Months bled away; people peeled off like leaves in a cold wind.

Once thousands packed the ground; now fewer than a hundred lingered, like stubble after locusts.

They kept throwing in fresh bodies like logs to a dying fire; without that, Luxiao would’ve stood here alone, a post in fog.

Li Feiyang hit his six-month mark; winged Angels, several meters tall, lifted him out like a crane snatching a fish.

Luxiao sighed and scored a new notch into the stone wall, like tallying tree rings.

He counted with bony fingers, each ridge a winter.

“Half a month left.” Weariness pooled first; he rubbed his temples, then stared blankly at the pale sky, a lid of slate.

His days were the same low tide: spacing out, waiting for food, training his body; then watching timed bacteria roll in like dirty fog, and watching people die like candles.

He’d gone from nauseated retches to the numb crust of ice on a pond.

A man before him bloomed with sickly green spots, coughed, spat blood, and stilled; Luxiao only lifted his head, face wooden, and nodded like a gravestone.

Oh. Look. Another one.

Months drifted like ash, and he still hadn’t snapped; he almost respected himself, a stubborn rock in the current.

Now he was sure.

Either some cult had caged him for experiments, or those so-called gods had; either way, one iron pen under two names.

He gave a crooked smile, shut his eyes, and leaned on the pillar, a tired tree against a cliff.

Creak…

The sky’s iron gate groaned open like rusted jaws.

Huge Angels began dropping new catches, their cages swaying like birdcages under a storm; one Angel, one cage per hand, descending like hawks.

Luxiao lifted his head and frowned, a wrinkle across still water.

These things really spared nothing, like cold rain.

This time they’d netted children, batch after batch, like fledglings knocked from a nest.

His gaze stayed cold; he didn’t move, a stone under snow.

Someone had tried to resist before; before his words landed, a blade split him head to toe, fast as lightning; no one even saw whose hand fell.

When the Angels left, the children unclenched slowly, like frost under a weak sun.

Luxiao let out a small sigh; he knew the next bacterial tide would roll in soon, like a dirty tide at dusk.

Plenty of these little ones would die like snuffed lamps.

He turned his head away, too used to storm and ruin to care.

After a long while, as Luxiao drifted in a half-doze, a soft voice brushed his ear like a feather: “Big brother… where are we?”

Luxiao frowned and lifted his eyes; a pale, clean little girl stood there, timid as a fawn, seven or eight kids huddled behind her like chicks.

He swept the area again, quick and flat as a swallow’s glance.

The newly dropped children sidled in twos and threes toward the half-dead, seeking shelter like sparrows under a broken eave.

He rubbed his brow; those people were lifeless logs and wouldn’t shield anyone.

Luxiao sighed and mustered a smile, a lamp behind paper. “Don’t be afraid. There are no bad people here.”

Everyone was busy clinging to their own breath like shipwrecked swimmers; and the Angels forbade any banding together, so the place felt hushed as a grave.

Seeing Luxiao speak, more little ones drifted over like leaves to an eddy.

Maybe because they were kids, the Angels didn’t show to scatter them, like wolves ignoring lambs in a pen.

Luxiao had no better answer; he could only ease their fear a notch, a hand to a fevered brow, so they’d relax a little before death.

“The big brother… your hand’s hurt.” The first girl stared at Luxiao’s right hand like a sparrow eyeing a thorn.

He glanced down; he’d scraped it on raw stone during training, a thin red line like a thread.

“It’s nothing,” he said with a small smile, a dry leaf. “Just a scratch.”

“Then… does it hurt?” she asked, biting her lip like a petal.

He shook his head. “It doesn’t.”

From their chatter he learned the little girl was called Lu Huan; she said she had a brother who looked like Luxiao, like a mirror in ripples.

She shared his surname, carried no malice, and soon warmed to him like a kitten to a hearth.

With the warmth of these children, faces around them, wooden for months, showed a little color like frost letting go.

Yet for some reason, the bacteria that should have arrived on schedule didn’t, like a storm that never breaks.

A thin thread of worry tugged in Luxiao’s chest, a string in the wind.

More than half a month slipped by; the time for his release crept closer, like dawn inching.

At daybreak, he woke and stretched, bones cracking like dry bamboo.

No gas had gnawed at him lately, and his color looked better, a weak spring in winter.

“Huanhuan. Don’t stand so high.” Luxiao sighed, helpless as a tied boat, and reached to pull the dazed girl down.

She didn’t respond; she held her pose like a doll on a shelf.

His heart lurched like a dropped stone; he ran over, breath ragged.

Her eyes were empty sky; her body had no breath, cold as river rock; he gathered her in his arms and shook, a tree in a gale, weeping or raging, he couldn’t tell.

After a long while he stood, slow as dawn; only then did he see it.

Death lay everywhere like frost; in this sealed space, other than him, everyone had gone still.

They looked like sleepers in a quiet field; only, no chests rose.

Dizziness rolled through him like heat off a forge; he pressed the wall to keep from falling, a vine clutching stone.

So the gas had slipped in long ago, a snake in grass; he just didn’t know.

He dragged in the morning air in great gulps, like a man trying to swallow the river, as if he could pull the poison into himself; he panted in despair, and at last he toppled, tears slipping like rain.

His face twisted uglier than a sob, empty as a gutted house; he sat there, hollow.

After a long time, he drew a stone knife from his coat, short and rough, sanded over countless hours like a river pebble; his heart cooled, a pond at night.

His eyes went deep and lightless as a well; expression gone, he lifted his chin to the gate, a wolf watching a dark path.

By noon, an Angel returned; the gate opened slow as a lid, and the winged figure drifted in, but this one wasn’t towering—he looked almost human, like a man in borrowed sky.

He watched Luxiao; Luxiao watched back, two knives catching light.

The Angel smiled. “Congratulations, resident of the Eighth World. You’ve passed the trial. Come with me.”

Luxiao looked over the carpet of corpses like a field after fire; he didn’t move.

The Angel frowned, a crease like a cut. “We’ll cremate them, same as before.”

Luxiao nodded, rose, and walked toward the Angel like a shadow crossing snow.

The Angel nodded, satisfied, a cat with cream.

When Luxiao drew close, he whipped out the stone knife he’d hidden to his heart like a coal, and drove it at the messenger, hard as thunder.

The messenger flinched, startled; he hadn’t seen anyone dare to strike back, like a fox nipping a tiger.

Then his smile thinned to winter; he watched Luxiao with a cold gleam, an icicle.

Right then, a red film of energy sheathed Luxiao and the stone knife, thin as a dragonfly wing, but real as heat.

The blade, riding that strange glow, pierced the Angel’s body and rammed his heart like a nail.

The Angel stared at Luxiao in disbelief, eyes blown wide like moons; he slapped Luxiao away with one palm, a wave hitting driftwood.

Luxiao spat blood, a flower on white, and laughed coldly. “Go to hell, scum!”

The Angel felt the pain in his chest and his life running out like sand; disbelief clung like frost.

“I… got killed by a human?” That was his last thought, a fading spark.

A special force hit his body like a hammer of light, and he crumbled to ash on a sudden wind.

Another Angel appeared in the sky, cutting in like a blade; clearly, he’d struck that final blow. He eyed the smoke and sneered. “Trash. Letting a human hurt you.”

He glanced at Luxiao with a flicker of praise, like sun on steel. “Not bad. Of tens of millions of test subjects, you’re the only one who dared to strike us and pulled it off.”

Luxiao’s face stayed cold as frost; he didn’t care what waited ahead—anything was better than this pit, even death, a clean snow.

The Angel crooked a finger, a hook of light. “Come. You’ve cleared a hidden project. You won’t face the next experiment. Straight to the final selection.”

Luxiao’s body moved under a strange pull, a current in deep water; he walked, wooden as a puppet.

“Don’t underestimate me,” the Angel said with a shrug, careless as wind. “I’m not like Pisco, brain-dead and weak.”

“You don’t know how we envy you humans, getting to enjoy this selection,” he added, voice light as ash.

Luxiao’s face didn’t change, a mask on a pole.

The Angel shrugged again, big and loose. “You should feel blessed. This is a grace from Lord Celestial God.”

Luxiao gave no sign.

The Angel didn’t mind; those who crawled out of this gate were all like this, stones in riverbeds.

Luxiao turned over the words in his head like pebbles. The Eighth World… so they weren’t just grabbing from his world.

He smiled at himself, bitter as brine.

They really were damn strong, like mountains walking.

After a long march, the Angel tossed him forward like a sack. “We’re here. This is the Grace Point. If you get out from here, you’ve cleared every experiment; if not, even your soul dies here.”

His smile was sly as a fox; the words fell like cold rain.

Luxiao stared at the scene—fairylike, painted in mist—and his face didn’t ripple, a lake in winter.

The Angel waved. “I’ll send you this far. From here, it’s on you. See you.”

He turned away like a shadow folding into cloud.