Sometimes, when Kane grew too tired to keep smashing, he rolled over and lay on his back, staring at the gray, hazy sky above.
The sky remained the same as ever—grayish white, with no clouds, no light, no change whatsoever.
He stared at the sky, and the sky stared back at him. Suddenly, he wanted to laugh, and so he did.
His laughter echoed through the riverbed, shrill and grating, like the cry of an owl!
At nightfall, he crawled back to the abandoned warehouse.
The warehouse walls were built of red brick, but the bricks had weathered away, their surfaces pitted and uneven.
Most of the sheet-metal roof had been torn apart by the wind. Only a few pieces still hung there, clanging whenever the wind blew.
The warehouse was empty, containing nothing but broken bricks and rusty metal scraps.
Kane curled up in a corner, using his sole remaining arm to hug his mutilated body. He howled like a wounded beast, his voice forced from his throat—hoarse, low, and intermittent.
He kept roaring the same words: "Give me back my flesh! Let me die!"
No one heard him. Even if they had, they would not have cared.
Everyone lived in their own hell. No one had the strength to concern themselves with anyone else.
Wu Heng's consciousness drifted over the riverbed without stopping.
He knew what Kane was shouting, but he did not care.
Every living corpse in this world shouted similar words. Some merely had throats too rotten to make a sound.
Lia was on a battered four-wheeled cart.
The cart was wooden, its boards rotten and its wheels crooked. It creaked as it rolled.
Someone pushed her along. The one pushing her was also a living corpse, even quieter and more numb than her. He thought