Shackles of Humanity

The slightest change in any prisoner here could not escape the notice of the Prison Guards. Recently, the scar-faced Prison Guard’s gaze toward Luo Kai had grown increasingly suspicious. Although Luo Kai’s emaciated frame hadn’t changed, the light gradually returning to his eyes was impossible to conceal.

One day, the scar-faced Prison Guard opened the iron door with a cold expression, one hand resting on the black revolver at his waist. He stared at Luo Kai, his eyes filled with scrutiny.

Luo Kai suppressed the Fear in his heart and, lying on his side on the floor, tried his best to appear weak.

The scar-faced Prison Guard sneered, then suddenly drew the leather whip from his waist and lashed it toward Luo Kai’s emaciated body.

Prolonged hunger had already made Luo Kai’s reflexes much slower. This weakness wasn’t something that could be recovered from quickly, and even in perfect health, he couldn’t have dodged the lightning-fast whip.

CRACK! With a sharp sound, Luo Kai was flung like a sheet of paper against the back wall. His fragile body couldn’t withstand the blow. His eyelids fluttered, and he passed out.

The scar-faced Prison Guard put his whip away with a satisfied look, scanned the cell, and then turned to leave.

An unknown amount of time passed before Luo Kai groggily regained consciousness. He gritted his teeth and struggled to get up, but a tickle in his throat made him start coughing up blood. In the dim moonlight filtering through the iron-barred window, he looked down at his chest. A purple whip mark was clearly visible.

He coughed for a full two minutes, expelling all the clotted blood from his trachea until he could finally breathe normally. Anger, despair, and hatred festered in his heart like bacteria. The whip had injured his lungs, and in a place like this, there was no chance of treatment. ’That scar-faced Prison Guard wants me dead!’

He wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and stared lifelessly at the iron-barred window above. The fiery pain in his chest could not extinguish the icy cold in his heart.

Luo Kai started dreaming again. This time, the dream was much clearer; he could even hear the words of the people in it perfectly. He had never heard their language before, but strangely, he could understand what it meant, and he found himself speaking it as well.

When he woke up, he had forgotten the dream’s events entirely, but he remembered the language perfectly. In a daze, Luo Kai realized it hadn’t been a dream at all. ’It was my memory. No, it was the memory of this body!’

’An idea surfaced in his mind. The Cosmos is infinite. With infinite probability, anything becomes possible, including everything humanity can imagine. This is the basis for the theory of parallel Space.’

’For instance, people sometimes get an inexplicable sense of familiarity when doing something or encountering a certain scene. Perhaps that’s an experience your self from another world once had. Those worlds might just be projections of one’s Spirit, or they might be real. It’s like the story of Zhuangzi dreaming he was a butterfly. Was it Zhuangzi who became the butterfly? Or the butterfly that became Zhuangzi? Reality and illusion are just concepts people have defined for their own convenience.’

’So, has my consciousness started a Fusion with myself from another world? Or is death just a dream from which you never wake?’

He rubbed his chest, trying to recall fragments of the dream. It seemed he came from a warm and loving family, with parents and an older sister. The two sets of memories were simultaneously undergoing Fusion and rejection. When they clashed, he sometimes couldn’t even be sure who he was. But when they merged, his consciousness grew clearer, his thoughts became faster, and his body’s resistance to pain and hunger increased. It seemed his Willpower was growing more resilient, too.

With his previous pampered body and cowardly nature, he would have likely killed himself long ago after being locked in this sunless prison for so long. But it was because of the Fusion with this body’s memories that his Willpower had become so much more resilient, allowing him to persevere until now.

Tonight, for the first time, Luo Kai didn’t work on digging his tunnel. Instead, he tried to recall his dreams. Unfortunately, the scenes within them were always blurry, and he forgot almost everything the moment he woke up.

The next day, the cell door opened again. A stooped, hunchbacked Prison Guard walked in. He glanced expressionlessly at the bloodstains on the floor, then at Luo Kai, who was curled up in the corner, half-dead. He sighed almost imperceptibly and muttered to himself, ”The new Prison Director takes office in seven days.” Then, he picked up the chamber pot, overflowing with filth, and left.

A long while later, Luo Kai raised his head to look at the closed iron door, his expression shifting from confusion to astonishment. He had actually understood the hunchbacked Prison Guard’s words! ’It’s just as I thought,’ he mused. ’I am undergoing a Fusion with this body’s soul. But the memories in my mind are a chaotic mess, like I have a Split Spirit, making it hard to think clearly.’

Of the few Prison Guards he’d seen, the scar-faced one was the most vicious, while the hunchbacked one had always been taciturn; he had never heard him speak before. ’Why would he tell me this?’

This body’s Recovery Ability was far beyond anything Luo Kai had imagined. In a half-asleep, half-awake state, he could even feel an unbearable tingling itch in his lungs. Dimly, he sensed it was his damaged cells constantly undergoing Split and regeneration. After the first two days of coughing up blood, he actually started to get better. Astonished, he couldn’t help but feel a flicker of hope.

The wound he thought would be fatal was gradually healing, but he had to keep up the act of being on death’s door, even pretending he was too weak to crawl over for his daily food. At the same time, his heart grew more anxious. The scar-faced Prison Guard clearly wanted him to die sooner rather than later. ’I can’t just sit here and wait to die!’

Late one night, Luo Kai frowned, feeling the hard granite foundation before him. If he could just get through this stone wall, he should be able to escape. But with only an iron spike, he had no way of breaking through the hard rock. Besides, the sound of the spike striking the wall would be too loud. His only options were to dig around it or keep digging downward.

SQUEAK SQUEAK.

The Big Gray Rat emerged from a hole on the side of the tunnel, dragging another salted fish. It squeaked at him nonstop, as if seeking praise.

Luo Kai reached out and stroked the Big Gray Rat’s smooth fur. ”Big Grey,” he whispered, ”what should I do... dig a new path, or keep digging down?”

He hadn’t spoken in so long that his voice was hoarse. In the silent tunnel, it sounded deafeningly loud, and he quickly hushed himself.

The Big Gray Rat clearly didn’t understand him. It just rubbed against his finger, as if asking for a scratch.

Luo Kai scratched its little belly, then resumed digging downward.

For the next few days, Luo Kai acted like he was on the verge of death during the day and spent his nights digging with all his might. As expected, parts of the tunnel experienced minor collapses, but fortunately, the damage wasn’t significant.

The scar-faced Prison Guard would peer at him through the small window in the iron door every day, seemingly waiting for him to die so he could drag the body away.

Time was running out. If the Prison Guard discovered he was still alive and well, they would surely redouble their efforts to torture him.

One day, the sound of organized footsteps echoed from outside the cell, followed by a faint shout: ”The new Prison Director is making his rounds! All of you motherfuckers better look sharp!”

The footsteps grew closer, pausing for a moment at Luo Kai’s cell door as if someone were observing him. After a short while, the footsteps resumed, gradually fading into the distance.

That night, Luo Kai continued his efforts. The soil composition had changed; small stones started appearing, greatly increasing the difficulty of digging. Moreover, his iron spike had been worn down to the thickness of a large needle. Helpless, he had to switch to using sharp rocks to dig.