The darkness inside Mo Tianyin's hut was not mere absence of light. It was a living entity, woven from the silence of the lower city—a silence filled with fearful whispers, the sighs of the hopeless, and the echoing clinks of chains imagined long before they were ever heard. He sat still, his back straight like a sheathed sword, eyes open in the gloom watching something no one else could see: a map of the upper city, drawn in gold and blood in his mind.
The night was his fertile ground. Here, far from the eyes of the "Mixed Blood" and the pride-tainted breaths of the "Pure Bloods," he analyzed. He planned. He calculated.
The fat slave trader... "Ling Bo." His name rolled in Mo Tianyin's mind like a poisoned stone. His wealth built on selling Tainted Blood children like animals. His weakness? His only son, "Ling Xiao," a reckless teenager dancing on bloodlines like a man walking a noose over hell. One mistake... Mo Tianyin only needed to push him toward it.
The young noble with the golden mark... "Yun Zehan." Heir to the mighty Yun Clan. His strength untouchable, but his arrogance blinding. He loved to prove his superiority in the "hunting games"—releasing runaway slaves into the woods and hunting them like prey. A gap in his mental defenses: the belief that no one among the "filth" would dare stare into the sun.
An hour. Two. The gears turned in his mind, every thought sharpened like a blade. It was not emotions of revenge that moved him. It was a rational equation: To break the system, one must identify its stress points... and apply the proper weight at the proper time. He was gathering these points, one by one, like venomous spiders in a jar.
• • •
With the first gray threads of dawn, Mo Tianyin left his hut. His destination today wasn't the familiar alleys of poverty, but another heart of cruelty: "Yulong Slaughterhouse." A massive, filthy place where the rampaging bull-like beast "Yulong" was butchered—the primary meat source for nobles. It was a hell of real blood, animal screams, and the stench of rotting flesh mixed with human fear. The workers, all "Tainted Blood," were treated closer to replaceable machinery than people.
He entered through the back gate, avoiding the watch of the "Mixed Blood" overseers. The slaughterhouse air was thick with humidity and iron. The floor slippery with frozen blood. The screams of terrified Yulong beasts sliced the air like a knife through soft meat. Among all this, the slaves toiled: men and women with frozen faces of exhaustion and terror, dragging heavy carcasses, scrubbing intestines, committing daily massacres for a handful of rotten rice.
Mo Tianyin hadn't come to work. He came to see. To hear. To collect.
He stopped near a shadowed corner, his back against a wall crusted with dry blood. His ice-cold eyes scanned the scene:
A sadistic Mixed Blood overseer lashing an old woman who stumbled under the weight of a severed Yulong head.
A broad-shouldered youth, the Tainted Mark clear on his sweaty brow, lifting a beast carcass with terrifying ease, but his eyes were hollow like shattered glass.
A small child, no older than ten, crawling beneath machines to gather scraps of flesh in puddles of blood, his face pale with hunger and fear.
Then, his eyes fell on her.
Jin Lian.
She stood near a washing basin filled with bloody innards. A woman in her mid-twenties, her frame thin but with strange resilience—like a tree sprouting through stone. Her face partially covered by strands of black hair sticky with sweat and blood, but her eyes... Her eyes were a surprise. Gray, like Mo Tianyin's, but with a spark. Not hope—hope was madness here—but a spark of awareness. Awareness of the hell she lived in. Awareness of injustice. Awareness that she was more than a slaughter tool. She washed entrails with cracked hands, but her gaze flickered now and then to the sadistic overseer, then to the large knives hanging on the wall. A quick glance, calculated, then back to work. Danger. Quiet danger, compressed under layers of submission.
"Interesting..." thought Mo Tianyin. "A dormant flame. It can be aimed... or devour itself."
He didn't approach. He only observed. Watched her movements, her precision despite the conditions, the way she subtly shifted to avoid lashes, as if predicting them. Sharp survival instinct. A rare tool in a world that grinds the weak.
• • •
Noon. The slaughterhouse heat was suffocating, mixed with the smell of death. What Mo Tianyin had anticipated happened. The sadistic overseer, Gao, drunk on cheap liquor and arrogance, decided to "entertain" himself. He picked a target: the little boy gathering scraps.
"You filthy thing! Move faster!" Gao yelled, his whip snapping near the boy's terrified ear. "Can't you see the corpses piling up?!"
The boy scrambled faster, tears mixing with blood on his face. But his slippery foot lost grip on a chunk of meat. He fell face-first into a pool of fetid blood. Gao laughed loudly, intoxicated by his petty power. "Look! The little pig bathing in his sty!"
He raised his whip, ready to land a blow that might break the boy's fragile back.
At that moment, something happened.
Jin Lian was only a few steps away. Mo Tianyin saw her freeze for a second. He saw that spark in her eyes ignite into silent flame. Her right hand, which had been cleaning a Yulong's stomach, gripped the short washer's knife—sharp as a razor. She stepped forward once... then stopped. Her whole body trembled with the effort of restraint. Her eyes met the boy's terrified ones, then her grip relaxed on the knife. She turned her head violently, as if flogging herself, and returned to washing intestines, her back curling under the weight of forced submission.
But Mo Tianyin saw. He saw the choice. The choice not to act. Not just out of fear for herself, but deeper calculations. Perhaps fear for the boy who might suffer more if she intervened. Perhaps knowledge that her knife would only kill Gao, but result in her own death and dozens more in retaliation. The willpower to restrain weakness. More impressive than rage itself.
Mo Tianyin smiled for the first time in a long while. A smile without warmth, a crack in the ice. "Yes... you."
• • •
Night returned. The slaughterhouse silent now, except for the moans of the injured and the screams of the insane whose minds were eaten by the dark. Mo Tianyin hadn't left. He waited in the shadows near the back gate where workers exited like shadows.
Jin Lian emerged. Her steps heavy, but upright. Her face covered in dried blood and sweat, but her gray eyes scanned the night with a hunter's caution, not a prey's. In her hand, wrapped in a filthy rag, a small piece of spoiled Yulong meat—her day's wage. She had stolen it, of course. They were barely allowed food.
As she turned into a dark alley, Mo Tianyin stepped from the shadows. He didn't hide. He stood directly in her path under a pale moonlight that pierced the smog.
Jin Lian froze like a cat. Her body tensed, her right hand disappeared into her ragged clothes—where she hid her washer's knife. Her eyes met his. No fear. Only deadly alertness, and a silent challenge. "Take one step closer and it'll be your last."
"Jin Lian," Mo Tianyin said, his voice soft as silk, yet it sliced through the cold of night. "Age 24. Taken from Shan Lin village at age ten, after Mixed Blood guards burned it down suspecting someone had helped a runaway Pure Blood slave. Your father was killed protecting you. Your mother died en route. You've worked in the slaughterhouse for eight years. You survive because you're clever, because you hide a knife, because you know when to bow... and when to hide teeth."
She didn't move. But her eyes widened slightly. Shock. How did this stranger know all that? How did he know her name? Shan Lin village—erased by time and blood.
"What do you want?" she rasped, voice rough from silence and repressed screams. Her hand tightened around the knife handle.
"I want to show you something." Mo Tianyin said, pointing slowly to the left side of his forehead. The faint blue mark. The Tainted Blood symbol. Under the moonlight it was faint, but unmistakable. His identity. His curse. "We... share the same shackles."
Jin Lian didn't lower her guard. The fire of suspicion burned in her gaze. "What do you want?" she repeated, harsher now.
Mo Tianyin took just one step forward. Enough to make Jin Lian step back, her spine pressing against the cold wall. "I want to give you a choice," he said, his eyes locked on hers. "You can go back to your filthy hut. Eat that rotten meat. Sleep. Then return to the slaughterhouse tomorrow to hear the animals scream, smell death, and wait for the day Gao's whip falls on you, or your knife is discovered, or some noble decides he wants a slave with 'rough skin but pretty eyes' for his room." He paused, letting his words fall like stones into her silence. "Or... you can follow. And learn how to set fire to this hell from within."
A sharp scream tore through the night. Not far away. A woman. Then the sound of brutal strikes. A man laughing drunkenly. A daily scene in the lower city.
Jin Lian didn't look. Her eyes stayed on Mo Tianyin's. In him, she saw herself. The same coldness. The same buried despair. The same desire... to burn. But she saw something else: a danger deeper than the slaughterhouse, than Gao, than anything she'd known. A danger named hope. Hope for revenge.
"What's the price?" she asked, her voice calm as death.
Mo Tianyin smiled. A smile without teeth. "Everything. Your humanity. Your comfort. Perhaps your life. Definitely... your peace." He gestured toward the woman's fading screams. "Peace here is a lie. I offer you war... that might change something."
Long silence. The wind howled through the alley, carrying the stench of garbage and blood. Jin Lian looked at the spoiled meat in her hand. Then at her hidden knife. Then at the blue mark on Mo Tianyin's forehead. Her mark. Her prison.
With a swift motion, she threw the meat into the darkness. Mo Tianyin heard dogs scramble for it.
"What do I learn first?" Jin Lian asked, stepping from the wall. She stood before him, upright, her eyes now blazing with the fire she had restrained at the boy. She was no longer submissive. She was a soldier before battle.
Mo Tianyin didn't smile. He gestured for her to follow and began walking into the dark alley. "You first learn how to see what others do not. And how to move... without the wolves noticing the shadow."
They walked into darkness. Jin Lian's steps were steadier now. She left her fear behind with the discarded meat. She carried with her the knife and quiet rage. Mo Tianyin didn't look back. His mind calculated the next move. Jin Lian was the first stone in his crumbling wall. Strong. Angry. Malleable... and replaceable, if necessary.
Before reaching his hut, they passed a narrow alley. Suddenly, three men emerged from the shadows. Not Mixed Blood—just Tainted Blood thieves, preying on the weaker for scraps. Their faces twisted with greed and despair.
"Heh! Easy loot!" one growled, holding a wooden stick. "Give us what you got, or—"
He never finished the threat. Mo Tianyin moved.
Jin Lian didn't see him run. One moment he was there. The next, he was in front of the first thug. His right hand, swift as a serpent, struck a point at the base of the man's neck. The thug dropped like a felled tree, unconscious before hitting the ground. The second lunged with a rusted knife. Mo Tianyin sidestepped effortlessly, his foot kicking the thug's wrist with surgical force. Jin Lian heard bone snap. A scream. The knife dropped. Before the man collapsed to his knees, a flat-handed strike to the temple silenced him.
The third, the youngest, panicked and fled into the dark. Mo Tianyin didn't pursue. He simply stood among the bodies, his nose unbothered by the fresh blood joining the alley's rot. His eyes met Jin Lian's. She stood frozen, knife in hand, unmoving.
"Lesson one, Jin Lian," Mo Tianyin said, his voice flat as still water. "Violence is a tool. Use it precisely. To kill... or to teach. This was a lesson. They'll remember. Maybe."
He continued walking. Jin Lian looked at the bodies. One unconscious. One groaning with a broken arm. A contemplative look. Not pity. Study. How he moved. How he struck. How he turned three men into a warning within seconds.
She hurried after him. Many questions swirled in her mind, but she held them in. She had already learned the first lesson: Silence.
She followed him into the crumbling hut. The darkness inside was deeper than outside. He didn't light a lamp. He sat on his mat. Gestured to a corner. She sat, back straight, her knife still in hand but resting on her thigh. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, watching him.
"Why me?" she finally asked. The only voice in the world.
Mo Tianyin lifted his head. In the darkness, his eyes looked like voids into the cosmos. "Because you saw the knife... and chose not to use it today," he said. "That makes you dangerous... and useful. The weak strike in foolish rage. The truly strong know when to wait."
He paused. Then added, his words dripping with grim intent: "The waiting is over, Jin Lian. Tomorrow... we burn our first bridge. Its name is 'Ling Bo.'"
Outside, an owl screamed. A warning? Or a welcome to the new hunters? Jin Lian closed her eyes for a moment. She inhaled the scent of mold, dust, and old blood in the hut. Then opened them. Fear had melted. In its place sat naked will.
"What do I do?" she whispered, her voice now as steel as her knife.
Mo Tianyin smiled in the darkness. The smile of a wolf who finds a pup worth training. "In the morning... you'll go to a new place. The slave market. You have... an appointment with a merchant's son."