The busy port town of Dalian was simultaneously a completely new experience and something within his expectations. Lao Chen had been to a grand total of three human settlements in his life. The Village, Gold Stone City, and now the port town. With only numerous stories to sate the appetite of the outside world, Lao Chen remained unaware of many things.

For instance, this was the first time he had ever seen boats or any aquatic vessel for that matter. Oppressively enormous cargo-ships lined the lake’s coast, packed with wooden crates and boxes of all sorts of goods.

On the port, hundreds of people flitted around carrying heavy crates transporting goods to and fro the various ships. Among these workers, Lao Chen noticed, were dark-skinned men with short-cut hair carrying burdens much larger than their paler counterparts, though they also seemed to have large iron balls chained to their legs inhibiting their full efficiency.

Lao Chen’s eyebrows furrowed. “Why are they chained that way?” He murmured under his breath. The workers conducted themselves with mechanic efficiency belying their ragged states. It was nonetheless fascinating to Lao Chen.

“This town seems profoundly boring,” Lin-Lin yawned. “What is so fascinating to you, father?”

“I’ve never seen this place before. Isn’t that fascinating enough?” Lao Chen retorted indignantly.

“But there’s nothing interesting to see, here.”

Lao Chen approached the workers to take a better look at them. Shrugging, he decided to play a part in the work, grabbing a crate and following the line of workers.

Lin-Lin looked at his father incredulously. “Are you serious? What are you gaining from this?”

“What is there to gain?”

Carrying several crates at once, Lao Chen took a spot in the line, shocking the surrounding workers as he carried his burden with no issue at all.

For half an hour, they loaded the ships until their inevitable break, in which the workers congregated on one spot to rest. Lao Chen joined them.

“My respects, elder,” One of the black men, a burly man with checkered bald-spots on his short hair, spoke in an overly-enunciated accent. Lao Chen laughed.

“I’d have thought that you youngins would outstrip me in strength!” He replied, causing the workers to break into a laughing fit.

“We can hardly to compare to a hidden dragon like you,” a native worker retorted. “Why aren’t you in a sect or in the army?”

Lao Chen waved his hands. “I’m just a passing traveler heading west.”

“An adventurer? You must have seen a lot in your days!”

Lao Chen chuckled ruefully. “Barely anything, actually. I began my journey along with my daughter a month ago-… come to think of it, where is she?” Lao Chen looked around to see where she was, then shrugged. “She can handle herself.”

“Tell us, elder! What is your cultivation level?”

Lao Chen hummed thoughtfully.

“I’m a Dao Seeker,” he replied, causing the party of workers to break into another fit of laughter.

“He’s invincible, this one!” Another black man laughed.

“I wouldn’t put it past him, this crazy old man!”

Lao Chen laughed along, expecting this outcome. With a perceptive glance, he noticed something about the black dock-workers. Patterned scars covered their forearms before crawling up to their necks underneath their sleeves. All the black workers had these patterned scars, but what was really interesting was the energy it emanated.

“What are those scars if you don’t mind me asking,” Lao Chen ventured, looking at one of the black men.

He puffed his chest with pride, knocking on his chest a couple of times. “These are the Wau’a! The symbol of Kawa strength!”

Lao Chen hummed. “That makes you a native of Kawa…” He surmised, to which they all replied with a simultaneous grunt.

“What are you all doing so far from home?” Lao Chen asked, trying to confirm his fears.

One of them looked down before replying. “We are slaves.”

Lao Chen grimaced, but in reply, one of the native dock-workers waved their hands. “We didn’t enslave them. They were passed along from the Wichuan Province through the lake. They’re the property of our master Wang Gen.”

The black men looked down with forlorn expressions. “Now, and until we are passed along to our next owners.”

“Why don’t you break free?” He asked.

One pushed his hand forward, showing his palm. He had long, but level and thick hair that gave his head the impression of a pitch-black globe. His hair was much longer than the others’. On it was a beautifully patterned rune. “These prevent us from using ma. We cannot break our chains and flee in our current states, and there is not a single state in the entire Orient that would not enslave us once again…”

“Huh… Give me your hand. Perhaps I can help,” Lao Chen proposed. The man was reluctant, but eventually gave in and approached him.

Concentrating deeply, Lao Chen felt the rune and the way the Qi seeped into his body, restraining him. “Wouldn’t it be more cost effective to cripple your dantian?” He muttered.

The man shook his head. “We do not possess dantians.”

Lao Chen’s eyes widened as he used his spiritual sense to scan the inside of the man. His stomach did not contain a dantian. Rather, the energy in his body was in his blood. It was not Qi, but something different and possessed entirely different properties to Qi. Something much more bestial…

The Qi in his body was not his own. The rune pumped Qi from the surrounding air into his body, stopping the energy, the ma from circulating to its full efficiency.

The marking on his hand was only the tip of the iceberg. There existed several of them inside his body.

“What’s your name, son?” Lao Chen asked.

The long-haired boy replied, “My name is Aro.”

“I can dispel this rune, Aro,” Lao Chen replied in a deadly serious tone of voice. Aro snorted.

“Very funny, old man. We’ve entertained your jokes far enough. Please don’t use my bondage as material for your comedy,” Aro tried to snatch his hand back, snorting in dissatisfaction, but Lao Chen’s hold on it was strong.

“Do you wish for freedom?” Lao Chen asked. Aro looked at him with a steely gaze, but in a single moment of vulnerability, he gave a weak nod.

Lao Chen invaded Aro’s rune with his Qi, frying it from the inside until it could no longer repair itself.

“Gah!” Aro snatched his hand back and itched all over his body. “What was that, old man?!”

The gathering began to laugh even louder as Aro wore an indignant expression.

Lao Chen simply waited, a smug grin on his face.

At that moment, a foghorn sounded, alarming every dockworker in the vicinity.

“What’s that?” Lao Chen asked.

“The warhorn,” replied a native. “The Nobles are coming.”

Aro stood up, giving Lao Chen a long look. “Travelers and workers aren’t expected to fight, but if you want to put your money where your mouth is, Dao Seeker…” He suggested as he turned around to head towards the barracks.

Lao Chen furrowed his eyebrows. “The nobles are attacking? Why could that possibly be?”

Looking around discretely, Lao Chen silently flew up into the sky, unnoticed by all. Far out in the outskirts of the city, an army a couple thousand strong stood, ready to raze the city down to the ground.

“Why would nobles want this?”

On the ground, thousands of people dressed in light armor and improvised weapons stood behind a certain young man exuding an aura of disregard and superiority. He didn’t even have to ask to know that the man was a young master, and most likely, Young Master Wang Gen, the slaver.

As Lao Chen understood that the nobles were the aggressors in this instance, he flew towards them to have a better look.

A man on a horse rode around the front lines, waxing poetic on a sinful revolution and the greed of the common people.

“The man!” the horseman shouted “who is willing to plunder wealth from the large cities, food from the stomachs of your mothers and daughters is within this port town! The man who thinks ignorant country hicks are more worthy of a good life than us is within this port town! What say you, army?!”

“KILL!” The unanimous reply disconcerted Lao Chen more than he was willing to admit. Rolling his eyes, he gestured a dozen times in the span of a second, opening a large rift overhead.

Landing just before the army, Lao Chen channeled his Dao, putting all the warriors to sleep. The remaining horseman stared at him, completely befuddled.

"Let's do this in my realm, shall we?" Lao Chen smiled smugly, putting him, too, to sleep.

And in his sleep, he sat comfortably on a chair, sipping tea as Lao Chen sat right opposite him.

"How are you doing, cousin?" Lao Chen laughed. The horseman laughed too.

"Oh, you know how it goes, cousin! Currently making a killing destroying this country-bumpkin town, a small-time shipping port, can you believe that?!" He laughed. Lao Chen laughed too.

"Why is that necessary?"

"Oh, you know," he smiled. "Some renegade young master decided to kill his own father and a whole lot of nobles so he could take control over all the money and move it as he sees fit. Problem is, he's a populist!"

"Oh, how dreadful," Lao Chen gasped.

"Exactly! Guy thinks he can steal from nobles and survive! What world does he live in? So, I take my men and ride in, six thousand strong, and we destroy them, simple as that!"

"A sound plan for a genius such as yourself cousin!"

"Heheheh... come to think of it, cousin... I can't remember the last time we met..." The horseman's face shifted into confusion. "What's... your name?"

"Uhm... Yi Ming!"

Before he could ask another follow-up question, Lao Chen exited his mind and stood before the thousands of sleeping warriors. Gesturing several times in the blink of an eye, he used a large portion of his Qi teleporting the warriors a hundred li away, rousing them awake right before their send-off.

--

Wang Gen had no idea what just happened. His army was prepared and the enemy was just a few dozen li from the gates, separated by sparse forests. Suddenly, the enemy vanished.

And strangely enough, that was exactly what happened. Their footprints only indicated their marching. Then, they all stopped

That was it. No return prints, nothing. His first assumption was a mass-teleportation spell, but who would have the motive and the means to use one on what was ostensibly six thousand men? Wang didn’t know, but neither did he want to look a gift horse in its mouth. Experts did all sorts of things for whatever reason, and the fact that he had unwittingly charmed such a strong backer was a gift horse.

Yubo and Jari… or whatever their names were, weren’t besides Wang at the moment. They couldn’t provide for him his needs, and it was too vexing to have someone attempt a mockery of it without succeeding.

Closing his eyes, Wang forced himself to sleep, intent on dreaming about that wondrous night.

The dream came. The woman was his perfect match. A thin layer of fat all around her body, just enough to prevent her from looking emaciated, wide hips and large breasts contrasting her thin waist, but her face was truly where his fascination lay.

By all accounts, she was perfect… so perfect, in fact, that Wang couldn’t remember the exact thing that made her so perfect. Her face had been drawn by ‘expert painters’ upon Wang’s request dozens of times, but there was a single thing that they all lacked. That x-factor that separated her from simply another beautiful lady.

In his rage, Wang shook her off of him and began to clobber her, turning her jade-like skin into shredded meat paste. She stopped convulsing and died after several hits.

Endless sorrow washed over him.

“There’s a void in your heart… a deep desire” Sounded an old voice from behind him. Wang turned around to look at the newcomer. An old man with a bald head, wispy white beard, and kind eyes.

“I have never seen you before in my life…” Wang whispered.

“Why do you enslave people?” The old man asked. Wang simply scoffed in reply.

“Why do I do business? What’s wrong with that?”

“You are denying people their freedom. Is that not an evil?”

Wang replied flatly. “It’s not my fault that they are enslaved. I didn’t enslave them, but even if I did, Kawans rake in money in spades. Why should I feel bad about that?”

The old man sighed. “Greed leads you astray… and so does lust, from what I've seen.”

Wang stood up indignantly, glaring at the old man. “Greed? What do you know about greed?! I am the enemy of greed, you old bastard! I killed my father in his sleep for being an embezzler, I assassinated five noble scions for being a part of that! Can’t you see, I’m letting the people live lives not governed by these greedy bastards!”

The old man frowned. “Does that justify taking the freedom of so many people?”

“You’re not listening, old man! We need the money! Once the Kawans are shipped off, we can afford so many things! Weapons, mercenaries, livestock, food! These subhumans are our key to prosperity!”

“Subhuman?”

Wang laughed. “You’re a sentimental one, aren’t you, huh? Always thinks that there can’t be any losers! Well, surprise, life’s a zero-sum-game! One winner and one loser!”

The old man smiled, "You talk about real life, but you don't realize that this is a dream? Everything is in your power here, and what stops you from affixing the reality in your dreams to true reality?"

"Reality, that's what! It doesn't work that way. I can't think of any way these poor sobs could ever survive without me and my willingness to do wrong! I'm a hero, goddammit! I can't afford to be soft when these people need me!"

The old man persisted. "Please. At least try to imagine it! Where there's a will-"

"Shut your goddamn mouth, you old geezer! I'm selling them, and there's nothing you can do about that!"

“Do you realize what you are putting these people through?! They will never be able to be themselves! They won’t be able to govern their lives, and it’s all because you desired money so much, you couldn’t see past the means you’ve used! The ends don’t justify the perpetual suffering of all these people you claim to own!”

Wang scoffed. “You think you can just talk me into letting all my slaves free?”

“I thought I could… but I think experiencing what they have experienced will change your mind,” The old man flicked his hands, and the world around them transformed.

“Dreams are magical things. They make the whole night of your sleep feel like a few seconds or minutes, but did you know that the reverse is also true?”

Wang was inside the bottom deck of a ship, with hundreds of people just like him, tied and listless.

The old man stood before him, glaring. “A decade of bondage. It will accompany the good and the bad, and you will sympathize once this is over.”

And with that, the old man disappeared. Wang tried to shake the shackles off of him but failed.

Wang’s decade of bondage had begun.

Being sold at an auction.

Being whipped into submission when shirking his duties.

Watching his compatriots live and die at the mercy of cruel masters.

Being used for all sorts of depraved acts without his consent, reduced to an unthinking doll. The torture was all too much for him, and by the first year, he had forfeited.

He got caught attempting to run away, and as punishment, his lover is tortured to death right in front of him, her screams still echoing in his mind. That was it. He cracked.

The remaining nine, he spent aimlessly following orders and suffering with happy compliance, unable to imagine any other way of living.

On the tenth year, the old man returned. Minutes before first light, he was just tilling the fields when he saw his familiar wooden slippers, his immaculate white robes, and his wispy beard.

“Wang Gen. Your time is up.”

Wang Gen ripped his gaze from the soil and looked hopefully at the old man.

“I hope you do remember your own name,” he chuckled.

“T-t-this… this was always a dream, right? I am Wang Gen, right?! The master of Dalian?!”

“You could be so much more, Wang Gen… A kind master, and one that looks down on slavery…”

Wang Gen’s face turned ugly when he mentioned slavery. “Never! I’ll never let anyone encounter this suffering! Not on my life!”

The old man smiled as he turned to watch the sunrise. “Dawn is finally upon you. Wake up.”

Wang Gen finally did, and for the first time in what he perceived was ten years, he no longer had shackles.