They started walking together, keeping a loose formation. No one walked too close, and no one fell too far behind.
Every step felt cautious and measured.
Zhiyu felt the tension clearly. The only thing tying them together was the fact that they had all been kidnapped and locked away.
That alone wasn't enough to create trust. It just meant they shared the same danger.
They talked as they walked, voices low, almost testing each other. Someone mentioned the doors opening all at once, wondering out loud if someone had gone around unlocking the cells manually.
Only then did Zhiyu realize something.
'When my door opened, I didn't check the others,' he thought. 'I couldn't even see them before.' There had been no torches near his cell back then, just darkness. He had no idea what condition the others were in.
Wu Sheng spoke up from behind them. "Many didn't survive."
Everyone slowed.
"I saw it earlier," Wu Sheng continued. "When I found a torch near my room. I checked another cell."
His voice didn't change, but his jaw tightened slightly.
"Some were already rotten," he said. "Bones exposed. They'd been dead for a long time."
No one asked for details.
The image was clear enough.
The group fell silent after that, their footsteps sounding louder than before as the reality of the place settled heavily over them.
They kept walking, but the silence grew uncomfortable. Chen Yuanyuan was the first to speak again, her voice careful.
"So… what do you think they want from us?"
Lin Hao let out a slow breath. "If they just wanted us dead, they wouldn't bother feeding us. Even poisoned food takes effort."
Xu Xiyue nodded slightly. "It feels like selection."
Zhiyu glanced at her. "Selection for what?"
She hesitated. "For who survives."
Wu Sheng spoke next. "They're not training us yet. They're testing us..."
'That made sense.'
"They want the weak gone," Lin Hao said. "The ones who panic. The ones who can't endure."
Xu Xiyue frowned. "Then opening the doors now… it's another test."
Chen Yuanyuan hugged her arms. "To see who can move. Who can cooperate. Who will attack each other..."
"And who won't," Xu Xiyue added quietly.
Wu Sheng glanced down the corridor. "If this is about raising assassins, they don't need everyone. They only need a few who survive all of this."
Zhiyu felt his stomach tighten.
They walked on, each of them carrying the same thought but none of them saying it out loud: surviving this long didn't mean they were safe. It only meant they were useful.
They walked in silence for a long time before the corridor finally opened up into a wide space.
The light here was dim and steady, spread evenly across the area, bright enough to see but soft enough that it didn't hurt their eyes.
Zhiyu slowed instinctively. The space was large, larger than he expected, with rough stone walls and a high ceiling that swallowed sound.
There were people everywhere.
Dozens of them. Kids around their age, scattered across the area, sitting or standing in small clusters.
Some leaned against the walls. Others sat on the floor with their knees pulled to their chests. No one was talking loudly. Most weren't talking at all.
Zhiyu counted without meaning to. Roughly. More than seventy. Maybe closer to eighty, including them.
As soon as his group stepped inside, the atmosphere shifted. Conversations died out completely. Heads turned. Eyes followed them.
It wasn't hostile, but it wasn't welcoming either. It was the quiet attention of people who had learned to be wary of everything new.
He noticed the bodies next.
Most were thin, hollowed out by hunger. But a few stood out. Broad shoulders. Thick arms. Even after months of starvation, some still carried obvious muscle.
'How is that possible?' he thought.
'Those guys can probably smack me in one hit.'
Either they had been strong to begin with, or they had adapted in ways he hadn't. Neither answer was comforting.
His group slowed to a stop, unsure where to go.
Around them, the other captives kept watching, all of them waiting for something none of them understood.
The light changed without warning.
Click.
It flared brighter, not blinding but sharp enough to make everyone flinch. The dim glow that had felt tolerable was suddenly pushed aside by something stronger, more deliberate.
At the center of the large area, five figures stood where there had been nothing before. They were adults.
That much was obvious from their height and build alone. Broad shoulders. Long limbs. Bodies that looked fed, trained, and intact in a place where no one else was.
Each of them wore an animal mask.
One resembled a mantis, its surface segmented and angular.
Another was a crow, the beak long and curved, the eye holes dark and unreadable.
The third wore a wolf mask, sharp lines carved into its muzzle.
The fourth looked like some kind of reptile—smooth, scaled, something between a salamander and a lizard.
The last was unsettling in a different way, a fly-like mask with rounded shapes where eyes should be.
Zhiyu's chest tightened.
'What's the point of this?' he thought. 'Intimidation? Symbolism? Or something else?'
Around him, the quiet cracked. Whispers spread through the crowd, low but fast, fear leaking into every voice.
People shifted, stood straighter, or shrank back.
Then the wolf stepped forward.
"Silence."
It was just one word. Calm. Unraised.
The effect was immediate.
The noise died instantly, like it had been cut off at the source. Zhiyu felt it too—a sudden, heavy pressure pressing down on his body. His throat tightened, his chest felt compressed, and the urge to speak vanished as if it had been forcibly taken away.
It wasn't pain. It was restraint.
He tried to swallow and felt how difficult even that had become. His heart beat faster, but his body refused to move more than it already was.
Around him, no one spoke. No one dared to.
The five figures stood calmly in the center of the space, masks unreadable, as if this reaction had been expected all along.
The wolf-masked man lifted one hand slowly, then clapped. The sound echoed sharply across the wide hall, bouncing off the stone walls.
Zhiyu flinched at the sharpness, not because it was loud, but because it seemed deliberate, almost ceremonial.
"Congratulations," the man said, his voice low but carrying clearly through the room.
"You have passed the first test."
The words were simple, but their meaning landed like a weight on everyone present.
Zhiyu glanced around. Some of the other children shifted nervously, some stiffened as though expecting punishment. None of them spoke.
The man continued. "The first test is a process of elimination. Those who survived… consider yourselves lucky."
He paused, letting the words sink in. Zhiyu could see the masks reflecting the torchlight, sharp angles and smooth curves catching every flicker.
"And perfect," the man said, emphasizing the word slowly, "to be assassins."
Zhiyu's stomach turned slightly. He looked at the faces of the other kids, seeing the same mixture of fear and relief mirrored in their expressions.
Some were pale, shaking from the lingering effects of hunger and poison. Others stared blankly, their minds still trying to process what had just happened.
He realized then that this place was designed to test not just strength, but endurance, fear, and adaptability.
Every poisoned meal, every locked cell, every silent hour of darkness had been part of a system.
The ones who remained weren't necessarily the strongest—they were the ones the captors deemed capable of surviving enough to be molded.
Zhiyu felt a strange mix of tension and resignation.
He had survived, but the survival wasn't freedom. It was the start of something else—something deliberate, controlled, and entirely beyond their choice.
The wolf-masked figure clapped again, a slow, deliberate motion that drew the eyes of everyone in the room back to him.
"From this point on," he said, "everything you do will be observed. Every action, every reaction… everything will determine your place here. Remember, you were not chosen because you are strong. You were chosen because you survived."
The words echoed in Zhiyu's mind as he shifted slightly on the stone floor.
He felt the pressure in his chest linger, the same oppressive weight that had silenced him moments before.
The first test was over, but now, the real process of watching and being watched was only beginning.
The wolf-masked man raised one hand, slow and deliberate, and gestured toward a large black stone at the center of the area.
Its surface was smooth but cold, almost metallic in appearance, and it sat on a low pedestal, catching the flicker of the torchlight.
"For instructions," he said, his voice calm but firm, carrying easily across the room, "everyone will fall in line and touch the black stone."
Zhiyu's eyes narrowed slightly as he studied it. The stone looked ordinary, but the way the man spoke made it clear it wasn't.
He glanced at the other children. Most were already moving hesitantly toward it, some pausing halfway, unsure of what would happen.
Xu Xiyue stayed close to him. "Are we supposed to just… touch it?" she whispered.
"Yeah, I think..." he replied quietly, keeping his voice low. "Just follow the instructions. Nothing more..."
He stepped forward with the others, careful not to bump into anyone. Each child moved cautiously, hesitant fingers reaching out.
Zhiyu kept his eyes on the stone and the wolf-masked man at the same time, calculating distance, movement, and the reactions of those around him.
The stone felt cold under his fingertips, unnervingly so, but nothing happened immediately.
He let his hand rest there for a moment, feeling its smooth surface, while silently noting how the others reacted. Some flinched, some whispered, but all obeyed.
'It's a test,' he thought. 'Everything here is a test. Stay calm. Observe.'
He drew a slow breath, keeping his mind focused, waiting for the next instruction to come.