces, bringing a wave of fine, stinging pain.

Aside from the sound of the wind, there were no other sounds in this world.

Deathly still and oppressive.

In Su Ji's mind, Su Jiu's somewhat surprised voice sounded.

"What sinister intentions..."

"The human heart is inherently sinister..."

Su Ji silently retorted in his heart, but his footsteps did not pause in the slightest.

He could feel that as they went deeper into this wasteland, the cold aura from the Spirit-Locking Ring on his wrist became denser, even beginning to erode his spiritual power.

This thing not only locked up spiritual energy but also carried a weakening aura.

The eighth-grade Golden Core genius had not walked far before he stumbled and fell to the ground again. His companion simply could not pull him up.

"Trash."

Walking at the very front, Lao Wang did not even turn his head, merely spitting at him impatiently.

He stopped in his tracks, turned around, walked up to the two of them, and then kicked the companion.

"Cannot help him up?"

"Then drag him."

The companion let out a muffled groan from the kick, but did not dare show the slightest bit of complaint on his face. He could only grit his teeth and drag his companion like a dead dog, stumbling forward.

It was unknown how long they walked.

At the end of the horizon, something different finally appeared.

It was an unimaginably massive deep pit, like an ugly scar branded onto this wasteland.

At the edge of the deep pit, incredibly crude shacks were built, crooked and leaning.

Countless tiny figures, like ants, moved numbly within the deep pit and between the shacks.

The clinking and clanking sounds of hammering drifted over from afar.

The air was filled with a suffocating scent mixed with despair and numbness.

This was the third mining area.

Lao Wang led the three of them straight toward one of the slightly larger shacks.

At the entrance of the shack sat an old man, also dressed in gray cloth. He was holding a black stone up to the dismal light of the sky, turning it over and over in his hands as if studying something.

Old Zhao, I brought some people over.

Three people, the annual quota goes up by one percent.

Lao Wang's drowsy voice broke the silence of the area.

The old man called Old Zhao finally shifted his gaze from the stone and slowly raised his head.

His face was heavily lined with deep wrinkles, and his cloudy eyes swept over Su Ji and the other two.

When his gaze paused on the two disheveled Golden Core cultivators, his brows instantly knitted together.

Lao Wang, are you messing with me?

Old Zhao's voice was hoarse, laced with suppressed anger.

What era is it? How are there still people ascending at the Golden Core realm?

For these three useless dregs, you're making me raise the annual quota?

Lao Wang chuckled, his face the picture of indifference.

It's the higher-ups' orders. It's calculated by head count.

I'm just an errand boy, so yelling at me is useless.

He waved his hand and turned to leave.

If there's nothing else, I'll be heading back.

You three work hard too.

Work for a full four hundred years, and your freedom will be returned to you.

Old Zhao looked at Lao Wang's thick-skinned, indifferent demeanor, and ultimately could only let out a helpless sigh.

Fine, I'll take them.