Asset_url loading through non-existent public folder

Hello,

I have deployed a laravel application version 6.18.42 to my web server (shared hosting), this is the folder structure:

home/user/
    public_html/
        portal/
            index.php
    portalcore/
        .env
    sales.domain.com
        index.php
    salescore/
        .env

Folder portalcore and salescore are two different laravel applications, these folders hold all application code and are outside public_html for extra security.

public_html/portal/index.php is the main application, which was deployed over a year ago. When I access domain.com the application loads correctly, with all urls and asset urls pointing correctly to domain.com and assets loading from within the public_html/portal/ folder and everything else from the portalcore folder.

I followed the sames steps with the second application downright to updating the env file and htaccess (the one included with laravel), double-checked urls/asset_urls. Here's the problem though: sales.domain.com/index.php is loading the application partially, inspecting the code I can see that all routes/urls to the app are through sales.domain.com/url but all assets (css/js/images) are loading through sales.domain.com/public/url. I can't figure out where this public in the url is getting loaded from, the folder doesn't exist and everywhere on the app code I have removed mentions of it.

Essentially, the app thinks there is a folder sales.domain.com/public/ that holds all assets, even though the assets are in the root of the sales.domain.com subdomain.

I'd appreciate any help with this. Thanks!