Chapter 11: Blank Paper
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Li Guanqi had never been this utterly bewildered before. He had been kidnapped.
He was sitting in a car speeding down the road.
His mind was a complete mess.
“What? What is all this?”
As far as he could remember, he had been working as an intern at a hospital. Xu Fei had said something to him, and he had gone to Room 505 and opened the door...
Everything after that was hazy. When he woke again, a robot had thrown him into this vehicle.
“Human trafficking?”
He tried to explain the situation using what little common sense he had, but quickly rejected the idea himself.
He had heard of children and women being kidnapped.
But why him?
Organ trafficking?
Had Xu Fei ambushed him and sold him off?
No. What criminal organization could possibly have access to technology this advanced?
Li Guanqi turned his head slightly to the right. Near the door sat a large robot, radiating violence.
Besides him, there were two other people in the compartment.
Directly opposite sat a young man in his twenties, dressed in a white uniform. His neatly combed hair was swept back, and the uniform was trimmed with gold. Several dark-red bloodstains marred the fabric.
His hands were cuffed in front of him, and heavy shackles circled his ankles. His gaze was cold.
Everything about him seemed to say three words: Not to be trifled with.
The young man’s name was Nanyang Ming. He looked Li Guanqi up and down, then saw the freshly branded numbers 0478. He could not help letting out a soft sigh.
“Another poor bastard.”
He had not spoken loudly, but the compartment was small and well sealed.
Li Guanqi heard the words perfectly clearly, and his nerves instantly drew taut.
He wanted to scream.
“Brother, say a little more.”
“What does ‘poor bastard’ mean? Are they harvesting kidneys or sending people to the mines?”
“If you want money, we can negotiate...”
“I’m a medical student. I’m educated. I could be useful...”
He imagined every possible plea for mercy.
But he could not speak. A metal bar had been forced into his mouth, leaving him capable only of making muffled sounds.
Li Guanqi swallowed and shifted carefully to the left.
Apart from the two men and the robot, a girl sat in the corner of the compartment on his left.
She wore a neat blue school uniform with a golden school badge pinned to her shoulder. Her skirt fell to her knees, and black knee-high socks encased her long, slender legs. Her jet-black hair was tied into a high ponytail, radiating the freshness of youth.
Yet her legs were drawn up, her face buried against her knees, as though she were sobbing.
Compared with the young man, her clothes were unstained, and she wore neither handcuffs nor shackles. She was the picture of an ordinary person.
A beautiful young schoolgirl—in a human-trafficking operation, she was practically the perfect victim.
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“Mmph—”
Without alerting the robot, Li Guanqi edged cautiously toward the girl and lightly touched her shoulder with his elbow.
A strange sensation traveled up from his elbow, but he paid it no mind.
The girl shuddered, yet still did not raise her head.
“Who are you?” she asked, her head bowed. Her voice was ethereal.
Li Guanqi had no time for embarrassment. Keeping one eye on the robot, he wrote the words victim on her palm with his finger.
“How pitiful.”
Her tone was unexpectedly calm. There was no nervousness in it, only sympathy.
She extended one hand and groped toward his shoulder as though feeling her way through darkness. Then she touched his chest and patted it twice, left and right.
Li Guanqi had no idea what she was trying to do. He simply sat there in a daze, not daring to move.
Her hand slowly traveled downward, reached his wrist, and continued wandering about at random.
Then she touched something. She abruptly snatched her hand back and exclaimed in astonishment, “Oh! You’re a boy?”
“Ah—”
Li Guanqi collapsed inwardly on the spot.
“Is this how you determine someone’s gender?!”
A stampede of furious curses thundered through his mind, but unfortunately, he could not shout them aloud.
She giggled, then sighed.
“Being a boy is better. They’ll send you to the mines.”
Hearing this, Li Guanqi let out a long breath of relief.
Being sent to a mine was at least better than being sent to an operating room.
“My name is Bai Zhi. I’m blind. Forgive me for being rude just now.”
“Blind...” Li Guanqi murmured. A trace of sympathy appeared in his eyes. “It’s all right.”
“Grrr—”
His stomach betrayed him with a loud growl, and the atmosphere instantly became awkward.
“Why am I hungry already...”
“Didn’t I eat earlier...?”
Li Guanqi tried desperately to remember, but a sudden agony erupted in his mind, as though hundreds of shards of glass were slicing through his nerves.
Bai Zhi seemed to sense the change in his emotions. She gently patted his thigh to comfort him.
“Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid.”
“Here, have some...”
She opened a box of food that looked like a double-lotus mooncake. Using a small knife, she cut it into pieces and gave half to him.
Li Guanqi received the half with the knife.
He pushed the pieces of pastry through the gaps around the metal bar in his mouth, forced them down his throat, and swallowed them directly. Then he slipped the small knife into his pocket.
He must have been truly famished. Even after eating half the cake, he still felt no sense of fullness.
“Are you a multifunctional numbered citizen?” Bai Zhi set down the other half of the cake and asked softly. “It’s rare to find one who can write.”
“Numbered citizen?” Li Guanqi stared at the number on his wrist, murmuring the words again and again.
His brow furrowed slightly. The term sounded vaguely familiar, but whenever he tried to think about it more carefully, pain shot through his head.
“Do you know where we are?”
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Li Guanqi avoided the subject of numbered citizens and wrote on Bai Zhi’s hand.
He needed more information. It would make escaping from the mine easier later.
Bai Zhi thought for a moment before answering, “We should be beyond the frontier of Bordermoon Falls...”
“Bordermoon Falls?” Li Guanqi’s brow creased even more deeply.
That term sounded even more familiar.
But where had he heard it before?
He continued writing a stream of questions on her palm: Which province or city was Bordermoon Falls in? What were conditions like at the mine? Was there any radioactive poison gas?
She could not answer a single one.
He could not see a thing.
The two of them huddled together in the corner of the compartment, embracing each other for warmth.
It should have been a romantic, harmonious, happy scene. Yet Nanyang Ming, sitting opposite them, merely frowned more and more deeply.
He watched Li Guanqi’s every movement, his pupils narrowing slightly with an odd expression.
It was as though he were watching an absurd play, its actors performing some ridiculous farce upon the stage.
“What is all this supposed to mean?” After communicating with Bai Zhi, Li Guanqi was even more bewildered.
There were so many words he did not understand.
What were “Ena,” affinity, spirituality, negative crystals...?
The mine even held regular duels. Just hearing about them was frightening.
In his everyday dealings with people, Li Guanqi thought like an ordinary person.
When ordinary people heard the word duel, they generally imagined a fight.
At that moment, the transport vehicle suddenly braked. The compartment tilted sharply, taking quite some time to steady itself.
The driver’s voice came from the front.
“What?”
“We’re at a disadvantage in the league, so you need a substitute?”
“I’ve got one. Don’t worry, I have the person...”
“They’re all just stand-ins meant to die anyway. Just use a numbered citizen. I’ll sell you one cheap.”
Li Guanqi drew in a sharp breath, his eyes widening.
“A stand-in meant to die? A numbered citizen?”
He frantically scanned the compartment: one robot, one schoolgirl, one hostile young man.
Only his wrist bore a number.
Am I being sent to die in someone else’s place?
He had seen this episode before. A lackey took money to accept the blame, then was hooded and executed by firing squad.
“Great!” the driver roared with laughter, as though the deal had just been sealed. “I’ll hurry over now. Half an hour—we’ll make it.”
“Damn!”
Li Guanqi’s heart sank.
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