The Sleeping Cargo, Imprisoned Innocence

Inside the Ghost Ship.

Within a mobile labyrinth of precision instruments and metal.

Lin Xuan moved through the narrow passageways without making the slightest sound.

His steps seemed casual, yet every footfall landed with terrifying precision.

His left foot had just lifted.

A crimson high-energy laser beam silently swept beneath the floor where he had been standing.

The hard alloy floor was sliced open, leaving behind a smooth molten cut.

Before the heat could spread, it was swallowed by the passageway's icy air.

Lin Xuan did not even raise an eyelid.

Whatever was happening behind him had nothing to do with him.

"Know Cause Upon Thought."

He was pushing this ability to its limit.

Within a kilometer, any mechanism hostile to him and any trap about to activate would appear in his mind thirty seconds in advance.

To him, this ship brimming with lethal intent was no different from his own backyard.

At a turn.

Dozens of tiny red dots lit up simultaneously on the walls, ceiling, and floor ahead.

An automatic target-locking turret array.

It could turn an intruder into a cloud of blood in 0.1 seconds.

Lin Xuan did not stop.

He did not even speed up.

The instant before the turrets fired, his body swayed left with an unnaturally twisted flexibility.

As though boneless, he slid along the wall.

Countless explosive energy beams shrieked past the hem of his clothes and struck the opposite wall.

They left behind pitch-black bullet holes so deep their bottoms could not be seen.

Throughout the entire process, Lin Xuan's expression did not change in the slightest.

His divine soul was locked onto the depths of the ship.

That was where the aura of despair was strongest.

That was his true target this time.

The ship's automated gadgets were far more powerful than those at the Light Base he had taken down before.

The technology here was more advanced.

And even more inhuman.

All the defense systems had only one purpose.

Kill every unauthorized living thing.

Lin Xuan passed through layer after layer of defenses.

At last, he arrived before an enormous circular alloy door.

The door was several meters thick, its surface smooth enough to reflect a person's image. There was no handle, no keypad, not even a visible seam.

That suffocating despair and sorrow came from behind the door.

Lin Xuan raised a hand.

He did not touch the icy door.

His fingers tapped lightly through the air. The power of his divine soul turned into an invisible key, following the complex energy circuits inside the door and instantly slipping into the core control center.

The complicated authorization protocols were a joke before him.

A faint mechanical whir sounded.

The heavy alloy door slid soundlessly to the side.

The vast space beyond it was revealed.

A blast of frigid air mixed with hallucinogenic gas and low-temperature coolant rushed toward him.

The moment Lin Xuan saw what lay beyond the door, his gaze turned completely cold.

A massive cryogenic cargo hold.

Large enough to contain a small stadium.

There was no cargo inside, no crates.

Only row upon row of high-tech hibernation pods, arranged so neatly it made one's scalp crawl.

There were several hundred of them.

Each hibernation pod was like an exquisite metal coffin, its surface blinking with dim blue indicator lights and connected to countless thick and thin tubes.

The pod lids were made of transparent reinforced glass.

The "cargo" inside was clearly visible.

They were neither precious minerals nor high-tech products.

They were sleeping children.

They varied in age—some were three- or four-year-old toddlers, while others were teenagers around ten.

Boys and girls, dressed in all kinds of clothing, clearly from different families.

Their only common trait was their tightly shut eyes and pale faces.

They lay quietly in the hibernation pods, trapped in dreams from which they would not wake.

Countless tiny probes were attached to their temples and wrists, maintaining only the barest vital signs.

Their heartbeats had been suppressed to only a few beats per minute.

Their breathing was so faint it was almost nonexistent.

They were carefully preserved specimens, stripped of all vitality and childhood innocence.

Lin Xuan was all too familiar with the hallucinogenic gas permeating the air.

It was an upgraded version of the poisonous incense Master Huian had used in the incident involving Li Yuan's daughter.

This gas could continuously erode a person's will to live, dragging them into a deep coma.

Here, it was being used as a sedative on an assembly line.

Ensuring that this "cargo" remained absolutely compliant during transport.

Lin Xuan's gaze swept across the entire cargo hold.

He already understood this ship's true purpose.

This was a large-scale child trafficking ring with a tightly organized structure and technology advanced to a horrifying degree.

Its technological style came from the same source as the Red Ribbon Army's, but it was more refined—and more utterly deranged.

The Red Ribbon Army's evil was the kind written plainly on its face: conquest and destruction.

The organization behind this ship hid its evil beneath cold technology and efficient procedures.

They did not treat people as people.

They treated them as cargo that could be quantified, transported, and traded.

This methodical, cold-blooded sin that regarded life as nothing enraged Lin Xuan far more than simple burning, killing, and looting.

This was no longer mere wrongdoing.

This was trampling on the bottom line of human civilization.

The last trace of emotion vanished from Lin Xuan's face.

In its place was utter stillness.

He knew this was another immense "merit."

And it was a monstrous crime that had to be uprooted completely and purged without a trace.

He did not immediately destroy the hibernation pods.

These children's vital signs had been forcibly suppressed to their lowest point. Waking them rashly could very likely cause irreversible damage to their bodies and minds.

He first had to understand how the entire system worked.

Lin Xuan's figure flashed, and he appeared before the main control console at the center of the cargo hold.

The console screen displayed dense streams of data recording the real-time status of every hibernation pod.

Lin Xuan reached out, preparing to study the system and see whether he could find out these children's final destination and information about the buyers.

Just then, his movement abruptly stopped.

His head slowly turned toward the cargo hold entrance.

His gaze pierced through the heavy alloy door.

Within his perception, a squad of armed personnel was approaching the cargo hold.

Their footsteps were heavy and precise, carrying the distinctive texture of metal.

The intervals and force of every step were completely identical.

Those were not the footsteps of normal humans.