Chapter 15: Forging a Sword from a Broken Body
When the iron bar gate was thrown open, the slaves surged out frantically, resembling a massive school of sardines pressing forward with all their might. Most of the guard robots, now overridden and controlled by the resistance, had powered down and sat obediently crouching in the corners of the walls. Resistance members, their bodies bearing copper water-clepsydra tattoos, pinned the Chrono-Entropy Corporation staff to the ground. The spectators scattered like panicked birds and beasts, transforming the venue into a bubbling cauldron of chaos.
It was at this exact moment that the live footage of the 2030 branch being completely overrun was broadcasted to every hidden corner of the Spiral City. Almost every upper-district citizen halted their tasks, their minds thrown into utter disarray as they watched the screens.
Monkey Face, his complexion turned a sickly yellow, let out a series of frantic shrieks. The resistance knocked him unconscious, loading him into an iron cage previously used for auction items to haul him away, intending to interrogate him on another day.
Snow Leopard’s exhilarated voice crackled through the communication channel: “I’ve secured the data files of the 2030 branch! Once we crack their dynamic encryption keys, the time technology possessed by this branch will be safely in our pockets!”
Hearts smiled. “Then we shall trouble you greatly over the coming days.”
Leaning heavily on the support of the resistance members, he managed to stand up with great difficulty. The liberated slaves gathered before him, their clouded irises dull and lifeless. Hearts scanned the crowd, his voice ringing out loud and clear:
“Fellow comrades.”
The slaves, who had been hanging their heads listlessly, slowly raised their rheumy eyes upon hearing his voice. Hearts said, “Whether you wish to remain within the ruins of this arena or leave this place entirely, the choice is yours.”
His back straightened, and every slave stared at him without blinking an eye. Hearts continued:
“This old man merely hopes that your lifespans will never again be used as a spectacle for others to watch. From this day forward, your time belongs to yourselves. You live for your own sake.”
The slaves lowered their heads, their expressions hesitant, but eventually, they began to shift their steps, merging into the Clepsydra resistance like tiny drops of water flowing into an ocean.
More and more people chose to stand alongside Clepsydra, electing to become the masters of their own lives.
Hearts watched this scene with profound gratification. The Clepsydra resistance had grown and expanded through a long journey. Even if the path ahead required them to taste every bitter hardship, there were still those who chose to entrust their lives to this cause.
The padding of the arena ring was shredded, the foam mats torn open, and web-like fractures spread across the metal scaffolding. Amidst the absolute wreckage, Quicksand was supporting Diamonds when he suddenly felt the other man’s body go entirely limp. Turning his head, he saw Diamonds’s face drained of color, cold sweat dripping down his jawline and splashing onto his jacket collar.
“Black-hearted boss?” Quicksand barked. Diamonds didn’t answer, merely panting heavily. Bracing him, Quicksand felt his gaunt, bony frame beneath the jacket. This was a body entirely devoid of cybernetic modifications. It was hard to imagine that relying on such a fragile physique, Diamonds had bested that mountain-like monster through nothing but sheer, exquisite combat technique. Fragile, ordinary—he was just a normal human being.
“Take me to the ‘Affordable Clinic,'” Diamonds managed to squeeze out through his teeth.
“Alright,” Quicksand replied. “Is it because the doctor there has excellent skills and knows your medical history?”
His face drenched in cold sweat, Diamonds shot him a teasing smirk. “No. Because it’s cheap.”
Avoiding the celebrating crowds, the two exited the 2030 branch. Quicksand drove a battered taxi, weaving through the twisting, labyrinthine alleys. By the time they arrived outside the Affordable Clinic, Diamonds had slipped into unconsciousness, occasionally letting out incoherent, muffled groans from his throat. Quicksand parked the car and hoisted the man over his shoulder like a sack of sand.
The clinic was nestled beneath a covered corridor, its rusted iron rolling door shut tight like a coffin, sealing away a patch of dead, silent air. Quicksand knocked on the door. Moments later, the door clicked open, and an old man with a bulging forehead and a goatee appeared between the iron bars, speaking with an impatient tone:
“What is it? Are you here for a consultation?”
Quicksand nodded. The goatee old man’s gaze fell upon Diamonds, who looked completely lifeless, like a piece of withered wood. Unfazed by the sight, the old man pulled open the door and said, “Bring him in.”
Stepping into the clinic, a damp wave of iodine stench hit Quicksand square in the face. The room featured a brass ceiling fan, walls with peeling yellow paint, and a examination bed placed behind a faded cloth curtain. He deposited Diamonds onto the bed with a rough, heavy thud, as if unloading cargo. Drenched in sweat, Diamonds remained entirely oblivious to the harsh treatment. Quicksand asked:
“Doctor, what kind of illness is he suffering from?”
The goatee old man leisurely threw a loose coat made of white, coarse cloth over his shoulders and said, “You’re asking me? I wanted to ask you. I just gave him stitches a few days ago, and he came by to check on a fracture before that. How did he manage to stir up a whole new set of injuries?” His eyes suddenly flashed with a cold, piercing sharpness. “Young man, you two aren’t teaming up to scam me out of medicine just to resell it on the black market, are you?”
Quicksand’s expression remained indifferent. “To be honest, I don’t know him. I was simply passing by, saw that he was unwell, and brought him here out of the goodness of my heart. Go ahead and treat him, Doctor. I’ll take my leave first. He can settle the medical fees himself once he wakes up.”
The goatee old man let out a chuckle. “The pair of you share the exact same nature—always running your mouths.” He pointed out toward the iron gate. “There is Coptis root tea on the table. If you’re thirsty, help yourself. I need to run some examinations. Go wait outside; there’s a folding stool for you to sit on.”
Quicksand nodded, offering one last piece of information: “Doctor, he turned into this state after getting into a fight with someone. What exactly is going on with him?”
The goatee old man replied, “Who knows? Young people these days are incredibly fragile. My guess is it’s just lumbar muscle strain.”
Once Quicksand walked out, the goatee old man pulled the cloth curtain shut, unzipped Diamonds’s jacket, and snipped open his inner shirt. That physique was emaciated, every single bone distinct beneath the skin. Mottled scars scored his flesh like hibernating serpents coiled across the pale skin. One scar was particularly gruesome, slashing from his chest all the way to his lower abdomen, looking as though a jagged blade had once split him completely in half. Covered in deep bruises and with a slightly sunken abdominal cavity, it resembled a corpse more than the body of a living person.
The old man let out a heavy sigh. “How can you be so reckless?”
Diamonds cracked open a sliver of an eyelid, murmuring indistinctly, “Young people these days are naturally fragile… and highly impulsive.”
The goatee old man looked at Diamonds, his expression deeply complicated. His mind drifted back to the distant past.
At that time, Anvil, the King of Boxers, had only just changed his alias to “Hearts,” and together with Diamonds, had begun running the Poker Bar. The fury burning within Hearts against the Chrono-Entropy Corporation had never waned, and he frequently sought vengeance at the 2030 branch. However, the technology possessed by the Corporation was far too advanced, repeatedly sending him back in bitter defeat.
The goatee old man still recalled a rainy night from those years, when flashes of lightning surged through the clouds. A frantic pounding abruptly rattled his door. Pulling open the iron gate, he saw a member of Clepsydra supporting Hearts, their expression twisted with agonizing anxiety:
“Doctor Hua, I beg of you, please save the Boss!”
Hearts’s face was stark white as he lay in a deep coma. His limbs and one side of his abdomen were entirely missing, the severed edges emitting a surreal, shimmering hue. The resistance member stammered out, “The chief of the 2030 branch, Monkey Face… possesses a quantum gauntlet that can sever a person’s limbs at the cost of a massive amount of lifespan. Boss Hearts clashed with him, got struck by a punch, and his four limbs were scattered across different dimensions!”
The goatee old man swiftly checked Hearts’s breathing, pulled back his eyelids, and after a long silence, spoke: “He has fallen into a deep coma.”
“Yes. We heard that the Boss’s daughter also fell victim to this foul method, and ever since, she has only been able to survive inside a nutrient solution.” The resistance member was in an absolute panic. “Doctor, will the Boss have to sleep for the rest of his life too? The resistance is already unstable; if we lose him now, Clepsydra will fall apart…”
The goatee old man sighed. “He is missing his four limbs and half of his internal organs. If we can gather these components together, it might be possible to restore his consciousness within this timeline.”
“The limbs are manageable; we can scavenge some cybernetic prosthetics from the black market that aren’t monitored by the Corporation. But internal organs are extremely troublesome. The tracking of almost every single organ is strictly recorded, and they are embedded with the Corporation’s nano-trackers. Removing them with our technical capabilities is brutally difficult, and we risk exposing the location of the resistance…” the member vibrated with anxiety.
“Then that is for you to worry about. This old man only handles saving lives.” The goatee old man let out a cold snort, setting his stethoscope down. “If you cannot gather these organs, your Boss will end up exactly like his daughter did, preserved inside a nutrient solution like a specimen.”
The resistance member shuddered violently.
“Furthermore, with such a massive implementation of implanted organs and cybernetics, he is highly likely to experience severe neurological disruptions and organ rejection. He will have to endure immense physical agony and sensory distortion, and he might even lose his mind. Your Boss considered this exact risk back then, which is why he refused to inflict such an inhumane procedure upon his daughter. Are you truly certain you want to do this to your Boss?”
The Clepsydra member lowered his head, and after a long pause, whispered, “The Boss gave us strict instructions before this—until our vengeance is exacted, he will not fall. If he meets with disaster, we must use any means necessary to ensure he can return to the battlefield. Please, Doctor, save him.”
Hearing this, the goatee old man silently donned his white coat and walked over to the examination bed.
From that point onward, the Affordable Clinic closed its doors to ordinary patients, dedicating itself solely to treating the core pillar of the resistance.
The members of Clepsydra worked themselves ragged, scouring every corner for cybernetic limbs unregulated by the Corporation. Vintage cybernetic eyes, silverback gorilla cybernetic arms, titanium prosthetics—all kinds of disparate cybernetic parts were attached to Hearts’s body. Yet, the internal organs remained incomplete.
“His brain is intact. If we used the Corporation’s technology, as long as there are organs to maintain basic bodily functions, we could sustain a person’s consciousness in this timeline.” The goatee old man had just concluded another transplant surgery. Setting down his scalpel and forceps, he stepped out of the clinic and sighed to the waiting resistance members.
The Clepsydra members showed strained expressions. Despite running themselves into the ground, they had failed to secure usable organs from the black market. Someone asked hesitantly, “Doctor… what if we used our own organs?”
The old man nodded. “We can only treat a dead horse as if it were alive. If any of you possess organs that match his, it could work.”
The old man leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. “But we don’t possess the Corporation’s technology; we cannot forcibly modify genes to disguise incompatible organs as a match. Hearts has no living relatives here to turn to, and the probability of finding a blood type and Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) match among a random group of non-relatives like you is only about 1%. The odds are incredibly dismal.”
A Clepsydra member gritted his teeth. “Aside from our own people, we are stepping up our search across the Lower District to find a suitable candidate.”
“Even if you find one, what then? Will that person willingly agree to transplant their organs into your Boss? I will not condone violence. If you kidnap an innocent lower-district citizen and bring them here, this old man will absolutely refuse to perform the surgery.”
The faces of the resistance members turned pale, their brows locked in tight furrows. One of them slammed his fist violently against the wall, snarling, “What about the Corporation’s people then? Let’s launch an assault on the 2030 branch, abduct their employees, and use their wicked hearts and lungs to sustain Boss Hearts!”
“Fool! Boss Hearts was injured precisely because he clashed with that branch. Do we have the strength to face them right now? Doing that will only result in greater casualties.” The other members hurriedly restrained the impulsive speaker.
As night fell, the neon tubes sparked to light one after another, saturating the Lower District in a deep, ghostly blue glow. Dejected and heavy-hearted, the Clepsydra members shuffled away one by one. The goatee old man returned inside his clinic, and a short moment later, a figure nimbly slipped through the narrow gap of the iron gate.
“Doctor Hua, I brought some honey whiskey. Care for a drink?” Holding a liquor bottle, the intruder greeted him with a cheerful grin. A few strands of hair fell along his temple, gleaming under the lamplight like frost, or like moonlight. Catching sight of him, the goatee old man let out a long sigh:
“You brat. Come on in.”
The intruder was none other than Diamonds. He made himself right at home, sinking into the armchair and relaxing against the red-checkered cotton cushion. The old man knew that Diamonds bringing alcohol never signaled anything good; the youth was a notorious liar who frequently scammed him out of medicine and ran up debts, never paying until he had argued his way down to the lowest possible discount.
“What are you doing here? I don’t believe for a second that you’re kind enough to just come have a drink with me. Besides, I can’t stand the taste of the alcohol you bring. I only drink this.”
The goatee old man shot him a sideways glance, pulling down a flat-bottomed clay bottle from the antique display shelf against the wall—it was his long-treasured millet wine.
Diamonds accepted it, smiling. “Excellent. Then we shall drink this to suit the doctor’s palate.” Moving with swift hands, he popped open the bottle’s seal, deftly retrieved a black ceramic cup from the shelf, and began pouring a drink for himself. The goatee old man picked up Diamonds’s honey whiskey, only to realize that because the opaque packaging blocked his view, he hadn’t noticed the bottle was entirely empty.
The goatee old man snapped irritably, “Tricking me out of my wine with an empty bottle again? Do you actually have proper business to attend to? If not, this old man is seeing his guest out.”
“Of course I have business.” Diamonds leisurely took a sip of the wine, then suddenly leaned forward, his expression turning solemn. “It’s regarding the matter of Boss Hearts’s missing organs.”
The goatee old man’s expression turned equally grave as he sat down across from him. “What? You found a channel on the black market?”
“Though I have a few leads, I still haven’t found any organs that match Boss Hearts.” Diamonds spread his hands. “However, I’ve thought of an alternative solution.”
The smile completely vanished from his face as he spoke: “Transplant my organs into Boss Hearts.”
The wind rattled the broken wooden door out on the street, making it slam with a sound like loose teeth about to fall out. A jolt of shock struck the goatee old man’s heart like a sudden clap of thunder. After a long silence, he spoke:
“Kid, what absolute nonsense are you spouting!”
Diamonds shook his head. “I am entirely serious. Once the rule of the Chrono-Entropy Corporation is overthrown and the cyclical timeline returns to normal, Boss Hearts will be able to reclaim his original body. When that time comes, he can simply return my organs to me.”
“Are you an idiot? You speak of organ transplantation as if it were borrowing and returning a book, completely ignoring issues like donor matching?”
Facing the goatee old man’s gaze, which looked at him as if he were a lunatic, Diamonds smiled. He unbuttoned his collar, revealing his pale skin. The old man gasped in shock; branded right upon Diamonds’s collarbone was a Penrose Stairs emblem.
“The Penrose Stairs…” the goatee old man murmured.
This was the famous geometric paradox proposed by the British mathematician Roger Penrose, referring to a staircase that continuously loops upward or downward in an infinite cycle, possessing neither a highest nor a lowest point. It was the symbol of the Chrono-Entropy Corporation.
This emblem possessed a hierarchy of its own: the core tier, management tier, and enforcement tier symbols were colored gold, silver, and purple respectively. But the brand upon Diamonds’s collarbone was a pitch black, like dried ink, and beneath the mark lay a tiny serial number: A-0. This was the symbol of the slave-labor tier.
The goatee old man’s countenance shifted drastically, and he spoke in utter astonishment: “You are from the Chrono-Entropy Corporation…”
As the lantern shadows flickered, Diamonds’s smile seemed to wax and wane along with them. He spoke, his words carrying a hidden edge:
“A slave. A test subject. You can call me whatever you prefer.”
Only now did the goatee old man recall that this youth was a figure shrouded in mystery. He belonged to no resistance group, yet he carried an aura that seemed entirely incompatible with the squalor of the Lower District. The revelation was far too unexpected, leaving the old man momentarily speechless.
Diamonds interlaced his fingers, wearing a helpless smile:
“To put it simply, the Corporation cultivates a batch of slaves to serve as an ‘organ bank.’ I am one of them.”
“I have undergone genetic engineering. As a donor, my organs can adapt to fit anyone. Under the stimulation of stem cells, my body regenerates organs far better than an ordinary human, and the nanobots in my bloodstream can sustain my organ functions for me. Even if my organs are transplanted out, I will not die.”
The goatee old man was rendered utterly speechless. The ceiling fan turned at a sluggish pace, its shadow crawling across the mottled walls and the wooden medicine cabinets, washing the room’s interior in somber tones.
“Do it, Doctor. Boss Hearts is the hope of the resistance. His life is worth far more than mine.”
The youth with the platinum-blonde hair maintained a faint smile at the corners of his lips. He pressed his hand against his chest, devoid of both sorrow and joy, as if narrating a story belonging to someone else entirely.
“After all, I was originally born to be a consumable asset.”
