The night wind continued to blow, seemingly growing stronger, stirring the towering trees beside them, making them rustle. Rather than breaking the silence, it only made everything feel even more desolate.
Neither of them was particularly sensitive about life and death. After a brief moment of surprise, Sheng Min’s gaze calmly shifted away from the name “Li Xuan” on the tombstone. In a low voice, he asked the man beside him, “What was your original name?”
Li Xuan took his hand, and with his fingertip, he traced two characters in Sheng Min’s palm. Sheng Min slowly closed his fingers around them, looked up at him, and after a moment of thought, said, “I’m still used to calling you Li Xuan.”
Li Xuan smiled faintly. “I don’t think it really matters.”
Sheng Min also smiled, though not very successfully, and then asked, “Why does Zhao Jizhe call you Nineteen?”
“Because I was the nineteenth child adopted by that orphanage.” The answer was unexpectedly simple. “Every child who entered the orphanage was given a new name, maybe for management purposes, or maybe to sever ties with their past… But it didn’t really work.”
Li Xuan shrugged indifferently. “By the time it was my turn, the staff were too lazy and just assigned me a number in order.”
He spoke casually, pressing a finger against the furrow between Sheng Min’s brows before continuing, “I stayed there until I was eleven, then ran away. I think I mentioned this before… After arriving in N City, I lived in Qingshui Alley in the southern part of town for two or three years. It’s a shame you were living in the north; otherwise, maybe we could’ve met earlier.”
Qingshui Alley sounded like a peaceful name, but in reality, it was the most chaotic place in the city.
It had started as an urban village, but as the city’s industries shifted, factories and workers moved away. Over time, the area became fragmented and taken over by various theft gangs, red-light districts, and underground casinos.
When Li Xuan ran away from the orphanage, he had no household registration, no identity, and no intention of being sent back. Only in a place like that could he hide and survive.
At first, Li Xuan and Zhao Jizhe slept under a bridge, but soon enough, people came demanding “protection fees.” Those people didn’t actually care about the few coins in their pockets—bullying those worse off than themselves was simply a source of entertainment.
But no one ever got that kind of entertainment from Li Xuan.
He was still young then. Though tall, years of malnutrition had left him too thin—like a reed, yet the hardest one to break.
Many people tried to give him trouble. At first, he suffered for it, but not a single one of them ever managed to gain anything from him.
Before long, all the thugs in Qingshui Alley knew that the silent, unsmiling newcomer was a dangerous one. When he fought, his gaze was ruthless and cold, as if his opponents were already dead. Even when blood was still dripping from his lips, he’d seize an opportunity and kick someone’s ribs until they cracked.
Gradually, people stopped bothering him. Maybe they weren’t exactly afraid—after all, he was just a kid. But no one wanted to provoke a lunatic.
And so, Li Xuan managed to stay there, year after year.
He washed dishes, scrubbed plates, collected debts, even worked security at a casino. He never gambled, but he could calculate—he could see exactly who was cheating.
…..
He did all sorts of odd jobs, met all kinds of people, but he refused to belong to any one group.
Between shifts, he spent his time reading. Without an identity, he couldn’t go to school, so he bought textbooks by the pound from scrap shops and taught himself. He had no diploma, no official recognition, but he refused to fall behind.
People mocked him, openly and in whispers, as if he were some kind of freak.
Li Xuan didn’t care. He knew he wouldn’t rot in that place. Even if he had to stay in the mud for a while, he would carve out a different path.
By the second year in Qingshui Alley, Li Xuan was thirteen.
He moved for the fourth time, bringing Zhao Jizhe from an abandoned building to a place that, at least, didn’t leak when it rained.
With different groups constantly fighting for territory, he had already left the casino to avoid getting caught in the crossfire.
That same year, Qingshui Alley got its first internet café.
Back then, computers were still a novelty—especially in a place like that.
A lot of people went out of curiosity, and soon, they got hooked on the games. Li Xuan, no matter what he did, was always the quickest to pick things up. He saw an opportunity and started making money by leveling up accounts for others.
But soon, that wasn’t enough. He wanted to understand what was behind it all.
More importantly, he noticed that even those gangsters who shared a single cigarette were willing to spend half a month’s worth of meals on in-game purchases.
There was money in this.
Li Xuan needed money.
So he searched for information in every way he could, and that was when he discovered what powered games—programming.
He walked a long way to a second-hand bookstore near a university and bought his first programming book.
An internet café wasn’t exactly a great learning environment—though, of course, Li Xuan could concentrate anywhere, no matter how noisy. The real issue was that he couldn’t occupy a computer for too long. Any program he wrote would be erased as soon as the next person took over.
To solve that, he bought a USB drive and saved everything he wrote.
But what he really wanted was a computer of his own.
That thought grew stronger with each passing day.
But for him at that time, it was a luxury. He had to pay rent, cover daily expenses for himself and Zhao Jizhe, and any extra money went toward buying books. So, he could only endure.
That summer, the stack of programming books Li Xuan had self-studied was taller than the legs of his desk, and he had filled more than ten USB drives. On another visit to the second-hand bookstore to buy books, he encountered a graduating student from a university selling their used computers.
Over the years, Li Xuan had saved up some money here and there, but not much—not enough to buy a computer, not even a used one. Even after scraping together all he had, he was still short by several hundred. Given more time, he might have been able to gather the rest, but he wasn’t the only one eyeing that second-hand computer.
He asked the student selling the computer to wait for him for half an hour, then turned and headed to the hospital across the street.
Selling 400 milliliters of blood still wasn’t enough. He asked the nurse to draw more, but she refused. With no other options, the nurse suddenly asked him if he was willing to participate in an experiment.
“It won’t take long,” the nurse told him. “Three hundred yuan. Is that enough?”
At that moment, he had no better choice. If he hesitated any longer, someone else might buy the computer.
He carefully and seriously checked the nurse’s credentials. She told him it was a biology experiment for a university and even proactively showed him the relevant certification.
He did everything he could think of to ensure his safety, even firmly and alertly refusing the nurse’s offer of anesthesia, choosing instead to stay fully conscious and endure everything.
In the end, he got the computer he had been longing for. But the pain was overwhelming. He forced himself to finish the purchase, but he could no longer move. Hugging the computer, he collapsed in a daze under a pedestrian bridge as the sky turned to dusk.
The bookstore owner found him, took pity on him, and lent him a handcart. Feeling slightly better, Li Xuan pushed the cart under the moonlight for two hours to bring the computer home. The night was just as hot as the day, and his body, weakened from blood loss, was on the verge of heatstroke—perhaps he was already suffering from it. But he was happy.
So, he didn’t realize that the needle from that day had been the key to opening Pandora’s box.
“Leukemia?” Sheng Min asked softly.
A crow perched on a tombstone, and at the sound of voices, it flapped its wings and flew away.
Li Xuan shook his head. “Aplastic anemia.”
“His illness… Did it have anything to do with Shu Xin?” Sheng Min recalled visiting the Li family, Shu Xin’s strange words, and her repeated insistence that it was her fault.
Li Xuan paused for a moment. “Shu Xin used to be an astrophysics researcher. When she was pregnant, she was transferred to a physics research base in the northwest… There was a radioactive material leak there.”
Sheng Min stiffened. “So it was because of—”
“I don’t know.” Li Xuan lowered his gaze. “Who can say for sure? After the incident, Shu Xin resigned and returned to N City to give birth. The child grew up healthy for fourteen years—until one day, he suddenly fell ill.”
The most effective treatment for aplastic anemia was a bone marrow transplant, which required a matching HLA type. Parents and children were usually only half-matched, making them poor donors. Both Li Mingge and Shu Xin were only children, and they also had only one child, leaving no direct relatives as potential matches.
Fortunately, by then, Li Mingge’s business had grown substantially. Wealth made everything easier.
To increase the chances of finding a compatible donor, after registering with the bone marrow bank, Li Mingge spent a large sum of money to bribe doctors and nurses at various hospitals and blood centers in N City. Under the guise of medical experiments, they persuaded desperate patients’ families and blood sellers to sell their bone marrow—people who needed money and were easily exploited.
If this had happened later, with more advanced medical technology, perhaps it wouldn’t have been so complicated. Just using blood from someone who had received stem cell mobilization injections might have been enough. But maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference—after all, to the wealthy, everything about the poor, including their lives, could be bought and sold. Blood, bone marrow—it was all the same.
Statistically, the chance of finding a match between strangers was one in tens of thousands, or even millions.
Yet, in this needle-in-a-haystack search, they found that one person.
“Did they force you?” Sheng Min instinctively gripped Li Xuan’s hand, his voice as cold as ice.
“Not exactly…” Li Xuan was silent for a moment. “Can I have a cigarette?”
Sheng Min looked at him for a while, then silently took out a lighter and lit it for him.
After bringing the computer back to Qingshui Alley, Li Xuan was bedridden for two days due to the pain from the bone marrow extraction.
On the third day, Li Mingge’s car arrived at Qingshui Alley.
Threats, bribes, persuasion—none of it worked on Li Xuan. He was like a lean, lone wolf, stubbornly rejecting all strangers.
Later, Li Xuan thought that if he had continued resisting, Li Mingge and Shu Xin, desperate to save their son, might have just kidnapped him.
After all, he had no parents, no one to protect him. No matter how tough he was, he was still just a child, far from adulthood.
The survival skills he had honed, like weeds growing in the cracks, were too fragile to withstand the weight of power and influence.
But he never got to that point.
Zhao Jizhe was arrested.
Drug trafficking—heroin, one kilogram, caught red-handed.
Any one of those charges was enough for a death sentence.
At the time, they lived under the same roof, occasionally shared meals, but in truth, Li Xuan didn’t really know what Zhao Jizhe was doing every day.
He had too many things to take care of and didn’t have the energy to pay attention to Zhao Jizhe. He gave him money from time to time, and if Zhao Jizhe said he didn’t need it, Li Xuan left it at that.
Beyond that, they barely exchanged two words in a week. Maybe Zhao Jizhe had wanted to talk, but Li Xuan didn’t have the patience to listen.
The day Zhao Jizhe was arrested, Li Xuan had been at home writing code. Zhao Jizhe hadn’t come back the night before, but he hadn’t noticed.
It wasn’t until Skinny Monkey rushed in to tell him that Zhao Jizhe had been caught.
Selling to sustain addiction—Qingshui Alley had a hidden yet complete drug trade network. It was also the group Li Xuan wanted nothing to do with.
People whose central nervous systems were controlled by drugs were no different from animals.
He didn’t know when or how Zhao Jizhe got involved with those people.
He believed Zhao Jizhe might steal, but drug trafficking—he wasn’t that bold.
“This was a setup from the start.”
“The cops have been watching that group since last month. They just needed someone to take the fall first—makes it easier to clean up the rest. The cops have to report results too, don’t they?”
“They said it was for that batch of stolen American watches from last month? Those were dismantled for parts ages ago. Besides, how much were they worth? Hardly anything. But just for this one run, they were offering so much money?”
“Everyone in Qingshui Alley knew this was a trap—even that fool at the noodle shop wouldn’t have fallen for it.”
Everyone knew. Whether Zhao Jizhe knew or not didn’t matter anymore. He still went, for the sake of that hefty commission.
Li Xuan didn’t get to see Zhao Jizhe in the detention center.A few temp workers hired by the police taunted him, saying, “Kid, better go home and prepare your brother’s urn.” Li Xuan didn’t say a word and silently walked back to Qingshui Alley.
It was midsummer, the scorching sun burning down. Sweat soaked into his unhealed wounds, making them throb with pain. From one end of the alley to the other, he once again saw Li Mingge’s car.
Turns out, as long as you find the right way in, you can even snatch a life from the hands of the King of Hell.
One month after Li Xuan left Qingshui Alley, the drug trafficking case was sentenced.
Everyone thought it would be a death sentence, but in the end, it was reduced to seven years and ten months in prison.
In the darkness, the tiny ember at Li Xuan’s fingertips was the only source of light.
Sheng Min suddenly snatched the cigarette from him, took a deep drag, and immediately coughed violently.
Li Xuan patted his back. Watching Sheng Min’s cheeks flush red from choking, he lightly but firmly took back the half-smoked cigarette.
“Don’t smoke,” he said.
They silently stared at each other as the wind passed between them.
He knew Sheng Min was waiting for an explanation.
But Li Xuan didn’t speak, and in the end, Sheng Min didn’t ask.
After a long time, his coughing subsided, and he simply said, “And then?”
Li Mingge and his wife sought out Li Xuan for a bone marrow transplant. But at that time, their son’s condition was already very weak, with a persistent low fever, making it a poor time for surgery. They had to rely on long-term care to improve his condition. Meanwhile, due to his weakened hematopoietic function, he needed regular blood transfusions to survive.
Perhaps it could be considered a stroke of luck—out of the millions, the donor they found just happened to be O-type, a universal blood donor.
Even though there was no medical proof, Li Mingge insisted that since the bone marrow was a perfect match, blood transfusions from the same donor would also be more effective.
So before undergoing the transplant, Li Xuan became a living blood bag.
Only when the doctors warned that if he continued donating blood so frequently, his body wouldn’t be able to endure the bone marrow extraction did they finally stop.
By then, nearly six months had passed since he first came to the Li family. Despite being well-fed, he had lost over ten pounds.
Sleeping had become unbearable. No matter the position, no matter how soft the bed, lying down meant being poked painfully by his own bones.
Luckily, endurance was his strong suit.
When he couldn’t sleep, he simply stayed awake—reading, coding.
He negotiated with Li Mingge, and three years after leaving the orphanage, he returned to school. He also got a better computer.
This would end soon. Very soon.
Many nights, he opened the first program he ever wrote: a simple “Hello, World.”
The cursor blinked. His heart beat in sync with it.
He thought—his new world was just ahead.
Summer passed. Winter, too, neared its end.
By the next summer solstice, the doctors said the bone marrow transplant could proceed.
At the time, technology for harvesting peripheral blood stem cells was still underdeveloped, so they used the traditional bone marrow aspiration method.
He was too thin. To extract enough marrow, the doctors had to perform multiple aspirations on both iliac crests.
Everyone said that donating bone marrow wasn’t harmful, that the body could regenerate it quickly.
But that applied to healthy young adults.
Li Xuan was still too young, too frail.
Maybe they extracted too much marrow. Maybe his body had already been pushed beyond its limits. Either way, unlike the previous time when he recovered quickly, after this surgery, he remained bedridden for over a month.
He was constantly drowsy and barely noticed the doctor’s strange expression when they told him the surgery had been successful.
The first day he could stand, Li Xuan packed his things, ready to leave the Li family.
His task was complete.
But they stopped him.
“The last extraction wasn’t enough. The patient may need a second surgery.”
Li Xuan sensed something was off.
Eventually, a kindhearted young nurse told him the truth.
The supposedly successful surgery had severe complications.
It started with an infection, then hematuria.
The condition worsened rapidly.
The doctors confirmed that the illness had progressed from aplastic anemia to AA-PNH syndrome. The severe breakdown of red blood cells damaged the kidneys, and soon, the patient required a kidney transplant.
None of it was inevitable.
But countless small, unlikely misfortunes had stacked together like a chain of falling dominoes.
Bad luck came in waves, and no one knew where it would finally stop.
But why did he have to bear it all?
Just because he had been greedy for a computer that was never meant for him?
Was desire a sin?
Li Xuan refused to accept that.
So he ran away from the hospital.
He wandered from place to place for over half a month before they caught him again.
“This isn’t what we agreed on,” he argued with Li Mingge.
“Of course it is,” Li Mingge replied. “I saved your friend’s life, and you save my child’s. Your bone marrow, your kidney—it’s an even trade… The prison system isn’t safe these days. You wouldn’t want the life you saved to meet an accident, would you?”
Twisted logic. Deception.
Yet under the power that money brought, it became the truth.
The doctors had advised them—organ transplants didn’t require a perfect HLA match. The survival rate for a mismatched kidney was only about 10% lower than that of a fully matched one over ten years.
But in the end, none of that mattered.
Because to the wealthy, everything about the poor—including their blood, their marrow, and even their organs—was up for sale.
“Is 10% not important?” Li Mingge asked condescendingly.
Important, of course, it was. So, another child’s organs should be taken as easily as plucking an apple.
Whether Li Xuan was willing or not, no matter how he resisted, he was forced to undergo a full set of organ matching tests.
One by one, the tests were completed. Under the doctor’s sympathetic gaze, he saw the result no one had told him about.
To prevent him from escaping again, he was locked in a private hospital room after the tests, with multiple security guards stationed at the door and the windows sealed shut.
Apart from the medical staff who came to deliver meals and check on him regularly, he was completely isolated from the outside world.
After a two-day hunger strike, he managed to get a pen and a book. Li Mingge still feared he would attempt suicide. But Li Xuan had no intention of dying—he would outlive them all.
Day after day passed, until the night before the surgery, when his hospital room welcomed an unexpected guest.
“You don’t have to look at me like that. I don’t want your kidney at all.” Under the cold white light, the person opposite him looked like a wandering soul.
“I thought you were too sick to move.” Li Xuan said indifferently.
“I was. But I really wanted to come talk to you, so now I can move again.” The boy smiled and asked, “Do you have some water I can drink?”
Li Xuan ignored him.
But the boy didn’t mind, and with a magician’s flair, he pulled out a bottle, shook it, and said smugly, “I knew you were stingy, so I brought my own.” He then took slow sips.
“Can I trouble you with something?” After an unknown amount of time, he suddenly said, “If I don’t make it off the operating table tomorrow, can you take care of my mom for me?”
Li Xuan suspected he was delirious, coming all the way here just to spout nonsense.
“I lied to her. I was never the son she wanted—I’m not as smart as you, I can’t inherit her ideals, I can’t complete her unfinished work. My health is terrible… If only we could switch places.”
He spoke for a long time, and when Li Xuan didn’t respond, he sighed. “You don’t want to talk to me either? I get it… I know I’m not likable. My dad hates me too. Ever since I got sick, my mom cries for me every day, and he can’t stand it. He never really wanted to save me, only did it so my mom wouldn’t be sad…”
That night, everything he said was a jumbled mess. Li Xuan had no idea what kind of fit he was having, showing up in the middle of the night to talk about how much his parents loved each other. Li Xuan remained silent, his eyes downcast, making notes in his programming book.
“You know, they never should have had me.” He drank water like he had been thirsty for a long time. “If I live longer in my next life and meet someone I love, I would never let her have my child. Women are too fragile. There’s no such thing as ‘a mother’s strength.’ A child is just a greater weakness… My mom would be so mad if she heard me talking about a next life. She’s a scientist—she doesn’t believe in that. So why does she think my poor health is karma for her not protecting me well enough?”
“You’re sick in the head,” Li Xuan snapped, irritated by his endless rambling.
“Shouldn’t I be?!” The boy suddenly stood up. “She cries by my bed every day, always saying sorry, saying she ruined my life. I never once blamed her, never wanted to be a physicist—so why do I have to carry all her guilt?! Does she love me, or does she hate me?!”
In his agitation, the plastic bottle in his hand fell to the floor, rolling under the hospital bed.
“What’s the point of telling me all this?” Li Xuan said coldly.
“There is no point.” His body was too weak, and just having a tantrum left him breathless. He slumped down by the window, exhausted. “But you’re the only one I can talk to. You’re the only friend I’ve made in the past year since I got sick.”
Li Xuan sneered. “Only you think that.”
“Promise me.” He acted like he didn’t hear the sarcasm. “I don’t want your kidney, but please take care of her. Talk to her, don’t let her be too sad… She doesn’t owe me anything—I ruined her life. It’d be better if she never had a son like me.”
Li Xuan frowned, but just then, there were two light knocks on the door.
“I have to go.” He quickly stood up and repeated, “My dad’s foolish love has clouded his judgment. One day, it’ll hurt her. You’re smarter and more clear-headed than him, so take care of her for me. I’m too tired—I just want to sleep well.”
Li Xuan stared at him coldly. The other boy’s smile was hazy, his voice weak. “I know this isn’t fair to you. You’re the most innocent one in all this. But that’s just how the world is… Tell you what, it won’t be forever. I’m more reasonable than my dad. Since you’re only here for your friend, just do it until he gets out of prison.”
That was the last thing Li Xuan heard from him that night.
The next morning, he was taken to the operating room.
In the adjacent operating room, the boy who had spoken nonsense the night before lay there quietly.
If everything went smoothly, in two hours, one of his kidneys would be removed and transplanted into the other boy’s body.
The doctors moved in an orderly fashion, like precise, cold-blooded machines. No one cared about the thoughts of the fifteen-year-old on the operating table.
Hopefully, it wouldn’t go smoothly. Li Xuan thought of the empty ink bottle on the desk. As long as they didn’t take it this time, he would have another chance to escape before the next operation.
And if it failed… that was fine too.
He had survived this long with no parents. Losing a kidney wouldn’t change that. As long as he could still breathe, he would keep on living.
Anesthetic slowly entered his body. He should have lost consciousness, but the memory of that day remained vivid.
The cold sensation of the scalpel slicing into his waist, the sharp tip cutting through flesh, the distinct feeling of capillaries and muscle fibers snapping apart…
He hoped the doctors would find the kidney unfit for transplant. But just as the procedure began, everything came to an abrupt halt.
“Something’s wrong. Stop! Stop the operation!”
[mfn]
T/N:
A bone marrow aspiration – a procedure that removes a small amount of liquid bone marrow for examination. It’s usually performed in the back of the hipbone.
Iliac crest – a curved ridge of bone at the top of the hip that forms part of the pelvis.
Hematuria – the medical term for blood in the urine. It can occur due to a number of possible reasons, including kidney disease, urinary tract infections, or vigorous exercise.
Aplastic anemia (AA) and paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (AA-PNH) are both rare blood disorders that can occur independently or overlap. Both are related to bone marrow failure.
An HLA match – a test that determines if the human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) of a donor and recipient match. HLA matching is performed before an organ or stem cell transplant
[/mfn]
