Life was slipping away from his pierced chest.
Lu Li's breathing grew weaker, and his heavy eyelids refused to open.
Suddenly, he felt a searing pain on the back of his hand. Even on the verge of death, the pain didn't fade; it pierced him to the very core of his soul.
The pentagram burned onto his hand by the demon flared with the color of lava, and the sharp scent of sulfur struck his nostrils.
For a mont, it seed as if an illusory portal of lava was forming, but then a faint breeze seed to blow through, and the gates to hell died out like sparks.
The brand on his hand vanished, along with the agonizing pain.
Through a sliver of hazy vision, he saw Death, the soul collector, floating toward him from a distance.
But it looked more like another figure.
"Friday?" Lu Li's lips whispered, so faintly he might not have said anything at all.
The black silhouette, creeping along the ground, picked up the fallen Beacon, crawled over to Lu Li, and pulled sothing from his pocket.
Only when the black silhouette pressed the object against Lu Li's burned hand did he realize it was a shard of the Atonent.
Lu Li didn't understand what the silhouette was doing. He couldn't see or feel a thing.
Then, the black silhouette took the Beacon and pressed its base against the wound in Lu Li's chest.
Or rather, inserted it into his pierced chest.
Suddenly, Lu Li heard the whispers of countless believers repeating the inscription on the Beacon's base.
"The light of humanity gathers in the wick..."
"It must be where it belongs..."
Warmth spread through his chest. It replaced his stopped heart, flowing throughout his entire body.
The price was the rapid depletion of Lu Li's humanity and a rising tide of exhaustion.
His eyelids no longer obeyed him, and he sank into darkness.
Lu Li's consciousness plunged into the abyss.
...
An unknown amount of ti passed before Lu Li regained consciousness.
He was lying in a dark room, covered by a moldy blanket. A candle burned on the table, casting a faint light.
Soone was sitting on the cold floor, sticking sothing sharp and thin, like a needle, into their leg.
The sound Lu Li made turning his head drew the figure's attention. It looked up, revealing a grimy female face.
"I thought you were dead. I was going to take your loot after the Mantis left, but I noticed you were still breathing, so I brought you here," the woman explained curtly, easing Lu Li's wariness.
"The wound healed so fast... Are you a slug?"
"A slug?"
Lu Li glanced at the window. It was nearly impossible to see anything in the darkness; the candlelight obscured the vague outlines outside.
They were still in the shelter.
"Doesn't seem like it."
The woman pulled out the sharp object, which she had pushed nearly ten centiters into her shin, and plunged it into her ankle. It must have been the inner ankle, yet the sharp object slid into the bone without resistance. The woman rely frowned in pain and continued, "Then where did you get that kind of regeneration? Bloodline? The Church? Contamination? Or an Anomaly?"
"I don't understand."
The blanket began to rise. Lu Li lifted his hand and threw it aside to inspect his wound.
The sll of damp and mold hit his nostrils. Lu Li saw smooth skin on his chest, without any wounds or scars.
It was as if the whole thing had been a dream.
Frankly, if the wound had remained, Lu Li would have died either from its severity or from infection.
Lu Li's words made the woman fall silent for a mont. Then she spoke in a language unfamiliar to him, composed entirely of vowels, "****?"
"I understand the words, but I don't grasp your aning," Lu Li replied.
"That's good enough. I only know a few words in other languages," the woman said, visibly relaxing. "So, is it your ability?"
"I don't have a regenerative ability."
"So you used an Anomaly?"
"You could say that," Lu Li answered, recalling the properties of the Beacon.
The woman acted as if she knew it all along, pulling the sharp object from her ankle and plunging it into her foot.
"What are you doing?" Lu Li asked.
"Returning your honesty. My Anomaly lets
run faster, but at the cost of my life."
"A high price."
"High?" The woman's voice held a note of mockery. "Life is the cheapest thing there is."
"Are you an exorcist?" Lu Li asked. The woman was strange: she was being hunted by an Anomaly, she possessed an Anomaly herself, and she knew things he didn't.
It seed a lot had changed up on the surface while he was down below...
"An exorcist..." The woman's voice grew quiet, tinged with longing and disappointnt. Then she shook her head. "No, I'm just an ordinary person trying to survive in the Age of Anomalies."
It was uncomfortable for Lu Li to speak while craning his neck. Feeling no other abnormalities besides his humanity having returned to a baseline of 2, he sat up, leaning against the bed.
"Your wound..." The woman stopped abruptly upon seeing Lu Li's unmarked chest and shrugged. "Forget what I said."
"Do ordinary people have Anomalies too?" Lu Li asked.
Every one of the woman's answers only raised more questions.
"What are you, so rich city slicker?" The woman's voice suddenly turned aggressive, and she added caustically, "Most ordinary people can't afford an expensive Anomaly."
Another question surfaced.
But sensing that further inquiries might lead to an argunt, Lu Li decided to change the subject for now.
He wanted to ask sothing else, but the woman seed tired of his questions. "If it's another question, don't even bother asking. I won't answer."
"Has Silence been stopped?" Lu Li asked calmly.
The woman truly didn't want to answer anymore, but this question seed to anger her, or rather, she found it ridiculous. "Of course not, you amnesiac! It's still here, and now they call it the 'Hour of Silence'."
"Why?" Lu Li frowned.
Silence still exists... That ans the shot didn't work...
"Why? Because it's a Calamity, and because it's present for half the day."
"Half... the day?" Lu Li whispered.
Could it be that because he challenged it, Silence had unleashed its wrath upon all of humanity?
Now it was the woman's turn to stare at him strangely. She looked Lu Li over with curiosity. "Have you been in a shelter this whole ti?"
"For about two weeks."
"Who stays in a shelter for that long..." the woman muttered, and suddenly her eyes lit up as if a beggar had seen a mountain of gold. "You're from a shelter?!"
"No."
"Are you sure? You act like you don't know anything," the woman said, still doubtful.
Lu Li remained silent. He suddenly rembered sothing.
A stray phrase from Friday.
"When did Silence appear?"
"It's at a different ti every day. What are you even..."
Lu Li looked at the woman. "Tell
when it was born."
Under the gaze of those pure black eyes, the woman suddenly found herself unable to utter the retort she had prepared.
"Fine. I'll only say it once."
She answered what she considered an absurd question. "Twenty-four years ago."
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