The Denied Value

Huai Shi opened his eyes and saw the afternoon light outside the window.

Dust drifted down from the ceiling, dancing chaotically in the dim yellow light. The air was thick with the familiar smell of mildew, and he could hear dripping from next door.

This was his home.

After an Illusionary Dream, he was lying on the battered sofa in the living room.

"Am I... still alive? How long was I asleep?"

He climbed up in a daze and touched his chest. The wound had been properly wrapped in bandages. It ached faintly, yet he could move without difficulty.

More importantly, he discovered that the Book of Destiny had shifted from a physical object into his consciousness. With a thought, he could flip through its pages.

Soon, he heard a voice beside him.

"About ten hours or so. Looks like you recovered well."

The girl sitting by the window raised her head to look at him. Her calm expression made Huai Shi uneasy.

"What exactly... happened last night? Right, Old Liu, he..."

"Liu Dongli? Ah, he's alive. His surgery should be over by now, and he's in intensive care... If he recovers well, he might have a chance of waking up someday. But this isn't your fault. Rather, surviving after being targeted by Green Sun was already a stroke of incredible luck."

Ai Qing said calmly, "A lot happened last night, and the mastermind even got away... but as far as you're concerned, it's all over."

"It's over?"

"Yes, it's over." Ai Qing nodded. "No matter what, what happens next has nothing to do with you. No one will keep targeting you anymore."

She stared at Huai Shi and solemnly told him:

"Congratulations. You can return to your old peaceful life."

If Ai Qing had told him that yesterday, he would have been overjoyed, dancing with excitement. But now, hearing the news, he could not feel happy at all.

He did not even have the slightest pleased reaction.

Ai Qing said nothing more. She closed her book and prepared to leave. After refusing Huai Shi's offer to see her out, she got to her feet on her crutch and said goodbye.

"What's wrong?"

Seeing Huai Shi's dazed expression, she tilted her head. "Is there anything else you want to ask? If you're worried about Liu Dongli's car parked here, someone will come take it away in a couple of days. Don't worry, they'll call you before coming."

Huai Shi shook his head and looked at her. "These past few days, I've been wondering where exactly I might have seen you before."

"..."

Ai Qing fell silent. After a long while, she calmly shook her head. "It doesn't matter if you can't remember. It wasn't anything important anyway. Forget it."

She walked out the door, gave Huai Shi one last look, then nodded in farewell.

"Then I need to leave immediately for Jinling to report in. May everything go smoothly in the rest of your life. I hope we never meet again."

She said, "Farewell, Huai Shi."

The door closed.

In the silence, Huai Shi watched Ai Qing enter the car with the driver's support. The door closed, and the car slowly drove away, eventually vanishing at the end of the road.

For the entire afternoon, Huai Shi sat on the garden steps, in his old spot, staring blankly at the bare flower bed.

"Feeling lost, huh?"

Crow appeared again at some point, perched on his shoulder, and patted his head. "Don't be sad. Come on, have a cigarette and relax.

"If that doesn't work, buy a bottle of liquor and take a couple of drinks. Sleep it off, and everything will be over."

"It'll be over?"

Huai Shi looked at her.

"Yes, it'll be over." Crow asked lightly, "Isn't everything over now, Huai Shi? Just as you wished, you've escaped all that messy nonsense and regained the peaceful life you'd been longing for."

Huai Shi did not answer.

Was it over?

Perhaps. Yet the release he had imagined never came.

There was no sense of relief. Instead, there was even a trace of anger from nowhere... when clearly nothing was over.

He suddenly remembered Old Yang's face.

In that final moment, that bastard had actually been smiling at him, as though dying meant he could finally be free.

But nothing had been freed. He had merely traded his own life for someone else's. Would the woman he saved really be happy?

What the hell was he so proud of?

And there was Liu Dongli, now in intensive care.

Huai Shi had once considered them both his friends. But now, one had been shot in the back by him, while the other had shot him in the back.

He had lost two friends.

Yet the one responsible for all of it had already slipped away...

"How can it just suddenly be over?"

He raised a hand to cover his face, no longer able to suppress the anger and exhaustion in his heart. "Fuck..."

Crow looked at him with pity.

In all this time, it was the first time she had seen Huai Shi so angry.

Other than this, no matter what he encountered, he always just shamelessly collapsed on the ground and let the wheels of his chaotic fate roll over him like some old salted fish.

He was naturally easygoing.

He could be as strong as he wanted. I was doing just fine anyway.

Yet she had always felt that something was missing from Huai Shi, that he was concealing something, or perhaps... trying to hide something.

Only now did she vaguely understand that perhaps this empty garden was where he felt most at ease. Only here could he calmly face himself.

Even though his heart resisted this place so deeply—

"Say, Huai Shi." She asked seriously, "Does this place hold some important meaning for you?"

"Probably..."

Huai Shi lowered his head and looked at the small garden below the steps, remaining silent for a long time.

"If you don't want to say it, pretend I never asked." Crow shook her head. "After all, prying into someone's privacy isn't exactly something to be proud of."

"No, there's no reason to hide it anymore. I'm just thinking about how to tell you."

Huai Shi rubbed his face, pondered for a long time, and thought seriously.

He said, "When I was little, I once had a high fever."

"My parents were very angry at the time because they were having fun abroad. They said I hadn't taken care of myself properly and made them worry, then transferred me some money and told me to go to the hospital myself.

"But I was too sleepy and felt too awful, so I didn't go. I fell asleep on the sofa in the living room."

Huai Shi said, "I remember having many strange dreams then. I dreamed that I grew wings and flew through the sky. I dreamed that this old house could speak, wiping my sweat and pouring me water. Then I heard someone climbing over the wall. Someone climbed in through the backyard, wearing a mask and carrying a knife... I hid behind the door and didn't dare make a sound.

"I was terrified. If that person found me, I might die."

"I didn't want to die."

He stared at the raised patch of earth and murmured softly, "So I killed him."

"..."

Crow froze. She turned to look at Huai Shi's face, but found no trace of a joke there, only an unsettling calm.

"That's right."

Huai Shi repeated calmly, "I killed him."

He hid behind the door and, when that man came inside, swung an axe down at the back of his head.

It took only one blow for the man to fall.

Then he struck again, and again, until he had no strength left.

After realizing the man could no longer move, he was first bewildered, then uneasy and panicked. In the end, however, what emerged was a courage that frightened even himself.

In the haze of his fever, he dragged the corpse into the garden, dug open the ground, and secretly buried it there along with the axe.

He covered the hole, washed his hands clean, and returned to bed.

As though nothing had happened.

Stone Marrow Hall was so remote that no one would come. His parents were so lazy that they would never tend to the garden. No one would discover that he had killed someone.

That was how he fell asleep in fear and had many more strange dreams. Yet he remembered none of them. Along with them, he lost some of his earlier memories as well. When he woke up, his fever had miraculously broken.

But from that moment on, Huai Shi's childhood had ended.

From then on, day after day, year after year.

"Thinking about it carefully, I've really been lucky to survive, haven't I?"

Huai Shi said softly, "At first, I was terrified that someone would come arrest me, that someone would find what I buried in the garden. But even now, it seems no one has ever found it...

"If I hadn't hidden it back then, maybe I wouldn't have to be so exhausted now. No, if I had been killed back then, I wouldn't be living a life so miserable I can barely stand to look at myself."

"...You don't need to torment yourself like this."

Crow could not help sighing. "Have you ever considered this possibility? Maybe this was just another nightmare you had while burning with fever."

"Yeah, maybe?"

Huai Shi nodded calmly. "I've bought shovels many times, but I've thrown away many too.

"Every time I stand here, I hesitate, afraid of what might be hidden beneath this ground. I'm not actually afraid of digging up a corpse. I'm afraid of the truth."

He said, "If I dig this place up, I won't be able to keep lying to myself anymore—then how could I ever return to my peaceful life?"

He paused, then suddenly laughed softly. "I thought I would spend my entire life deceiving myself."

"—But now, it seems there's no need to fear anything anymore."

As he spoke, Huai Shi picked up the rusted iron shovel in the corner, returned to the center of the garden, found the mark from back then, and stood still.

Then, he lifted the first shovelful of dirt.

Crow stared in astonishment.

Then came the second shovel, then the third.

Huai Shi moved quickly. Even as the wound beneath his bandages split open and blood seeped out, he did not hesitate again.

He chopped away the obstructing wild grass, shoveled out the roots underground, and dug up the earth that had buried his nightmare.

Sweat poured down like rain.

"You know about my family..."

With his back to Crow, Huai Shi spoke to her as though talking to himself. "Actually, I know very well that my parents never liked me from the moment I was born. After Grandpa died, they stopped caring for me—they never needed me.

"When they were around, I was an inconvenient burden. After they left, I became a stray dog with no home. I patched things together, borrowed from one place to cover another, and barely scraped by for all these years.

"By now, if I can't make money, it won't just be tuition. I won't even be able to survive... Even I think a life like this has no value at all.

"Honestly, I often wonder why I keep living such an exhausting life.

"Everything is always so miserable. No matter how hard I struggle, it never seems to help, and sometimes people laugh at me and look down on me. Wouldn't it be easier to give up once in a while?

"But no matter how depressed I am, no matter how hard things get, I feel like I can keep going. Even if I have to sell my dignity sometimes, it doesn't matter. I won't get angry.

"Because I know that as long as I keep moving forward, everything will get better.

"Even if those changes are always insignificant.

"People like Old Yang were willing to specifically introduce jobs to me, finding excuses to give me a little extra money. Old Liu was willing to treat me to meals and clean up the messes I caused at the club. Even after I shot him in the back, when danger came, he still wanted me to run...

"Doesn't that prove that my life has value?"

Huai Shi asked softly, but no one answered him. Sweat dripped from his face into the hole he had dug.

"But now—"

He lowered his eyes, raised the pick again, and drove it down with all his strength.

As though he wanted to split apart that vicious face from his memories.

"My value has been denied!"

Bang!

The shovel seemed to strike something and tore open a huge crack, but there was nothing visible in the pit. No corpse, no bones, nothing at all.

Only the scattered glow of the setting sun faintly outlined a cruel shape.

Like an axe.

Huai Shi bent down, reached out, and gripped its handle tightly.

He said:

"—I'm going to kill him."

Under the setting sun, Crow stared in shock at the shape in Huai Shi's hand—intangible iron forged purely from Source Matter, blazing fury and icy killing intent blended together, reflecting a brutal light.

It was the killing intent and death that had slept here for seven years, given substance and forged into a steel weapon from nightmares and fear.

As though he had gripped a spark, Huai Shi's right hand was ignited by that invisible force in that instant, white flames rising from it.

Its true form emerged from silence.

"So that's it... so that's it..."

She murmured softly, suddenly enlightened, finally understanding what was happening to Huai Shi.

He had crossed the barrier between spirit and matter, realizing the transformation between iron and Source Matter...

After seven years, Huai Shi had finally crossed the long Stress Period. In the burning of Source Matter, his nature underwent sublimation, and he welcomed the soul that belonged to him.

It was the unique true name of the soul bestowed at last by the Silver Sea.

—'Hand of Confinement'!

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