In the abandoned boiler room, the silence was so absolute you could hear dust hit the floor.
Four people, four shadows, stretched long by the distant glow of the furnaces, like four silent ghosts.
The initial excitement and the unspoken understanding after cheating death had been worn down by the weight of reality. The spark of hope, just kindled, was already being smothered by the cold smell of rust and the boundless darkness, making it hard to breathe.
Jin Wanzhao leaned against the cold boiler casing. Old Zhong squatted on the ground, absently scratching lines in the dirt with an iron rod. Little A Xing huddled behind Jin Wanzhao, hugging his knees like a frightened animal.
The one whose mood was most off was A Huo.
This young worker, whose eyes had blazed with fire after witnessing the "miracle" in the workshop, now looked like charcoal doused with water, emitting only a suffocating deadness. He crouched in a corner, holding his head, his body trembling slightly as he muttered something repeatedly.
"What's wrong, A Huo?" Old Zhong finally couldn't help but ask, his voice dry.
A Huo jerked his head up. His bloodshot eyes were filled with nothing but despair and madness.
"She's gone... my little sister... they took her in this morning..." His voice was hoarse, like sandpaper scraping. "She was fine yesterday, and today those people in white robes came and took her away... just because she coughed a couple of times!"
The Nursery Factory.
Those four words landed on everyone's heart like an invisible mountain.
Jin Wanzhao's heart clenched painfully.
His own sister had been taken the same way.
"They said... said her constitution wasn't up to standard, needed to be sent for 'optimization'... What kind of place is that! It's a human meat grinder!" A Huo's voice suddenly rose, filled with a blood-and-tears accusation.
He lurched to his feet, staggering backward, pointing at Jin Wanzhao, then at Old Zhong, and finally at himself.
"A Chosen One? Fire Worshipers? Stop fooling yourselves!" he screamed hysterically. "What are we? Four rats hiding in a sewer! What's the Black Steel Council? A steel beast that blots out the sky! How are we supposed to fight them? With our mouths?"
"We don't even know where the Nursery Factory is! And even if we did, what then? Just charge in? We can't even beat one foreman!"
Despair, like a plague, spread rapidly through the cramped space.
Little A Xing trembled even harder. Old Zhong's back, which had just straightened, slumped again.
What A Huo said was true. It was reality.
"There's no hope... not a shred of hope..." A Huo laughed bitterly, tears mixing with the coal dust on his face, carving two black channels down his cheeks.
He spun around and, like a maddened wild bull, charged out of the boiler room's shadows, heading towards the brightly lit Smelting Zone in the distance.
"A Huo!" Jin Wanzhao's face changed, and he was the first to chase after him.
Old Zhong and little A Xing reacted too, scrambling to follow.
A Huo's target was clear: a high platform at the edge of the Smelting Zone. Below the platform was a huge trench filled with churning, red-hot molten iron. All the waste and slag from the entire Smelting Zone was eventually dumped there, to be melted down by thousand-degree heat.
A wave of scorching air blasted towards them, threatening to ignite their hair.
A Huo charged onto the platform without hesitation and stood at the very edge, which had no railing, spreading his arms as if to embrace death.
"A Huo! Come back!" Jin Wanzhao's shout was torn to shreds by the roar of the machinery.
He rushed onto the platform at top speed and, a split second before A Huo could leap, grabbed him by the shoulder.
"Let me go!" A Huo struggled wildly, his eyes red. "Let me die! I don't want to live like this! Every day I open my eyes to despair! I've had enough!"
"If you die, what happens to your sister?!" Jin Wanzhao held him fast, the veins bulging on his arms.
"She's finished! I'm finished! We're all finished!" A Huo's voice held nothing but utter deadness now.
Jin Wanzhao's heart was stabbed with pain.
Yeah. Just talking. What good was it? Hope? What could he offer as hope?
A nameless rage, mixed with a strange impulse, surged up from the depths of Jin Wanzhao's heart.
That strange perspective in his mind surfaced again.
He "saw" that within A Huo's body, the flame representing life energy had dimmed to a single spark, wrapped in an impenetrable shroud of black despair, on the verge of extinguishing.
And within his own body, a warm, bright light blazed fiercely.
A crazy idea seized control of his will.
Jin Wanzhao stopped talking. He just gripped A Huo's shoulder tighter.
He closed his eyes, channeling all his will, all his anger, and that unyielding belief, concentrating it into his palm.
*Burn... dammit!*
*Boom!*
An invisible, scorching energy surged violently down his arm and into A Huo's body.
A Huo, who had been struggling madly, suddenly froze.
An indescribable warmth exploded from his shoulder, like a river bursting its dam, instantly flooding his entire being, sweeping away the bone-deep cold and despair.
His mind went blank.
Then, countless chaotic, fragmented images and information flooded into his brain like a tidal wave.
Gear meshing, the principles of levers, formulas for calculating steam pressure, fatigue limits of metal materials... things he could never have understood before were now, like an innate instinct, clearly imprinted in his mind.
He instinctively looked down at the support structure of the platform beneath his feet.
In his vision, it was no longer cold steel, but a flowing energy map. He could clearly "see" which rivet was bearing the greatest shear force, which weld point showed signs of microscopic metal fatigue due to years of high heat.
This... this is...
A Huo wrenched himself free from Jin Wanzhao's grasp, staggering back a couple of steps, away from the edge.
He stared blankly at his own hands, then jerked his head up to look at Jin Wanzhao, whose face was exhausted and covered in cold sweat.
The despair, madness, and deadness in his eyes had vanished without a trace. In their place was a nearly fanatical, ignited flame.
"Wanzhao Ge..." His lips trembled. "I... I heard it... the machines are crying."
Old Zhong and little A Xing, who had just climbed onto the platform, witnessed this scene.
They saw A Huo drop to one knee, clasp his hands, and bow his head towards Jin Wanzhao with an incredibly devout posture.
"Wanzhao Ge, I get it. Just crying and dying is useless." A Huo's voice no longer trembled; it was filled with a metallic hardness and burning heat. "Please, teach me! Teach me how to make the machines obey me! I want to... tear that damn factory apart with my own hands!"
Old Zhong's body trembled violently. The awe in his eyes as he looked at Jin Wanzhao had completely transformed into fanatical worship.
"Divine revelation... resonance... this is the 'Gift of Flame'!" Old Zhong's voice floated, as if in a daze. He, too, suddenly knelt down, tears streaming down his aged face. "You are not only the 'Chosen One,' you are the 'Flame Bearer'! You can awaken the... final spark within us who are as good as dead!"
Jin Wanzhao gasped for air, a wave of immense fatigue washing over him. But looking at A Huo kneeling before him, seeing the fighting spirit rekindled in his eyes, even brighter than before, his own heart felt clear and bright.
He looked down at his own palm.
This... this was the true use of this power.
Not to fix a machine, but to "fix" one despairing person after another.
One person's strength was limited.
But what about a hundred? A thousand?
If every worker in the entire Smelting Zone were "awakened" by this flame, what kind of terrifying force would that be?
Jin Wanzhao clenched his fist, his nails digging deep into his palm's calluses.
He raised his head, looking towards the sky above the Smelting Zone, the sky layered and sealed off by smoke and steel, where the stars were forever invisible.
The Black Steel Council had forged this cage with iron and steam.
Then, he would melt it into molten iron with fire and gears, with his own hands.