Chapter Forty-Four: Terrifying Memories

Two stern-faced researchers were shoving him forward from behind. They turned into another corridor, and Kuroba immediately followed.

His memories resurfaced—back then, the walls here were pristine and white, and the corridors flooded with bright lights. Yet in these cavernous, windowless halls, there was no telling day from night.

At that time, Kuroba had no name. He was simply “the specimen” in the mouths of others. His small body was dragged out from a basement cage, pushed up the stairs, around a corner, and ahead, at the far end of another corridor, someone holding a notebook would impatiently urge him to “hurry up” and open a side door.

As a child, fear made him shrink back, feet scraping desperately at the floor, yet the researchers behind him would strike him and force him inside, strapping him to an operating table bristling with surgical knives and syringes.

Now, Kuroba stood outside that very door, gazing at the dust-shrouded, cobwebbed operating table. That bone-deep terror, after so many years, surged over him once more.

On the table, the young Kuroba screamed and thrashed, trying to evade the restraints. During the struggle, thick feathers began to sprout from his back, and a pair of black wings slowly emerged.

“Inject him with a sedative!” ordered the man with the scalpel, his eyes devoid of emotion. Kuroba recognized him—this was White Scorpion.

A nearby researcher hurried over, handed him a syringe, and, without hesitation, jabbed it into the boy’s arm. Soon, little Kuroba quieted. A steel muzzle was clamped over his mouth, stifling any sound, and his limbs and torso were shackled with iron clasps and chains, leaving him to watch helplessly as the scalpel glided across his flesh.

With every slice, a bead of bright red blood would well up along the hair-thin cut.

“Healing ability test, ninety-eighth trial. Prepare to record the data,” White Scorpion announced in his dry, mechanical voice, while the recorder’s pen flew across the page.

At first, the pain was sharp and vivid. Gradually, under the sedative’s effect, numbness set in, and drowsiness overcame him.

“Healing ability test, one hundred and fifth trial…”

His heavy eyelids fell and lifted. By the time he next opened his eyes, the tests had repeated countless times. Day after day, all he could do was endure; his strength was no match for the researchers here.

Once, awakening from a stupor, he heard a voice clearly:

“Automatic bodily damage repair test, fifteenth trial.”

With a heart-rending scream, a heavy hammer crashed down on his left leg.

When consciousness returned, he lay in his room, wrists and ankles still shackled. Sitting up, pain shot through his left leg—it was now utterly useless.

After each of these “bodily damage repair” tests, he would be forgotten in the basement cage for nearly a month. The cage was walled on three sides, the fourth sealed with sturdy iron bars.

At this point in his recollection, he felt as though something vital was missing from his heart, as if he had forgotten something of immense importance.

Descending the steps toward the basement, Kuroba drew closer to the heart of his memory.

There was no moonlight in the basement—only deeper darkness. He retrieved a pinch of ghostgrass powder from his waist pouch and sprinkled it onto the crystal at the tip of his staff. The crystal glimmered faintly. This powder was a common illumination tool for magicians.

Although the light was dim, it was enough to make out nearby objects as he groped his way forward.

“I remember there were rows of cages here. Mine was the very first, so I never knew what was kept in the ones behind me…”

He mused. In retrospect, those cages must have held the half-human, half-wraith monsters he’d just seen—back then, each day, he would hear their chilling, deranged, and incoherent wails. The number and faces of those monsters were always changing.

On the wall, he spotted a sign: “Specimens.” The iron bars had a gaping hole, the ceiling inside had collapsed, and heaps of rubble and debris choked the interior, filling the cage. Within, it was pitch-black; nothing could be seen.

“Back then, there was probably only a small bed inside,” he thought.

When no one passed by, the torches in the basement would always be out—total darkness.

In those countless days when day and night were indistinguishable, confined within narrow walls of copper and iron, he drifted in and out of sleep, losing all sense of time. He had no name, no identity, no family, and no reason to live—pain had erased everything from his mind.

“To die.”

That was the only thought.

Yet, during that month he was forgotten in his cell due to his injured leg, one night he faintly heard, from the neighboring cage, the sound of someone crying—a boy’s sobs!

He became instantly alert. The discovery thrilled him. It had been so long since he’d encountered someone his own age, let alone a normal, communicative person. He jumped off his bed, hopped on one leg to the bars, and listened intently.

He called out, “Who are you?”

The crying abruptly stopped. In the icy darkness, he sensed the other was startled by his voice and was searching for its source. He heard the boy’s light footsteps approaching the bars, and little Kuroba’s heart pounded with excitement.

“Who are you?” came the timid, small voice in return.

Never had Kuroba felt such joy. He quickly replied, “I live next door to you! Did you just get here?”

“Yes,” came the reply. “Have you been here long?”

“Mm.”

“My name is Xiaoyu. What about you?” the boy asked.

Kuroba hesitated a moment. “I don’t have a name. I don’t know who I am,” he said.

The boy gradually crouched by the bars. “You can give yourself a name.”

“Then call me Kuro. All I can see here is darkness. I’ve always lived in this darkness.”

“Alright, Kuro. So why are you here? Are you here to be cured, too?”

“To be cured?” Kuroba was puzzled.

“My mother said, once my illness is cured, she’ll come and get me. But I’m so scared, Kuro. When will I be cured…” Xiaoyu seemed on the verge of tears again.

“Don’t be afraid, Xiaoyu. I’m here.”

Kuroba stretched his arm through the bars, waving in the boy’s direction.

…

“Xiaoyu, can you see my hand?”

“No, I can’t,” he replied, his tears abating.

The wall between them was too thick; despite Kuroba’s efforts, Xiaoyu still couldn’t see.

“Xiaoyu, reach out your hand.”

He did as asked.

Soon, Kuroba felt a small, soft hand in his own. He grabbed it tightly.

“Xiaoyu, from now on, we’re friends!”

“I’m so scared, so scared…” the boy murmured.

“Don’t be afraid. The two of us—we’ll both survive. We’ll make it out of here. We must hold on. I’ll hold on, too…”

From that day forward, the two of them sat by the bars, separated by the wall, talking about all sorts of things each day.

To Kuroba, the outside world was a blank slate, his memories a void. Everything beyond these walls he learned from Xiaoyu’s stories: forests, lakes, meadows, the sky… and all kinds of beautiful plants and animals.

“I had a master out there who taught me magic.”

“Magic?”

“Yes, he was very powerful.”

“I wish I could see the world outside,” said Kuroba.

“I just want to go home, back to my master…” Xiaoyu replied.

Time trickled by in the darkness. Each time Xiaoyu was taken away and brought back, his sobs grew more desperate. From these cries, Kuroba could gauge the intensity of his suffering. Later, Xiaoyu would sometimes be returned unconscious, and when he awoke, he could only moan in pain, unable to leave his bed. Kuro would crouch by the bars, calling and waiting for him.

When Xiaoyu was better, he would come to the door.

“Xiaoyu, what did they do to you this time?”

Xiaoyu stayed silent, sobbing softly.

“You’ll get better, Xiaoyu. You’ll go home.”

“I can’t go home anymore…” he said, helpless and hopeless. “I can’t go back the way I am…”

Sometimes, aside from the operating table, Kuroba would be taken elsewhere.

There, in a vast empty room, the researchers would bring in ten blindfolded adults and chain them separately to the walls. Then, White Scorpion, with his ashen hair, would enter.

White Scorpion would rave at Kuroba, “Bear witness! The birth of your kin!”

Then, a researcher would inject each adult with a different vial of pale yellow serum.

Soon, the adults’ bodies began to change. Writhing in agony, they tore at their chests, their teeth sharpening and lengthening, drool dripping, veins bulging, and suddenly, swollen masses of muscle would burst from their bodies.

Some would die as their bodies ruptured from the rapid swelling, flesh and blood splattering everywhere, while the few survivors transformed into twisted abominations.

Little Kuroba stared in terror at the horrific spectacle before him.

“All failures,” White Scorpion muttered irritably, striking off numbers one through ten on his clipboard.

The twisted monsters, once deemed failures, were swiftly killed and disposed of. Over time, the lab was filled with the overwhelming stench of blood and acrid disinfectant.

Much later, in that same place, after another round of injections, the adults began to mutate again.

The first few burst under the strain, falling to the floor as heaps of bloody pulp. Only the tenth remained standing, his veins glowing red, skin impervious to knives or bullets, his strength multiplied, and his limbs and torso much improved.

“Success!” White Scorpion cried, drawing a red circle around number ten.

“Success, at last!” He turned to Kuroba. “Do you see? Monsters made with your blood—the true demon army!”

Only then did Kuroba realize: the daily blood draws were for this very experiment. But his greater fear was that Xiaoyu might be turned into such a monster.

He still remembered, before he left the facility, the project was far from perfect, its side effects severe. The sole survivor, number ten, soon died bleeding from every orifice, his organs failing.

Yet, when he encountered White Scorpion again not long ago, the “Ogre Serum” was far more stable, a sign the research had advanced even further.

On the last day Kuroba saw Xiaoyu, the boy was still shackled hand and foot, being led away. As he passed Kuroba’s cage, he paused and smiled gently.

He was a boy with short, pale blue hair, sorrowful eyes, fair skin, and a gentle smile.

Kuroba grasped the bars tightly, watching his friend’s receding figure, his heart filled with dread, crying out in anguish.

Days passed, but Xiaoyu did not return. More days, and the cell next door remained empty. Anxious, he finally asked a cleaning researcher passing by.

“The boy who lived next to me—where is he?”

The researcher replied coldly, “Oh, that specimen? If he didn’t come back, it means he’s dead—disposed of, most likely.”

Kuroba clutched the bars, his knuckles white with strain.

“What did you say? Xiaoyu—Xiaoyu is… dead?…”

His body shook uncontrollably, grief spiraling out of control, tears streaming down his face.

“You killed Xiaoyu! You killed him!” he screamed, rattling the bars with all his might. The magic blood within him boiled; black feathers unfurled from his back, and with a mighty wrench, he snapped the manacles from his wrists and ankles, spreading his massive wings.

The researcher dropped his broom, scrambling away in terror. “When did he get that power? Help! Sedatives! He’s out of control!”

Researchers from upstairs rushed down, tranquilizer guns in hand, firing high doses through the bars.

Thwip—thwip—thwip—

Syringes filled with sedative flew toward Kuroba, who darted into a corner, shielding himself with his wings, the dense feathers deflecting the needles one by one to the ground.

“His wings have grown! Quick, call for backup, call for backup!”