Chapter One: Lost in a Nightmare

Northern Myanmar—a place where the dead outnumber the living. If not for the disappearance of my sister, I would never have set foot in that godforsaken land.

Online scams, organ harvesting, live burials, electric torture...

If it were only these horrors, I would have been prepared. But when I truly arrived in this hell, I realized there were things here far more terrifying and bizarre.

Years later, this ordeal remains a nightmare I can't shake.

My name is Liu Nanfeng. Whenever I speak of this, people think I’m joking, or worse, that I am insane.

Everything began that autumn, the origin of all nightmares.

And it all started with a video sent to me by my sister, who had been missing for three years.

Live organ extraction, burying people upside down, faces with a dozen eyes, insects the size of humans, the clinking of glasses in underground lairs...

"Boom!"

Suddenly, a violent explosion nearly knocked me unconscious, countless fragments of shrapnel tearing through my body.

Am I going to die...?

Both my parents were officers, my sister a special agent.

Growing up in such a family, I had little choice in life. After getting into the city’s police academy, I’d hoped to secure a stable job after graduation. Who could have guessed I’d end up as a lowly auxiliary policeman? I never even worked big cases—just tagged along with colleagues to raid massage parlors, and even that was considered a major operation.

Through the haze, I sensed someone dragging me by the shoulders. There was a familiar scent of gardenia perfume.

"Sis..."

I stared at the vague outline before me, feeling a sharp pain in my neck—as if stabbed by a needle. Instantly, my mind cleared, but then a wooden club, thick as an arm, crashed down on my back.

"Ah!"

I twisted in agony, only to discover my hands were bound behind me. Two burly, dark-skinned men stood nearby, one grinning menacingly while hefting the club.

Fear and confusion mingled within me. I’d just been riddled by shrapnel—how was I now here, unharmed?

Clenching my teeth, I surveyed my surroundings. I was tied up in a plaza, surrounded by rows of buildings caged in by security bars. In the distance were towering walls strung with electrified wire and guard towers, each topped with a gleaming heavy machine gun.

High up on a nearby building, neon lights blazed out a row of bold letters—Kosinski Kwame!

My mind went blank, then spun with dizziness—I’d been brought to the notorious KK compound!

While I reeled, the two thugs yanked me to my feet and dragged me to the end of a line. One untied my ropes and barked, "Behave! Follow the line! If you try to run, I’ll chop off your legs and feed them to the crocodiles!"

I was indignant, but powerless. All I could do was fall in line, glancing around. There were twenty or thirty other so-called "pigs" like me—men, women, young and old. Some had come willingly, some were tricked, and others had been kidnapped.

"Pigs"—that’s what they called those lured or abducted by these black-market organizations.

In the noisy crowd, some looked excited, others terrified, and some wore blank faces.

A Wuling minivan sped up and screeched to a halt before us. Out stepped a man in a military coat and sunglasses, his face grim.

With a cold, emotionless sweep of his gaze, he roared, "Shut up, you filthy pigs! Stand straight! Men on the left, women on the right! Move it—now!"

He hadn’t finished when a buzz-cut man near me shouted, "Damn it, let me go! You bastards! Why did you grab me? What law did I break? You’re criminals!"

"Oh? Who did you offend?" The sunglasses man raised an eyebrow, as if hearing the world’s funniest joke.

He gestured, and several masked thugs closed in, each wielding an electric baton. Their faces were covered by Peking opera masks, making them look all the more sinister.

As these masked men approached, the quick-witted among us snapped into line, while the slow suffered—the crackling batons lashed out indiscriminately. The women, already pale with terror, shrieked as the electric prods struck them.

Their screams only fueled the masked men's frenzy.

The troublemaker who’d shouted was dragged aside by two masked men, who slashed at him with machetes, each blow carefully avoiding the vital organs.

The wet, chopping sound was one I’d only ever heard at butcher stalls.

Bone and tissue splattered across my face. Even as a police academy graduate, I trembled. Here, we "pigs" were nothing but meat, at the mercy of the butchers.

Cries of pain, the snap of breaking joints, the crackle of electricity—all mingled in the air, thick with the stench of scorched flesh.

I was lucky, packed in the middle of the crowd, spared the worst.

After a few minutes, the crowd fell silent. Separated by gender, we crouched in two shivering groups.

The troublemaker lay in a pool of blood, his limbs hacked off. He was nothing but a human stump.

I shuddered, warily glancing at the sunglasses man.

I’d read countless gruesome cases in textbooks—bodies blown apart, cooked in pressure cookers, human-skin drums...

But seeing a living man hacked to pieces before my eyes shook me to my core.

"Let me introduce myself—I’m Brother Can," the sunglasses man finally said. "You’ve probably heard of this place, think it’s hell on earth. Well, you’re wrong! That's slander—outright defamation!"

"Here, if you obey the rules and work hard, this is paradise. If you end up like that guy..."

He paused, kicking the blood-soaked stump. Everyone flinched.

"As for what we do here, I don’t need to explain—you’ve all seen it online. You know at least a little."

"Starting tomorrow, you’ll receive specialized training. If you apply yourself, it’s easy to get the hang of it!"

Brother Can raised a finger. "Ten thousand! That’s your first month’s performance target. Meet it, and you eat, drink, and live well. Fall short, and you’ll lose something you won’t get back!"

"If you exceed twenty thousand, you get a five percent bonus on the extra. If you make over a hundred thousand, there’s a special reward on top!"

His lips curled into a meaningful smile as he clapped his hands. His men quickly brought out a fat, pig-faced man.

"Heh heh! Brother Can, hello! Hello!" the fat man greeted obsequiously.

"This is Number 2033—a newcomer from last month! He hit a hundred thousand in his first week," Brother Can announced, slapping him on the back. "So, Number 2033, you get to pick one of the women from this batch!"

"Thank you, Brother Can! Thank you!" The fat man’s eyes glinted with greed as he scanned the crowd, lingering on the women—most around twenty, several in revealing dresses, some even in school uniforms.

Judging by their attire, I guessed they’d been tricked by shell companies under the pretense of team-building, or simply kidnapped and smuggled in.

At last, the fat man made his choice, grabbing a girl of seventeen or eighteen with a leering smile. He didn’t care who was watching; he reached straight for her dress.

"Slap!"

A crisp smack silenced everyone.

The girl, fierce as fire, slapped him again, even harder, across the other cheek.

But she was still just a girl. The fat man, enraged, punched her square in the face. She collapsed, motionless—whether unconscious or dead, I couldn’t tell.

"Feisty, aren’t you? Just how I like them!" he sneered, licking his lips before dragging her toward the nearby shack.

I watched, gasping for breath. Born into a family of police, if my parents were still alive—if my sister were here—what would they do?

"Stop right there, you bastard!"

At last, I couldn’t hold back. My shout cut through the air, drawing the attention of Brother Can, the fat man, and every single "pig" in the yard.