Starting as dockworkers, they swept through Chongqing.

After saying all that, Kemi finally came to her senses.

He looked up at Xilun and asked curiously, "And you? How long do you train each day?"

Xilun did not answer immediately.

He stood backlit, with a hazy sky and the towering chimneys of Saint Laurent behind him.

He slowly raised one finger.

Kemi's eyes widened, then she seemed to find some psychological balance and breathed a sigh of relief. "It's been an hour too. I knew it. Everyone's about the same. It seems you really are exceptionally talented."

"Keep practicing."

Xilun's voice was very soft.

Kemi's smile froze. He looked at Xilen's expression, which didn't seem fake.

There was no entertainment, no social interaction, no women, and no future plans.

"you……"

Kemi swallowed hard and said with difficulty, "Aren't you tired? What's the fun in living like this?"

Xilun clenched his fist, feeling the power emanating from his fingertips.

"Kemi, you don't have a job yet, you can't see the real world. It's corrupt, fake..."

"Fairness is fake, prosperity is fake, family ties are fake, love is fake..."

Xilun lowered his head, looking at his right hand covered in black markings, and muttered to himself.

"But the power is real!"

Xilun's eyes were glazed over; the gray torrent of steel gradually dimmed, and his pupils reflected blurry memories.

......

The sound of rain outside the window was always loud; it was the kind of drizzling downpour unique to the downtown area.

But in Xilun's memory, what was clearer than the sound of rain was the sound of that brass cane striking his body.

Snapped.

"Stand up straight, Siron."

The woman sat in front of the dressing table, her voice languid and hoarse.

She was breathtakingly beautiful in the mirror, a kind of radiant beauty tinged with decay, like a poppy desperately trying to bloom with golden edges in the mud.

She is Avira, once the most popular dancer in the East End, but now she is just a madwoman trapped in a cheap apartment.

Seven-year-old Xilun gritted his teeth and tried to straighten his trembling legs.

He knelt on broken porcelain shards—the punishment his mother gave him for making noise while drinking soup.

"Remember, the blood of Duke Russell flows in your veins." Avira turned around, a slender cigarette between her fingers. Through the swirling smoke, her eyes looked at her as if she were looking at a rare treasure and a pile of disgusting garbage. "You are noble, Siron. Don't live like the pigs here."

"Your father is the Duke of Storms, and his noble blood flows in your veins."

She walked over, her cold fingers gently stroking Xilen's bruised cheek. The movement was as tender as a loving mother's.

"Your mother hits you so that you will remember what dignity is."

She whispered in his ear, her breath carrying the strong scent of gin, "Only after you learn these manners will your father even glance at you. Once he takes you back to the estate, your mother can leave this awful place with you... Do you love your mother, Celen?"

Despite the excruciating pain in his knees, Little Xilun nodded forcefully: "Love."

Snapped!

A slap landed on his face without warning, causing blood to trickle from the corner of his mouth.

Avira's face contorted instantly, the tenderness in her eyes turning into a deep-seated venom. She screamed, her nails digging deep into Xiren's shoulder:

"Liar! How could you love me? Just like your damned father, you're all liars!"

"If it weren't for giving birth to you, how could my waist have gotten so thick? How could I have those disgusting stretch marks on my stomach? I could have married the Duke, but because of you, this burden!"

She hysterically grabbed her cane and began to beat Xilen mercilessly.

"You ruined me! You ruined my life! Why couldn't you be more capable? Why hasn't the Duke come to pick us up yet? There must be something you didn't do well enough! You're not acting like a nobleman!"

……

The year that followed marked the peak of Westren's "false prosperity."

The butler-like man did indeed arrive. He didn't take Siron away; instead, he tossed down a heavy bag of gold pounds as if it were a bone, along with a message: "The Duke wishes the boy to live...with some dignity. But he doesn't wish to be disturbed."

That night, Avira laughed like a madwoman, laughing so hard that tears smudged her makeup.

She stopped hitting him, at least not during that month.

She bought Celen a velvet blazer, the kind of thing only uptown rich kids wore. She took him to the best restaurants and forced him to cut steak like a little adult.

"Look, Celen, this is the love Daddy gave us." She drunkenly raised her glass, showing off to the ragged diners around her. "We're moving. We're going to the uptown."

Xiren, dressed in expensive new clothes that were so tight he could hardly breathe, looked at his mother's face, flushed with excitement.

He tried to take her hand, but she disdainfully shook him off.

"Don't get my gloves dirty," she said.

The bag of gold pounds didn't take them to the Upper Town. It became the mother's ornate yet vulgar jewelry, the expensive perfumes that filled the house, and countless nights of alcoholic revelry.

When the last gold coin was squandered, the once "noble" mother completely collapsed, and the nightmare returned in even greater intensity.

"Useless thing! Go write another letter! Go beg him again!"

This time, the copper cane broke, so she replaced it with an empty wine bottle.

"Why did I run out of money? Why didn't he come to pick me up? It must be because your handwriting is too ugly! It must be because you're useless and can't win his favor!"

The ending was absurd and hasty.

It was an ordinary rainy night. Avira, drunk, got into an argument with a vulgar butcher's wife outside a tavern. The reason was simply that the woman had mocked her out-of-season silk dress.

"I am the Duke's woman! My son is a nobleman!" Avira screamed, trying to maintain her pitiful dignity.

But this spell, which is so powerful at home, has no effect here.

The butcher's wife, as strong as an ox, disregarded all etiquette and bloodlines. She simply swung her beer mug, without any finesse, resorting to pure, savage violence—

boom.

A muffled thud.

The woman who always taught Xilun to be elegant, dignified, and noble, the woman who bound Xilun's soul with countless rules, fell straight into the mud like a broken porcelain doll.

Her forehead was sunken, and her expensive makeup mixed with the dirty water from the sewer made her look ridiculous and ugly.

Xilun learned of all this the next day. He rushed over from the dock and looked at the woman, who looked like a broken porcelain doll.

His face showed neither joy nor sorrow; he seemed like an outsider, coldly watching the farce come to an end.

"I don't feel sad, and I didn't shed a single tear. I probably shed all the tears I've ever shed since childhood. Whenever I encounter something sad, my eyes are always dry and sore, but I can't shed a single tear."

"Isn't that strange?"

"But if you ask me if I am happy, it's not quite like that. Rather, it's a kind of indifference, bewilderment, complexity, and a coldness like that of an outsider."

"I think I might really be sick, an incurable disease called 'apathy.' The world planted too many seeds of pain in my childhood, and when those pains finally formed scars, they became my strongest armor."

"The world has kissed me with pain; I am covered in thorns, yet I yearn for the light!"

......

Xilun snapped out of his thoughts, his fingers slowly clenching, his knuckles cracking like popping beans, and the veins on his arm, which resembled black tree roots, seemed to come alive.

"Fairness is fake, prosperity is fake, family ties are fake, love is fake..."

He looked calmly at Kemi, who was trembling all over.

"But the power is real."