Wang Hao blinked, once, twice, as if struggling to clear his vision, to make sense of what he had just heard.
"You?" he repeated, his voice rising in incredulity, "On your knees?" It was an image his mind utterly refused to reconcile with the person sitting before him, a profound violation of his friend's very essence.
Lin Yi nodded, reiterating what he had said, his composure absolute.
A profound silence descended upon the room, thick and suffocating. It was not merely the absence of sound, but the heavy quiet produced when a deeply ingrained reality had just been violently contradicted, when long-held beliefs about a person's unbreakable spirit were challenged to their core. Wang Hao's worldview, constructed around Lin Yi's unwavering strength, threatened to crumble.
"And he enslaved you?" Wang Hao asked, his voice barely audible, the word 'enslaved' tasting like ash on his tongue. The idea was almost too monstrous to contemplate.
