He was born without knowing anything and would die without knowing anything. In the Abyss, in this… sad place. As if a switch in his memory was touched, a voice suddenly filled his ears. It was his own voice.

“There on the sad height,” the voice gently said. “Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.”

“…Do not go gentle into that good night.”

“Do not go gentle into that good night.” He had asked, “What does it mean?”

Lin Zuo, the teacher at the Garden of Eden, had replied, “Don’t accept the destruction gently.”

After a brief pause, the words changed again.

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you are with me.” He was softly reciting a poem to someone. That day, they walked a long way together and didn’t know what they would meet in front of them.

On that day, in the wilderness, that man walked with him in the darkness while the ancient wind blew. What had that person been thinking then?

In the face of the fate that told his eventual demise, did that person feel the same despair? How did he go on?

He…

An Zhe lowered his head and found that he had somehow taken out the judge’s badge. The sharp edges of the badge stung his already bloodied hand. The illusory trance suddenly receded and he took a few steps back. He thought, ‘What was I just doing?’

There was a severe pain in his ankle. The stone that had just cut his palm had hit his ankle. He stooped to move the sharp grey stone away, so that other creatures wouldn’t trip over it. Then he suddenly found something. There was a dark charcoal mark on the stone, as if it had been written with a scorched tree branch. A crooked, ugly arrow was drawn, pointing southeast.

He fell deep into thought. With his limited knowledge, there were no creatures in the Abyss who could draw arrows. This strange grey stone, he seemed to have seen it once or twice elsewhere in the Abyss. He had just been so focused on finding the cave that he hadn’t paid attention.

He looked around and finally chose to go in the direction indicated by the arrow. After walking for a long time, another grey stone appeared abruptly on the flat ground, half buried in the soil and half exposed. The exposed part had an arrow drawn on it.

An Zhe continued to walk. It wasn’t only the grey stones that were marked. Sometimes, there were marks on the tree trunks or white bones. After five days, he found that he was walking south of the Abyss, walking near the highlands. The environment of the highlands was dry and harsh so few monsters would go here.

Yet on the same day, he couldn’t find any other stones.