The Poison Serpent Sect's underlings showed no mercy to Iron Bull Village.
They killed the elderly and infants, robbed the little the village had, abused the villagers, and enslaved the able-bodied.
Tian Fang, a young man full of energy, was inevitably taken.
For six years, Tian Fang and other captured slaves toiled under the Poison Serpent Sect.
From farming to carrying rocks, mining precious minerals, and finally extracting Qi Stones, Tian Fang endured all the relentless pain and suffering.
Among his family of four, he was the only one left.
His poor mother was abused to death by the sect's minions. Tian Fang knew she tried her best to hold on for her children.
His sisters met similar fates, each, however, choosing suicide to escape their misery.
Tian Fang witnessed it all but was powerless to intervene.
He had once considered ending his life, like his sisters, but in the end, he couldn't.
Killing himself, he felt, would let their tormentors off too easily. Instead, he clung to life, determined to endure.
While he couldn't confront the Poison Serpent Sect, Tian Fang found ways to deal with fellow slaves who had worsened his family's suffering.
Among them were people he once saw as fatherly or brotherly figures.
Now, they were all dead, killed by whatever means he could find.
"The Poison Serpent Sect is still too powerful for me to face with my current strength, which barely compares to their underlings," he thought. "But my freedom is approaching. The moment I rid myself of this gu worm, I'll be truly free to act."
Despite his origins on Earth, Tian Fang felt a deep attachment to this world.
At times, he wondered if he had truly transmigrated or merely awakened memories from a past life.
In the end, he accepted both sides of himself.
He was Tian Fang from Earth, who died of cancer, and Tian Fang from Jianghu, who perished from a severe cold.
Both identities coexisted within him.
He was, and always would be, Tian Fang
Absorbing the Qi Stone was a small interlude for Tian Fang.
Of course, he didn't dare do this too often, as it might attract the attention of the powerful overseers watching the slaves.
It wasn't that Tian Fang feared them.
Although some of the overseers were second-rate, a stage higher than him, he was confident in his skill to confront them.
What restricted his actions, however, was the Gu worm inside him.
One reason Tian Fang was so skinny wasn't just the lack of food but the Gu worm's drain on his body.
Not only did it poison him, but it also absorbed his life force. This was the same for every slave under the Poison Serpent Sect.
Tian Fang had no way of removing the worm from his body. Every half month, he had to take an antidote from the sect to suppress the Gu worm, preventing it from devouring him or poisoning him to death.
To maintain control over the slaves, the Poison Serpent Sect made every new slave feel the terror of the Gu worm to eliminate any thoughts of escape.
To reinforce the fear, they sometimes punished slaves by withholding the antidote, ensuring the worm took its toll.
Tian Fang had witnessed the miserable deaths of those who suffered in this way and had developed a deep fear of the Gu worm.
Unfortunately, he had no means of removing it from his body—at least not yet.
In fact, the antidote provided by the Poison Serpent Sect was actually a poison designed to weaken the Gu worm while also serving as sustenance to prevent it from going berserk and draining the slaves of their blood.
After several experiments, Tian Fang discovered that if he could ingest a large amount of the "antidote" at once, the Gu worm in him would be neutralised.
Unfortunately, since he knew this, the Poison Serpent Sect did too.
The fact that they only gave the antidote twice a month, and only when the Gu worm was close to acting up, was proof of this.
The sect's strategy was to prevent the slaves from saving the antidote to accumulate it. Because by the time they could gather enough, they'd already be dead.
Despite this, Tian Fang still felt his freedom was drawing closer.
While the other slaves might not have noticed, he had.
The Poison Serpent Sect seemed to be facing an imminent crisis.
Tian Fang wasn't sure, but it felt like they'd be attacked soon.
He had observed the increasing number of martial artists around the mine, the urgency the manager imposed on the slaves to mine faster, and other subtle signs.
Perhaps the Poison Serpent Sect had shot themselves in the foot by mining precious resources like Qi Stones, which were crucial for higher-level martial artists.
Though Tian Fang didn't believe he'd be safe from the coming conflict, he intended to use it as an opportunity to escape.
In the four months since he was transferred to this mine, Tian Fang had memorised the location of the Poison Serpent Sect's storage.
Should the sect be attacked, that would be his first destination.
Just as Tian Fang considered heading to another location in the mine, the sound of screams echoed through the tunnels.