He frowns. How unusual for a monk to frown or to think needlessly! Yuan shields his mind. His eyes closed in deep meditation. A ninety-nine-year-old monk who mastered time and desires shouldn’t let little thoughts infect his inner quiet.

Yuan approaches the edge of the cliff. The waterfall feels like a magnet full of untainted energy when his hand has touched something dead. Although, the hand feels energetically cleaner after healing a life with prana. His half-aging, half-youthful skin at the back of that hand has tightened. It looks younger than his other one now. He examines that hand. His skin hasn’t felt this smooth for so long. “Recharge my car,” he says.

A text message visible in his inbox: You’re missing the Independence Day Speech, auto-signed with Ren. Yuan ignores it.The next text plays in his brain when he is not looking at the CRAB: Come on! The war-hero can’t miss the speech in Alphatech when the war hero himself is its owner! Ren.

Look, old monk. You can’t ruin this. It’s my Alphatech, too. Ren. The next text-message comes.Manage. I’m busy—Yuan thinks the reply. The CRAB in his wrist reads his thoughts and sends it to Ren, adding the signature YY at the end. YY—everyone knows it’s the signature of the founder of Alphatech, the signature of the monk war hero.

Don’t meet him. That monster has an agenda. Ren. Yuan’s CRAB forwards the text to his mind. So, he silences it.Why after two decades? Ren.It smells fishy. Ren.Just because he's a childhood buddy, you'll run to him? Ren.Maybe I didn’t see the Apocalypse with you, but I'm your war comrade, too. Ren.The texts stay unread in his CRAB.

Focusing his mind, he searches for any sign of death in the forest. But nothing. Prana diminishes with death. He won’t know if the dead bird is far away.

He senses his energy, the prana, vibrating, looking for a release, either as a subconscious beast or as a conscious creator.

... You cannot force adventure on everyone, Ruem. You can’t implant wisdom.

… The system succeeded, enough to turn talents into machines, warriors into lazy citizens, knights into faithful slaves, writers and artists into pets and trophies. They succeeded, and they laughed. But not after the Apocalypse. Not after the War. We fought. We lost many, but we won through evolution. Now, things are different. Now things are better …