A few hours prior to Byeon Min-Hee swallowing the pill.
[Congratulations host on successfully using the
As his focus was elsewhere, primarily on Byeon Min-Hee's gorgeous body which glistened like a crystal as the light in the room reflected on the beads of sweat she had produced, he saw the screen popping up but chose to ignore it.
'Put that away for now. I'll check it out later.'
[Understood.]
Only after everything was over, while he was drinking a glass of water, he told the system to show the pop-up screen he had momentarily tossed to the side.
'...the system will reward you,' he read, making a face of satisfaction at the mention of a reward.
He already knew that the system would sometimes reward him depending on certain accomplishments that it deemed worthy.
'I didn't think my first reward would come this soon,' he thought as he checked out the reward it had mentioned.
[Inventory: Lesser Rebirth Pill]
Not only did it place the reward in his inventory for easy access but the information about the pill had already been transferred into his brain.
Just by looking at it, he knew how it was meant to be used as if he was the one who had made the pill.
'Since I already have a system to upgrade my cultivation level and techniques, I don't really need a pill to boost my spiritual roots. I also don't have one at the moment so it would just be a waste for me to use it.'
He wondered if the system had given him that pill specifically because it knew what would be useful to Yi Tian at the moment.
'Are you normally this generous and useful with your rewards or is this just a coincidence and beginner's luck on my first one?' he asked the system.
No response.
After being aired by the system, that was when he handed the glass of water to Byeon Min-Hee who was panting on the bed.
After that was when he told her the truth, she cried her heart out, he told her the truth again, she got angry, he lied here and there, she got down on her knees and swore loyalty to him, and finally after all that, he took the pill out of his inventory and handed it to Byeon Min-Hee.
As soon as he saw the pill and understood its function, he had already concluded what he was going to do with it.
It was for Byeon Min-Hee to use.
Wasn't it a waste to give a valuable pill that has never existed before in the world to someone else?
No.
Not only was Byeon Min-Hee already his slave bonded to him for all of eternity but if the day ever came that she wanted to stop serving him as a master, Yi Tian could simply change tactics and begin commanding her around without a single consideration for her feelings.
That meant that no matter what, it wouldn't be a waste of a pill to hand it over to her.
The stronger the people under him, the stronger Yi Tian would be.
Back to the present.
Yi Tian wasn't done for the day.
It was still bright out and there were plenty of hours left before the moon started announcing its presence to Qiao City.
Already at the red light district, he might as well kill two birds with a single stone.
There's a place in the district that every customer was aware of.
It was a popular place but Yi Tian had never been there before because he never felt the need to.
But now seemed like the perfect time to pop that cherry.
What is this place?
Underneath a building that blended in naturally with the rest of the district existed a large area that had tons of lights set up around the place to keep the space illuminated.
It was an area where shady business was conducted.
The business itself wasn't illegal but it was heavily frowned upon by society so it was decided that it was best to keep the transactions as hidden from the public's eyes as much as possible.
Due to the unofficial nature of the place, it had a lot of names but most people simply referred to it as — the slave center.
Wearing a mask and dressed in new clothes which included a hood that covered his entire head, Yi Tian made it hard for people to recognize him.
Other people at the slave center were also wearing masks to hide their identities so he wasn't worried about sticking out like a sore thumb.
Even if the purchases they made at this place were legal, there still existed a stigma against people who purchased slaves.
That stigma is even worse when it comes to slaves in a place like this.
There's a reason why the area was located in the red light district.
These slaves were sex slaves.
* * *
"All ten of them? Are you sure?" the slave merchant licked his lips as he asked.
Yi Tian was at a store, which was just a fancier way to call the large tent which housed numerous metal cages.
There were tons of these "stores" at the slave center.
Obviously, all of them sold one product, slaves.
However, not every store shares the same type of product or quality.
Some stores exclusively sold men, some sold only women, and others sold a mix.
Some stores only sold skinny slaves, other stores only sold large ones.
One store even specialized in slaves that were over seven feet tall.
A few stores at the center also had trade routes outside the city, stretching out far beyond the country so the slaves they sold were sometimes foreigners stolen from other lands.
Yi Tian wasn't particularly looking for a specific type of slave.
He just needed women so he chose one that had a random assortment of them.
Although the hooded robe the customer who entered his store was wearing looked extremely shabby and cheap, the merchant knew that the center wasn't a place to judge someone by their appearance.
Looks can be deceiving, especially in a place where people want to keep their identities a secret.
Treating the tall customer with the utmost respect, the merchant had made the correct decision because the customer pointed at ten slaves kept inside cages and said, "The ones I pointed at, I want them."
On an extremely good day which only came once a month, the merchant would be able to sell a total of maybe five slaves.
That's how expensive the ownership of a human life costs.
Only the truly rich people could splurge on slaves whenever they desired and since there were other stores at the center with a better selection that those rich customers would frequent, this particular merchant never expected to be blessed with a mass amount of wealth in a single day.
His store was truly just a run-of-the-mill place.
As he took the bag of gold coins from Yi Tian and counted them in his head, he wondered if he had just used up all of his luck for the year.
'Maybe I'll be struck by lightning tomorrow.'
One slave at a time, he pulled them out of their cage and transferred the ownership of the slave arrays.
These slave arrays were etched onto the slaves' bodies and they responded to a separate array that was engraved onto bracelets that the slave center sold to customers.
The bracelet the slave arrays responded to could be transferred from one bracelet to another so that was what the merchant was doing.
He was handing the ownership of the arrays to Yi Tian's bracelet.
With it on, he could make the slaves feel an excruciating amount of pain with a single thought.
These arrays weren't capable of commanding the slaves to do anything like a soul-binding contract but just the ability to make them feel pain was enough to keep the slaves in check.
Once the tenth and final array was handed over to him, Yi Tian brought the ten women out into the real world.
None of them knew what the future had in store for them.
But at least they were out of that gloomy place full of artificial light.
For some of these women, the sunlight they were seeing now was the first sunlight they'd seen in months.
For the "lucky" few, it had only been a few weeks since they were placed into those cages.
Before Yi Tian had left for the slave center, he had rented out a building in the red-light district.
The building's purpose was that it was a place for people to bring their mistresses and affair partners.
Without the fear of getting exposed, you could cheat on your spouse or partner in private.
Yi Tian had other purposes for the building.
Guiding the women inside the building, he placed each woman into their own room, isolating them from the others.
The infidelity building was a spacious one and each room was meant to be rented out separately but Yi Tian simply rented out the entire building.
Changing out of his shabby robes, he threw on a pair of pants while leaving his torso shirtless.
Entering the first room, the slave who had been nervously waiting inside, confused about the purpose of the room as well as why she was in it alone, saw the face behind the mask of her new owner for the first time.
She started to blush.
'I won,' she smiled.
What did she mean by that?
In those cages where the only entertainment you have is your fellow slaves, you discuss things and eventually come to a consensus.
One consensus was that the best-case scenario for them was that their owner was a rich and good-looking person.
Nobody wanted to be a slave but if they were going to be one anyway, they would rather serve a pretty face every night than a face that not even a mother could love.
Thus in a way, the slave who stared at Yi Tian's face while blushing thought that she had just won the lottery, similar to the merchant who had sold her to Yi Tian.
'Activate <Soul-Snatcher Method of Death>.'