Cixing believed this was the price he paid for disrespecting the Father God—

He had been abandoned.

Cixing searched the entire Thorn Stone Forest but found not a single living member of his race, nor any sign of life.

His entire civilization had been destroyed. He was the sole survivor.

"Why didn’t you run?" Cixing cursed as he searched in frustration.

All his people were dead, and there was no word from the Father God. It took Cixing a long time to get his emotions under control.

Following the rites he had learned on his travels, he erected a tombstone for his people. He placed his red cloth into a box made of magnetite and buried it.

"Father God, the calamity has passed. Now, I return to you what you bestowed upon me."

At that moment, Cixing didn’t know if he truly believed in the Father God or not.

Perhaps he did.

He only knew that everything was gone, and faith was meaningless.

But he had not yet given up hope.

"I must find the source of the disaster and eliminate it."

Before the tombstone, Cixing swore an oath to his dead kinsmen and the vanished Father God.

Upon the ruins of his civilization, he built a cylindrical structure, like the upright conch shells that were once common in their culture.

Cixing searched the Thorn Stone Forest every day for traces of the disaster. He gradually discovered that the catastrophe that had destroyed the entire Thorn Stone Forest had been a massive earthquake.

A sudden, massive earthquake.

He investigated day after day. Sometimes, he would even leave the Thorn Stone Forest to gather information from other parts of the Abyss.

Until one day, upon returning to the Thorn Stone Forest, Cixing discovered new signs of life.

After the great earthquake, the stone pillars had collapsed and the ore veins had fractured. No newborns had appeared for a very long time, and Cixing could only wait in solitude, hoping for life to reappear.

However, as time went on, the stone pillars finally began to regrow, the ore veins continued to form, and life began to gestate within the Stone Forest once more.

Cixing was ecstatic.

’I’ll have companions again!’

With new companions, at least he wouldn’t be alone.

Then he could rebuild their civilization. It would be hard, but soon, things could go back to the way they were.

Even though things were no longer the same, the Thorn Stone Forest would eventually be bustling with life again.

Cixing waited anxiously before the ore veins, hoping the newborns would appear soon.

Finally, one day, a newborn came into being.

After its birth, the newborn lay beside the ore vein, staring blankly upward. It looked utterly dejected, like a lifeless statue.

’Is it still absorbing knowledge?’ Cixing had never seen anything like this.

He used to spend a lot of time by the ore veins and was very familiar with newborns. When they were first born, they were always full of curiosity about their surroundings.

As a result, almost every one of them was very lively, running all over the ore veins and even unwittingly causing a bit of destruction.

Cixing had helped catch those mischievous newborns before. They were naughty, but not very strong. Once caught and given proper guidance, they became very obedient.

But this one?

’It’s a little too quiet. Is it because of its personality?’

Cixing reached out and waved his hand in front of the newborn’s vacant eyes. His movement startled it.

The newborn finally reacted. It stood up, looked at Cixing, and seemed to be taking an interest in the outside world.

The newborn looked timid, sizing up the much taller Cixing. After realizing Cixing had no hostile intent, its expression became vacant again.

Then, the strange newborn shuffled over to another open spot and lay down again.

Then it went back to looking completely dejected.

’What’s going on?’

’Is it just lazy?’ Cixing could only chalk it up to the newborn’s personality. After all, Cixing himself was an anomaly.

Cixing had no choice but to let the newborn lie there and stopped bothering with it.

However, as more and more newborns came into being, Cixing discovered something terrible.

All of these newborns were listless and showed no interest in their surroundings, completely different from the ones he had seen before.

Cixing slowly began to interact with these newborns, testing their reactions to various things.

Soon, he found the reason for their strange state—they were missing many kinds of emotions.

Except for fear.

These newborns would react in various ways out of fear, but as soon as they felt safe, they would become idle.

Cixing looked at these "defects," and the more he watched them, the less he felt they were his companions.

Only then did he realize he had been indulging in wishful thinking all along.

These new members of the Mineral Race were not his companions.

Dejected, Cixing returned to his home and continued his solitary search for the cause of the great earthquake.

But after so much time, Cixing felt weary. He mechanically searched for clues, occasionally checking on the development of those "defects."

He had thought these "defects" would just continue to pile up in the ore veins, slacking off forever, but to his surprise, a war began.

Hope ignited in Cixing once more.

’War is the external manifestation of desire. They must be fighting over something!’

Full of hope, Cixing sought out these members of the Mineral Race, wanting to know if they had developed some kind of emotion that had triggered a war born of desire.

But things didn’t go as he wished. The cause of the Mineral Race’s war was, surprisingly, also an unknown fear.

Disappointed, Cixing returned to the black building and resumed his day-to-day life.

The repeated blows made him grow numb. Loneliness devoured his weary soul, and he even began to lose track of time.

Until a Mineral Race member made entirely of red crystal knocked on his door.

It was a member of the Ruby Race.

"Is this your home? It’s really nice." The Ruby Race member walked into his home without invitation.

Like a curious newborn, the Ruby Race member wandered around Cixing’s house, touching this and that, and even broke one of Cixing’s stone sculptures.

This Ruby Race member was very powerful, far beyond what a newborn could possess, but he didn’t seem to know how to control his strength.

Cixing paid no mind to the broken things and asked excitedly, "Where are you from? What’s your name?"

The Ruby Race member was very mischievous, but when Cixing asked, he obediently put down the thing in his hand and replied politely, "My name is Iron Fish. I was born in the No. 3 Iron Ore Vein Camp, but they wanted to hit me, so I ran away."

"You’re from the Iron Race?" Cixing asked, puzzled, as he sized up the other’s body of brilliant ruby.

"Yes." Iron Fish nodded blankly.

"Didn’t your knowledge tell you what iron looks like?" Cixing was very confused.

"I know what iron looks like. I used to look like that, too..."

At Cixing’s questioning, Iron Fish obediently recounted his experiences and transformation.

From his birth to being dragged into battle in a daze, and then being exiled, Iron Fish explained everything clearly, without any reservation.

Only then did Cixing realize that Iron Fish really was a newborn.

"Something touched me when I was still dazed and confused, and then I got this power. I don’t know why, either." Iron Fish himself was also bewildered.

Hearing this, Cixing instantly thought of something—the red headscarf the Father God had bestowed upon him.

He rushed to the tombstone and dug a large pit. The box he had buried before lay underground, perfectly intact.

But when he opened it, it was completely empty.