A hand pushed. Li Yuan fell.
His knees hit the ground. Hard. A sharp stone pierced his skin through wet pants.
"Sit there. Don't move."
A rough voice. A foreign language that his Wenjing translated. The intention behind it—a threat, control, no room for defiance.
Li Yuan didn't move. His hands were still tied behind his back. The rope was cutting into his wrists. Wet from the rain. Tighter now.
Sounds around him. Many sounds.
Footsteps. Coughing. Whispers. Muffled sobs.
Other people. There were other people here.
His Wenjing whispered—presences within two meters. Three... no, four people. Sitting. Also bound. Also captured.
Fear. Despair. Exhaustion. A bitter acceptance.
"How many did you get today?" A man's voice. Close. Maybe five meters away.
"Four. One woman, two men, one boy."
"The blind one?"
"The blind one. A bonus. Won't cause trouble. Can't run."
Laughter. Cold. Humorless.
Li Yuan sat. The rain was still falling. A coldness seeped into his bones—or what felt like bones in this consciousness body.
Smells. Unfamiliar smells. Smoke. Burned meat. Sweat. Something fouler—excrement, maybe. Or blood.
Someone moved. Close. Entered the two-meter radius.
His Wenjing felt the presence—a man, large, carrying something heavy.
The sound of metal. Clanking. Chains.
"Leg."
Li Yuan didn't understand.
A kick to the shin. Not hard. A warning.
"Leg. Straighten it."
Li Yuan straightened his legs. A hand touched his ankle—rough, uncaring. Cold metal wrapped around it. Click. Click.
A shackle.
A chain connected his left and right ankle. Heavy. Cold. Real.
"Stand."
Li Yuan tried. The chain limited him. Short steps. He couldn't run even if he could see.
A hand pushed again. Forward. He stumbled. The chain jerked his ankles. A sharp pain.
"Walk. Slow. Don't fall."
They moved. A group. Li Yuan in the middle. Chains connecting all the captives—he could hear the clanking from in front and behind.
The ground was uneven. Stones. Roots. Li Yuan didn't know where they were going.
His bamboo staff was gone. Nothing to guide him but the sound of the chains and the occasional shove from behind.
He fell twice. Each time, a kick waited.
"Get up. Fast."
No one helped. With his hands tied and a chain on his legs, getting up was a struggle. Knees to the ground first. Then one foot. Balance. Standing.
Blood on his knees. He felt it—warm, sticky, mixing with the rain.
Time meant nothing in the darkness.
They walked. Stopped. Walked again.
No one spoke. Only the sound of the chains, heavy breaths, an occasional cough.
When they stopped for the night—Li Yuan knew from the temperature dropping further and the sound of a fire being lit—the captives were shoved to the ground.
"Sleep there. Don't try to run. There are guards."
There were no blankets. No protection from the rain that had finally stopped but left the ground wet and cold.
Li Yuan lay on the ground. His body trembled. Not from fear—though there was fear—but from the coldness that seeped into bones that were not bones but felt so very real.
Someone whispered. Close. Within his Wenjing's radius.
"You're new?" An old woman's voice. Tired.
Li Yuan nodded. A small motion.
"How long... how long will we walk?" he asked in a voice that was barely audible.
"Three more days. Maybe four. To the Zharmeq Market. In the desert."
Bitterness. Acceptance that had been a long time coming. No hope of escape.
"What will happen there?"
The woman was silent for a long time. Then:
"They will sell us. Like livestock."
The whisper hung in the cold air. There was nothing more to say after that.
The second day was worse.
No food. Only water—given once, a small amount, from a leather pouch that smelled foul.
Li Yuan's wrists were swollen. The rope had rubbed the skin raw. Every movement brought a sharp pain.
The shackles on his ankles also rubbed. The skin was torn. Blood dried, then got wet again when the wounds reopened with every step.
He fell again. This time, the kick was harder.
"Stand up or we leave you here to die."
An empty threat—he knew from his Wenjing that they would not abandon valuable "merchandise." But the kick was still real.
He got up. Slower this time.
The sun—though he could not see it—burned. He felt it on his skin. A heat that provided no comfort. Only added to the misery of the previous night's cold.
His head was dizzy. Dehydration, maybe. Or from yesterday's blow that made his skull throb with a rhythm that would not stop.
Someone in front fell. The sound of a body hitting the ground. No one got up.
"Get up!" A kick. No movement. Another kick. Still no movement.
"Dead." A flat voice. No emotion.
"Unlock the chain. Leave him."
The sound of metal being unlatched. A body was dragged to the side of the path. Abandoned.
The group walked again. One person fewer. No one said a thing.
Li Yuan felt something break inside—not physically, but something in his consciousness.
This was not philosophy. This was not an abstract lesson.
This was reality—a reality where a weak body was left to die, where life had no value except market value, where no one cared if a person stopped breathing as long as the other merchandise could still walk.
Chen Ming never experienced this. Chen Ming lived in a safe valley, with a community that cared.
But thousands of others—thousands of blind, lame, weak, different people—experienced this. Every day. In every corner of the world unseen by those who had safety and power.
And Li Yuan, who had chosen to understand, now understood in a darker, more terrifying, more real way.
Vulnerability was not just an inconvenience.
Vulnerability was not just a philosophical lesson.
Vulnerability—true vulnerability, vulnerability without a safety net—was a real danger, was a real pain, was a total loss of control over what happened to the body.
And as he was dragged through the forest by rough hands, as the rain continued to fall and the darkness remained consistent, as the pain in his wrists and head throbbed with a rhythm that carried a terrible awareness, Li Yuan began to understand that this journey—the journey to understand the Understanding of the Body—had just entered a phase far darker than he had ever imagined.
A phase where the learning did not come from observation or reflection.
But from suffering experienced directly.
From a body that was no longer under his own control.
From a darkness that was not just the loss of sight but the loss of freedom, the loss of choice, the loss of dignity.
And although a part of his consciousness—the part that was still Li Yuan who had lived sixteen thousand years, who had a power that could destroy his captors in an instant—whispered that he could stop this, could break free, could use his Understanding to escape...
...another part of him—the part that had chosen this path, that had chosen to truly understand what it meant to live as Chen Ming lived—chose not to fight back.
Chose to accept.
Chose to experience to the very end, no matter how dark that end became.
Because this was the path he had chosen.
And the journey to understand a vulnerable body, a suffering body, a body that was treated not as a human but as an object...
...that journey had just begun.
Author's note: Li Yuan is using his Understanding of the Body to be an ordinary human.v