Extraterrestrial demons invaded; I laid the groundwork eight years in advance.

The off-road vehicle traveled through the night.

The desolate wilderness of northern Tibet has no boundaries, no trees, only darkness stretching from under the wheels of the car all the way to the horizon.

Starlight fell, shattering into pale silver fragments on the car body, outlining the logo on the door—a cracked horizon, a long sword piercing the night, its wings symmetrically raised on both sides.

On the day Gesang Pingcuo joined the team, Liu Feng stood on the training field and said: "Darkness is on the left, dawn is on the right. Wings are protection, and the longsword is determination."

At this moment, starlight shines on the emblem, where darkness and dawn coexist within the same badge. Night and starlight meet on the car's surface, as if darkness and light had pre-arranged their positions, waiting only for time to bring them to fruition.

Gesang leaned back in his seat, his face turned toward the window. His silhouette was reflected in the car window—overlapping with that summer when he was eighteen.

Eight years ago, he was admitted to a university in mainland China. He traveled by bus from northern Tibet to Sala, and then by train to Chengdu. As the train left Nagqu, he pressed his face against the window, watching the wilderness recede little by little.

He spent eighteen years running across that wasteland, herding yak, collecting cow dung, and following his grandfather to find lost sheep—but that was the first time he saw it with the eyes of "farewell."

There was only one thought in my mind: I want to come back.

Not because it was anything special. There was nothing here—no trees, no shops, no paved roads; in winter your ears would freeze off, and in summer your skin would peel from the sun. He loved it simply because it was the place his grandfather had stood for his entire life.

"We've arrived." Li Cheng's voice brought Gesang back to reality.

A rift hovered beside an abandoned ranch fence, its dark red light casting long, thin shadows of crooked wooden stakes. The Apostle's panel flashed: The rift is expanding; eight monsters, apprentice level.

"Same as always," Gesang said, "you carry, I'll hit."

Li Cheng nodded, but did not get out of the car immediately.

"Do you remember what I said yesterday?" he said.

Gesang turned to look at him.

"I'll go home with you," Li Cheng said. "If you come back alive in eight days, you have to buy me a drink."

Gesang smiled slightly: "I remember."

Li Cheng stopped talking. He gripped the short knife, got out of the car, and walked towards the crack. He stopped a dozen meters in front of the crack, like a stake wedged into the frozen soil.

Gesang picked up his bow and arrows and squatted down on a low wall about thirty meters away from the crevice.

The first monster emerged. It was a poison sac crocodile lizard, its scales a dark gray, its saliva dripping onto the grass and burning charred pits. Gesang didn't look at its head, but rather at its forelimbs.

  

The instant its left forelimb landed firmly, he drew back the bowstring, activated the Spirit Edge Technique, and channeled spiritual energy into his arm, condensing and compressing it along the bowstring—a semi-transparent arrow of spiritual energy streaked across the night, precisely piercing the lizard's brain. The lizard twitched, its body collapsing heavily to the ground.

The second monster poked its head out immediately. Gesang's next spirit arrow was already nocking on the bowstring.

One after another, spiritual energy arrows lit up, and under the dark red rift light, those translucent spiritual energy arrows flew silently across the battlefield like snowflakes.

His body remembers the rhythm: condensation, compression, release.

None of the eight monsters dared to cross Li Cheng's path. The dark red rift closed, and the abandoned pasture returned to calm.

"Five apprentices at level six, three at level seven, all bodies intact." Li Cheng crouched down to inspect. The two began cleaning up the battlefield, bagging, numbering, and boxing the bodies.

As Gesang squatted on the ground cleaning up the last patch of blood, the sky was already beginning to lighten. The neutralizing agent was sprayed onto the black bloodstain; white foam churned a few times before slowly dissipating, revealing the black, damp soil beneath.

His knees pressed against the frozen ground, a dull pain pressing down on his bones.

He thought of his grandfather's legs.

Those were the marks of kneeling for too many years. The joints were worn out, the knees were wider than normal, the left foot was turned outward, and it was difficult to walk fast or steadily, with each step requiring a tentative test of the ground.

Grandpa said, "Back then, we weren't human; we were just talking animals."

He said this without anger or tears, as if stating something perfectly ordinary.

People of that age no longer get angry about those things—anger is for young people. Their generation has used up all their anger; all that's left is silence.

When Gesang was a child, he just listened quietly and couldn't understand the weight behind that silence.

"Herding sheep required walking dozens of miles, leaving the soles of our feet covered in cuts and bruises. We would rub them with ghee when we got back at night, and then continue the journey the next day. We couldn't stop; if we walked too slowly, we would be whipped."

"We were working that day when someone ran over from a distance and said that Jinzhumami had arrived."

"The Bodhisattva soldiers walked up to us, but instead of drawing their guns, they smiled and said to us, 'A bright red sun has risen in the east, you can stand still.'"

Gesang stood up. He looked towards the eastern horizon—a sliver of gray-white appeared on the horizon, beneath which a very faint orange-red was brewing, like a furnace of charcoal that had not yet been fully heated.

He lowered his head and stomped on the patch of soil that had been sprayed with neutralizing agent. The black blood was gone, the soil was wet, and after he loosened his foot, half a clear shoe print remained.

"What are you thinking about?" Li Cheng walked over.

"I miss my grandpa," Gesang said. Li Cheng glanced at him but didn't ask any further questions. He picked up the last bag of monster corpses, put it in the trunk, and closed the car door.

Gesang stood there, watching the bright red light from the east spread from the sky all the way to the ground, covering the land where his grandfather had knelt, and every inch of grass roots that had been washed by the neutralizing agent.

Grandpa still walks with a limp, but his back is straight. He never lets anyone help him; he says, "I can walk by myself."

My grandfather's generation spent their lives trying to confirm that they were no longer treated like livestock, that they could stand up and eat, and that their descendants would no longer have to kneel.

Gesang turned around, got into the car, and closed the door.

The SUV turned around and drove back the way it came. Li Cheng gripped the steering wheel, glanced at Gesang in the rearview mirror, said nothing, and then turned his gaze back to the front.

Gesang leaned back in his seat, watching the grassland outside gradually light up—the dark outlines on the wasteland began to reveal brown and ochre patterns, and the gold on the snow-capped peaks grew brighter and brighter, like a giant lamp being lit.

He lowered his head, took off his gloves, and looked at his hands. The lines on his palms were clear, and his fingers were nimble. He remembered his grandfather's hands—the cracks on his fingertips resembled a network of rivers on a map, each one formed by freezing, wear, and hardship.

Grandpa rarely mentioned the serf owners' families, but once he said, "That steward's boots had three-inch-thick leather soles. In winter, walking on the ice, you'd leave a dent with every step." Grandpa's feet never wore boots like that in his entire life.

He thought to himself that his hands were too new.

As the car passed a gentle slope, Gesang saw the outline of his own yard through the car window—mud walls, a low roof, and a wisp of smoke rising from the chimney. Grandpa was already up, making tea.

Gesang loves this land. Not because of its snow-capped mountains and grasslands, not because of its sunrise and starry sky. It's because after his grandfather's generation knelt for their entire lives, they can finally sit on the doorstep and say, "It's dawn."

It was because he stood there, bathed in the morning light, that he knew that what crawled out of those cracks would never again make this land kneel.

The aroma of tea lingers, Grandpa is still here, and the mornings still resonate on this land.

The off-road vehicle continued its journey in the morning light. Its tracks stretched across the grass, leading towards the rising wisp of smoke in the distance. Gesang rested his hand on the window sill, his fingertips lightly touching the cool metal. Morning light filtered through his fingers, falling on the back of his hand.

He slowly closed his eyes.

The sky was bright and clear.