The jingle of metal reverberated throughout the tower, emanating from chains as dark as the night.
Wrapped around the arms of the white-haired young boy like a snake strangling its prey, they hoisted him in the air.
Sunlight streamed through thin iron bars, spotlighting his body—broken and battered, crimson blood dripping down like a faulty faucet on his ragged clothes. Lips chapped, his face pale and dry, revealing tear trails.
The solitary figure remained unmoving, eyes closed; from an outside perspective, one might even mistake him for a corpse.
Alas, life still coursed through his veins.
Muffled groans escaped his lips as Huise pried open his eyes, his body sluggish and weary. For a moment, his eyes were unfocused and blurry, then widened as he shook violently.
He remembered the events of the night before, and waking up in gloomy, unfamiliar surroundings only rekindled the fear he felt back then.
Noticing the chains, his heart jumped out of his chest, pounding heavily. 'Where am I?' he thought, doing his best to assess the situation. The villain from before wasn't present, which was both a source of solace and despair.
On one hand, he had been relieved of his suffering; on the other hand, the figure could return at any moment and resume his torment.
'Calm down; panicking does nothing.' Huise reined in his erratic emotions—an impressive feat for a teen.
Even under the oppressive metallic stench, the subtle, familiar scent on his robes endured, wafting into his nose and soothing his soul.
An image of a white-haired figure flashed through his mind, along with a couple of words, "Huise, Negative farmers don't exist; they wouldn't be farming." A smile appeared on Huise's face, faint and bitter, but smiling in this situation alone was already pushing his limits.
His breathing gradually returned to normal.
Time passed.
For the last three hours, the young boy stared through small gaps between the iron bars on the tower's window, watching the townspeople go about their lives. "Fatty, how much will you eat?" he murmured, his eyes locked on a round and big middle-aged man dressed nicely in expensive leathers—clearly a noble.
The one he dubbed fatty was gulping down a bowl of porridge, nothing out of the ordinary. Except, according to the young boy's calculations, it was his 5th meal today!
Seeing this, his stomach growled, vocalizing its hunger and its jealousy toward the one dubbed fatty.
One thing puzzled him, though: the face of the one dubbed fatty didn't have the expression of one who was enjoying his meal; well, it had the expression, but underneath it, Huise noticed some discrepancies.
His wide smile while eating just seemed inorganic, with every bite taken, the forcefulness just became more and more apparent.
Unbeknownst to Huise, his eyes began to light with grey Qi.
His current knowledge on qi was abysmal. He had heard of it, but what it was and its applications were a complete mystery to him. However, from things his father had told him, he realized that he was different from others in his town.
Clicking his tongue, he turned his focus to another direction.
—-
In the back of his mind lingered the fear of the hooded villain's return; each passing moment increased the tension.
And soon, hours went by, the sun came down, and the moon rose. Still hanging with chains coiled around his arms, Huise's belly rumbles echoed throughout the tower.
The hooded villain had still not returned, and as Huise pondered this, for some odd reason, the image of the purple-haired old man appeared in his mind.
'Could it be that he ran into some trouble?' He thought, the sound of his growling belly spreading across the tower while blood continued to drip from his wounds.
The stinging pain acted as a constant reminder of his suffering and also the villain's potential return. 'Nevermind that.. I need to get help, quickly…' Time went by, Huise eventually fell into slumber. …
The sun enveloped the town in its embrace once more, its light revealing a battered and bloodied figure.
Huise remained hanging from the air, his face deadpan and eyes vacant. Whether or not the villain would return didn't matter; right now, he had a more pressing issue—he was dying.
The weakness, the blood dripping out, and the difficulty of staying conscious made him sure of it. Huise blinked a couple of times before piercing through the thin iron bars gaps with his eyes, focusing on the village.
He stared at a group of women conversing beside the bakery, and although from their distance he couldn't hear what they were saying, by their facial expressions and mouth movements, he could intuit the words being spoken.
"I think today's bread tastes better than usual today," said a middle-aged woman to her four peers. She said this with a smirk on her face, and though in a high pitch, there was a subtle sarcasm in her tone.
Huise frowned; in his eyes, it was as if her lips, eyes, and facial features had come alive, telling a story different from what she portrayed. To Huise, the words she said were "Today's bread is even worse than yesterday's."
Somehow, her compliment was actually an insult; it was strange, but he didn't get time to think about this complexity as his vision went blank once more. …
The sun came up once again. Huise fought to open his eyes, groaning, the simple movement requiring a significant amount of effort.
Eventually, his eyes opened. And along with the appearance of the grey shimmer, came tears.
Despair crawled along every inch of his bones and ate him inside like a colony of ants. To his dismay, he couldn't move his body; his eyes were the only thing he had been left in control of.
'Damn it...' He thought, turning his focus away from paralysis and towards the town once more.
Present turned to past as Huise continued watching.
How he had not died yet was a mystery to him, but with each day that passed, he felt he was closer to grasping something.
However, he soon reached his limit, his eyes closing for what seemed to him to be the last time.