Nineteen
From as long as he could remember, Lucas's only friend was the moon in the trees above.
Liu Family Village was a small mountain settlement hemmed in by deep valleys and crisscrossing ravines that stretched for miles. To the southeast it bordered Dawang Valley in Deting; over the southern mountains lay Mulin Street territory; to the southwest across the peaks it connected to Guanzhuang in Luanchuan. Nearly two thousand residents were scattered across more than a dozen gullies. For generations, this had been a special-poverty area—remote, inaccessible, and poor.
The old folks said their ancestors had fled here to escape wartime chaos, and then never left, generation after generation.
Because of the isolation, travel and daily life were extremely difficult. Even buying basic necessities like oil and salt required trekking over mountains for miles. Getting children to school was even harder. Whenever it rained or snowed, the kids simply couldn't attend class.
This was why Lucas had virtually no memories of playing with other children. After a full day of farm work, the adults would come home, quickly turn off the lights, and fall fast asleep, snoring like thunder. His only playmate and confidant was the moon.
Lucas's grades were merely average. He wasn't a naturally gifted student. But he had an obsession.
He had to get out. Leave this place. Leave forever.
Sometimes ordinary life is just that ironic—harboring grand ambitions but lacking the means to achieve them.
"It's all because you little brat kept insisting on going to school! We had to sell the family ox!" His mother was a severe woman. As far back as he could remember, she had never smiled. This was her refrain—her only refrain.
So from childhood, Lucas's catchphrase became "I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry, Mom!"
"I'm sorry, I was wrong!"
"I'm sorry, I'll never do it again!"
Even so, beatings were a daily occurrence.
Too slow feeding the chickens—beaten. Burned the cooking fire—beaten. Gathered too few wild greens—beaten. On New Year's morning, when he refused to go out onto the frozen lake to dig lotus roots—beaten.
Though he was still young, Lucas's scrawny body was already covered in fresh wounds and old scars.
The old willow switches soaked in salt water felt like knife blades when they struck the cuts.
On every night when pain kept him from sleeping, he would whisper to the moon, over and over, with desperate sincerity:
"Moon, oh moon, I know you're listening. If only you'd help me get rid of my parents, I'd finally be saved..."
"If you don't come save me soon, Mom's going to beat me to death..."
Until that day...
That day, his parents went to sleep early. Lucas was hungry and got up in the middle of the night to make himself some soup. But he was so exhausted that he fell asleep while the water was boiling. Sparks leapt from the stove and ignited the straw beside it. By the time Lucas came to, everything within sight was an inferno. All he could hear was the sickening smell of burning flesh and the heart-wrenching screams.
"It's ALL YOUR FAULT!!!" His mother, half her hair singed off, seized Lucas by the throat like a demon. He tried to escape but had nowhere to go. Wave after wave of agonizing dizziness crashed over him.
In the depths of his mother's pupils, purple mist swirled.
---
"So according to the records, Lucas is actually an orphan?" I said, watching from outside the inferno through binoculars with an expression of disbelief as I reviewed the documents Chloe handed me.
On May 18, 1998, an unexplained fire broke out in Liu Family Village, Songxian County. Three households burned. Seven people died. One nine-year-old child sustained minor injuries.
"So the real Lucas wasn't actually the pride of his village, never ranked first in his class, and didn't have loving parents who sold their home to pay his debts. All of that was his fantasy?"
"Lucas was the sole survivor of that fire," Chloe explained. "He's actually rather pitiful. Let's go collect the key."
This layer felt more like background exposition—a transitional stage without much difficulty. One kick to the door, time stop, King's Treasury volley, and the house was reduced to rubble in the blink of an eye. From the mother's body rose an ugly, moon-shaped wooden puppet—this must be the second key.
"When people are at their most desperate, they sometimes fantasize that someone will come to save them... just like he did." Chloe looked at the young Lucas trembling on the ground and couldn't resist reaching out to ruffle his hair.
"Hey, hey, don't go all Mother Teresa on me! This cute little kid is going to grow up to be an Assassin who'll try to kill us both. There are still ordinary people in Hangzhou waiting for us to rescue them!"
"I know! Next level, next level." Chloe waved her hand dismissively and strode forward, stepping into the third dream layer.
Before I followed, I took one more look at the young Lucas still trembling on the ground.
He stared at me blankly, but hidden in his eyes was an unmistakable glint of joy.
Perhaps he felt he was finally free too.
A sense that something was off, even though I couldn't pinpoint exactly what, settled in my gut.
I had the key. So what was wrong?
Shaking it off, I followed Chloe's footsteps into the dream. A ripple of dreamlight passed beneath my feet, and the entire scene shifted in an instant.
The third dream layer was a prison.
Strictly speaking, it was the top of a prison wall.
"So that explains Lucas's build..." I observed with interest as four bald, prison-uniformed figures sprinted through the grass below us.
"Convicts... What has he been through all these years?" Chloe muttered, clearly still nursing a sliver of sympathy from his childhood ordeal.
"Someone's escaped! Southeast direction—search!"
A bank of searchlights snapped on simultaneously. Dozens of trained guards and their dogs charged in the same direction. Almost simultaneously, the four inmates scattered in four different directions as if by prior agreement.
"You take left, I'll take right! Watch their eyes for any signs of mist." Chloe gave brief instructions before we split up, vanishing into the endless night.
While everyone chased the escapees, a figure in a guard's uniform was quietly preparing to climb down from the watchtower on the wall—the same person who had called out the inmates' coordinates.
"Don't bother climbing. Just jump. I'll catch you." Lucas looked down to find me waiting below with Ama-no-Murakumo at the ready.
"How did you know he was up there?" Chloe had hurried back, clearly surprised by my uncharacteristic display of intelligence.
"Forgot? I heard his voice when he was making deliveries..." I readied Ama-no-Murakumo. One jump and I'd skewer him like a kebab.
But at that moment, something strange happened!
Purple mist suddenly began spreading from the prison's periphery. The mist surged toward Lucas like a living thing. Only then did we notice—the darkness surrounding the prison, so thick you couldn't see your hand in front of your face—was all nightmare mist!
"This is bad! Lucas must have detected us. He's set a trap in the third dream layer!"
Moments later, the convict Lucas's body had nearly tripled in size. His blood vessels bulged outward, and their purple color under the moonlight was terrifying to behold.
"You don't belong here! You're not from this place!" he roared, charging toward us like a falling meteor.
For a split second, time seemed to slow. But the next instant, it snapped back to normal speed.
He'd broken through the time stop through sheer brute force! Moonlight cascaded across his bulging muscles as he bore down on me like a living mountain.
Wait—
Moonlight!
I looked up. Against the boundless deep blue canopy of the sky, a conspicuous patch of black hung directly above me.
What a coincidence.
I raised Ama-no-Murakumo toward the moon. All the moonlight converged along the blade's trajectory.
In an instant, multiple blades of condensed moonlight rained down from the heavens toward Lucas's back.
"Kara-take, Kesagiri, Gyaku-kesagiri, Hidari-kiri, Migi-kiri, Hidari-kiri-age, Migi-kiri-age, Gyakukaze, Shitotsuki." Nine lunar blades struck home.
Convict Lucas didn't even bother dodging. With his Abandoned Object maximized, he'd temporarily lost all sensation of pain. Instead, he accelerated—and for a moment I caught what looked like a death-seeking warrior's tragic resolve. Riding the momentum of the lunar blades hammering his back, he slammed into me with tremendous force.
Dust exploded. I felt several ribs crack, and my internal organs nearly came up through my throat.
"Marcus! Are you okay!" Chloe shouted beside me, frantic.
"I'm fine, no big deal!" I pushed aside convict Lucas—now thoroughly impaled by Ama-no-Murakumo—and stood. Clutched in my hand was a photograph. The third key.
After some basic treatment, Chloe and I examined the photo closely. It was a college graduation shot of three young men in academic gowns, mugging for the camera with various silly poses.