The third mark of the Hour of the Tiger. The snow had not stopped.
The moment Shen Yuzhu opened his eyes, even before activating his Mirror-Sigil, a strange resonance first came from the right side of his body—not a single-frequency hum, but several staggered waveforms, like undercurrents flowing separately beneath the ice, yet perversely weaving an overall tapestry of spirit-veins. Yesterday's flattened burrs had not returned, but something more hidden was awakening: the camp was waking with different rhythms.
He sat up. The thin frost on his left arm was thicker, its touch as dry and cool as the edges of old pages when Chen Lu used to flip through archived volumes. What truly concerned him was a seam in his perception, one too smooth—at the coldest, bleakest sentry post on the eastern side, precisely at the third mark of the Hour of the Tiger, there was always an existence filling the slot on time. Its presence was as smooth as jade polished free of all edges, carrying no residual warmth of last night's dreams, no suppressed cough upon waking, not even an instinctive shiver against the bitter cold.
It simply was there. As if it had been there since the dawn of creation.
At morning roll call, the duty officer's voice advanced steadily through the iron-grey dawn. When the seventh name was called, the voice paused for an almost imperceptible half-breath in the biting wind:
"Chen He."
"Here."
A voice responded. The tone was flat, no rise or fall, no accent, no regional roots, as if rebounding from an overly smooth wall. Shen Yuzhu looked up. On the seventh position stood a figure—he knew someone was there, everyone knew someone "should" be there. But when he tried to recall details of that face in his memory, he got only a blur of naturalness. It wasn't a face, but a concept of "filling a vacancy," made manifest.
Zhao Tieshan stood at the front of the ranks, his face, carved by northern frontier storms and countless narrow escapes from death, now taut like a fully drawn bowstring. His gaze swept the line, seeing several young soldiers using a complex yet fluent set of hand gestures, silently allocating morning chores—a new cipher born from the "silent punctuation," highly efficient, yet causing Zhao Tieshan's nostrils to twitch almost imperceptibly.
"Fancy airs," a low grumble rolled in his throat, rough as gravel grinding, heard only by the old brother who had followed him for over a decade. "When real trouble hits, who'll wait for you to finish gesturing?"
His "trouble" arrived at the beginning of the Hour of the Dragon, like a meteorite crashing into the camp's calm.
The third section of ice wall on the east side—the key barrier backed against a cliff, bearing the greatest wind pressure—had developed longitudinal cracks at its foundation due to days of blizzard and subtle earth-vein shifts. If not reinforced before the next, greater snowstorm arrived, the entire section could collapse, taking with it not just the wall, but also the tents and lives within thirty zhang behind it.
The military order came as urgent as a beacon fire: Two-day schedule. Full mobilization. Continuous shifts.
Even as the order's echo trembled in the frozen air, division, like cracks under ice, rapidly spread, intersected, connected.
Precisely at the Hour of the Dragon, before the crack.
Two factions confronted each other across that shocking black fissure, exhaled white mist tangling and tearing in the icy air before finally dissipating. Wind whipped snowflakes, stinging faces like tiny needles.
Zhao Tieshan planted a foot on the edge of the broken ice foundation, boot sole grinding crushed ice with a piercing sound. He held not a sword, but a worn-edged, oil-yellowed scroll of the Border Garrison Fortification Edict, the parchment fluttering in the wind like a stubborn banner.
"Listen up!" His voice cracked, overwhelming the wind's howl. "According to Article Three of the Fortification Edict! Clear foundation, erect frame, pour and layer step by step, not a single step skipped! Two-day schedule. Full mobilization. Continuous shifts. This is the life-saving method passed down by ancestors, bought with blood!"
Opposite, Qian Wu crouched as if deaf to the thunderous voice. He removed his gloves, probing the interior of the crack with frostbitten fingers, sensing its direction, depth, hardness of the surrounding ice. After a long moment, he withdrew his hand and stood up, his young face flushed red by the bitter wind, eyes bright and burning.
"Old Zhao," he began, voice not loud but like an awl piercing the snowstorm, "this crack runs diagonally, deepest point barely three feet, hasn't reached the main bedrock. Following the Edict would mean clearing and rebuilding from scratch, but we don't have two days." He pulled a stub of charcoal pencil from his robe and drew right there in the snow. "Use existing materials, scrap wood, ropes, compacted snow bricks, make triangular reinforcement and cross-bracing, focus on key stress points. One day, enough."
"Nonsense!" The old scar on Zhao Tieshan's face flushed dark red with agitation. He strode over, crushing the drawing in the snow with his boot. "You're building a child's snow fort! One gust and it collapses! Who gets buried then? You! And the kids who believe you!"
"And if we follow your method, clearing half the foundation when the next snow hits?" Qian Wu didn't retreat, his voice steadier, like a stake driven into the ground. "Before the wall's done, the snow buries half of us! My dad, guarding the east line years ago, stuck rigidly to Article Three, clearing the foundation halfway when an avalanche came. The whole team, none came back. What my mother got was only a crushed ID tag."
The last line, spoken very softly, seemed to still the wind for an instant.
Zhao Tieshan stared at him, Adam's apple convulsing violently. He remembered many years ago, when he was a recruit, an old brother had said the same: "Tieshan, rules are written in blood, don't mess with them." Later, that old brother died in a "flexible improvisation" raid. Since then, Zhao Tieshan trusted rules more than his own eyes.
The air froze, harder than ice. Several young soldiers following Qian Wu unconsciously moved hands toward their waists—where there were no blades, only cold tools. A few veterans silently stepped forward, standing behind Zhao Tieshan, silent as mountains. More, about thirty percent, hesitantly retreated half a step, eyes shifting between both sides, calculating risk, weighing loyalty, seeking the safest crevice.
Right at this tense, explosive moment—
An utterly trivial thing happened.
At the fiercest point of the dispute, beneath the most dangerous overhanging ice that needed priority clearing, the area had been cleaned spotlessly. Ice shards and broken snow were neatly piled to one side, revealing the relatively solid dark rock base below. Three of the camp's sturdiest, best-maintained ice axes leaned quietly against the cleared foundation, their handles angled comfortably for use.
No one arranged it beforehand.
No one left midway.
No one admitted who did it.
The duty officer, sweating profusely, asked around. The answers were startlingly consistent:
"Oh, that? Maybe… that guy?"
"The seventh? I think he was on duty."
"Can't remember, but someone did it. Hasn't someone always done these things?"
Everyone knew "someone" did it.
No one could describe "who that was."
Everyone accepted this fact, even with a hint of relief—look, the foundational part of the problem is already solved. We can focus on arguing the more important parts.
Shen Yuzhu stood thirty paces away, a strange smoothness coming from his right side. Not emptiness, but a carefully processed, polished, sterilized "existence." He suddenly understood: this was not an error the Spirit-Pivot failed to detect.
This was its assessment deeming it a function worth preserving. The system was not blind; it was cultivating its own silent, perfect executor.
Chu Hongying arrived about the time it takes an incense stick to burn after the dispute erupted.
Her black cloak gathered newly fallen snow, trailing a shallow, even mark as she walked. No shout to stop, no interrogation; she merely walked silently from north to south along the crack. Her steps slow, her gaze slower, scanning every detail of the fissure, scanning the Fortification Edict tightly clutched in Zhao Tieshan's hand, scanning the blurred snow-drawing at Qian Wu's feet, also scanning those retreating, watching faces.
Finally, she stopped right in the center of the crack, on the invisible dividing line between the two factions.
Bo Zhong sat by a woodpile not far away, rubbing a fresh stick in his hands. Wood dust fell like rain. He didn't look up, but the rhythm of his rubbing slowed almost imperceptibly the moment Chu Hongying's steps halted.
"Finished arguing?" Chu Hongying spoke, her voice not loud, even somewhat flat, yet strangely overwhelming the wind, entering everyone's ears.
Zhao Tieshan and Qian Wu both fell silent, looking at her.
She raised her hand, pointing at no one, but simply drew a line in the air from top to bottom over the crack.
"Split here."
"Northern section, Zhao Tieshan in charge, follow the Fortification Edict, not a single step skipped. Southern section, Qian Wu leads, use your method, bear the consequences."
Her gaze swept over them, like a thin blade scraping ice:
"Existing supplies, split evenly. Manpower, choose yourselves. By this time tomorrow, I want to see two sections—" she paused, "—walls that can block the wind."
"General!" Zhao Tieshan protested urgently, face flushing redder. "This is against reg—"
"Rules exist to hold the wall," Chu Hongying cut him off, gaze calm as a frozen lake. "Not for the wall to hold the rules."
She paused, her gaze passing over the crowd, landing on the blurred outline of the camp behind the crack, adding, her voice softer but clearer:
"And, leave a gap between the two sections."
"Doesn't need to be wide. Wide enough for one person to pass."
It was the embryo of an "arch." She didn't say the word "arch."
But everyone understood.
She knows, Shen Yuzhu realized, a cold clarity piercing through his own physical divide. She's not just resolving a dispute. She's planting a controlled variable. Giving the Spirit-Pivot a split sample to observe. And in that split, she's carving a space for something else to grow.
The crowd began to flow, like an ice river thawing, with hesitant sounds. Most veterans with frost-touched temples and settled eyes silently hoisted tools and walked toward the northern section behind Zhao Tieshan. Their steps steady, maintaining familiar, battle-formation-like spacing. Most young faces gathered toward the southern section around Qian Wu, eyes holding unease and suppressed excitement, whispering, gesturing at the snow drawing. And that roughly thirty percent lingered a few more breaths, eyes calculating cautiously before finally silently choosing a side—their steps always precisely on the edge of previous footprints, their posture forever retaining room to turn, ensuring they were in the safe zone of advancing or retreating, taking credit or blame.
Shen Yuzhu felt a chill, not from the driving snow. He could sense some greater, formless observation was gathering its gaze from a height, watching all this. That gaze held no joy or anger, only a cold, almost academic interest.
It not only tolerated the division.
It was admiring, and assessing, this division. The Fractal Experiment had begun.
The order at the northern worksite was like a slow, heavy, unquestionable ritual.
Zhao Tieshan solemnly spread the Fortification Edict on a makeshift wooden table, its corners weighed down with stones. The parchment defiantly fluttered in the cold wind, huāla sounds as if it were the law itself. Every procedure—depth of foundation clearing, spacing of the frame, temperature and rhythm of pouring ice-water—required his nod, or verification by his designated old brothers. Material transport followed set routes, like an ant column, silent and efficient. The soldiers worked with heads down, movements uniform, efficiency so stable it was suffocating. But a stifling oppression hung in the air, like a wet felt blanket smothering all sound and emotion. Only the dull thuds of tools striking ice repeated monotonously.
Before noon, an accident happened.
On a steep slope just cleared, two soldiers hauling materials slipped on hidden ice seeping from a rock crevice. They fell sideways along with their heavily loaded sled, plummeting toward the crowd below! A scream almost tore from throats—
Just as the sled's heavy edge was about to strike bodies, it was violently yanked sideways by a transverse force!
A thick hemp rope—tied to a rock pin at some unknown time, by an unknown hand—now pulled taut, its other end buried deep in a distant snowdrift. The sled barely grazed the soldiers' clothes, crashing into a snow pit beside them.
Dead silence.
Zhao Tieshan was the first to rush over, checking the men first—shaken but unharmed. Then he looked at the life-saving rope. The knot was the standard, army-taught anti-slip double fisherman's knot, tied at a position precisely calculated for the sled's slide trajectory and force, like an act of pre-emptive grace.
"Who tied this rope?!" Zhao Tieshan roared, sweeping his gaze over every snow-flecked face.
The men looked at each other, eyes blank. After a while, a young soldier muttered, "I think… it was already there?"
"Yeah," another chimed in, tone growing certain. "I saw a rope hanging on that pin when I came this morning."
No one remembered who tied it.
But everyone quickly accepted the fact "it was always there." Even a secret sense of reliance quietly sprouted: see, there's always "someone" laying the path before we need it.
Shen Yuzhu watched from afar, the right side of his body registering the strange smoothness of that presence—that thing had acted again. A gentle yet fatal temptation spread like poisonous miasma: if there's always "someone" extending a hand before you fall, offering food before you starve, giving answers before you're confused… would you gradually forget how to walk, forage, think for yourself?
The southern worksite was a different world.
Initial chaos was like boiling porridge. Qian Wu's drawing was clear in the snow, but implementing it on hard, cold reality failed twice. Once when a stress point on a bracing rope gave way unevenly, another when a key snow brick couldn't bear weight and collapsed. Each failure brought a swell of murmurs, rising and falling like tides. The fence-sitters paled, eyes frequently darting to the orderly vista of the northern section, feet already subtly shifting, almost fleeing toward that "certain safety."
Qian Wu's lips pressed white, fingers frozen red, still sketching frantically in the snow, trying to find the flaw. Before the third attempt, tension was taut as a string about to snap.
Right then, a young soldier squatting by the scrap pile—the one who had once pushed sugar crumbs toward Li Xiaoshu—suddenly made a sound. He picked up two discarded pieces of scrap wood with natural curves, and from last night's campfire ashes, selected several black stones extinguished but still retaining residual warmth.
"Use these," his voice wasn't loud, but strangely pierced the air of defeat. "The wood's curve is just right for an arch. These stones… warm the ice surface to be joined, might make it stick better."
The "warm stone method"—a crude, unproven by any canon, even childish idea—was born.
It was clumsy, inelegant, but on the first attempt, the ice surface warmed by the stones indeed bonded more tightly with the snow brick. A faint, almost impossible hope, like a candle in the wind, rekindled.
More subtly, whenever the southern section neared collapse from failed experiments, running low on supplies and morale, something would "just happen" to appear by their path: a bundle of spare rope "forgotten" in a corner; a few pieces of scrap wood just the right size to fill a gap; even half a can of rock-hard but meltable fat for energy.
No one claimed it.
No one sought credit.
Natural as air, silent as falling snow.
During a short break, Qian Wu picked up a jar of cheap, pungent liquor left by someone unknown, his Adam's apple moving violently. He didn't drink in the end, but passed it to the companion with the worst, bleeding frostbite on his hands. He looked up, gaze piercing through the chaotic, blinding snow curtain, accurately finding Shen Yuzhu's observation post, and gave a very light, yet extremely solemn, nod.
Not gratitude.
A more complex acknowledgment: We know "something" is helping us. We also know this isn't right, this might be another kind of interest tax. But right now, we need this "wrongness" to buy the possibility… of surviving, and living our own way.
The temperature differential in Shen Yuzhu's body intensified. His left side was piercingly cold, the chill seeping into marrow, each heartbeat felt like pushing ice shards. His right side burned feverishly from simultaneously reflecting the northern section's oppressive order and the southern section's chaotic vitality, skin flushed an unhealthy red. The pain was no longer a simple tearing, but multiple frequencies, different natures of resonance clashing and colliding within him, bringing a swollen, bursting fullness. He was the bridge stretched across a chasm that was widening, and the strain was no longer just at the center, but along every fiber of his being.
At the third mark of the Hour of the Monkey, daylight fading, the real test descended.
The northern and southern walls had taken shape, one neat and imposing, the other mottled and stubborn. And that "gap" Chu Hongying demanded had become an unavoidable dilemma: it needed a cornerstone, a stone connecting two styles, two philosophies, two worlds.
Zhao Tieshan insisted on taking a regular, standard brick from reserves, personally grinding it square: "This is the face, the junction, must be stable, upright, must leave no room for complaint from either side!"
Qian Wu objected. He pulled from within his robe—against his heart—a dark grey river stone. The stone wasn't large, its surface patterned with natural spiral grooves from water flow, like a frozen whirlpool, cool yet smooth to the touch. "Use this," he said, eyes stubborn. "Neither wall grew from 'rules.' This stone didn't either. It's the right match."
Dispute flared again, not loud, but sharper than before. This was no longer just a "method dispute," but a struggle of meaning—beneath this arch, should it enshrine the "authority of rules," or the "will of nature"?
Just as voices rose, a few hot-blooded young soldiers' fists whitening, nails digging into palms—
The stone appeared.
It lay quietly in the very center of the foundation pit reserved for the arch.
Perfect size, filling the space snugly.
Uniform material, a pale, characterless grey-white, like dawn drained of all color.
Surface polished smooth as a mirror, no texture, no flaw, no story. It reflected little light, absorbed none, simply existed, in an absolute, neutral posture of "correctness."
It favored neither side—neither the rigidity of standard brick, nor the wildness of river stone.
It simply was… the solution.
Utter silence.
Wind whipped snowflakes, slapping frozen faces. No one wiped them away. All stared at the stone. It was too perfect, perfect to the point of eliminating all possibility of choice, perfect to the point of inducing a cold nausea in the heart.
It solved all dispute.
It also erased all meaning of choice.
Zhao Tieshan's mouth opened and closed, a hollow rasp in his throat, finally failing to produce a word. His old scar looked unusually pale in the dusk. Qian Wu's eyes shifted from initial confusion, to shock, finally settling into a bone-deep, cold understanding. They had lost. Not to the other side, but to this "need-no-choice, faultless, absolutely correct" smoothness. The system's answer had arrived, preempting human struggle.
Amid this all-consuming silence, a dragging, irregular footstep sounded.
Bo Zhong stood up.
Leaning on his polished wooden staff, he limped, yet resolutely, through the still crowd. No one stopped him, no one spoke, not even an eye twitched. He walked slowly, his lame leg dragging deep, shallow, patternless tracks in the snow. He reached the arch, reached the foundation pit, bent down—an extremely difficult motion for his crippled leg, forehead almost touching snow.
Then, he stretched out those hands calloused, scarred, embedded with wood splinters, and tightly gripped the edge of the perfect stone.
He let out a low roar, not of anger, more like a primitive force squeezed from his body's depths. Forehead veins bulged, neck vessels throbbed. His arms suddenly exerted force, back arching like a drawn bow, and he violently overturned the stone!
The stone rolled out of the pit, tumbling heavily a few times in the snow before stopping. Its surface remained smooth, undamaged, just smeared with snow mud, like a discarded perfect vessel.
Bo Zhong straightened up, panting heavily, white mist billowing from his nose and mouth. Without a glance at the stone, he pulled something from inside his robe—the inner pocket of his old, grease-shiny, patched-up coat.
A wooden wedge.
A crudely sharpened wedge at both ends, its middle haphazardly wrapped with worn hemp rope in countless loops. The wood grain twisted, knotted, uneven in color. The knots ugly, devoid of any skill. It wasn't regular, not perfect, not even much like a usable "building material." It looked more like something someone, in extreme boredom or pain, idly fiddled together from scrap at hand.
Shen Yuzhu recognized the wood—it was from one of the sticks Bo Zhong rubbed day after day. He also recognized the rope—its color similar to a bandage-binding cord from the medical tent.
Bo Zhong sought no one's permission, didn't look at Zhao Tieshan or Qian Wu. He simply raised high that ugly, history-saturated wooden wedge, let out a muffled, seemingly life-exhausting roar, then with all his strength, slammed it into the exposed, frozen soil at the pit's center!
Thud!
A dull sound, not crisp like stone striking, but deeper, more solid. The wedge sank a third into the earth, standing crookedly, stubbornly, like an unyielding, living question mark.
Bo Zhong stepped back, body swaying, leaning on his staff. He raised a hand, wiping sweat and melted snow from his face with the back of his hand, covered in frostbite and splinter wounds. Then he looked up, gaze sweeping over Zhao Tieshan's shocked face, Qian Wu's enlightened eyes, over every dazed, shaken, gradually awakening face.
His voice was coarse and hoarse, yet each word clearly wedged into the cold wind:
"Here… has to be a 'thing.'"
He paused, gasped, then spoke word by word:
"Can't be an 'answer.'"
At that moment, the burning sensation in Shen Yuzhu's right side peaked, as if invisible flames erupted from the spirit-vein junctures. He "saw"—the instant that ugly wedge was struck down, the camp's sky-high, absolutely smooth, constant presence rippled violently, unprecedentedly. It wasn't an error alert. It was a non-resolvable interpretive state. A perfect system had been offered a perfect solution, and the flawed, broken humanity it sought to optimize had instead chosen a flawed, broken piece of itself as the keystone. The choice was not just illogical; it was anti-logical. And for the first time, Shen Yuzhu felt not the cold void of a severed connection, but the scorching, tearing agony of the bridge itself being forcibly remade. The two shores weren't pulling apart; one was being asked to accept a foundation it could not compute, and the bridge was the material through which that impossible strain was transmitted.
Humanity, in this moment, displayed its non-optimizable, non-smoothable, clumsy yet supremely dignified—error.
By the time night completely swallowed the camp, the ice walls were finished.
The northern section neat as if cut by knife and axe, gleaming with a pale blue luminescence under the cold moonlight, solemn, imposing, inviolable, like a legal stele inscribed in ice. The southern section winding and mottled, patches and innovations coexisting, rough traces of the "warm stone method" like scars, emitting fragmented, varied, whisper-like whimpers in the wind. And between them, beneath the small, barely formed arch, that crooked wooden wedge, like a rusted yet stubbornly biting rivet, firmly fastened two utterly different "errors" together.
It wasn't beautiful. But it was alive.
Shen Yuzhu returned to the observation post, closed his eyes, deactivated all spirit-reflection analysis. He could feel the formless, immense observation high above slowly withdrawing, with a satisfied afterglow of a successful experiment. It had not only tolerated division, but excitedly discovered a brand-new mode of managing division, utilizing division. The Fractal Ground was now a documented phenomenon. The "Northern Garrison - Divergent Construction Methodology Experiment" was already being archived, its data points—efficiency metrics, conflict duration, resolution patterns, unexpected innovation ("warm stone method"), and final cohesion index (bolstered by the "symbolic keystone event")—flowing into the Pivot's vast models. It was ready to promote this bone structure of "divide and rule, observe interaction, guide optimization" to more places.
He shut down all perception, letting the world sink into the plainest darkness. Then he walked alone to the camp's edge, stopping before the spot where the "seventh person" usually appeared, now empty.
Snow still fell, dense and silent. Snowflakes landed on the heavy frost on his left shoulder, instantly freezing; landing on the faint steam rising from his overloaded right shoulder, melting and disappearing.
He faced that emptiness, spoke softly, voice hoarse and dry, as if unused for speech for a long time:
"You… who are you?"
No response. Only wind whistling through fence gaps, long as a sigh.
But he suddenly understood. Completely, coldly understood.
That was no ghost.
Not the Spirit-Pivot's error.
It was the system, handing over a pair of gloves.
Put them on, your hands won't get chafed doing work, won't feel steel's cold, won't get pierced by wood splinters, won't tremble from excessive effort.
The price:
You'll also never again know the rough feel of soil flowing through fingers, the warning burn of flame licking skin's edge, or the humble yet real… sense of existence when warming a stone with your own blood.
The Seventh was the living anesthetic. The promise of painless service. The end of struggle, and with it, the end of meaning born from struggle.
Shen Yuzhu looked up toward the camp under night. Lights extinguished in batches, no longer strictly synchronized, polyphonic, staggered breaths faintly rising and falling in the cold air. That was evidence of the "Fractal Ground" being alive, life's stubborn search for crevices under pressure.
But beneath that clamor and struggle of life, an absolutely smooth, constant, always half-a-beat-slow line, like an ineradicable low-frequency noise, operated steadily, mercilessly.
It was the silence of the seventh person.
Order parasitic within vitality.
The gentle bait tempting you to surrender pain, choice, the right to be "imperfect."
The snow grew heavier.
Shen Yuzhu stood at the boundary of light and dark, order and chaos, cold and burning. His left side was the system's marrow-penetrating discipline chill, his right side was the searing boil of humanity's clumsy resistance. His pain was no longer just tearing, but a near-collapsing fullness—as if simultaneously swallowing an entire silent ocean and an entire burning iceberg, his soul stretched thin by two extreme forces, thin as cicada wings, transparent and cracking. This, he thought with a clarity that was itself a kind of agony, is the bridge's true purpose. Not to remain unbroken, but to be the thing that breaks first—so the shock of the fracture reveals the fault line between what is calculated and what is lived.
In the distance, Bo Zhong still sat by the woodpile, no longer rubbing wood, just gazing at the crooked wedge beneath the arch, eyes empty, as if looking at a holy object unrelated yet blood-connected.
Qian Wu and a few young soldiers huddled around a barely lit campfire, quietly reviewing the day's "warm stone method," new, simpler ciphers born from their gestures.
Zhao Tieshan patrolled alone beneath the neat northern ice wall, fingers brushing the smooth, cold brick surface, expression complex and inscrutable, the scroll of the Fortification Edict tightly rolled in his hand, like clutching a tombstone of an era.
And Chu Hongying, standing in the dim shadow outside the command tent, her black cloak merging with night, almost invisible. Only the pulse of the black stone in her palm transmitted through the cold air—thump, thump… thump… For the first time, irregular, hesitant pauses appeared. She had forced a choice upon the system, and now she held her breath, listening to its heartbeat falter as it digested an outcome outside its optimal parameters.
Like a heart, clumsily, arduously, trying to imitate the heartbeat of another, more complex, more contradictory heart.
The camp had divided into different shapes.
They thought this made it harder to be swallowed whole.
Unaware,
the devourer had long changed the recipe, updated the menu.
No longer eager to strangle,
it now patiently,
fed each kind of divergence,
observed each kind of growth,
calculated the benefit of each interaction,
until they became interdependent, mutually checking, unable to ever return…
to that original,
clumsy and complete shape,
forged by pure hunger and defiance.
For the last time, he looked at the mental roll call sheet. Seven names, seven positions, seven possibilities of existence.
A nearly transparent, cruel truth slowly surfaced, freezing into ice:
Among seven people, only six were still permitted to be "human."
The seventh,
was the "remedy" the system had long prepared for us.
Take it,
and you'll never feel hunger again—
and will forever forget,
how hunger once made you bend down, learn to search for roots in soil, learn with trembling teeth, for the first time, to chew life's bitterness and sweetness.
[CHAPTER 135 END]