"No?" Xu Ling asked.
"Killing him would indeed provide a profound sense of satisfaction," Lin Yi acknowledged, his tone surprisingly casual, as if discussing a trivial matter, yet a deep undercurrent of cold resolve pulsed beneath his words.
"Especially after everything he subjected me to, after the calculated cruelty and the sheer disrespect he showed." The memory of those past events, though he spoke of them lightly, was evidently sharp and unyielding within him. It was a cold, hard ember that still glowed in the depths of his being.
He recalled it all with perfect clarity: the forced kneeling, a posture of utter subservience he had been made to adopt, the searing pain and indelible mark of the slave brand etched onto his very skin, a symbol of his humiliation. He remembered the long, agonizing month of being treated as nothing more than livestock, a mere tool to be exploited for experience gain, his very existence reduced to a means for another's advancement.
