Warren looked up, staring intently at his old friend on the screen. "Promise me, if I'm no longer around, that kid is the future we'll rely on."
Captain Hamdan also sensed the gravity of the moment. He answered, word by word, with equal solemnity:
"Alright, I promise you."
"Thanks... next time you come to Beijing, the hot pot's on me."
The video call ended. Captain Hamdan stood on the balcony, gazing at the boundless seascape, seemingly lost in thought.
Without his notice, a touch of gold crept into his pupils. A fierce vortex of wind materialized in his hand, whistling with power. He casually hurled the vortex into the ocean. In the next second, a massive whirlpool formed on the sea's surface. Beachgoers unaware of the danger screamed and fled. People wailed and cried—it looked like purgatory.
That's right. He was also one of the empowered.
Just then, a languid voice sounded from behind him:
"Captain Hamdan, that phone call of yours certainly took long enough."
Captain Hamdan—or rather, Captain Hamdan—turned around. He saw only a woman in a blue-and-white striped bikini staring straight at him from the private pool behind.
Her pupils glowed with a soul-piercing deep blue.
---
Fourteen
"Lucas, dear, we've sent away all the creditors who came these past few days. Your father and I have both changed our phone numbers. The money we owe, our family will pay back slowly together. You're out there braving wind and rain to earn money—it's not easy. Take care of yourself, don't do anything rash."
"Your uncle and your older brother came this afternoon too. We told them about your situation. Give up on this idea—don't borrow money from any relatives ever again, and don't gamble anymore! You can't win back money through gambling. You'll only sink deeper. We're begging you, stop gambling."
"Take good care of yourself over there. Mom's old now, Mom's useless."
His mother's eyes were rimmed red, as if she'd just been crying. While rummaging through the closet for something, her dark hair turned silver at a visible pace. She found a worn passbook and some gold jewelry from her wedding day, and walked out happily.
The next scene: she walked out of their old house and signed the deed over to a grinning real estate developer. Watching relatives use an excavator to flatten the home she'd lived in for years, she could only drag her suitcase away with her husband, shuffling toward a dilapidated flood-retention house riddled with holes.
Then she turned around. A little boy who looked just like him as a child came bouncing over, holding up a certificate of academic excellence:
"Mom, Mom! I ranked first again! Look, look, this is my certificate!"
"Our Lucas is the best behaved. When you grow up, you'll definitely amount to something great! Then Mom will get to enjoy your success."
Lucas's eyes snapped open. Only then did he realize tears were streaming down his face.
"Another nightmare?" He checked the time—less than an hour had passed.
Ever since he'd taken that strange sum of money, every time he closed his eyes, nightmares came chasing after him.
Strangely, Lucas noticed that every passenger in the entire car seemed to be asleep as well. And every sleeping person—including infants barely a few months old—had tear tracks on their faces.
Recalling the dream he'd just had, Lucas couldn't help but sigh.
From elementary school onward, his stellar grades had made him the pride of his village.
The first from his village to attend the county's key middle school. The first to attend the county's key high school. And also the first 211-university student from his village.
After graduation, Lucas found a sales position at a Global 500 multinational in Beijing, earning an enviable salary right out of college.
But he was young and cocky then. He started hanging out with a crowd of fair-weather friends at bars, watching and betting on games. Before long, he'd been drawn into offshore gambling platforms. At first, the stakes were small—a few thousand at a time.
Then it spiraled completely out of control, like a demon had possessed him. The bets grew larger and more frequent.
By the time he came to his senses, he was over five million in debt.
Thanks to loan shark companies and an endless barrage of collection calls, both his job and his friends had abandoned him.
He had nothing.
His family, never well-off to begin with, was ruined overnight. They sold their house and their land. His elderly parents emptied a lifetime of savings to fill the bottomless pit their son had created. After liquidating everything, there was still a gaping hole of over four million remaining.
The monthly interest from the loan sharks alone exceeded ten thousand yuan. Penniless, he could only weave through the city on his e-bike, delivering takeout.
He dreaded being awake, because being awake meant guilt. It meant suffering.
He couldn't even access whatever money was in any bank account—any deposit, even a hundred yuan, would be swiftly seized by the bank. He had to collect his wages in cash, and because of this, his supervisor docked another twenty percent of his income.
To make up for it, he single-handedly covered both day and night shifts in the Dawanglu district, just to chip away at what seemed like an endless debt.
Chronic sleep deprivation had led to a car accident at an intersection a few months back, leaving a shocking scar across his chin.
But he couldn't bring himself to tell his family. There was no way he could open his mouth about it.
So when the number sixty million materialized in the night sky, it was like a lifeline thrown to a drowning man.
He was going to climb that lifeline. He'd climb higher than anyone, live better than anyone!
Those who had given him pain and humiliation—he would burn them all to ashes!
A golden flame burst forth from the depths of his pupils in that instant.
The moment he activated his Abandoned Object, something bizarre occurred.
Every passenger in the car began groaning in agony, as if trapped in nightmares.
But no matter how they screamed or wailed, however pitifully, they seemed trapped in an endless nightmare—none of them could open their eyes and wake up!
For a time, the wails of adults and children throughout the car wove together into a single tapestry of suffering. If you listened carefully, you could hear the hysterical, crazed laughter of a madman woven through it all. In the flickering cabin lights, it was nothing short of hell on earth!
Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometers behind this high-speed train, I sat in another car, absently fingering a stone necklace.
Chloe's phone went unanswered. No WeChat replies either. She'd vanished off the face of the earth.
But given her wariness and abilities, my concern for her was probably an overreaction.
Maybe she'd already handled the delivery guy before I even arrived...
And was just waiting to settle the final score with me...
The only things I could do before leaving were to identify my opponent and get what I needed from a friend.
Which was this necklace in my hand.
It looked neither gold nor jade—ancient and unassuming.
If my account hadn't suddenly decreased by tens of millions, I never would have realized how extraordinarily precious this necklace was.
Because it didn't come from Earth.
It came from the sky!
There are four sources of lunar rocks on Earth:
1. The six Apollo moon landings brought back 2,200 lunar rock samples, totaling 382 kilograms.
2. The Soviet Luna program returned 301 grams of lunar samples across three missions.
3. Lunar meteorites collected on Earth, totaling 190 kilograms.
4. And the 1,731 grams of lunar soil brought back by Chang'e-5 in 2020.
Of these, the American, Soviet, and Chinese lunar specimens are all vital national research samples. Without official scientific justification, ordinary citizens couldn't even dream of accessing them.
But in various underground transactions overseas, lunar meteorites do exist, and specimens in good condition can be worth fortunes.
You just needed enough money, and there were ways.
And what I now held in my hand was a necklace crafted from a lunar meteorite, purchased through a buddy of mine abroad.
I stroked this Abandoned Object from the moon, my emotions a tangled mess.
I abandoned the moon, and the moon abandoned you. I wonder if putting us together might produce some miraculous negative-times-negative-equals-positive chemistry?
But I'd been testing the necklace for a while now—meditation, rubbing, even sticking it in my mouth and, well, elsewhere (don't ask)—nothing worked. The thing was as responsive as a brick.
After all that fruitless testing, I couldn't help but sigh.
"I don't even know what they were trying to tell me with that Osiris and Isis myth. What does that have to do with me?"
Just then, the necklace suddenly lit up from within, like a phone flashlight switching on. A warm golden light spread through the stone's interior like veins, and countless ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs surfaced across its surface, transforming the cabin into broad daylight.
"Huh?" I stared at it dumbly, reaching out a finger to touch it.
A tremendous force instantly flooded into my fingertip. It felt like a sword piercing backward through my arm, traveling along my aorta straight to my heart. The Abandoned Object ignited my pupils in an instant.
At the same time, it rapidly transformed and elongated in the light, solidifying into shape, and promptly melted away half of my seat's armrest.
I looked at the strange weapon of condensed light now floating in my hand.
I murmured, almost in disbelief:
"Ama-no-Murakumo...?"