In Niutou Village, such incidents weren't worth a formal report to the authorities.
The village head wouldn't even bother making the trip to the government office. He would simply cross out the names of the deceased in the population register when submitting the next year's census.
A straw mat, a shallow grave—that was the final resting place of Tong Jialiang's grandparents.
After that, his uncle and aunt never had more children, choosing instead to raise Tong Jialiang as their own.
One day, out of the blue, they received news from his cousin, along with supplies sent back for the family. His cousin wrote that he had found a good master, a kind young lord.
He also said that his new name was Bao Jian, given to him by his master. From that day onward, he would be known as Bao Jian.
Tong Jialiang remembered that day vividly. His aunt and uncle locked themselves inside their room and wept for a long time, holding onto the items sent by his cousin.
Afterward, they worked tirelessly, farming and doing household chores. With Bao Jian's occasional support, their days, though still meager, were peaceful. All three of them believed they were living their best lives.
As long as things remained this way, their future would continue to unfold in calm serenity.
It seemed that ever since the disappearance of his grandparents, life had steadily improved.
Sure, there were occasional moments when local ruffians bullied him, but Tong Jialiang considered such events minor disruptions to an otherwise peaceful life.
Even the brightest spring days have their cloudy moments, he thought.
As long as life didn't force him into the depths of endless, soul-crushing despair, he could endure.
Once, Tong Jialiang truly believed this.
But everything changed when he stayed overnight in a secluded mountain village, only to be captured alongside its residents and thrown into that cursed abyss of a mine.
The strange, haunting mine, with its stones that could turn people into something neither human nor ghost, snatched him back to the cliff's edge from that night long ago.
Not long after they were forced to start mining those stones, everyone in the cave with him, especially the older villagers, realized something was terribly wrong.
The older ones made a decision: they ordered the few young children, including Tong Jialiang, to stop working. They gathered the children in a distant corner, away from the stones, and wrapped them tightly in their own clothing, hoping to shield them from the poisonous effects.
Meanwhile, the adults continued digging, pushing themselves to their limits. They believed that if they could meet the demands of the so-called immortals outside, they might be allowed to leave, and the children might be saved.
But no matter how much they dug, no word came telling them they could stop.
Their bodies began to rot, their organs disintegrating.
In the end, death came not as a relief but as a horrifying spectacle—intestines spilling from bodies, skin sloughing off in strips, until they were left as raw, blood-soaked masses of flesh.
Even the children, whom the adults had protected so fiercely, began to show grotesque symptoms of the stone's poison.
Only Tong Jialiang appeared relatively unaffected.
He sat there, numb, expressionless, seeming the calmest of them all.
Everyone around him, both adults and children, fell apart, sobbing and wailing in despair.
Blood covered the ground, and they lay in it, awaiting their inevitable deaths.
One by one, the people died.
But no one knew that most of them chose death.
Tong Jialiang vividly remembered the first person who asked to die.
An old man, clutching his fallen eyeball in one hand and holding his disemboweled intestines in the other, crawled towards him, trembling, and begged for mercy.
The man was too weak to end his own life.
But the others were too lost in their own hysteria to hear, or perhaps, they simply didn't want to hear his pleas.
Finally, the old man turned his desperate gaze toward Tong Jialiang.
At the time, Tong Jialiang seemed the calmest, the most composed, and the most likely to grant the old man his request.
It was as if, in that moment, Tong Jialiang's body no longer belonged to him. Someone else had taken control.
This other version of himself picked up a mining pickaxe and raised it high.
Seeing the motion, the old man closed his eyes, his face peaceful, as if he had found deliverance.
The pickaxe came down with a sickening thud.
The salty taste of blood mixed with tears flowed into Tong Jialiang's mouth.
Those who witnessed his actions did not react with fear.
Instead, they were excited.
Weak and dying, they dragged their failing bodies toward him, one by one, begging for the same mercy—to be released while they still resembled human beings.
They didn't want to die as monsters.
The cave, in that moment, had become a hell on earth.
This was a graveyard for humanity.
Tong Jialiang clenched his jaw, trying to stop the taste of warm blood from seeping into his mouth.
He knew, deep down, that there was no other person inside him. From start to finish, it was his own hand wielding the pickaxe, executing his fellow prisoners.
Later on, he thought about ending his own life.
But when he thought of his aunt and uncle, and the resolution he had made on the cliff years ago, his hand hesitated.
He couldn't bring the pickaxe down on himself as easily as he had for others.
Tong Jialiang thought to himself, I am truly filthy.
I can end others, but not myself.
Because deep down, I still want to live.
"Ah-Liang!"
A voice called from the cave's sealed entrance.
It was a familiar voice.
A voice that should have meant salvation.
But for Tong Jialiang, it was the last thing he wanted to hear.
In that moment, his mind spiraled into chaos. Thoughts tangled together in his head, and a fire raged in his heart, burning everything in its path.
Something within him began to shatter silently.
Not long before, he had killed all those people.
Why couldn't that voice have come sooner?
Why couldn't it have waited until he was dead too?
Instead, it came when he was the last one left, standing there with bloodied hands, the sole survivor.
In the end, it was all his fault.
If only he had been strong enough to save them.
If only he had been able to lead them out.
If only he had the power to stop them from being captured in the first place...
Why are there so many things in this world that we are powerless to change?
Why, even when I reached out toward the light, felt as though I had grasped it—why was it all so futile?
It's as if an unseen hand keeps dragging me down.
No matter how much I struggle, why is my strength never enough to break free?