LeeHan still lay on the cold floor, his body shivering and his breath coming in ragged gasps. He covered his head with both hands, bracing himself as if waiting for an inevitable blow.
"Please... please spare me! Don't kill me... I will do everything you say. I won't run away again, I promise!"
The terror in his voice was the harvest of years of humiliation. To him, the word 'human' had become synonymous with 'tormentor.'
Hao Chen took a long, deep breath. Without moving from his spot, he kept his voice as gentle as possible.
"Child, calm down. If you don't believe our words, then just take a look outside this hut. We are not going to do anything to you. We saved your life... you fell into the river, do you remember?"
LeeHan's mind began to race. The river... those freezing waves... that suffocating sensation... yes, he had a blurred memory of falling into the fierce current while running in his euphoric state of freedom.
'So, they saved my life?' he thought to himself. 'But why? Why would anyone save a slave? Are their intentions even more sinister? Do they want to heal me just to torture me later? Or perhaps they are preparing to sell me to another Sect?'
Years of slavery had utterly crushed his ability to trust. Behind every act of kindness, he saw a conspiracy.
Hao Chen saw the panic in his eyes and spoke again, "Child, be at peace. We feel you are misunderstanding us. As I said before, just look outside once. This is a different place... this is not the Sect you were living in."
Hao Lin stood quietly in the corner, watching it all. She added softly, "Yes, there is no Sect here. There is only us and our fields."
LeeHan gathered his courage and stood up on trembling knees. He leaned against the wall and staggered toward the small door of the hut. As he pushed it open, he was momentarily blinded by the light.
Outside, there were no black walls, no cruel guards, and no scent of blood. Before him lay only lush green hills, a peaceful flowing river, and the golden glow of the setting sun. The sight was so serene that LeeHan could hardly believe his eyes.
He took a cold breath, but his suspicion had not yet vanished. He turned back toward Hao Chen and asked in a low voice, "This place... where is it? And why did you save me?"
Hao Chen looked at him with a slight smile and said calmly, "Well, child, you don't know why I saved you? Because it is the duty of one human to save another in distress. That is what humanity is."
LeeHan froze. Humanity? Duty? He hadn't heard these words in the last ten years. To him, the world meant only one thing: the strong crushing the weak.
He stammered, "Humanity? But... but I am just a slave. My price is only ten gold coins. Why would anyone waste their time and medicine on me?"
Hao Lin, standing nearby, spoke up with a huff, "Oh, you dummy! No one uses coins like that here. Grandpa saved your life because you were dying. That's it! Now stop asking so many questions and drink this tonic."
LeeHan looked at the bowl and then at the two of them. He couldn't wrap his head around the idea of someone helping another without greed. He slowly sat down on the ground outside the hut. A thousand questions still swirled in his mind—'Are these people really this good? Will no one really come to whip me here?'
Then he remembered he was free, but he felt so helpless that he didn't even know what to do with that freedom. He simply stared at the sky, where birds were soaring, unburdened.
As LeeHan's fearful words left his lips, the silence of the hut was suddenly broken by bursts of laughter. Hao Chen chuckled, stroking his beard, and Hao Lin couldn't contain herself at all.
"Hahaha! You dummy!" Hao Lin said, clutching her stomach. "Sell you? You? With a face like that, no one would take you even for free! And work? There's no 'work' here, just watering the fields and picking herbs with Grandpa. That's the biggest task we have."
Hao Chen's laughter slowly subsided, but the spark remained in his eyes. He looked at LeeHan, who was currently feeling deeply embarrassed by his own childish words. After all, if a young man of twenty or twenty-two speaks with such infantile fear, it would make anyone laugh. But they knew that behind this laughter lay a boy with a horrific past.
"Son," Hao Chen said, steadying his voice, "your words make me laugh, but they also make me sad. It seems you have seen the world only as a slaughterhouse. Here, there is no master, and there is no slave. You can stay here as long as you wish, and when you are satisfied, you are free to leave."
LeeHan stared at them, wide-eyed. He didn't know whether to be angry or relieved. He had never seen anyone laugh at his words like this before; people either beat him or ignored him entirely.
He slowly lowered his head and whispered, "Forgive me... I thought..."
"Oh, stop 'thinking' and go to sleep!" Hao Lin interrupted. "So many high-quality spiritual herbs have gone into your stomach; now sleep like a log for at least eight hours. Understood?"
LeeHan quietly lay back down on the stone bed. Hao Lin's laughing face and Hao Chen's words continued to echo in his mind. For the first time, he felt that maybe—just maybe—this world wasn't exactly what he had seen until now.