Shackles of Humanity

In the dead of night, when all was silent, Luo Kai struggled to open eyelids that felt as heavy as lead. He fought to sit up. Prolonged starvation made his body feel like it no longer belonged to him. Even the slightest movement was an agonizing struggle.

A sudden rustling broke the silence of the dark, oppressive Space. It was an enormous rat. Luo Kai desperately wanted to catch it, but he lacked the strength. His only strategy was to block the rat’s hole to keep it from escaping. It was a battle of endurance to see which of them would last longer.

The cold rock wall at his back sent an involuntary shiver through Luo Kai, chasing away the last of his drowsiness. He had to get to work.

He fumbled for the rat hole beneath him and, using all his strength, lifted the stone slab covering it. He had already excavated the hole until it was large enough for a person to fit through. Cautiously, he slid down, then carefully replaced the slab, trying his best not to make a sound. He was escaping!

In the dark, damp tunnel, Luo Kai’s eyes glowed with a faint green light, his surroundings gradually coming into focus. It was a night-vision Ability he had developed after spending so long in the Darkness. After panting weakly for a moment, he pulled a brightly polished awl from his sleeve and began to carefully excavate the dirt.

Digging a tunnel to escape prison. It was a scene he had only ever witnessed in movies, but now it was his reality. Only by living it could one understand the true hardship. His body was already wasted away by hunger, and this work drained what little stamina he had left. But if he didn’t do it, he would wake up in the dead of night, so tormented by the Silence that he wanted to kill himself...

Luo Kai didn’t know what prison this was, or why he’d been locked up here. All he knew was that he was alive. He had survived a plane crash from ten thousand meters in the air.

But sometimes, living was more painful than death. This was a stone room of roughly thirty square meters—a cell, to be precise. For over three hundred days and nights, he hadn’t had a single full meal. Every day, a burly Prison Guard would toss each inmate a piece of moldy cornbread and a stinking ball of seaweed, then swagger off, shouting in an incomprehensible language as his fat ass swayed.

At first, Luo Kai had tried to communicate with the Prison Guard. In return, he received a torrent of angry, incomprehensible curses and was deprived of all food and water for three days.

More terrifying than the hunger was the unspeakable loneliness. No one here communicated. No one spoke. Because everyone, just like him, was constantly struggling between life and death. They had no energy for anything, not even speaking.

His initial Fear and impatience slowly gave way to numbness. He once saw a rat that had accidentally found its way in. After being trapped for some time, it began to frantically gnaw at the hard granite walls. It wore its claws and teeth down to nothing but refused to stop. The rat clearly knew it was committing suicide. But if life truly possessed a soul, perhaps upon death, that soul could finally pass through the cage that imprisoned it.

Luo Kai sometimes thought to himself, ’It’s a miracle I’ve survived this long. Maybe I’m not ”human” anymore!’

Deep in the dark, damp underground, a few drops of water had begun to seep through the tunnel walls. Luo Kai leaned in, sucking them up greedily. The sweet Water Drops nourished his parched body and soul, allowing him a small Recovery of his strength.

He carefully scraped at the tunnel’s dirt walls with his awl, then gathered the soil into his only intact rag pocket. The Prison Guards inspected the cells daily. If they found any damp earth, it would all be over.

The Prison Guards here were completely devoid of humanity. Their favorite thing to do was torture inmates. Whenever a new prisoner arrived, agonizing screams would echo from outside the iron door for days on end. Every so often, a Prison Guard would drag away a shriveled corpse. He had never seen a single inmate released. This was, without a doubt, a death row prison. In the near future, he could very well become one of those corpses.

Luo Kai had been digging for over a hundred nights, yet he had only managed to burrow five or six meters. He was simply too weak. Panic and hunger were constantly whittling away at his will and his body. He didn’t know where the tunnel led or how much longer he could keep going, but still, he forced himself down here to dig every night. Maybe the suicidal rat had moved him. Maybe it was humanity’s innate yearning for freedom. More likely, it was just to give himself something to hope for.

He still hadn’t figured out where he was, or even if he was still ”himself.” Judging by the Prison Guards’ dark complexions and the salty sea breeze blowing through the barred window, it seemed to be some coastal region. But the Guards’ accents didn’t belong to any language family he had ever heard.

What perplexed him most was his body. Its arms and legs were noticeably more slender, and his old potbelly was gone. One time, catching his reflection in a puddle of urine, he realized his face looked just as it had when he was a high school freshman. He even had the same crescent-shaped birthmark on his stomach.

Strictly speaking, this wasn’t his current body; it was more like his body when he was sixteen or seventeen. Perhaps it was the legendary journey to an Otherworld, or perhaps he had traveled back in time. But for now, none of that mattered. He was living on the brink of death every single day.

...

As dawn approached, Luo Kai carefully lifted the stone slab and slowly climbed out. In the Darkness, a pair of beady little eyes stared at him from a pile of straw in the corner. It was the big rat.

Luo Kai bared his teeth at it, a hint of cruel, bloodthirsty hunger in his eyes. To someone in a constant state of starvation, any living thing was food. He just didn’t have the strength to catch the agile rat, not even in this cramped cell.

Prolonged hunger and lack of sunlight had left him severely malnourished, his bones brittle with osteoporosis. He was incapable of any sudden or strenuous movements.

After replacing the stone slab, he slowly crumbled the large clods of dirt in his pocket. He carefully got to his feet, steadying himself against the wall, and began sprinkling the dirt bit by bit through a head-sized, barred window. The damp, cold sea wind outside felt like it would leave his arm Frozen.

By the time he was finished, he was breaking out in a cold sweat, despite the bone-chilling temperature of the cell.

Exhausted, Luo Kai gathered the straw at his feet and arranged his matted bedding before falling into a deep sleep.

In a life of agony, dreams seemed the only escape. He began to dream again. He dreamt he had a loving family: a stern father, a doting mother, and a sister who, though a bit fierce, was incredibly good to him. Life was simple and happy...

”BANG... BANG.” Violent kicks against the door jolted him awake. Luo Kai’s bleary eyes fluttered open.

The Prison Guard’s large, hideously scarred face appeared at a small peephole in the iron door. His cold gaze held a hint of confusion, as if he were surprised Luo Kai was still alive.

An angry shout immediately followed. After all this time, Luo Kai had come to understand what it meant: ’Get up and eat!’

He struggled to crawl to the iron door. Today’s food was the same as usual: a moldy piece of cornbread the size of a baby’s fist, a salty, fishy ball of seaweed, and a bowl of thin gruel in which he could count every single grain of rice. This was the daily ration for each inmate. It was a miracle anyone could survive on so little.