Chapter 5
Wearing his necktie, Shen Quanquan played marbles in the corner of the wall, occasionally pulling his pocket open to catch a whiff of the chocolate’s rich sweetness. He had already eaten one; the rest were far too precious to finish, meant to be saved and savored bite by tiny bite.
Faint weeping suddenly drifted in from outside. Curious, he climbed onto the stool and peered out the window, spotting a child with a clean-shaven head squatting just outside, face buried in their knees, crying their eyes out.
The child wept bitterly, shoulders heaving in jagged hiccups. After watching for a while, Shen Quanquan asked, “What are you crying for?”
Startled, the child whipped around to look up. Shen Quanquan studied the flustered, tear-streaked face, recognizing her as the little girl who had stood next to him that morning—the one dragged away by the supervisor because her hair was crawling with lice.
“Where’s your hair?” Shen Quanquan asked in utter shock. “Did the lice eat it all up?”
“No, they shaved it off.” The girl hung her head, a teardrop clinging to the tip of her pointed chin.
Understanding dawned on Shen Quanquan. “You didn’t want your hair cut?”
The little girl gave a barely perceptible nod.
“I didn’t want my hair cut either. Last time when everyone was getting theirs chopped, I hid away.” Shen Quanquan adopted a conspiratorial whisper: “Do you know where I hid?”
The girl’s lips parted slightly. “Where did you hide?”
Shen Quanquan dropped his voice even lower: “I hid in the backyard.”
“There are ghosts in the backyard.”
“I didn’t see any ghosts. If a ghost ever came, I’d grab him!” Shen Quanquan poked both hands out through the window bars. His left hand mimed seizing something by the scruff, while his right made a sweeping clawing motion through the air toward her. “If he dared to bite, I’d snatch the lice off your head and dump them all over his!” With that, he knitted his brows and roared fiercely down at his empty left hand: “You still trying to squirm, huh?! You admit mistakes faster than anyone, got skin thicker than anyone, never care how much you get punished—now tell me, are you scared of lice?!”
The little girl broke into a giggling smile through her tears, then added, “Don’t go grabbing lice off of me. I washed my head and shaved all my hair off; I don’t have lice anymore.”
“Oh. Then we’ll just slam the ghost to death.” Shen Quanquan slammed his left hand viciously toward the ground.
The two children dissolved into giggles across the window bars. The girl introduced herself: “I’m Liu Sijin from Junior Class One. What’s your name?”
“I’m Shen Quanquan.”
“Which class are you in?”
“Junior Class One.”
Liu Sijin blinked. “B-but I’ve never seen you in our class.”
“Oh. Then I guess I’m not in Junior Class One.”
“Are you in Junior Class Two then?”
Shen Quanquan had never paid the slightest attention to which class he actually belonged to, so he scratched his cheek. “Yeah. Junior Class Two.”
“Shen Quanquan, let’s be friends.” Just as the words left her mouth, Liu Sijin grew hesitant. “…Except my older sister told me never to play with smelly boys.”
Shen Quanquan offered breezily, “Then neither of us will play with smelly boys! We’ll just play together.”
“Deal.”
Now that Liu Sijin was his brand-new friend, Shen Quanquan yanked off his padded cap. “I’ll lend you my hat to wear for two days. Only two days, though.”
This hat was a prized treasure he had scavenged from the junkyard; no one else in the entire orphanage had one like it.
Liu Sijin examined the cap. “It’s ugly. I’m not wearing it.”
Shen Quanquan pulled the two earflaps hanging by his cheeks straight up over the crown. “How is it ugly? You can tie it underneath, or you can tie it up on top to cover your bald head!”
Liu Sijin stared at him for two seconds. “Never mind. I’ll just stay like this.”
After chatting a bit more, Liu Sijin’s eyes drifted to Shen Quanquan’s chest, widening in admiration. “Your scarf is so pretty.”
Shen Quanquan looked down at it. “This cloth strip is a scarf?” Poffing out his chest with soaring pride, he declared, “I won’t lend you this one! Someone gave this to me.”
“Who gave it to you?”
Shen Quanquan was about to say “the big kid from Cloud Peak,” but the words caught on the tip of his tongue.
“Brother.”
The word tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop it.
A sudden flutter of panic seized his chest, but Liu Sijin pressed on: “Your big brother?”
He didn’t answer right away. He lowered his head, staring down at his scarf in silence for a good long while before finally letting out a soft: “Mm.”
“Your brother is so nice.”
Shen Quanquan remained silent, but his breathing quickened, a bright spark rekindling in his eyes.
Brother… Big brother…
He chanted the word silently in his mind over and over. With every repetition, it sounded sweeter, warmer, until a tidal wave of heat rushed straight to the top of his head, making his nose tingle with an aching prickle of emotion.
He snapped his head up and declared emphatically to Liu Sijin, “My brother is so good to me! He gave this to me! He gave me the scarf and good things to eat! Only my brother would give me those things!”
Though the words were spoken to Liu Sijin, it felt as though he were proclaiming them to convince himself. With that, all lingering hesitation vanished, and the floodgates burst open.
“My brother is super tall. Taller than all the big kids in our orphanage! When I look at him, I have to do it like this!” Shen Quanquan threw his head back, bending his spine into an extreme arch until Liu Sijin warned, “You’re gonna fall over!”
Gripping the window bars, Shen Quanquan pulled himself upright. “He’s super handsome. Prettier than all the big kids in the orphanage! He… he… his face doesn’t have any red patches at all. It’s so white—white like the wall, and smooth like the wall.”
At this time of year, all the orphanage children had chapped, peeling skin, sporting two wind-burned red patches on their cheeks.
“No, his face is even smoother than the wall,” Shen Quanquan corrected himself, squinting at the pitted surface beside him.
Liu Sijin pictured something entirely different: “That flat? Doesn’t he have a nose and eyes?”
“Of course he does! His nose and eyes are super handsome!” Shen Quanquan poked a stubby finger into his own cheek. “I mean smooth here.”
Understanding struck Liu Sijin: “Oh, I get it! The kind of smooth that looks slippery!”
“Yes! Exactly like that!”
“So where is your brother now?” Liu Sijin asked with intense curiosity.
Shen Quanquan didn’t answer right away. Instead, he cast his gaze into the distance, looking down that empty, deserted road.
A moment later, he said softly, “My brother isn’t here. He’s a child from Cloud Peak, but he’s going to come visit me.” Then he nodded firmly, reaffirming it to himself: “Mm. He’s definitely coming to visit me.”
Chu Ya was already sitting in the car heading home. He had no inkling that he had just acquired a brand-new identity—as the older brother of a certain six-year-old orphan from the Angel Orphanage in the Abyss’s Aisala Special District. He simply stared up at the sky through the car window.
Though Cloud Peak’s sky was equally overcast with gray, it lacked the thick, murky heaviness of the Abyss. Here, one could faintly sense sunlight filtering through, lending the air a touch of brightness and clarity.
The floating city’s main structure was entirely metallic, shaped like an elongated shuttle and suspended aloft by massive anti-gravity levitation engines mounted at either end. While its surface area was comparable to a standard city, more than half the land was reserved for agricultural food production facilities. The remaining sliver had to house several hundred thousand citizens alongside all municipal infrastructure, making every square inch of space exceedingly precious.
The thoroughfares were not only narrow, but stacked into three tiers: the upper two tiers served as opposing one-way lanes for vehicle traffic, while the ground level was dedicated to pedestrian walkways. Flanking the streets, high-density skyscrapers thrust directly into the heavens, exerting a suffocating sense of claustrophobic pressure.
The vehicle Chu Ya rode in was traveling along the topmost roadway. Since the daylight was dim, the buildings alongside the road glowed with brilliant artificial lighting.
Through the metallic barrier fence lining the roadway, he peered into the second-story windows of the passing buildings.
Outside rooms smaller than ten square meters hung multiple company plaques, with clusters of sales agents huddled together, yelling into phones to their respective clients.
Inside the hospital wards, the beds were stacked as bunks. A nurse lowered the upper bunk’s elevation so a patient hooked up to an IV drip could climb on, before hoisting it back up toward the ceiling.
Cramped, suffocating, congested…
It suddenly struck him that Cloud Peak, the place where he lived, was hardly any better than the Abyss. Though the Abyss was frigid, damp, barren, and bleak, utterly dependent on Cloud Peak for survival, at least it was never this agonizingly crowded.
If that dirty kid—the one weeping at the retreating silhouettes of those chosen—ever actually made it to the Cloud Peak of his dreams, he would surely be deeply disappointed.
Lost in his wandering thoughts against the seat back, Chu Ya was violently wrenched back to reality by an earth-shattering boom. It sounded like an explosion detonating nearby, or perhaps an entire high-rise collapsing.
Amidst a chorus of screeching brakes from the vehicles ahead and behind, his driver slammed on the brakes. Chu Ya jerked forward, only to be snapped back into his seat by the taut seatbelt.
“Young Master Chu, are you alright?” The moment the vehicle skidded to a halt, the driver twisted around in panic.
Bracing a hand against the door, Chu Ya shook his head. “I’m fine.”
Traffic came to a grinding halt across the roadway. Chu Ya lowered the window, hearing frantic screams rippling through the street below as pedestrians scrambled in all directions.
He saw heads popping out of the windows of surrounding cars, their faces wearing the same bewildered shock as his own. Inside the flanking high-rises, people called out to one another, clearly just as clueless about what had happened.
Soon, the heavy thrumming of a helicopter beat through the upper atmosphere, accompanied by the blare of a megaphone: “A high-security convict has escaped from the White Fortress! The suspect is armed with a portable mortar, possesses exceptionally high combat capability, and exhibits extreme violent tendencies! He is currently on this street! All citizens, remain indoors! Anyone outdoors, seek cover immediately—”
The corridor between the high-rises was far too narrow for the helicopter to descend, leaving it to circle uselessly overhead. But before the echo of the broadcast could fade, intense gunfire erupted directly ahead.
The shooting closed in rapidly. A bullet whined directly over the roof of Chu Ya’s car, while several stray rounds struck the road surface nearby, sending shards of asphalt spraying into the air.
Panic instantly gripped the driver, his face draining of color as he turned to look at Chu Ya.
Though Chu Ya was only twelve years old, years of training in the military academy meant he remained far cooler and more composed than an average adult.
Drivers and passengers in nearby cars had lost their heads, spilling out of their vehicles and fleeing back along the third-tier roadway, hunting for an off-ramp or stairwell to escape. But Chu Ya had already noticed a heavy steel blast-gate sliding shut to seal the roadway behind them. Knowing that bolting into the open now would leave them trapped and exposed to stray gunfire, he issued a terse order:
“Stay inside the car. Do not get out.”
No sooner had the words left his mouth than a silhouette appeared up ahead, leaping and sprinting across the roofs of stalled vehicles with terrifying agility, leaving the panicked crowd scrambling below in the dust. That lone figure was the focal point of the firefight; craters pockmarked the road in rapid succession wherever he moved.
“Aaargh!” Someone cried out in agony, clutching a bleeding arm—collateral damage from a stray bullet.
The helicopter’s megaphone bellowed down: “Get down! Do not run! Everybody get down!”
The figure vaulting across the car roofs closed in fast, allowing Chu Ya to get a clear look: a gaunt, pale man in his thirties. A wound on his shoulder wept blood, soaking his gray, prison-like tunic into a deep, sodden crimson.
Evidently realizing the road ahead was completely sealed, the man dropped down from the roof of a vehicle, lunged forward several strides, and ducked behind a metal lamppost by the roadside.
That lamppost stood right beside Chu Ya’s car, barely two meters away. Terrified, the driver froze, hardly daring to breathe. Chu Ya held his breath as well, carefully reaching out to grab the leather bag from the seat, slipping a concealed defensive dagger into his grip.
Back pressed against the lamppost, the man panted heavily, a portable mortar still hoisted over his uninjured shoulder. Staring at him, Chu Ya noticed several special forces soldiers rapidly rappelling down the towering concrete wall of the building overhead.
The operators moved swiftly, dropping to the level of the fifth floor in seconds. The man didn’t seem to look up, yet a shadowy dark mass beside him suddenly sprang to life, leaping up the wall and scaling the brickwork straight toward the descending soldiers.
Chu Ya had noticed that dark blur from the start, but had dismissed it as an ordinary reflection. Only now did he realize the shadow was fully three-dimensional, clambering up the wall with the nimble agility of a monkey.
“Uncle, do you see that?” he whispered urgently to the driver.
Trembling so hard his teeth chattered, the driver stammered, “Y-yes, I see him.”
“Do you see that black shadow, too?”
“Wh-what?”
Chu Ya froze for a split second before the realization hit him like a lightning bolt: he was looking at a quantum beast!
When Sentinels or Guides were in their differentiation period, mental fluctuations occasionally allowed them to catch fleeting glimpses of other people’s quantum beasts. The shapes were never fully defined, and the sightings were extraordinarily brief.
A wave of shock rippled through him. He hadn’t imagined this man was actually an awakened Sentinel or Guide—and a maximum-security prisoner confined within the White Fortress, no less.
Gunfire and agonized screams erupted from the high-rise wall. The shadowy monkey clawed and tore in a violent frenzy; clutching at their eyes, the operators were hoisted rapidly back to the rooftop by their safety cables.
With his path blocked ahead and soldiers closing in from behind, bullets slammed repeatedly into the metal lamppost protecting the man, sending sparks flying in showers.
Still seated in the vehicle, Chu Ya watched the man suddenly dart toward the edge of the street and scramble up the barrier fence. The shadowy monkey took up a defensive position, shielding him from incoming rounds while wisps of faint black smoke trailed from its head.
The man hammered on the reinforced window glass of the high-rise, yelling at the terrified office workers cowering inside: “Don’t be afraid! I’m not here to kill anyone, I just need to get away! Open the window, let me in!”
No one inside dared to approach; they shrieked in terror and stampeded toward the exits. Gritting his teeth, the man shouted, “Then get clear, hurry! I’m blowing it open!” Sliding down the chain-link fence, he backed up several paces and hoisted the mortar toward the window.
Yet before his finger could squeeze the trigger, his entire body seized violently. His arms went limp, and the mortar slipped from his grasp, clattering to the asphalt and rolling all the way to the side of Chu Ya’s car.
Chu Ya watched the shadowy monkey plant itself protectively in front of the man, claws raised in defensive fury. But a rope-like black shadow suddenly whipped past the car window, coiling tightly around the monkey’s body like a constrictor crushing its prey.
Another quantum beast!
The monkey and the serpent thrashed and rolled across the ground in a desperate brawl. Meanwhile, as though struck by an invisible psychic blow, the man clutched his chest and dropped to his knees, vomiting a heavy spray of bright blood onto the pavement. The shadowy monkey dissolved into a wisp of vapor, evaporating into thin air.
Several soldiers swarmed forward, pinning the man to the ground and pressing rifle barrels hard against his skull.
“Don’t move! Move and we shoot!”
The man offered no resistance. With his cheek mashed against the frozen ground, his eyes happened to lock directly onto Chu Ya’s through the car window. Chu Ya watched a solitary tear spill from those dull, ash-gray eyes, drowning in sheer, bottomless despair.
“Take him back.”
Hearing that familiar voice, Chu Ya turned his head to see Gu Lin striding over—the very same man he had parted ways with outside the Tuta Conduit barely half an hour ago.
Gu Lin didn’t notice Chu Ya. Wearing a dark, menacing expression, he walked up to the pinned prisoner and abruptly kicked him savagely in the chest. Taking the blow full force, the man let out an agonized groan, coughing up another mouthful of blood.
Breathing heavily, Gu Lin turned to confer with a tall, lanky officer beside him, his voice drifting into Chu Ya’s ears in muffled fragments.
“…Failed to capture him earlier and let him hide out for a whole week, only for him to break through… Once they’ve broken through, they’re completely useless… Take him back to the White Fortress for now.”
Gu Lin turned and strode away, the soldiers hauling the limp prisoner up to follow. Chu Ya stared quietly at their retreating backs without making a sound. Assuming he hadn’t recognized the officer, the driver offered quietly from the front: “Young Master Chu, that was Colonel Gu. Aren’t you going to say hello?”
Chu Ya paused for several seconds before replying softly: “No need. We just saw each other anyway. Let’s go home.”
