The cold dampness touched Hong Min’s face, seeping through his ragged clothes as if whispering that death had not yet departed. He opened his eyes slowly, a violent wave of dizziness washing over him, as if the world were spinning in an endless orbit. He tried to get up, but his body was trembling, his empty stomach screaming with hunger, and the memory of last night was scattering in his mind like shards of glass… no, not just last night… but the shards of an entire life.

  His first cry in life was his first memory of the pain of existence. His mother's face, filled with hatred as she looked down at him, a baby in her arms. "You are a curse on this world… Why were you born?" Her words were arrows, and the blood she spat on his face was a curse that clung to his soul... He could still remember the sharp, metallic scent of that blood.

  The shrill laughter of children in the muddy alleys of Chang'an as they kicked him, their voices chanting, "Red-haired devil!" He didn't understand, but he felt the rejection like a brand seared onto his skin…

  The sound of a shattering plate in the restaurant, followed by his furious boss's yell: "You insolent slave! A worthless Prometheus!" Then a hard slap across his face, and his expulsion into the rain and darkness…

  All this pain, all this rejection, flooded him in a single moment as he shivered on the cold rock.

  Hong Min forced his eyes fully open. He turned to his side, and froze.

  A few steps away from him, that enormous being sat in silence. "The other monster." The man with the grey eyes against whom the tiger had shattered itself.

  In an instinctual motion, Hong Min scrambled backward in terror, his back hitting the cold rock wall. He placed a hand on the hilt of his sword, his entire body poised to flee. His heart was hammering violently, his breaths short and shallow.

  "Stay away!" he whispered in a raspy voice that barely came out. "Don't come near."

  But the mysterious man didn't move. He didn't attack. He didn't even shift his posture. He just remained seated, watching him with the same empty, cold gaze. A second passed. Then another. The silence and absolute indifference from this being were stranger and more unsettling than any attack.

  Slowly, Hong Min's analytical mind began to regain control over his blind panic. Why isn't he doing anything? If he wanted to kill me, he would have done it by now.

  The fear didn't vanish, but confusion grew stronger. Still in his defensive posture on the ground, his voice trembling with the remnants of terror and suspicion, he asked the first question his desperate mind could formulate:

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  "What… what are you doing? How did we get here?"

  The giant man looked at him. A moment of silence passed, as if he were searching through empty files. Then he said coolly, "I have no data"

  Hong Min's eyes widened. "What? What do you mean you don't know? Weren't you conscious?"

  The mysterious man didn't answer, merely continuing to stare into the space before him, leaving Hong Min with a cold, unsettling feeling that their escape from the lake and their arrival on this cliff were no mere coincidence.

  In that moment, Hong Min truly took in the scene around him for the first time. He was on a high rock ledge, his back against the wall of a cavern. The cavern was vast and completely enclosed. Below him, an abandoned city stretched out, illuminated by a faint blue and violet glow emanating from strange crystals growing on the surfaces of some buildings and from fungi that shimmered along the edges of the streets. The city was situated on a wide, stone plateau. To his left, a huge lake extended, its dark waters reflecting the glowing lights like an inverted sky of stars. And to his right, a massive chasm split the earth, a dark abyss crossed by three ancient, intact stone bridges. At the far end of the city, at its most distant point, a disproportionately colossal palace stood, its upper portion disappearing into the shadows of the cavern's ceiling, like a sleeping stone god.

  Hong Min felt a strange kind of awe and admiration. The majesty of the place was overwhelming. And there was no sound, only a profound and absolute silence, a silence unknown to cities, the silence of tombs that makes one hear their own heartbeat.

  He refocused on the man himself, on those grey eyes that held no trace of emotion. He had seen or heard of them before... and now, the memory was starting to become clear.

  He whispered to himself in disbelief, "It can't be… a Panir?" Then his eyes widened in genuine shock and terror as he raised his trembling voice, "You… you're of the Panir race! The Panir! The ones with stony grey eyes! Emotionless beings born without feeling!"

  The mysterious man looked at Hong Min calmly. "Panir?" he said in a low voice. "I do not know who the Panir are. But feelings… I want to feel them. There is a command I must execute, an order related to the search for feelings. To do that, I must live. You told me I would live if I helped you. Therefore, I will help you."

  "Worthless" Hong Min began to laugh, a bitter, broken laugh. "You just sat there like a rock waiting to die! Like a shadow that can't even lift a hand! Are you trying to torture me and kill me, you bastard? I am a Prometheus! A Panir pretending to be helpless? That's impossible!"

  The mysterious man's expression did not change. He asked, "Then, how shall I help you?"

  Hong Min was stunned by the absolute disregard. He shouted in fury, "By dying, you bastard!"

  "I cannot die at present. I must execute the command," the giant man replied with unshakable calm.

  Hong Min sighed with suppressed rage. "Do whatever you want, you wretch!" he said, turning his face away to contemplate the abandoned city below him once more.

  Despite all the despair, he felt something strange seeping into his core. A sense of freedom. He was here, in a place far from Chang'an, far from the injustice and the Gu Clan. This ruin, this forgotten world inside a cavern, felt like a sanctuary. Here, in this majestic darkness, he could be just a shadow, starting over. Here, in this forgotten tomb, there were no masters or whips. There was only him, his silent companion, and an unknown beginning. And for the first time, he felt that this was enough.