More than a thousand miles south of the Gu Yuan Tribe, several thousand slaves were bustling around on the low rolling hills. These men, women, elderly and young, looked extremely gaunt, and their movements suggested the living dead due to the long hours of grueling labor they'd endured.
Above the undulating hills, tribesmen stood on guard, staring unblinkingly at the working slaves. On the cliffside, dozens of desiccated bodies swayed in the wind, seemingly a grim reminder to those below against attempting to escape.
The mountains echoed incessantly with the clanging of mining tools.
The once uneven landscape had been pierced with numerous mines, and thousands of slaves, burdened with bamboo baskets, trudged out of them. They dumped the rubble from the baskets onto a designated patch of land, immediately to be ransacked by other slaves in search of any exposed Elemental Stones).
