The Laws of Survival X and X So-Called "Food"

Qi Zhou walked aimlessly in some unknown direction.

He didn't know where he was going. All he could do was drag his muddled body onward.

His head ached terribly, and he was terribly dizzy.

He was so hungry it felt as though his insides were burning, but... strangely, he didn't want to eat anything.

Fiery red clouds blazed on the horizon.

Qi Zhou looked up at the sun as it was about to sink below the horizon. Reflected in his eyes, it looked like tears of blood held in his pupils.

He didn't know whether he was mourning himself or the people who had died.

He couldn't remember how long he had walked or where he had been since leaving that unfinished building-perhaps because even after he had walked until the sun set, he was still surrounded by an endless expanse of yellow sand.

Qi Zhou walked on in a daze. Only after the world spun around him did he realize he had fallen to the ground.

Had he fallen?

He didn't know, but he felt terrible. His whole body hurt as though needles had been driven into it, and it stung as though it were being roasted over a fire.

Was it because he had been sunburned?

Qi Zhou wondered in a daze.

He tried to get up, but his arms and legs wouldn't respond.

...I've reached my limit... huh...

With that thought, Qi Zhou slipped unawares into a pitch-black abyss.

Qi Zhou was jolted awake by a violent bout of heart palpitations. He saw that he was lying on a rock, and an unbearable pain was coming from the arm hanging over its side.

A disheveled, filthy man was crouched beside him, laboriously cutting into his arm with a rusty dagger. Beneath his hand was a battered cardboard box lined with a plastic bag, with a shallow pool of crimson blood already collected inside.

If he had woken a little later, the man's dagger would have cut into an artery in his arm.

When the man saw Qi Zhou wake up, his pupils contracted sharply. He viciously stabbed the dagger toward Qi Zhou's chest.

With a crack, the dagger struck the rock behind Qi Zhou. Its blade bent, and even its wooden handle flew off.

Qi Zhou pushed himself up and rolled off the rock. The sudden movement made him so dizzy that he couldn't stand, and he could only manage to steady himself on one knee, panting softly.

The man threw away the bent dagger, grabbed a stick lying nearby and walked toward Qi Zhou again, cursing.

The way the man looked at Qi Zhou was not as though he were looking at a person, but livestock fleeing wildly from a butcher's knife-an ungrateful beast that actually dared to resist. Damn it!

Qi Zhou couldn't understand why the man was looking at him like that.

But he didn't want to think about it anymore.

He slowly raised one hand.

The sun shone brightly overhead, as though it meant to roast every bit of filth in the world to death beneath its blazing light.

A streak of flame trailed smoke as it tore through the air.

"Bang!"

The disheveled man lay on the ground, clutching one charred arm and staring at Qi Zhou in terror, as though he were staring at a monster that had emerged from the abyss.

He bit back the cries of agony he couldn't stop, biting his lip bloody in the process.

But Qi Zhou merely crouched on the ground, dry heaving again and again.

After retching for quite a while, Qi Zhou felt no better, and had only used up most of what little strength he had left.

The man slowly got to his feet and picked up the stick. Though he was trembling all over, he still walked determinedly toward Qi Zhou, closing in step by step. The closer he got, the faster he breathed, and his eyes widened until they nearly bulged from their sockets.

As he approached, a faint aroma of charred flesh drifted from his arm, making the nausea that had begun to subside surge through Qi Zhou again.

Why... won't he give up?

Qi Zhou couldn't understand.

Was the price of one arm not enough to make him back off?

No matter how he thought about it, he couldn't understand.

We have no grudge, and we've never met. Why does it have to... end with one of us dead?

Qi Zhou thought of losing consciousness; of suddenly waking up; of the longing and greed in the man's eyes as he drained his blood; of the way the man had looked at him like livestock awaiting slaughter as he approached.

He understood.

So... there was never any hatred at all. He was just "slaughtering livestock."

So here, people can be food... and a source of water, too.

He slowly raised his head and looked at the man, at the "teacher" who had taught him a lesson.

But the man came to an abrupt halt when their eyes met.

Kerien saw that the kid, who had been no different from a slab of meat on a chopping board to him, had changed. At some point, the kid's eyes had changed.

One was gray-blue, the other silver-blue. The silver-blue eye was blue to the point of emptiness and nothingness, as though a soul could lose itself in that blue, then sink into the abyss, into hell.

That color... was nothing a human eye could have.

Only the color of his eyes had changed, yet the kid himself had gone from a docile lamb awaiting slaughter to something utterly terrifying.

Kerien had done plenty of "scavenger" work and had picked up plenty of people who were unconscious-and would never wake again. After draining their blood, he would skin them and remove their organs. Their bones could be ground down into knives or made into other weapons, and if the meat was good enough, it could even be taken to the market and exchanged for some Jenny.

Things had gone wrong before, but he had always dealt with them properly. Even if he couldn't, running away was still a last resort.

But this was the first time Kerien had suffered such a heavy loss, and at the hands of a child.

It had cost him an arm, and he was furious, but he had also seen how much more valuable the kid was.

The kid had the ability to "summon fireballs."

If he could seize this opportunity to capture the kid, he could fetch a handsome reward by taking him either to the arena in the Fourth District or to the church in the Second District. But if he couldn't capture him, then the arm he had lost would have been for nothing, and he would have lost everything.

But Kerien saw the kid's eyes.

Then Kerien trembled all over. Jenny, rewards-compared to his own life, all of it was as useless and cheap as the sand of Meteor City.

He felt a tremor rise from the depths of his soul, his soul shrieking: Run... run!

But he could do nothing except stare fixedly at the kid. He didn't even dare look away-if he kept meeting his eyes, perhaps the monster from the abyss would wait a little longer before pouncing on him and tearing him apart.

Kerien's stick rolled from his hand onto the ground.

Qi Zhou had lowered his head and stopped looking at him.

The next moment, as though granted a reprieve, he struggled to turn around. Clutching his arm, he fled away from Qi Zhou without looking back.

Qi Zhou watched his retreating figure gradually disappear, then sank to the ground, drained of strength.

He clenched tightly the hand that could conjure a fireball with the slightest squeeze.