"So Baudrillard believed that both 'Matter' and 'demand' were false symbols. He criticized Marx's theory of use value, arguing that it too had fallen into the trap of capitalist political economy, and thus proposed his own semiotic political economy."
Wu Qiren finished his report, clicked open the final slide, and nodded his thanks to Teacher and the dozen or so classmates. At Teacher's signal, he left the podium and waited for the next student's presentation.
"Tales!"
The next moment, Wu Qiren, once a graduate student, awoke from his dream.
He curled up in a frigid hole in a ruined wall, feeling the cold wind blow through the gaps around him.
Wu Qiren sighed. Five years after transmigrating, he still dreamed of his previous life.
His life before transmigrating had certainly been dull, but it was still better than his miserable situation now.
"Tales! Hey, Tales!"
A large hand reached in from outside the hole, grabbed Wu Qiren by the ear, and roughly dragged him out of his tiny, shabby nest.
It was a ruined house. Through the half-collapsed roof, the brilliant stars shone in the night sky, but the arrangement and shape of the galaxy were utterly unfamiliar to Wu Qiren.
Wu Qiren could not resist that brutal hand. What could a seven-year-old child do?
His knees scraped painfully against the ground.
Even so, he gritted his teeth and said nothing. Quade was especially impatient with children's cries.
"I asked Rick. Your allowance this week is five coppers short of last week's! Did you hide some?" Enraged, Quade resembled a red-haired lion, and his protruding nose made him look even more vicious.
Quade threw Wu Qiren to the ground. From the corner of his gray eyes, Wu Qiren saw the surrounding wall holes and the five beggar children sharing the house with him. They ranged from four to ten years old, and all trembled beneath Quade's roar.
In the innermost hole, the smallest short-haired girl bit down hard on her left hand. Her face was flushed as she stared fearfully at Wu Qiren on the ground. In the hole beside hers, the six-year-old Nide had even cried out in terror.
That was Colia. Wu Qiren knew what she was afraid of.
In fact, Wu Qiren had been lucky this week. He, the beggar Tales—Wu Qiren's current name—had earned thirty-seven coppers, eighteen more than the week before.
But he had handed Quade only fourteen coppers. Quade was the Black Street Brotherhood's boss in charge of the beggar business. Wu Qiren had taken the rest, along with the money he had painstakingly saved over two years, to Grove Apothecary, where the kind assistant Jenny had sold him a typhoid potion at cost.
Tales had fed it to four-year-old Colia. At her age, contracting typhoid without medicine was practically a death sentence.
During the five years since transmigrating, Tales had relived the period when his memories formed, from age two to seven, gradually recovering fragments of his former life.
A child's memories were scattered and disordered. Even so, during those five years of awakening, every death Tales witnessed with his own eyes left a deep impression on him.
People had died of illness, falls, drowning, hanging, and—on one occasion, Tales had personally watched a crying beggar suffocate to death under a supernatural ability—beaten to death. The Black Street Brotherhood, which profited from human trafficking, had never possessed any bottom line or principles.
Even gangsters needed time to establish rules and order.
Yet the Brotherhood, which had originated on Black Street, had taken only a little over ten years to rise and grow powerful.
Even the Brotherhood's archenemy, the Blood Bottle Gang, had existed for ninety years and was known as "the nobility among gangs," but the lives and blood on its hands were no fewer.
Most of the time, Tales could do nothing as he watched people die. Even he himself had escaped death more than once only by relying on scattered memories from his previous life.
For example, Quade was now rubbing his fists with excitement, his eyes revealing the brutality and malice unique to a gang sadist.
"I didn't hide anything! Winter started this week, and far fewer people passed through the three Lower City districts..." Tales climbed to his feet, his mind racing as he spat out the excuse he had prepared.
"Smack!"
A merciless slap knocked Tales off balance and sent him sprawling back to the ground.
"Hand over the money you hid, then I'll beat you up! Or I'll beat you up first, then you can hand it over! Choose!"
Clearly, Quade had no interest in his explanation.
Perhaps the Brotherhood boss merely wanted to scrape together money for drinks. Perhaps he simply wanted someone to beat.
"But of course, you can also be stubborn. I like stubborn children best." Quade grinned viciously as he flexed his fists.
Looking at the fists as large as sandbags, Tales knew that even if he said nothing, Quade would not let him off.
Only last month, Quade had tortured a beggar from the Fifth House to death.
Tales covered his swollen cheek and thought rapidly.
Normally, Quade did not manage the accounts. Once night fell, he either went to hang around the Sunset Tavern on Underground Street or wandered about hugging a bottle. He could barely remember how many Middler Copper Coins equaled one Mindis Silver Coin, let alone how much allowance his beggars had paid. That was handled by his second-in-command, the seemingly honest and steady Rick.
Even clever Rick knew that each beggar's weekly allowance fluctuating by seven or eight coppers was perfectly normal.
Someone had informed on him.
That was the only conclusion.
Tales glanced around at the other beggars.
He had begged money from a noblewoman and returned directly to the Ruined House. The children sharing his room must have seen him.
Under harsh conditions, children's hearts could become more frightening than adults imagined.
Quade kicked again. Tales secretly shielded his abdomen with his elbow and slightly deflected the force. He made his face look unbearably pained, as though the kick had nearly broken him. He could not cry out. Quade loved children's screams.
"I'll talk, I'll talk!" Fear appeared on Tales's face. "Don't hit me!"
"That depends on my mood!" Quade looked around. Seeing the other five beggars shrinking in terror, he was satisfied. His authority had been respected.
"On Wednesday morning, I met a noblewoman. She gave me nearly ten coppers!" Tales trembled in the corner.
"I knew it! Begging? You must have stolen it! No one can hide anything from me, especially a little thief like you!" Quade rubbed his palms viciously, preparing for another beating. "Hand over the money!"
Before Quade could raise his brows, Tales added, "But I went to Red Quarter!"
"Red Quarter?" Quade lowered his raised hand slightly. "You went to the Blood Bottle Gang's territory?"
"Yes. We can't beg for any more money in our own area." Aside from Brotherhood enforcers, skilled rangers, and people with special motives, who would foolishly patrol the three ruined districts near Black Street? Even the City Guard, carrying both swords and shields, refused to approach this place of endless crime.
"It was the first time I got that much money. No one from the Blood Bottle Gang appeared, so I thought I might have another chance the next day."
"You idiot!"
Another vicious kick met Tales. In the distance, he saw Colia shudder.
Quade swore furiously. "Red Quarter? That's the Blood Bottle Gang's territory! Do you think easy money grows everywhere?"
Tales shrank back and said shakily, "Yes. The next afternoon, the Blood Bottle Gang caught me. They hung me up. I said I'd gotten lost, but they didn't believe me. I handed over all my money, but they still wouldn't let me go."
"Useless! Then how did you escape?" Quade spat harshly.
"Then I said I was from the Ruined House, that I was Quade Luoda's man. They... they burst out laughing."
"What?" Quade clenched his fists. He grabbed Tales by his ragged burlap collar and lifted him from the corner. "What were those damned Red Scarves laughing at?"
Tales shook his head in confusion. "I couldn't really understand what they said..."
Quade's face twisted. "Tell me!"
Tales pretended to be terrified. He shuddered and said weakly, "There was a bald man among them..."
"Bald?" Quade shook his head, remembering something. "Spinn? Baldy Spinn from West Ring District, the one who collected debts for the Red Scarves?"
"I don't know." Tales shook his head fearfully. "But the bald man said that since I was one of Quade's children, they should leave me alive, because Quade needed children too badly..."
Before Tales could finish, Quade slammed him into the wall!
Bang!
The beggar did his best to protect his head, chest, and abdomen, taking the impact on his back. Then he immediately turned his back toward Quade and endured the furious blows.
"Son of a— you... bald... Spinn... how did he know... kill you... kill you... useless... fool..."
Quade roared madly, kicking Tales again and again. His words were reduced to a few discernible syllables.
Tales clenched his teeth, feeling the direction of each blow and constantly shifting the angle of his back to cushion the force.
"Fuck you, fuck you, idiot, bastard, fuck you..."
Through the holes in the wall, several children watched in panic as Tales was beaten, but they covered their mouths tightly and dared not make a sound.
Tales endured Quade's rain of kicks, yet secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
Though it looked frightening, an enraged Quade was far safer than Quade who was cheerfully torturing children.
More importantly—Quade would not ask about the money anymore.
Half of what Tales had said was true and half false.
He had indeed gone to Red Quarter, but he had hidden in a dark alley and carefully watched his surroundings, wary of the Blood Bottle Gang's Red Scarves.
He had also met a noblewoman dressed in goose-down finery. At least twenty Terminus Swordsmen accompanied her, which was why the Blood Bottle Gang had not interrupted him while he begged in the alley.
Tales had indeed begged a great deal of money from the noblewoman in goose-down clothing. Naturally, he had not been foolish enough to steal in front of twenty Terminus Swordsmen. But before the noblewoman's party had gone far, he had vanished into the crowd and never returned.
As for Baldy Spinn, Tales had never seen him. He only knew that Spinn was the Blood Bottle Gang's enforcer boss for collecting illicit debts.
Quade had once also been an enforcer who collected illicit debts for the Brotherhood—until he provoked the wrong person and had his lower body crippled. Tales had learned this secret while lying beside the Brotherhood's main house, listening to the killers Layok and Belicia privately mocking Quade as they had sex.
When Quade finally vented his anger, cursing Baldy Spinn of the Blood Bottle Gang while pulling a bottle from his clothes and grumbling away, all the clothing on Tales's back had been torn apart, leaving it mottled with bruises.
Because Tales had deliberately turned sideways to avoid taking the blows head-on, some places had also been scraped open and were bleeding. Waves of pain surged through him.
Blood flowed to the ground, bringing a searing pain.
Perhaps because it had been so long since he had been beaten, his muscles felt as if they were burning.
Since arriving in this world, beatings and hunger, sickness and cold had been everyday fare. But after gradually recovering Wu Qiren's memories, Tales had relied on caution and past experience to avoid such a brutal beating for a long time.
Only after Quade's voice faded did the other five children crawl from their holes. They skillfully carried the helpless Tales into the courtyard.
Ten-year-old "Big Guy" Synti picked up a curved shard of a broken bowl and scooped water from the jar. Eight-year-old crippled Lane and dark-faced Kellit struggled to gather dead branches and weeds, working hard to start a fire with flint. Six-year-old yellow-haired Nide and the youngest, Colia, picked several oddly shaped wild leaves, chewed them, and gently smeared them over Tales's battered back.
Tales endured the pain and searched for something to distract himself. Seeing Colia on the verge of tears, he turned to the downcast yellow-haired Nide and tried to keep his voice calm.
"It's all right, Nide. I don't blame you."
Nide jerked his head up, his face filled with terror. The other four children also turned toward him.
"How did you know?" A six-year-old could not hide his thoughts. Guilt and fear were written plainly across his face.
When Quade had been beating Tales, the three older children had watched this way despite their terror.
Only Colia and Nide had behaved differently: one hid her face in her hands and dared not look up, while the other stared into the wall and occasionally glanced over in fear.
Colia's typhoid medicine had been the final destination of those coppers. She obviously could not have informed on him, but Tales still had not been certain it was Nide.
Now there was no doubt.
He forced a smile. "It's all right now. Quade won't pursue this anymore."
"I, I..." Nide's face reddened terribly. Looking at Tales's back, he shed tear after tear. "I didn't earn any money this week, and I didn't dare steal."
He sobbed. "Rick didn't say anything, but Quade was furious. He said that if this continued, he would sell me to the Great Desert to feed the Aridbone people. I was scared, so I told him that Tales—Tales had brought back lots and lots of coppers one day... I thought they wouldn't sell me if I told them... Quade sent me back and said he'd come tonight..."
Colia's face flushed as well. Her hand applying the herbs suddenly trembled, and several drops of fresh blood fell from Tales's back to the ground.
Tales silently groaned. The burning pain had only just eased, but Colia's movement stirred it up again.
Lane glared angrily at Nide, making the latter lower his head further. Kellit looked at Nide in surprise, then at Tales. Only Synti said nothing, silently continuing to bring over water.
Tales's gaze dimmed as he looked at Nide.
The child was only six.
That was what Tales told himself.
He barely understood anything. Faced with Quade, fear and panic had made him speak without thinking.
He should never have had to bear such a fate in a place like this.
"It's all right, Nide, Colia." Tales exhaled and felt that the wounds on his back had eased somewhat. He gently took Nide's hand. "But you saw what Quade would do..."
Nide whimpered in terror.
Tales looked at him seriously.
"Next time any of you fail to earn enough money, tell me. I'll think of something."
"Compared with Quade, we're the same side."
Nide cried even harder, his words blurred by sobs. "Ta... Tales, I'm... I'm sorry..."
Tales silently watched the sobbing Nide.
In the end, he still turned away and drew in a light breath.
"It's all right now, Nide." Tales sighed softly, took the broken bowl from Synti, drank some water, and said quietly, "Don't be afraid. I always have a way."
Except for Nide, who was sobbing uncontrollably, the children timidly watched this scene in silence.
Tales looked at the ground beneath him, his gaze gradually hardening.
Compared with the countless predecessors who had traveled through countless worlds, his luck was undoubtedly much worse.
Even so...
Tales looked at the five children around him, especially Colia, who had just recovered from typhoid. Terror still lingered in her crystal-clear eyes.
At least, he thought, he would earn more money tomorrow.
In the Sunset Temple of Everstar City, an apprentice priest who had finished the sunset prayers and was tidying the Altar of God suddenly stopped.
She stared in surprise at a Sacrificial Lamp filled with Eternal Oil beneath the stone altar.
The inconspicuous lamp had never been lit, used, or even shone once since she had begun tending the altar.
Yet it suddenly burst into bright yellow flames.
The flames flickered uncertainly, shifting from yellow to red, then crimson.
Like the color of blood, they grew increasingly fierce.
An Elder Priest noticed the apprentice's distraction and scolded her unhappily.
"Nia!"
Only then did the apprentice return her attention to the altar.
But it was not until the Elder Priest saw the unusual lamp herself that she cried out.
"Nia, quickly—quickly notify the High Priest!"
The Elder Priest could not conceal her astonishment. Trembling, she rushed to the Sacrificial Lamp, raised her right hand, turned her left palm upward, and assumed a prayer pose while murmuring.
"Luori above..."
What was happening?
Apprentice Nia stood there in a daze.
It was the first time she had seen the respected priest so flustered, and her own emotions were affected.
Had I made a mistake?
But I never touched that lamp.
"But... but what should I tell the High Priest?"
Nia asked in a panic:
"Someone secretly lit it—the lamp beside the Altar of God?"
The elderly priest stopped praying.
"No."
The elderly priest stared fixedly at the lamp and lowered his praying hands.
"As for this lamp, even across the two continents and countless islands of the entire Erroel World, only one person can light it."
"That person concerns the future of this kingdom."