Dawn came with a decision.
The door to the room opened. It wasn't Madam Hong. It wasn't Madam Qiu.
It was Shen Du.
"Get out. Now."
Li Yuan stood. His legs still ached from a wound not fully healed. But he walked.
The corridor. The stairs. A heavy door opened—the outside air, different from the scent of perfume and incense. The smell of the city. Dust. Sweat. A life that moved on uncaringly.
"Stand there. Don't move."
Li Yuan stood. He heard Shen Du's footsteps recede. The sound of conversation—low, transactional.
Then other footsteps. Many. Different.
The rattling of chains.
"You're the blind one?"
A new voice. Rough. Huang language with a strange accent—Volmar, perhaps.
"Yes."
"Good. Stand next to the others. We're leaving soon."
A hand shoved Li Yuan's shoulder—not violently, but not gently. Like arranging cargo. He walked. Ten steps. Then stopped as his body touched someone.
"Careful!" A woman's voice. Old. Kesara language.
The intent behind it—exhaustion, fear, but still a small kindness.
"Sorry," Li Yuan whispered.
The woman didn't reply. She just shifted slightly to make room.
Five minutes passed. Then ten.
The sound of chains again. Metal meeting metal. Then pressure on Li Yuan's ankle—a shackle.
It was fitted. Locked.
"Ten slaves. Ten days' journey north. Those who fall behind are left behind. Those who run are killed. Understand?"
No one answered.
"I SAID, UNDERSTAND?!"
"Understand!" A chorus of voices. Ten voices. Ten bound souls.
Li Yuan heard them through Wenjing—not all within a two-meter radius, but some close enough. Different languages. The same intent.
Fear. Despair. Resignation.
"Walk. Now."
The chain was pulled. Li Yuan stumbled forward. The person in front of him moved—he had to follow. The person behind him followed—they were all connected.
Ten steps. Ten souls. One chain.
The first hour was still in the city.
The bustling noise slowly faded. The smell changed—from the city's smoke and garbage to dust and dryness.
The desert.
The heat came gradually. The sun rose—Li Yuan felt it even though he couldn't see it. His skin burned. Sweat began to pour.
There were no shadows. No shelter.
Only the path. Only sand and stones under already-injured feet.
The chain kept moving.
When someone slowed, the others were dragged. When someone fell, everyone stopped—but not for long.
"Get up! Hurry!"
A whip crack. Li Yuan heard it, even though it didn't strike him. The sound of skin tearing. A groan.
The one who fell got up. The chain moved again.
The first day was an introduction.
Li Yuan heard the voices around him. Not all within Wenjing's radius—but when they were close enough, he heard more than just words.
The man in front of him—speaking in the Huang language. A village accent.
"I... I just couldn't pay the taxes. They took my son. Then they took me too."
The intent behind it—a deep regret. A self-forgiveness that was impossible.
The old woman beside him—whispering in the Kesara language. A prayer, perhaps. Or a memory.
"...go home... I want to go home..."
The intent behind it—a painful longing. Knowing that going home was no longer possible.
The young man behind—a language unfamiliar to Li Yuan literally but not to Wenjing. A language from the far south. Maybe even beyond Kesara.
"I was sold by my own family. To pay off my father's debts. I hope they die."
The intent behind it—an unextinguished anger. A betrayal deeper than any physical wound.
Li Yuan heard it all. Understood it all.
Language was words. But intent was a universal language that Wenjing could hear without difficulty.
The Understanding of the Body sang softly—these were bodies sold, chained, and forced to walk toward something they hadn't chosen.
This was a lesson in how a body becomes a commodity not by choice, but because of a system—taxes too heavy, debts too large, a family too desperate.
On the third day, someone fell.
An old man. Li Yuan didn't know his name. Had never spoken to him.
But he had heard the man's breathing—shallow, fast, and irregular—since yesterday afternoon.
That morning, when the chain was pulled, the man didn't get up.
"Get up!"
No response.
The whip cracked. Once. Twice.
Still no movement.
A guard approached. Li Yuan heard footsteps. Then the sound of metal—a key unlocking a shackle.
"He's dead. A waste of time."
A dragging sound—the body was pulled to the side of the road. Abandoned.
The chain was reattached. Nine slaves now.
"Walk."
They walked. Leaving a corpse behind.
Li Yuan felt—through Wenjing, whose range faded as they moved away—the man's last breath.
Not dead. Not yet.
But he would die. Alone. Under the burning sun.
No one stopped. No one looked back.
The Understanding of the Body sang with a deeper wound—this was a body discarded when it was no longer useful. Abandoned like a broken tool. Like an item not worth carrying.
The body's value was determined by its ability to keep moving.
When it stopped, its value was lost.
When its value was lost, the body became trash.
The fifth day was the worst day.
Water was almost gone. Each slave was given one small ladle per day—just enough not to die, not enough not to suffer.
Lips were cracked. Tongues were swollen. Throats were like sand.
Li Yuan felt his consciousness body respond like a physical body—dehydration was not just discomfort. It was a suffering that seeped into every cell, every thought.
That night, when they stopped, the nine remaining slaves sat in a circle.
There was no fire. No warmth except from each other's bodies.
The night desert was the opposite of the day desert—a bone-chilling cold.
The old woman next to Li Yuan trembled.
"Cold... so cold..."
Li Yuan shifted closer. Sharing the warmth of a consciousness body that could still feel cold and heat.
The woman didn't say thanks. Too tired to speak.
But her intent—through Wenjing—whispered something simple:
Thank you. Thank you for still caring.
Across the circle, the young man—the one sold by his family—spoke softly in a language Li Yuan understood through intent:
"I dreamed... dreamed I was free. Dreamed I went home and burned my father's house down."
No one responded. But everyone heard.
Another man—the farmer who couldn't pay taxes—whispered:
"I dreamed my children were okay. That they weren't sold like me."
A young woman—whom Li Yuan had only just realized was there because she spoke so rarely—said in the Volmar language:
"I'm not going to make it."
The intent behind it—a quiet certainty. Not hope. Just the acceptance that death would come.
No one argued. Because everyone knew she might be right.
The Understanding of the Body sang—not with joy or even sadness.
Just with recognition.
This was the humanity that remained when everything else was taken.
Small dreams. Thin hopes. Or just the acceptance that the end was near.
But there was still something—there was still a soul that spoke, that shared, that wasn't entirely dead even though the body was almost broken.
On the tenth day, they arrived.
Eight slaves remained. The young woman died on the eighth day—as she had predicted. Another one fell on the ninth day and was abandoned.
Li Yuan stood with the seven others in front of something big.
A building—he felt it from the echoes of sound. Large. Tall. Made of stone, perhaps.
The smell—dried blood. Metal. Sweat that had settled for months or years. Something rotten that couldn't be identified.
The sounds—screams from afar. Metal hitting metal. Something heavy falling. Groans that didn't end.
Wenjing captured the intent from inside the building—even from this distance, even outside the two-meter radius, it felt something that almost activated the Understanding of Fear on its own.
Absolute despair. Endless suffering. Slow death.
Shen Du spoke—for the last time.
"This is the Forge of the Damned. Here you will work until you die, or die while working. It makes no difference."
He handed the chain to someone else.
New hands—rougher. Gripping the chain like a whip.
New intent—through Wenjing when this person came within two meters—
No empathy. No humanity. Just function. Just a job. A slave is a tool that speaks. Nothing more.
"Get inside. Now."
They were pushed forward. The large door opened—the sound of rusty hinges.
Heat assaulted them. Not the heat of the sun. The heat of a furnace. The heat of a fire that never went out.
Li Yuan stepped inside. His legs trembled. The consciousness body felt every detail—the heat burning his skin, the smell that made him want to vomit, the sounds that made him want to cover his ears but couldn't.
This was a place where a body was used until nothing was left.
This was—
"QUIET! EVERYONE QUIET!"
A new voice. Loud. Authority.
But it wasn't the voice of a guard. Not the voice of the owner.
The voice of someone who was also chained but not broken.
The voice of someone who still had life in a body that should have been dead.
Li Yuan heard it through Wenjing—clear even though the voice was somewhat distant, outside the two-meter radius.
But the intent behind it was so strong that Wenjing captured it even from afar:
Firmness. Leadership. A courage that was illogical in a place like this.
"You hear me! If you want to last one day in this hell, you follow my instructions! Understand?!"
Other voices—other slaves already there—answered submissively but also with something strange:
Respect.
Li Yuan stood in the darkness that was no different from the darkness outside or inside.
But for the first time since the brothel, since the market, since the forest—
—he heard the voice of someone who was still alive.
Not just surviving.
Living.
And that voice, though he didn't yet know its owner, whispered something that Li Yuan didn't expect to hear again:
Hope.
Small. Thin. Almost nonexistent.
But it was there.
And the Understanding of the Body sang—not with joy.
But with the recognition that the lesson was not yet complete.
That in the darkest place, where bodies were used until they were destroyed—
—there was still a soul that refused to die.
There was still a voice that led.
There was still something called humanity that endured even when all reasons to endure were gone.
And Li Yuan, who had chosen this path to understand—
—understood that he had just met someone who would teach a different lesson from Chen Ming.
Chen Ming taught acceptance.
This voice—the firm and fearless voice—
—would teach resistance.
And both were part of the truth about a body that lived under oppression.
Accept what cannot be changed.
Resist what can still be resisted.
The wisdom to know the difference.
The door closed behind them.
The Forge of the Damned swallowed eight new slaves.
And Li Yuan's journey into the darkness—
—continued even deeper.
One step at a time.
Toward something even darker.
Toward someone who would become a companion.
Toward a lesson that could not be found anywhere else except in a hell created by humans for humans.
One day at a time.
Until the Understanding of the Body sang with the final truth:
That a chained body could still choose—
—to die slowly, or to live with a flame that refused to go out.
And that choice, no matter how small, was the last freedom that no chain could take away.