"...cremation pit."

With the utterance of this term, the atmosphere at the scene tightened abruptly, freezing in an instant.

After all, no one present was a fool.

Given the known fact that thousands of vagrants died in the iron mine each year, they immediately understood its actual meaning upon hearing this term.

It was the burial ground for the vagrants.

Subsequently, Lin Ziming remained silent for a few seconds and said to Wei Fan:

"Clan Leader Wei, please lead me there to have a look."

After speaking, he looked toward Lei Wenjun:

"Director Lei, you are an expert in geology, this time..."

Lei Wenjun interrupted him:

"Colonel Lin, I'll go too."

Seeing this, Wei Fan exhaled solemnly and made a gesture of invite:

"Alright, everyone, please follow me."

Immediately after, under Wei Fan's guidance, the group traversed a section along a secluded path by the iron mine, finally stopping in front of an area.

By now, the area was already cordoned off, with servicemen in protective suits consistently disinfecting the passageways, making it impossible to clearly see the inside.

After Lin Ziming and Deng Feng's group arrived at the scene, they were taken to a tent temporarily set up, where they changed into airtight protective suits.

Once everything was ready, under Wei Fan's guidance, they came to the central area.

Honestly speaking.

In Lin Ziming's original imagination, the so-called cremation pit should have been a place filled with chilling winds and heaps of white bones, with countless skulls piled up like mountains, staring blankly in a certain direction.

Occasionally, a bone or two might fall from above, triggering a spine-tingling crisp collision sound.

However, upon arriving at the site, Lin Ziming found that the cremation pit wasn't as frightening as he had imagined.

The height of the cremation pit was about eleven or twelve meters, with a diameter of around forty meters. On the left side, there was a simple furnace built from clay.

The number of bones in the cremation pit wasn't particularly high; most of the bones were fragmented, buried in what appeared to be weathered, accumulated white ashes and rocks.

Although the scene was still a bit tragic, it was far from the chaotic, graveyards of bones Lin Ziming had anticipated.

At that time, some servicemen were busy at the bottom of the pit, dressed in even more secure protective suits, treading through the thigh-deep sediment of white ash, gathering the broken bones piece by piece and sealing them in several airtight containers.

Then, as Lin Ziming pointed to another group of servicemen sorting the white ash, he asked Wei Fan:

"By the way, what are they doing?"

Wei Fan glanced at him and said:

"Packing the ashes."

"Oh... what? Clan Leader Wei, what did you say?"

Lin Ziming subconsciously responded at first, then suddenly realized something, his entire body tensed up, and he stared intently at Wei Fan:

"Ash... ashes?"

Wei Fan looked at him, pointing to the thick layer of white ash at the bottom of the pit, deep enough to reach the thighs of servicemen, and said:

"That's right, these are all the ashes of the vagrants after cremation."

Lin Ziming fell silent.

Those who've had friends personally cremated should know.

The ashes of a standard adult in the native region weigh approximately 2.7 kilograms; humans in the Damo Realm have slightly smaller frames, with ashes around 2.5 kilograms. (The author personally called the crematorium to inquire about the ash mass, scary isn't it?)

Calculating the volume of an urn using the specifications 40x30x20, its volume is 0.024 cubic meters.

The pit here has a diameter of about forty meters, with an ash depth of about eighty centimeters.

Using the formula 2πr^2h, the volume of the ash layer is approximately 1005.3 cubic meters.

Dividing these two figures gives us a number...

41887.8!

The meaning of this number is not hard to grasp; it's the number of remains.

In other words, more than forty thousand innocent lives were buried here!

In the command center, watching the live feed of the scene.

Ma Ning slammed the table heavily; intellectuals tend to become more emotional under such circumstances:

"Beast! Damn it!!"

On the side, Dai Chaohong took a deep breath, pondered for a few seconds, and said to the solemn-faced Lin Li:

"Captain Lin, the number of remains in this cremation pit differs significantly from our previous estimates, with a substantial discrepancy.

If nothing unexpected occurs, it should be that the Mo Family secretly filled another batch of refugees into it during the mining period, even Yang Hengjun didn't know.

This would also explain why they were able to mine iron ore by manpower in just two to three months."

Lin Li nodded silently.

According to the information obtained from Yang Hengjun, the Sheepback City iron mine officially started excavation five years ago, with an average of four to five thousand refugees dying each year.

Even if calculated at five thousand, the death toll over five years would be just over twenty-five thousand people.

But the number in the cremation pit is clearly much higher than twenty-five thousand, even considering errors caused by the volume of rocks, this number still deviated not insignificantly from twenty-five thousand.

Therefore, Dai Chaohong's view should be correct:

The Mo Family had once secretly filled it with the lives of a batch of refugees, or even civilians, accelerating the mining of iron ore.

Inside the command center.

Lin Li stared at the skeleton of one of the children for a long time, then slowly said to his assistant Zhang Guohua:

"Xiaozhang, order Colonel Lin to conduct detailed image recording for the entire ash excavation and classification work, and bring the head of the Mo Family stationed at the iron mine—the one that's not dead to identify the scene and sign and seal it.

I'll give him three hours, after which the footage must be looped within Sheepback City, fully exposing the Mo Family's evil deeds!

Also, tell the comrades in the troops to restrain their emotions; a public trial will give this group of villains the punishment they deserve.

Also... find a place to properly bury these poor people after sorting and storing the ashes for them to rest in peace."

After saying this, Lin Li placed his hands on the table and sighed somewhat heavily.

Since arriving in the Damo Realm, the rabbits have actually been in contact with the cities in the Damo Realm quite a bit.

Chixian City aside, there is also Linyuan City's Flying Boat Transfer Station, Ziqiong City over a thousand kilometers away, Dingxing City during Little Lotus Mountain's battle with Luo Xiaotai, and so on.

And in these interactions with the cities, the rabbits have indeed been influenced by some dark aspects—for example, Tang Si and others encountered in Ziqiong City.

But on the whole, the residents within these cities are at least barely above the subsistence line.

It's just that the civilians in central cities like Ziqiong City and Linyuan City live a bit better, while those in small cities like Chixian City and Dingxing City live a bit worse.

Even the refugees dependent on these cities, though their overall mortality rate is not low, do not often die directly from the cities.

However, Sheepback City is the first 'tyrant' the rabbits have encountered, and the deeds of the Mo Family are simply outrageous.

Seventy percent of the in-city tax, the city's production capacity is highly concentrated in the hands of cultivators, and refugees have no guarantee of life.

You can basically not see the word 'human rights' in Sheepback City.

This city, like its name, is a city built on the backs of countless lambs, with the lambs beneath it having long been violated to death, covered in blood and wounds.

The reason the Mo Family was so fearless is simple—it's a chaotic time, and there's no way out without the protection of a city, given the cyclical beast tides every few years.

At the same time, the Mo Family, through more than two hundred years of exploitation experience, balanced the line of oppressing civilians at a level painful but not desperate—where the cost of fleeing (such as death during the escape, lack of support upon reaching a new city, etc.) and the cost of staying in the city are nearly the same or the latter might even be slightly less.

They rely on this strange balance to develop, accumulating a rich family foundation, and if they encounter some special opportunities, they might even become the original capital for promotion to a larger city.

This type of city is actually not rare in the Damo Realm, or rather, it is not a low proportion among all the cities.

Based on various astronomical and geographical survey teams' measurements so far, it can be confirmed that the Damo Realm is, with a high probability, a non-fluid dynamic equilibrium non-equilibrium state planet.

Suspected to be flat or pear-shaped.

Hence, it has enough land space to accommodate living creatures and cities.

Don't look at how a city in the Damo Realm might only have a few tens of thousands, the number of cities within it is actually quite large.

For example, the rabbits previously explored with helicopters; within a radius of two hundred and eighty kilometers from Chixian City, there were more than eighty cities of various sizes.

It is crucial to note that the position of Chixian City is actually relatively remote and not the center of the Damo Realm.

Who knows how many cities like Sheepback City exist in such a vast Damo Realm?

How many families like the Mo Family, or even worse, are there?

Therefore, don't think rescuing one Sheepback City now is anything worth glorification in the grand scheme.

The road ahead for the rabbits remains long and difficult.

....

After arranging the tasks, Lin Ziming left the cremation pit with Deng Feng and others.

After all, there are still other more important things to handle at the iron mine.

When they reached the tent for changing protective suits, they encountered Mo Tanzhi, a Mo Family member brought in for site identification.

After Mo Longtao was shot, Mo Tanzhi, a cultivator of fifth-layer Qi cultivation, became the highest person in charge of the iron mine.

Inside the command center.

Watching Mo Tanzhi being brought to the cremation pit through the recorder, Wang Qiang finally couldn't hold back and cursed for once:

"Pah, trash! Even Paradox Interactive players are kinder than you lot!"

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.