Liberating the Mine, A Great Harvest of Merit!

In the night wind echoed frenzied cheers and devout sobbing.

Several hundred ragged villagers were all kneeling on the ground.

Facing that lone figure standing before them, they kowtowed in the most primitive manner.

They had survived.

They had been saved.

This was a god.

Lin Xuan swept his gaze over the dark mass of people.

"Get up."

Lin Xuan's voice was not loud, yet it reached every ear with perfect clarity.

There was a soothing power in his voice, and the fervent villagers gradually calmed down.

The old village chief raised his tear-streaked face, his voice trembling.

"Lord God..."

"I'm not a god."

Lin Xuan cut him off, his tone mild.

"Just a cultivator passing through."

He offered no explanation, turning instead toward the pitch-black mine deep within the base.

Actions spoke louder than words.

The villagers froze, then supported one another as they followed him.

They did not know what Lin Xuan intended to do.

But they chose to trust him. They chose to follow.

After passing through the chaotic square, they saw weapons piled into small mountains and discarded to one side.

A mining facility resembling a steel behemoth crouched before them.

The air reeked of rust, blood, and despair.

The doors were locked, while several soldiers at the entrance had been scared weak in the knees and collapsed on the ground.

Lin Xuan did not spare them a glance as he walked straight forward.

He could sense several hundred faint traces of life beneath the building.

They were locked away in darkness, left with nothing but fear and numbness.

They were the last batch of enslaved miners.

"Lord God, th-this door is made of special steel. We..."

The old village chief hurried after him, wanting to warn him how sturdy the door was.

Before he could finish, he witnessed a sight he would never forget for the rest of his life.

Lin Xuan extended one hand and pressed it against the half-meter-thick steel door.

There was no deafening crash.

No eruption of power.

The instant his palm touched the door, the steel construct began to silently break down and melt.

Like ice and snow meeting a red-hot branding iron.

Within a few breaths, an opening wide enough for ten people to walk through side by side appeared before them.

The steel turned to powder and scattered across the ground.

The villagers behind him were once again dumbfounded by this incomprehensible method.

Their mouths hung open, but no words came out.

Lin Xuan withdrew his hand and walked inside.

An even fouler stench rushed toward him.

A dark, damp flight of steps led underground.

Lin Xuan descended the stairs. The villagers lit torches and followed him down.

The underground mine was hell itself.

Several hundred emaciated, haggard men, women, elderly, and children were crammed inside huge cages, barely clothed.

Shackles bound all their feet. Their eyes were hollow, and they were no different from walking corpses.

Rather than feeling joy at the sight of firelight and people, the prisoners were terrified.

They huddled in the corners, trembling all over.

They thought the Red Ribbon soldiers had come again to drag someone away for torture.

Lin Xuan's gaze swept over the people crushed by fear, his heart cold as ice.

He walked up to the largest cage.

The lock was bigger than an adult's fist.

Lin Xuan reached out and tapped the keyhole with a finger.

"Click."

A crisp sound rang out.

The alloy lock opened.

He pushed open the cage door and calmly addressed the terrified crowd inside.

"You're free."

Those four words exploded through the deathly silent cage like thunder.

The numb prisoners froze at first, then their faces filled with confusion and disbelief.

Free?

That word was too extravagant, too distant.

No one dared move.

They feared it was another trick.

Lin Xuan said nothing more.

He turned to the old village chief.

"Find a few brave ones. Open every cage and remove their shackles."

"Yes! Yes, Lord God!"

The old village chief nodded excitedly and immediately called several young men forward.

The villagers rushed into the cages and began removing the prisoners' restraints.

Only when the cold shackles truly fell from their ankles did the prisoners finally react.

This... seemed real.

An elderly man with graying hair trembled as he touched his bare ankle, then suddenly burst into loud sobs.

His crying lit the fuse.

The despair, pain, and fear they had suppressed through countless days and nights all erupted at that moment.

Sobs spread everywhere.

The entire underground mine became a sea of tears.

Lin Xuan watched it all. Only after most of them had cried themselves out did he speak.

"Take them up."

His gaze shifted in another direction.

According to Wright's memories, that was where the vault was.

"There's one last thing."

Half an hour later.

The base's central square.

All the villagers were gathered there—both those who had been free before and those who had just been rescued—nearly a thousand people in all.

Before them stood an underground vault that Lin Xuan had also opened.

When the vault doors swung open, the sight inside made everyone forget how to breathe.

Gold coins were piled into mountains.

Jewels lay scattered across the floor.

Crates of cash were stacked in neat rows.

The dazzling light made it hard to keep their eyes open.

This was all the wealth the Red Ribbon Army had squeezed out of them over the years—the fruits of their blood and sweat.

"This treasure belonged to you in the first place."

Lin Xuan's voice rang across the square.

"Now, take it back."

"Everyone gets a share."

The villagers were stunned.

They had imagined being rescued. They had imagined freedom.

But they had never imagined that the money taken from them could be returned.

They had never imagined that this "god" would share this fortune, rich enough to rival a nation, with them.

"Lord God, we can't possibly accept this!"

The old village chief was the first to react. With a thud, he dropped to his knees again.

"You saved our lives—you are our greatest benefactor! How could we dare accept anything else from you?"

"This isn't mine."

Lin Xuan shook his head.

"I'm merely returning it to its rightful owners."

He looked at the villagers who had previously been sent to count the people.

"Go. Divide it fairly among everyone according to headcount."

The villagers exchanged glances, seeing the excitement and resolve in each other's eyes.

They kowtowed deeply to Lin Xuan, then rose, straightened their backs, and began organizing people to move the treasure.

Within the crowd, a frail little girl poked her head out from behind her father.

Her father had just received a small pouch of gold coins.

Cradling that pouch, tears streamed down his face as he repeated over and over—

"We can live... We can live now..."

The little girl looked at her father, then at the man standing some distance away.

After hesitating for a moment, she pulled a misshapen wild fruit from her clothes. She had kept it hidden for a long time, unwilling to eat it.

She ran over, tilted up her head, and held the fruit high.

"Big brother, this is for you."

Lin Xuan looked down at the pure gratitude in her eyes. After a brief pause, he accepted the fruit.

"Thank you."

That small gesture seemed to flip a switch.

The villagers lined up, and when the heavy gold coins and jewels were truly placed in their hands, the emotions at the scene surged to their peak.

The wild joy they had suppressed for so long erupted completely in that instant.

People cheered, wept, and embraced one another.

They tossed gold coins into the sky, and golden rain fell over them.

Despair had been washed away.

Joy filled every corner.

At the very instant that wave of ecstasy and gratitude reached its height—

A long-unheard notification sounded in Lin Xuan's mind.

The panel before his eyes erupted with dazzling golden light.

The words Scripture of Supreme Perception flashed wildly.

[Freeing slaves, punishing the chief culprit, distributing ill-gotten wealth, and restoring justice to the people of a region]

[Assessment: Great Good.]

[Merit Points: +168]

Watching his Merit Points surge from zero to three digits, a trace of understanding flashed through Lin Xuan's eyes.

So that was it.

This was the most efficient way to gain merit.

Saving one person was good.

But changing the fate of a group, overturning the order of an entire place—that was great good.

These 168 Merit Points were enough to lay an incomparably solid foundation for his future cultivation.

His gaze passed over the celebrating crowd and settled on the other side of the square.

Several hundred surrendered Red Ribbon Army soldiers were being held there, every one of them pale with despair.

How to deal with them was a new problem.

At the same time, his Dust-Cleansing Realm soul caught an exceedingly faint sense of scrutiny coming from the distant horizon.

It felt like a vague signal crossing an immense distance and settling upon this base that had just changed hands.

Lin Xuan raised his head toward the night sky, his gaze deep.

It seemed the Red Ribbon Army headquarters had already noticed the anomaly here.