Not long ago, Chang Xu had considered a question: was it worth trading his own life for someone else's death?
At the time, his answer had been no. He wanted to live; killing Qi Si had also been for the sake of living more freely, without threats hanging over him.
But what if the chips on the other side of The Scales were the lives of others?
Ever since Chang Xu could remember, ghosts and monsters had surrounded him. Their hideous, blood-soaked forms, baring fangs and claws, danced around him like ancient shamans. Once they discovered that he could see them, they became even more unrestrained, trying to approach him, tear into him, and replace him.
Their blatant, undisguised malice had shaped his hatred of death and, in turn, awakened his desire to survive. He had stubbornly lived on, and as he grew older, he gradually gained the power to contend with the eerie, becoming someone those ghosts and monsters feared.
At last, he heard the ghosts' voices. Unlike the shrill screams full of threats from his memories, they became exceptionally polite once they realized they could do nothing to him.
They began teaching him, chattering over one another, all sorts of principles for survival. They tried to convince him that he was one of them, and those principles truly did help him survive in the orphanage.
But ghosts were cold in the end, unlike humans, who were warm.
The moment Chang Xu stepped into the sunlight, they scattered in all directions. Only after he returned to the shadows would they surge back like a tide.
They wanted to keep him, like a sticky swamp dragging down any creature that wandered into it, until it submerged their cheeks and poured into their nose and mouth.
But Chang Xu knew that