"Although we are merely miners, doing the heavy preliminary work, and perhaps in your eyes just considered rough people, we have principles! We've been working for so long thinking we were mining for the country. Until one time, by chance, we overheard that this was actually an illegal black mine, and the resources were being smuggled and exported abroad. This made us uneasy! We, a group of people, negotiated with the management, protested, and even proposed to strike. However, there were few who supported us, and after the management divided us, there were only a dozen of us left, which was essentially useless. Instead, they imprisoned us..."
That's when Li Yan understood why they were dressed in tattered clothes like vagrants. Their original intention, surprisingly, was to prevent the loss of strategic resources like rare earths, which moved him slightly.
"After you escaped, have you been hiding in the mountains all along?"
