Li Feng clenched the three copper coins until his knuckles turned bone-white, their sharp edges nearly biting into his cracked palm.
As he stepped out of the alley, the early-morning wind struck him like countless dull knives, scraping across a face smeared with mud and flecked with blood. He shuddered violently, teeth chattering, as the last trace of warmth inside him was sucked away.
Beyond the alley lay another world, no less broken, but faintly alive.
Crooked mud-brick houses leaned together like beggars seeking warmth. The narrow dirt road was rutted with cart tracks and footprints, its puddles murky and foul.
Early risers hurried past, shoulders hunched, wrapped in equally threadbare padded jackets, their faces hollowed by numbness of life.
The air was thick with the choking smell of cheap coal smoke, stale urine, and the aroma of coarse grain porridge drifting from some unseen home.
That scent struck Li Feng like a blade.
His stomach convulsed violently and Hunger surged up in a tidal wave.
His gaze locked onto a roadside steamed bun stall. Golden buns rose and fell in white steam, grain fragrance spilling into the air.
His body moved on instinct. One step forward. His hand tightened around the copper coins, lifting slightly.
"Get lost!"
The stall owner, a thick-waisted man with a greasy apron, snarled and waved him away as if swatting away a fly.
"You stinking beggar! Don't block my business!"
Spit sprayed near Li Feng's face.
Li Feng lowered his head.
Mud-smeared hemp clothes. Dark red bloodstains. Rotten straw sandals, toes purple with cold, poking through the gaps.
A deeper chill crept up from his heart.
The copper coins in his palm felt scalding hot.
A knife.
The thought surfaced again, sharp and clear, like a viper's tongue.
His parents collapsing in the alley. The cold glint at a Black Tiger Gang ruffian's waist. The warm, viscous fluid flooding the Old Beggar's throat.
All of it converged into a single conclusion.
He needed a knife.
A knife that could cut food.
And cut throats.
Crawling like a maggot was no longer enough.
Li Feng turned abruptly away from the bun stall, as if fleeing a plague, and stumbled into a narrower, darker alley nearby. Sewage flowed openly here, mud deep and slick, walls plastered with filthy notices and unknown residue.
Following a vague memory, he headed toward the market's most chaotic edge, where stolen goods changed hands, poor-quality iron was sold, and people like him struggled to survive in filth.
The blacksmith's shop was impossible to miss.
Not because it stood out, but because of its smell.
Burning iron and Quenching steam. Raw metal.
The scent was so thick it cut through the damp air like a blade.
A soot-blackened wooden sign hung crookedly at the entrance. Inside, dim light flickered. Only the heavy, monotonous clang… clang… of hammer on iron echoed out.
Li Feng hesitated. His stomach twisted violently.
He swallowed hard, lifted the greasy cloth curtain tied with straw rope, and slipped inside.
Heat slammed into him and his vision swam.
The shop was small. A roaring furnace glowed red against one wall. A shirtless young man worked the bellows beside it, skin flushed, breath heaving. At the center stood an iron anvil, where a massive bare-chested strongman hammered a glowing iron bar.
Clang!
Sparks exploded.
Coal dust and iron filings filled the air. Li Feng coughed violently, tears spilling from his eyes.
The hammer stopped.
The strongman wiped sweat and soot from his face and glared at Li Feng with undisguised disgust.
"Get out!" His voice scraped like iron on stone.
"You stink. Don't ruin my iron."
He lifted the hammer slightly in warning.
Li Feng's heart sank.
He forced down another cough, trembling, not from fear, but from cold, hunger, and the assault of heat on his already broken body.
"I… want to buy a knife."
His voice was hoarse, dry, barely holding together.
The strongman paused, then sneered. "You?"
He scanned Li Feng's rags and laughed. "With a few copper coins? Get lost. I don't sell toys for trimming fingernails."
Li Feng didn't move.
He stepped forward and opened his hand.
Three copper coins lay in his frostbitten, cracked palm.
"Three coins…" His voice dropped lower. "What… can I buy?"
The strongman's gaze lingered. His mockery faded, leaving only cold indifference.
He jerked his chin toward a broken wooden box in the corner. "That pile. That's all."
Then he turned back to his anvil. Clang!
Li Feng lunged to the box.
Broken rusted and decayed tools. Scrap iron.
He knelt, fingers sliced by jagged edges, blood mixing with rust and mud, but he didn't notice.
Then his fingers closed around something cold and narrow.
He pulled it free.
A dagger.
Or what remained of one.
Palm-length blade. Rust-darkened like dried blood. The tip was chipped badly. The hilt crude and unpolished, biting cold in his hand, Only a short section near the guard still held a faint metallic sheen.
This was it.
His heart thundered.
He placed the three copper coins on a nearby wooden block. The strongman glanced once, grunted, and returned to hammering.
Li Feng left.
Outside, cold air swallowed him again.
In a quiet corner, he examined the dagger one more time and then tucked it inside his clothes, pressing it against his chest.
Behind him, the Old Beggar's body would already be stiffening.
Ahead, his parents' blood would soon be trampled away.
Li Feng lifted his head toward the market.
The scent of steamed buns lingered, but something colder, now anchored his heart.
He lowered his head and stepped back into the crowd.
Hunger.
His straw sandals squelched through the mud, the sound quickly swallowed by human noise and distant hammering.