The King Of Warriors novel (Jared Chance) novel Chapter 6327

The northern mine sat at the far northern edge of the Fifteenth Firmament, buried inside a desolate vale.

The darkness before dawn pressed over the entire vale.

The stars had gone dim, and the moon was smothered behind a sheet of clouds.

The air carried a cold, damp bite.

Frost spread across the ground, catching what little light there was and flashing silver-white.

Towering cliffs rose on both sides of the vale.

They stood bare and stripped clean, not a blade of grass growing anywhere on them.

A gigantic pit had been carved into the valley floor.

It stretched hundreds of yards across and hundreds of yards deep, like some enormous mouth thrown open at the sky.

The walls of the pit were riddled with mine tunnels.

Each one was black clear through, the bottom nowhere in sight. Every so often, wind pushed out from inside, carrying the mixed stench of rot and dust.

A screen of light had been set around the mine.

That was the Tribunal's Saintlight Ward.

Dense layers of sigils crawled across the screen of light.

In the darkness, they flickered like countless eyes, watchful and alert.

Outside the screen of light, celestial cultivators were out on patrol duty.

Every 100 yards, there was a squad. Ten men to each one, their cuirasses bright, their spears sharp.

Their footsteps landed in perfect unison.

In the stillness of the night, the sound carried with unnerving clarity.

At the center of the mine stood the stone hall.

That was the captain of the guard's post.

The stone hall had been built from black rock.

Square and severe, it had no windows, only a single iron door.

Two celestial cultivators in the True Immortal Realm Level Four stood at the doorway of the stone hall.

One on the left. One on the right. They might as well have been stone statues.

They wore golden cuirasses, with longswords hanging at their waists.

Their eyes swept the surroundings like hawks.

Inside the mine, hundreds of ragged cultivators were working.

Some of them had already been at it the entire night.

Their eyes were webbed with blood, and their faces had gone as pale as paper.

Every one of them wore black chains on their bodies—soul-shackles.

Those chains had been forged from ancient cold iron.

Sealing sigils covered them from end to end. They were arcane implements made specifically to suppress the spirit.

Once the chains locked on, spiritual power stopped moving.

After that, a person could only be butchered at someone else's convenience.

One end of each chain was fastened to a prisoner's wrists and ankles.

The other end was fixed to iron stakes at the cave mouths, leaving them able to move only within a set range.

Their clothes hung off them in tatters.

Underneath, their bodies were all jutting bone and skin.

Some carried pickaxes and hacked at the ore, each blow against the rock letting out a dull, heavy thud.

Some shoved ore carts through the mine, the loads so heavy the straps had carved deep bloody grooves into their shoulders.

Some sorted the stones by hand, their palms and fingers sliced open by the sharp edges until flesh and blood blurred together.

No one said a word.

The only sounds were picks striking rock, mine carts rolling with a drawn-out creak, and, every now and then, a cough or a low groan drifting through the dark.

Dust hung in the air with the stink of blood and sour sweat mixed into it so thick it turned the stomach.

A young cultivator dropped to the ground.

His eyes were shut tight.

His face had gone paper-white, and his cracked lips had split and bled.

He had gone three days without rest.

The chains around him had cinched so hard he could barely draw breath.

"Get up!" A celestial cultivator strode over and drove a kick into his waist. "Quit playing dead!"

The young cultivator let out a muffled grunt and struggled to push himself up, but his body no longer answered him.

He collapsed again.

His forehead smashed against the rock, and blood poured out at once.

"Trash!" The celestial cultivator yanked the whip from his waist and lashed it across the young cultivator's back.

Barbs lined the whip.

One strike tore the skin open and ripped the flesh underneath.

The young cultivator clamped his teeth together and didn't make a sound.

He was used to it by now.

In this place, crying out only brought more lashes.

There were no tears in his eyes.

Only emptiness.

The kind that came after torment had been dragged so far that even pain no longer seemed to reach him.

Hadrian lay in ambush behind the hillock outside the mine with 500 beast-race warriors.

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