Shackles of Humanity

The north wind howled, and the frigid gale swept snowflakes across everything in the wilderness. A gaunt figure trudged through the knee-deep snow. His entire body was covered in a layer of blood scabs that had frozen into icy shards, like a blood-red coat of ice. With every step, the ice rustled. He moved mechanically for a long, long time, until a river nearly a hundred meters wide appeared before him. The churning water ignored the bitter cold, flowing on ceaselessly.

The figure’s mechanical pace came to a halt. As he stopped, it was as if time itself had stopped with him. He stood motionless on the riverbank, and the heavy snow quickly buried him.

「Two days later.」

The frigid wind gradually subsided, and the heavy snow turned into a light flurry, but the temperature dropped once again. The ceaselessly flowing river began to slow as a thin layer of ice formed on its surface.

A dilapidated little fishing boat dropped anchor in the middle of the river. Onboard sat a bearded old man dressed in tattered clothes and a conical bamboo hat. He held a fishing rod, occasionally taking a sip of strong liquor while humming an unknown tune, leisurely fishing in the river.

The liquor in his flask was soon empty, and he had caught three fat fish. A little tipsy, the old man reeled in his fishing rod, ready to go back into the cabin for a nap. Just as he stood up, he saw what looked like a snowman on the nearby shore. ’No, not a snowman... more like an ice sculpture.’ It had a faint red hue in the sunlight.

The old man shook his head and went back into the cabin, falling into a deep, snoring sleep. He slept until the afternoon before groggily getting up. When he saw that the ice sculpture was still there, he hesitated for a moment, then rowed to the bank. He walked over for a closer look and was instantly startled. ’It’s not an ice sculpture—it’s a person! Someone who froze to death!’ He cursed his bad luck under his breath. He was about to leave when he noticed the ”ice sculpture” was holding a gleaming weapon in each hand. A jolt of greed shot through him. He looked around; who else would be out in this bitter cold? He kicked the figure, but it was frozen solid. He had to go back to his boat for a hammer to break the ice.

When he saw the face within the ice, the old man’s expression changed. He cried out in shock, ”Xiaoluo.”

...

Luo Kai felt as if he had fallen into an endless Abyss. His consciousness drifted between Darkness and the Void. Compared to the eternal Void, the Darkness offered a strange sense of warmth. He had no idea how long he had been in this dazed state when a sharp pain from his body pulled him back.

He opened his eyes. Before him was an old man with a messy, bearded face. He looked very familiar. After rummaging through his memories for a good while, his consciousness finally placed him. ’It’s Big Beard, the tramp from the overpass.’

”Xiaoluo, you’re awake!” Big Beard exclaimed in pleasant surprise. ”Damn, kid, you’re tough as nails! I was just about to bury you!”

Luo Kai wanted to speak, but it was as if his throat no longer belonged to him. His lips moved for a long time, yet he couldn’t utter a single word.

”Sigh... Xiaoluo, you have to hang in there. Don’t lose hope. Look at me—I’m still alive and kicking, aren’t I?”

Luo Kai didn’t understand what he meant. He stared blankly around the humble thatched hut. Besides Big Beard, there were several other tramps in tattered clothes, all of them looking at him strangely.

Confused, Luo Kai looked down. He saw that the muscles of his chest, arms, and entire body were tight and shriveled, as if he had polio. Loose strands of hair kept floating before his eyes. When he reached up to touch his head, he immediately pulled out a clump of graying hair.

His breathing grew ragged. Terrifyingly, when he inhaled, his failing lungs couldn’t hold the air. It leaked into his chest cavity like a faulty bellows and then escaped through a long, narrow wound on his chest. He was forced to gasp continuously just to filter a tiny bit of oxygen into his blood.

He carefully sensed his body’s condition. It wasn’t just his appearance; most of his internal organs had also atrophied. Only his heart was still beating stubbornly, barely maintaining his bodily functions.

Big Beard looked at him with pity and asked, ”Xiaoluo, did you crawl out of Sword Mountain?”

Luo Kai gave a bitter smile and struggled to sit up. He felt as weak as a newborn; the smallest movement took all his strength. After a long effort, he finally managed to speak. ”Big... Big Beard, did you save me?”

Big Beard began to ramble on. ”Yeah! You have no idea! You were frozen solid, like an ice sculpture! I brought you back, thawed you out by the fire... There wasn’t a single spot on you that wasn’t busted up. Your guts were spilling all over the place! Scared me half to death! I was just gonna bury you, but then I found you still had a heartbeat. So, I tried forcing some food down you, and damn if you didn’t actually pull through!”

Luo Kai saw a mirror by the bed. Reflected in it was a terrifying face. His hair was streaked with gray, his cheeks were sunken, and wrinkled skin was stretched taut over his facial bones, with not an ounce of flesh underneath. He looked like a desiccated corpse.

The events of that night flashed through his mind, and he began to understand. He had already been on the verge of collapse, completely spent, yet he had forcibly mobilized his lifeblood, even starting to burn it in the end. All things in Heaven and Earth must obey the law of conservation of Energy; Energy cannot be created from nothing. The price for burning his lifeblood was overdrawing his Life Force. Now, almost all his organs were failing, his cells were dying en masse, and he was like an old man wasting away on his deathbed.

After a long moment, Luo Kai looked away from the mirror and said softly, ”Thank you, Big Beard. Where is this?”

”This is my home. I couldn’t make it in Longyang City anymore, so a bunch of us old-timers found a little village here on the Nili Long Riverbank. The village chief is a decent guy. He doesn’t look down on us old geezers; he even had this house built for us.”

Luo Kai nodded. His gaze swept around the room as he asked, ”Big Beard, have you seen my things?”

Big Beard scratched his head and gave an awkward laugh. ”Well... uh, Xiaoluo, you know us old guys don’t have the means to support you, and this village is really poor...”

Alarm flashed across Luo Kai’s face. ”You sold them?” he asked urgently.

”No, not that.”

Big Beard hesitantly pulled a small cloth pouch from his pocket and said, a bit sheepishly, ”Xiaoluo, it cost a lot of money to save you... I only used one.”

Inside the pouch were several Gold Coins—the very ones Luo Kai had grabbed from the Dragon Shark Camp. Of course, Luo Kai didn’t care about the money; he was worried about his two weapons.

In those final moments, as he burned his lifeblood, the two weapons had resonated with his Spirit and consciousness, giving him a much deeper understanding of what a Fierce Weapon truly was.

Fierce Weapons absorb the negative emotions of the dying—their resentment, Fear, and despair. As they kill more and more Living Creatures, they accumulate an incredibly dense, malevolent aura. If an ordinary person were to wield one, their mind would inevitably be affected, and they could easily become a crazed killer overnight.

”Not these. You can have the money. I’m asking about my weapons. Those two are... ominous. It’s not good for ordinary people to handle them.”

”Oh, that sword and saber! No wonder I kept getting a creepy feeling from them. I buried them! I’ll go get them for you right now. Da Wei, Niu Dan, let’s go! We’re digging something up!”

Big Beard excitedly took the pouch, calling to the other tramps as they all hurried out. He knew that a single Gold Coin was worth ten thousand Star Dollars, enough for them to feast lavishly for half a year. With more than a dozen coins, if they were frugal, they could live the rest of their lives without a worry.