Karma Fire

A long time after the electric current stopped, Zhuang Mingqi slowly stopped convulsing, calming down from his frantic breathing and heartbeat. Zeng Yuancheng looked down at him from above the hospital bed, backlit by the incandescent light, his sated smile so savage it was almost terrifying, like a demon from hell peeking out from a crack in the ceiling to spy on the mortal world: “How do you feel?”

...

He gasped for breath, struggling to push himself up with his elbows, trying to escape the demon's looming presence. Then, exhausted, he rolled off the bed and onto the floor, vomiting all over amidst dizzy spells and a dull ache as the world spun around him.

The back of his patient gown was completely soaked, leaving behind a human-shaped patch of cold sweat on the hospital bed.

Disgraced, pained, weak, terrified, stripped of all dignity... This was the “Adolescent Psychological Crisis Intervention Center” single-handedly established by Zeng Yuancheng.

Sometimes, when Zhuang Mingqi saw those words, he found them absurdly laughable—it was the only thing in this hell that could make him laugh. It should have been called the Psychological Crisis Cultivation Base or the Psychological Trauma Wholesale Market.

Although the first electric shock had been a solid show of force, Zhuang Mingqi wasn't the type to be suppressed into obedience. Relying on his youth to recover quickly, he endured the humiliation for two days before quickly launching his second act of resistance. This time, he jumped out the window to escape in the middle of the night, only to be cornered at the bottom of the wall by six security guards.

Even though he had experienced one electric shock and was mentally prepared, the second one was far beyond his capacity to endure. Zeng Yuancheng smugly admired the miserable sight of him convulsing and struggling under the electric shock; his smile could even be described as joyful. He didn't need to say anything; his face clearly read, 'I've seen plenty like you. You can't escape my grasp.'

Zhuang Mingqi's throat, mouth, and nasal passages were filled with the smell of rust. He could hardly control his own limbs, only gasp for air. In his confusion and blurred state, he felt a sharp pain in his arm. A nurse had given him an injection of some unknown drug. His consciousness quickly grew hazy, and he soon drifted into a dark, deep dream.

This time, he slept for a full day and night. When he woke up, his head was splitting. Even his memory was a little blurry. Perhaps it was the effect of the drug, or maybe some self-preservation mechanism had forcibly erased the memory of the pain that had seared through his brain. That terrifying near-death feeling didn't linger with him, but the trauma had already been formed. When he saw that machine again, he found that his hands would shake uncontrollably.

From then on, he was kept under strict watch. He was given antidepressants every day to prevent suicide. Zeng Yuancheng practiced various forms of aversion therapy on him. Induced vomiting, electric shocks, verbal abuse, starvation, and admonishments were used in rotation... However, all of this was considered light treatment. Because he was Zhuang Shize's son, Zeng Yuancheng had his reservations and had to carefully choose his “treatment methods” and control their intensity, to avoid causing permanent damage to his limbs or organs.

But this center was never short of examples to be made of people. There were also some lower-tier “patients” that Zeng Yuancheng wasn't personally responsible for. The moment any of them showed signs of resistance or tried to escape, Zeng Yuancheng would organize the entire center to collectively observe a public punishment. Sometimes, even the parents of the person involved were invited to watch.

Watching a living person be trampled and crushed, writhing on the ground in pain, begging for mercy, yet finding no release, elicited less fear or deterrence and more of a gaping emptiness that a cold wind howled through, impossible to fill. Zhuang Mingqi stood in the crowd with his hands by his sides, but often felt as if his soul was hovering above the auditorium, looking down on it all—Were there any gods, divine justice, retribution, or any existence at all watching this unfold?

The crimes of the people locked up here were bizarre and varied: internet addiction, rebellion, puppy love, homosexuality... Were these unforgivable sins? Why were they being treated like this without a trial, without a defense?

After watching many times, even without any direct interaction, he had memorized some of their faces. So, when he dragged his feet into the nearly empty cafeteria that day, he immediately recognized the boy who was mopping the floor with his head down.

Ye Tongsheng. This person was famous throughout the center. Many kids had been sent in by their parents for internet addiction, but he was the only “patient” who had successfully escaped only to be personally escorted back by his family.

Through his own actions, he had proven one thing to his trapped companions: this center was not an inescapable cage. Their “families,” who used blood ties as shackles to push them into the abyss with their own hands, were.

They didn't have any “illnesses” in the real sense. Those bizarre and ever-changing methods of abuse had no therapeutic effect whatsoever. Tearing off the painted skin labeled “correction,” parents just wanted to use knives, axes, and hammers to carve out their child's rebellious spirit, to obtain an obedient puppet.

The food on the metal tray had gone cold. Zhuang Mingqi had no appetite. He listlessly poked at the rice grains with his chopsticks, until the hunched-over figure straightened up and stopped in front of him.

Ye Tongsheng was so thin his cheeks were sunken, but his dark eyes shone with a flame-like light: “...I'm going to tear this cage down. Are you with me?”

They had never even spoken before. Ye Tongsheng's act of showing his hand right away was completely unexpected to Zhuang Mingqi, so much so that the first thing he asked wasn't about the specific plan or its feasibility, but to express his doubt: “Aren't you afraid I'll snitch?”

Ye Tongsheng shook his head slightly: “You want to get out, I know. I saw you jump from the third-floor window to escape that day, before the guards stopped you.”

Zhuang Mingqi had long since realized that his successful escape from the ward back then wasn't because he was lucky, but a tactic of Zeng Yuancheng's, to let him go only to catch him again, to catch him in the act and completely extinguish any thought of resistance. And the reason he had endured so much pain and torment for so long without trying to end his own life was because there was still a carrot dangling in front of him—

“My treatment ends in another week,” Zhuang Mingqi said. “Why should I take the risk?”

“There are others suffering, and more people will be brought in.” Ye Tongsheng gripped the mop handle tightly, the scrapes on the back of his hand had just begun to scab over. “I'm the most recent example. Who can guarantee they won't be sent back a second time?” He clenched his jaw slightly, every word that came from his chapped lips carried a hint of desperate, bloody resolve: “Only by completely destroying this place can we be free.”

In that instant, Zhuang Mingqi felt a long-lost, indescribable sense of absurdity. After witnessing the depths of human depravity, he was now witnessing the heights of human spirit in the very same place. It was like finding a living clay Buddha in a stinking gutter, who couldn't even save himself yet was still thinking of saving the world.

But absurdity was also an emotional shock. Once ripples formed in a pool of stagnant water, they wouldn't easily cease. He picked up his tray, got up, and went to the sink to wash it. Using the sound of the running water as cover, he quietly asked Ye Tongsheng, who had followed him: “What do you want me to do?”

“The third floor is all offices and storage rooms. You're the only one of us living on that floor.” Ye Tongsheng turned on the tap of the nearby mop sink. “We're not allowed on the third floor, so we need you to set a fire there in the middle of the night.”

Zhuang Mingqi tapped the bottom of the sink with his metal tray: “Are you serious? We all came in empty-handed. Who has a lighter?”

Ye Tongsheng said: “I have a way. I'll have someone pass it to you tomorrow. Be careful not to get caught.”

Compared to the ordinary patients who lived four to six to a room, Zhuang Mingqi's living space was relatively independent and spacious. But because his floor was occupied by staff members, he was monitored much more strictly than Ye Tongsheng and the others: “What's your plan?”

“After midnight on Thursday, when you hear a commotion outside, you can make your move.” Ye Tongsheng kept his head down, his lips barely moving. “That commotion will draw away the on-duty security guards and nurses. Once you've done your part, get out. Don't worry about anything else.”

The center's staff weren't stationed here twenty-four hours a day. Zeng Yuancheng and the other doctors would go home after work, and the orderlies and security guards also had rotating shifts. Saturdays were generally the most lenient time. But after a few people were caught trying to escape on a Saturday, they understood that the seemingly relaxed atmosphere was actually just harmless fallen leaves covering a trap, viciously luring prey to step into the abyss on their own.

So Ye Tongsheng did the opposite, choosing to act on a weekday. Zhuang Mingqi didn't object. He was worried about something else: “If I fail, will it affect your plan?”

“It's fine.” Ye Tongsheng squeezed the water out of the mop, gazing at the brilliant, fiery clouds outside the window. “Even if we fail, it doesn't matter. They can't beat me to death. I'll have another chance to start over.”

“As long as this cage still stands, I will fight to the end.”

At noon the next day, Zhuang Mingqi brushed past two girls in the cafeteria. One of them accidentally knocked over a bowl of soup. In that brief moment of chaos, someone with lightning-fast hands slipped a small, heavy paper packet into his pocket.

Zhuang Mingqi cleaned up his bowl and tray without speaking to them, because he wasn't supposed to know these people. But he remembered the girl with short hair was named Meng Meng; her crime was “rebellion.” The shorter girl was named Chen Xiaodie; her crime... no, it couldn't even be called a crime. She had actually attempted suicide due to depression.

Meng Meng and Ye Tongsheng were both stubborn, defiant types who had been singled out for public punishment multiple times. Chen Xiaodie, however, was part of the honest, silent majority. The most extreme thing she had ever done was drink half a bottle of laundry detergent in a suicide attempt.

Ye Tongsheng's judgment in choosing people was truly strange; even Zhuang Mingqi, who had been chosen by him, couldn't understand his intentions. He took the small paper packet back to his room. He carefully unwrapped it. Two batteries were wrapped inside two pieces of foil gum wrappers. Instructions were written in small print on the back of the paper: Tear the wrapper into a strip that's thin in the middle and wider at the ends. Press the foil side against the positive and negative terminals of the battery. The thinnest part in the middle will automatically catch fire.

In the long, purgatorial nights, this was the only fleeting spark they could hold in their hands.

In the quietest hours of the early morning, a dry summer night's breeze rustled the treetops. Everyone in the center was jolted awake by a sudden, loud “BOOM,” and even the floorboards trembled slightly.

A security guard yawned and leaned out to look: “Was that thunder?”

Wide awake, Zhuang Mingqi stared at the sealed window, his eyes reflecting the soaring flames and thick smoke in the distant night sky. Hurried footsteps ran down the hallway. The sounds inside the building grew gradually chaotic and clamorous. Someone was shouting “Fire!”, and the piercing shriek of the smoke alarm echoed through the corridor.

It was the “signal” Ye Tongsheng had sent to all his accomplices.

Zhuang Mingqi pulled the two batteries and the foil wrapper from under his pillow. He rolled out of bed. Calmly and composedly, he followed the instructions, as if conducting a physics experiment, touching one end of the wrapper to the positive terminal and the other end lightly to the negative—

A soft crackle sounded. A cluster of sparks bloomed from the thin wrapper in his palm, falling onto the stark white sheets and quilt. A black scorch mark gradually expanded. A crimson flame flared up, like boiling lava bursting from beneath the earth and flowing everywhere.

He incongruously thought of the story of Prometheus stealing fire. He slipped out of his room and ducked into the bathroom across the hall. Billowing smoke poured from under the door. The third-floor alarm joined the chorus of shrieks. A moment later, two orderlies rushed over from the other end of the hall and were nearly scalded by the wave of scorching heat from the room. Meanwhile, Zhuang Mingqi used the smoke as cover. Covering his nose and mouth, he slipped into rooms with open doors and, with the cheerful enthusiasm of lighting birthday candles, set a series of fires before quickly slipping down the stairs and out of the building.

The center didn't cover a large area; the building was only three stories high, with a layout similar to a school building. The separate cafeteria building was already burning so intensely it was impossible to approach. More than forty children in patient gowns were huddled together in the open space in front of the building. Security guards were trying to fight the fire with extinguishers and basins of water. The doctors and nurses who had run out still looked half-asleep, gazing at the flickering flames near and far with either bewilderment or panic.

Zhuang Mingqi did a quick count. About half the rooms in the building were lit with fire, in various locations—some were dormitories, others were treatment rooms. They burned fiercely, a roaring inferno. It seemed he wasn't the only one who had lingered inside after the fire started, spreading the seeds of vengeance.

Someone approached from behind. Zhuang Mingqi, unaccustomed to it, took a step to the left and turned his head to meet Ye Tongsheng's eyes, which were brighter and more captivating than the flames.

They said nothing. They looked at each other and smiled, then silently turned back to watch the karma fire blazing in hell.

The sirens of fire trucks and police cars raced in from the distance.