Actually, the instant they heard Wendell say the words "This is my son," Hao Ren and the others had already imagined a backstory, plot, protagonists, supporting characters, and post-reading summary spanning hundreds of thousands of words—all of it shaped by the novels, movies, and TV dramas they had consumed over the years. How could they fail to guess what was going on? But they still didn't say a word, merely hoping the old man would explain what had happened back then himself.
"Tell us about it," Vivian sighed. "What exactly happened?"
Wendell hesitated, but perhaps the burden of these events had weighed on him for too long and he needed someone to confide in. Or perhaps his lifelong endeavor had finally achieved something, weakening his emotional defenses. After a moment's hesitation, he silently turned and walked toward the edge of the platform.
Hao Ren and Vivian followed him.
"He wasn't wrong," Wendell said in a low voice. "I abandoned my wife and son. In the first half of my life, I accomplished nothing that could bring any comfort to my wife's spirit in heaven."
It was not a complicated story: an ambitious man yearning for a life of adventure, a complete family that could have lived happily ever after, and a tragic ending that had been destined from the start. When he was young, Wendell had joined a Light Seeker expedition. At the time, he already had a family: a wife named Sasha and a son named Hope, who was only seven that year. By then, Twilight City had stood through the Long Night for two thousand three hundred years, and countless Light Seekers had made futile efforts. As a result, the appeal of the "Light Seeker expedition" had dwindled to an extreme. Aside from the Light Seekers themselves and