Mo Fei’s eyes flickered and opened slowly. His back ached from cold before his senses returned.
On his wrist. The silk ribbon burnt black at the edges and slowly reformed. The character 叁 (3) was gone. In its place, the new mark, 肆 (4), glowed faintly.
Mo Fei pressed his hand against the cold snow. "Ah! Argh." His bones were cracked, but with a soft clatter, his remaining broken bones healed.
A deep, marrow-chilling cold hit him, his thin clothes did nothing to stop it.
The second thing that hit him was the smell. Not decaying or any other pungent scent. Wood smoke, dung, unwashed bodies, iron, and the wet-wool stink of soaked soil.
"I was killed by that tree..." What was the point of all of that?... No–wait. Was there a reason behind it? That monster’s attack didn’t kill him. Was that a warning that he would not die even if he killed himself? And that tree was the purifier.
His ears perked up, the noises of metal crashing on metal, the guttural scream of men, the creaking of wood, the snoring of the animals, and the crack of the whip. Wait, the crack of the whip?
His body trembled in cold, and a faint question in his mind: "What now? New monsters going to attack me?"
He was on his knees in churned, frozen mud. His clothes were the same casual clothes, and his long-sleeved T-shirt from his apartment was torn from arms. His wrist ached under the ribbon, now looking oddly plain against the grim backdrop.
"Oh, how desperate I was for my summer vacations." After that, he spat on the ice as if disrespecting the world. He tilted his head upward, feeling the cold wind.
That was not a curated absurdity. That was not a horrifying nightmare of monsters. That was an empire, and he was standing twenty paces away from the gateway.
Beside him, tall walls loomed, with a huge, mud-churning yard. Smoke from dozens of raw huts rose into a low, iron-grey sky, from which fat, wet snowflakes were constantly falling. From the gateway, men in rough-spun tunics and fur walked along with purpose; other men drove rows of ’slaves’ who were bound in chains, their breath gasping in the cold.
They came out of some wooden watchtowers beside a blacksmith’s shed.
"Okay, that was not a good joke..." From behind, a shadow fell on him. A boot baked in frozen soil stopped a few inches away from Mo Fei. The shade was that of a tall man, and from the outline of the shadow, he guessed that was of high status because of the wide, fluffy cotton clothes the man appeared to be wearing, unlike those dirty slaves.
"On your feet, void-spawn." The voice was a gravelly rasp, speaking a dialect of Mandarin that sounded archaic, adorned with a marginal roughness. The man’s eyes narrowed when he said "void spawn," as if testing something rotten.
Mo Fei glanced over his shoulder at the shadow with an annoyed expression.
A man loomed, wrapped in heavy furs over lamellar leather armour. His face was a topographic map of scars and windburn, his beard matted. His eyes held no cosmic indifference.
"What? That’s how you welcome your guest. Jiǎohuá de cháng tóu." (old fried dough stick.)
The world paused after his words. All the other guards quickly turned away, trying to suppress their amusement or maybe a fear of getting caught between two roosters.
The tall man’s jaw tightened. His lips pressed into a bloodless line. He threw his blade down, planting it in the snow beside Mo Fei.
All of them held their breath and curiosity. Mo Fei glanced at the sword. "And now I’m guessing. You are thinking that scared me, huh?" After saying that, he gulped silently. (Yes, it definitely did.)
"What say someth–" before Mo Fei could finish speaking. The man yanked him up by his collar. His body was still processing the aftershock, offered no resistance. He inspected Mo Fei with a sneer, looking at his weak hands and strange clothes.
"Tch, pitiful. No muscle, and those strange clothes. Not a beggar from any province I know." He shoved Mo Fei forward, toward a line of chained men. "But the Master likes curiosities. He’ll find a use for you, or at least you’ll be good food for beasts. Chain him!"
Of course he didn’t belong here. Additionally, Mo Fei lacked the physical strength compared to those who went to war, primarily because he had not eaten for two or three days.
After his inevitable command, their rough hands grabbed Mo Fei. They put a heavy, ice-cold iron collar around his neck. Its weight, an instant, profound humiliation. Another chain was linked to the man before him and secured with a hammer blow. Surrounded by men, escape felt like a dream.
He examined their faces; their eyes held the real suffering, the exhaustion in the slaves’ faces, and genuine malice in the guards’.
Mo Fei saw imperfect, handmade tools. He saw mud, rust, and disorder. No curated silence. No symbolic monsters. Every single thing belonged to reality... Was it a travel to the past? Or was it just a presentation of the past? Possible. But well, what was not possible in these garbage worlds?
The humans there must not be a fake creation; they were likely as trapped as he was, their entire reality annexed into this nightmare. They weren’t chosen ones, but they had been born here.
The guard shoved Mo Fei into line. "Move, stranger! The Overseer wants a look at the new catch."
Mo Fei stumbled forward and managed to stop himself from crashing. The chain pulled his throat. His mind still clung to one anchoring, terrible thought: "I should really keep my mouth shut."
With stumbling steps in the snow, he continued walking. In front of Mo Fei was a man in his early 40s muttering under his breath. His eyes held a pang of despair, probably cursing his fate.
The cold bypassed Mo Fei’s clothes; he didn’t have good clothing to begin with. Then, in the line of sight, there was a blacksmith’s shed. They were heading towards it. He could guess the reason (sigh); even royalty and the presence of luxury could not warm the cold heart of a man, and now, it didn’t warm their bodies either.
The mist had begun to fade, clearing up the surroundings. Yes, precisely, it wasn’t a luxurious place. It was a simple place, and black smoke was coming out of the chimney. The fire burnt inside the shed. The slaves outside still shivered.
Those few minutes of being a slave had taught him more than those physical sufferings ever did. That humiliation must have been the reason they lost hope. Their heads didn’t bother to lift when the guards walked. They didn’t even sigh.
Only the guards entered the place, leaving slaves outside, human beings as enemies of one another. They tied the chain to a pillar, giving them the respect of a street dog. Everyone around him quickly sat down when the figures disappeared. That had become their luxury, getting even a little time to sit.
A long-lasting sigh escaped from his mouth as he looked above at the sky. Nothing wrong with it, totally fine and covered in the mist. He was feeling cold, yet he had to bear it.
"I need to survive and escape." A thought that gave him the will. He kept looking at the sky, hoping something or someone would come and save him, or wishing to wake him up from the nightmare. Just at that moment.
One veteran man spoke to him, his voice empty, filled with harsh reality. "Don’t stare at the sky for too long, boy. The sky has neither bread nor mercy. Keep your eyes on the mud before they are taken."
His words were clearly soulless; he probably had lost his heart. He couldn’t understand, but he would when he got used to living in madness. "Where are we? This isn’t–This isn’t a place like the other worlds..."
He stifled a chuckle and said, "Other worlds? Boy, you aren’t the first one to say that. There have been few who–" He was going to finish the sentence when the other slave who was listening to this spoke; his voice held a strange fear.
"Do not speak loudly... And young man, you better not talk about the myths of the other worlds in this land. The master had killed many strangers when they talked about other worlds... One recently escaped from two others, yet somehow those two were never seen again. They might have got killed too." His voice conveyed a sense of danger, reflecting his fear of being caught by the guards.
"Chosen ones..." He must survive too. "Overseer, huh? Who is this so-called master?" Mo Fei’s voice hid the curiosity.
The veteran man looked at him. "The master? A self-proclaimed term... He is just another flesh in a finer suit of fur. The people of ’Trasia’ call him the Ascended of Dreamer."
Dreamer... He had seen those words in The Pillar of the world two. "What is it?"
"It is his Authority name." The veteran man paused. "You are one of us now; tell us your name, you may address me as Han."
It took Mo Fei a few seconds to respond, his jaw shivering under the cold. "Mo Fei."
Han stared at the boy. He was young for the chains. Nineteen, maybe twenty. A lean build, not a laborer’s body.
Then Han looked at his strange clothes, fabric that didn’t belong to any province he knew. The fabric was fine, actually too fine for a slave.
The veteran man finally nodded after hearing the name, and said, "Mo Fei? A unique name. This nervous man is Feng." After he finished his words, Feng warned Mo Fei once again.
"If you want to live, even a pathetic life, do not talk about another world ever again, young man." His words held weight.
Without any knowledge of these worlds, ascending now was reckless. He needed to understand the world. That was how he could go back home.
A man who wore beads and seemed religious, someone who had been taken recently whispered to them. "Sinners pay in either way; we must have done something. Give thanks to the cold; the cold purifies the rot. We are the grain, and this world is a mill, the hand of the divine. We mustn’t resist it." His voice was filled with acceptance.
Mo Fei stared at his face, totally flabbergasted. He had never seen a man believing so blindly that he accepted his suffering as deserved.
"WHAT A STUPID MAN!" his mind filled with a baffling thought, but said nothing. The man was stupid because if Mo Fei had accepted that this was ’divine’, he’d be admitting that he didn’t want to see his family again. Why would he choose divinity instead of his home?
The other two men also stared at the man. They were trying not to show their surprise under the stoic expression.
Feng leaned against the wall with a slight flinch. "Brother Wu, you shouldn’t accept your fate just like that without any will. How can a person survive?" Hearing his words, Wu mumbled something about ’May God show you truth’ but didn’t say anything.
Wu started praying.
Mo Fei kept thinking about Overseer and the world.
"What is bothering you, Mo Fei?" Han asked.
Mo Fei hesitated but decided to trust him a little. Han’s face held the solemn expression, but deep within that was the soft heart of a human.
"I was wondering, who actually is the Overseer? His true identity?"
Upon hearing that, Han leaned his head against the frozen pillar; his neck made a clicking sound. "Names are just air here, boy. It doesn’t matter whether he is an overseer, a master, or a dreamer. He still breathes the same air as us."
He took a small break for a moment, and a small sigh escaped. "He just gets to watch while we are used for scrap. We had seen his face. He is just like us, made of meat and skin. More than that, what is he? How did he come here? Why is he here? We don’t know."
Han paused once again and looked back as the footsteps echoed. Other slaves went silent. The figure of that tall man came out of the doorway. He had come here to check them out. His silent gaze went upon Mo Fei and then to others. With a glare, he went inside once again, disappearing from sight.
Han focused on Mo Fei; his eyes softened slightly. "I was the stonemason in the south before the ’Demonic Wolves’ swallowed my village. Now? I’m just a number forty-two slave."
Mo Fei felt the weight of his words. Han was a man who was taken here forcefully, just like Mo Fei and any other slaves. Mo Fei’s eyes locked on Feng, and for a moment thoughts filled his brain. "This one will get me killed. He’s a liability, but he had seen strangers getting killed; I can’t blame his insanity."
He looked down at his wrist. The ribbon, 肆, glowed with a faint, steady light against the dull grey. A single, clean number in a world of filthy, overwhelming reality.
Then,
A voice cut through the deafening silence: "Move, crap!" The guard’s boots crunched on the snow; every slave’s face showed the panic. They quickly moved away and stood.
Han stood up slowly, his joints popping with sound. Mo Fei’s eyes looked at the guard’s belt for any key weapon or even a hint to escape.
Before he could snatch the key, the tall man came out; Mo Fei stopped. He realized the risk, and then that tall man spoke in a rough tone. "Move now; we are heading forward." His voice left no room for disobedience, as counterguards gathered them in a line once again.
Mo Fei’s ear twitched at some guards’ whispering. ’Isn’t that territories of Kholkis?’
"Kholkis... I just hope this madman doesn’t throw me toward it."