Ada's tone remained flat. "If you want to survive, you'll have to listen patiently until I'm finished. After all, I don't have to help you, do I?"
Qin Siyang's gaze darkened. "Then please hurry. Sorry for the trouble."
"What you have on you is a Registry Offering Mark, a trace left by the second domain-wide sacrificial array."
Qin Siyang asked, "Registry offering? Sacrifice?"
"Yes. First you're registered, then you're sacrificed."
"The Second Domain used to be a slaveholding Safe Zone. The vast majority of people were registered and assigned a number from the moment they were born. All their information was recorded in the Slave Registry Ledger."
"In the Second Domain, many people weren't people. They were property."
Qin Siyang looked up at her.
Ada lowered her eyes and touched the brand on her neck.
"So was I. I was on the mine slave registry."
"Later, the Second Domain merged into the [evolutionary origin domain]. The world changed, and we went from living on land to living at sea. I was transferred to the Third Fleet's Logistics Department, though I changed hands several more times afterward."
"Later still, the Star Stream Research Institute bought me because I could calculate the Sunken Star Currents."
"Wait." Qin Siyang asked, "Could you tell me about your domain merge? Did anything strange happen on the day you merged? Why didn't the Second Domain's merger cause any commotion?"
Qin Siyang was still curious why the First Domain had never learned of the Second Domain's merger.
"I'm not sure about that either. Perhaps it was because of our Domain Master's sequence ability."
"He had the [God-Sacrificer] sequence. He turned the entire Second Domain into an enormous sacrificial array. Every person and every stone in it became his private property, to do with as he pleased."
"Perhaps