The next day, a dull, mournful bell tolled from the direction of the mines.

Chen Ping stepped out of the foot inn and merged into the stream of people pouring from the shack district.

The crowd moved in silence, numb. Most here had long since sold their lives to the mine.

He deliberately slowed his pace, drifting to the tail end of the throng, his eyes scanning the roadside.

Near the slope leading to a massive mining pit, he found his target.

A man wearing a relatively clean blue short jacket, a leather whip coiled at his waist, was lounging against a large boulder, basking in the sun.

He didn’t look particularly vicious. In fact, he seemed somewhat slick, his eyes roaming over the approaching miners as if assessing livestock.

Chen Ping knew the type well.

This was a mine foreman, commonly known as a “Little Overseer.” His job was to take roll call and maintain order at the lowest level.

Chen Ping drifted closer, silent as a shadow.

When the foreman’s gaze swept over him, Chen Ping’s expression remained placid, calm as an ancient well.

The foreman glanced at him. Seeing an unfamiliar face in a decent gray robe—someone who looked more like a tourist than a laborer—he waved his hand impatiently.

“Step aside! Don’t block the way! This isn’t a place for young masters to play sightseeing!”

Chen Ping didn’t leave. Instead, he took a step closer, his voice dropping to a whisper.

He didn’t want to alert anyone else. He couldn’t afford to startle the snake in the grass.

“Manager, sir, I’d like to ask you something.”

As he spoke, his sleeve flickered. A fingernail-sized nugget of gold, concealed by the fabric, was deftly slipped into the foreman’s hand hanging at his side.

The cold metal made the foreman’s fingers twitch. He instinctively clenched his fist.

The impatience on his face evaporated instantly. His small, beady eyes darted around, ensuring no one was watching, before he turned back to Chen Ping with a much softer tone.

“Sir? What is it? Ask away!”

“I’m looking for someone.”

Chen Ping’s voice was low, but his posture shifted, exuding the air of a superior questioning a subordinate.

“Chen Dashan, and his wife, Lin Shi. I heard they are… over at the ‘Abandoned Pit’? Is that true?”

At the mention of “Chen Dashan” and the “Abandoned Pit,” the foreman’s expression spasmed. A flicker of genuine panic darted through his eyes.

He tightened his grip on the gold nugget, his voice dropping even lower, laced with warning.

“Sir, why ask about the Abandoned Pit? That place is cursed! It’s no place for humans!”

Chen Ping’s expression turned icy.

“Chen Dashan is my father!”

A flash of anger crossed his face.

“Cut the nonsense. Tell me exactly what I need to know…”

A heavy, invisible spiritual pressure crushed down. The immense weight instantly squeezed the air from the foreman’s lungs.

The foreman’s face turned the color of ash.

He realized instantly that the man standing before him was a High Person.

Of course, he didn’t dare imagine he was facing an Immortal.

“Ai!”

The foreman sighed, his voice barely a wheeze.

“I won’t lie to you, sir… I do recall them. Last winter, he apparently made a mistake and offended an inspecting Immortal Master. He was punished and sent to the Abandoned Pit. That place… it’s a death sentence.”

He paused, struggling to organize his words under the crushing pressure.

“As for his wife… I think she went with him? I don’t remember clearly. The Abandoned Pit is under ‘Scarred Bear’s’ management. He’s a living King of Hell. Your parents, sir… ai!”

He finished quickly, his panic rising, and hurriedly added, “Sir, listen to this lowly one’s advice. Going there is suicide! Your parents… I’m afraid they’re long gone. Leave quickly! Get away from this damned place!”

Having said his piece, he turned away, desperate to shake off this trouble. He marched toward the mine entrance, shouting roughly at the sluggish line of miners, deliberately avoiding eye contact with Chen Ping.

Chen Ping stood rooted to the spot.

A gust of wind, carrying heavy dust and a bone-deep chill, blew from the mine entrance, flapping the hem of his robe.

Inside his sleeve, unseen by anyone, his hand curled into a fist.

Father. Mother. In the Abandoned Pit.

Offended an Immortal Master…

Sentenced to rot.

This world truly never failed to meet his lowest expectations.

“Scarred Bear, is it?”

He etched the name into his memory.

Abruptly, a surge of tyrannical violence erupted in Chen Ping’s heart.

His eyes turned bloodshot.

A massacre was about to begin.

For the next two days, Chen Ping drifted like a wraith, silently wandering the filthy streets of Black Stone Town and the edges of the mining zone.

He observed the roads leading to the various pits from a distance. He watched the foremen changing shifts. He watched the miners pushing heavy ore carts, moving in and out of the darkness like walking corpses.

He spent another gold nugget at a stall selling cheap, rot-gut liquor to extract specifics from a half-drunk, complaining old miner.

“The Abandoned Pit? Look… go west, all the way to the end. You’ll see a pile of rotting wooden scaffolds next to a shack that’s about to collapse… Go further in. The deepest, darkest tunnel mouth is the one!”

The old miner hiccupped, his muddy eyes filled with terror.

“Inside… cough… it’s all dead people! And the ‘living dead’! Scarred Bear? That son of a bitch! Has a scar on his face like a centipede! He lives in that broken shack! Black-hearted and ruthless, he manages the livestock in the Abandoned Pit… no, the slag! People who go in there aren’t people anymore!”

Noon, the third day.

The scorching sun baked the gray-black slag earth, sending up shimmering, distorted waves of heat.

Most of the miners were laboring deep underground, leaving the surface eerie and silent.

Chen Ping’s figure appeared at the fork in the road leading to the Abandoned Pit.

After days of silence, seeing no trace of his parents, his patience had snapped.

Perhaps, as the foreman said, his parents were already gone.

But regardless—if they were dead, he would see their bodies. If they were alive, he would see them breathing.

In front of the wooden shack, a figure sat dozing on a worn-out chair.

The man was exceptionally burly, a mountain of muscle. He wore a leather vest so filthy its original color was lost, exposing thick arms covered in black hair.

The most striking feature was his face. A massive, dark red, ferocious scar ran diagonally from his left temple, across the bridge of his nose, all the way to his right cheek. It lay there like a grotesque centipede, undulating slightly with his heavy breathing.

This was undoubtedly “Scarred Bear.”

Chen Ping lightened his steps, moving toward the shack like a weightless shadow, utterly silent.

He suppressed his aura completely.

He released the Divine Sense of a Qi Condensation seventh layer cultivator, sweeping the surroundings for threats.

The shack was crude. There were faint life fluctuations on the ground floor. Besides Scarred Bear dozing at the door, there seemed to be two other people inside. Their life force was weak, like Mortals flickering in the wind. One of them felt sickly and frail.

No other cultivator auras.

There were no guards at the entrance to the Abandoned Pit either.

It seems this place really is a ‘dead land’ as the rumors say. So forsaken they don’t even bother posting sentries.

Just as Chen Ping’s Divine Sense brushed against Scarred Bear, the burly man’s eyes snapped open.

Those bloodshot, copper-bell eyes stared directly at the spot where Chen Ping was hiding!

This Scarred Bear was a cultivator!

And a Qi Condensation sixth layer cultivator at that!