Chapter 1853: Trapped in a Cage, No Longer His Own Master
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Ten years earlier.
The child awakened his martial soul, inheriting his mother's attribute.
Dou Jing was delighted, but his heart sank.
This martial soul's attribute was utterly at odds with the Underground City's damp gloom.
More importantly, as Barton secured his position as regiment commander, Spirit Hall's tentacles-Bloodfang and the others-reached deep into the Bone-Digging Corps' marrow. Countless eyes watched Dou Jing, its deputy regiment commander.
His wife and child became his fatal vulnerability-his wife was a female Soul Master he had secretly spared during a human trafficking operation years earlier.
"The child isn't suited to living underground." Dou Jing confided his worries to Barton.
Barton pondered for a moment, then proposed a cold-blooded but "effective" solution: arrange a meticulously staged "accident" in which Dou Jing's wife and child would "die untimely deaths," then let them live aboveground under assumed names.
There was no other choice.
Swallowing his anguish, Dou Jing cooperated, personally "burying" his own happiness.
His wife and child were secretly moved to a secluded residence in Heaven Dou City.
He usually visited them whenever official business gave him a chance to come aboveground.
A year later.
A Soul Saint's keen senses immediately alerted him to something wrong-faint soul power fluctuations surrounded the residence. Surveillance!
Who had both the means and the motive to quietly station people aboveground in the Canopy District, if not Barton?
Confronted, Barton did not deny it.
"It's protection." Barton brewed tea at a leisurely pace, the curling steam obscuring his expression beneath his metal jaw guard. "Old Dou, you know perfectly well what things are like underground now. Bloodfang and his people... their eyes are sharp. Did you really think your 'accident' was seamless? At