The knock had a name. Lao Kang — old colleague, bad gambler, a man whose debts had finally grown teeth — standing at the door with a problem Yueguang could not afford and an offer he could not refuse. By the time the door closed again, the bargain was struck: Yueguang would make the debts disappear, and Lao Kang would sit at his desk, badge in with his keycard, and keep a careful man’s life running while its owner went somewhere no leave form would ever cover.
It was, by every rule Yueguang had lived his life by, a terrible arrangement. It was also the only one on offer.
And so he stepped out of his building with a bag on his shoulder and the bronze in his pocket, under city lights that seemed suddenly soft and unreal. North, to Jiuyuan. To the dust that raised the man history remembers as a monster. Every part of the plan was borrowed — borrowed time, borrowed credibility, a borrowed life sitting at his desk — and none of it could be given back if something went wrong.
He had spent twelve years reading about men who set out on roads like this one. He knew how rarely the road let them arrive unchanged.
What follows a man, when he finally leaves his own life to go looking for another?
Chapter Eleven of Tales of Alive — 纪真然 is now live on WebNovel and Royal Road.
The Shadow on the Road
About this chapter
Chapter Eleven takes Lü Yueguang out of his apartment and onto the road at last — and discovers that leaving is not the same as escaping. The bargain that bought his freedom has left him holding another man’s debts, and the questions he is carrying north turn out to be questions other people have opinions about. The Shadow on the Road is a chapter about the cost of motion: the friends who warn you, the arrangements that must hold while your back is turned, and the difference between walking toward the past and being followed by it. It asks how far a careful man gets before the road starts to look back.
About Tales of Alive
Tales of Alive — 纪真然 is a historical novel by 吕恩豪, set between contemporary Shenzhen and Han Dynasty China. Book One follows a man trained to read the past who finds himself forced to live inside it. New chapters publish every Sunday on WebNovel and Royal Road. Every court session, every meal, every execution has a source. What the author cannot prove is marked clearly. The rest, they will stand behind.
Continue reading
- Chapter One — The Weight of Plastic and Dust
- Chapter Two — The Vessel of Wrath
- Chapter Three — The Weight of the Bargain
- Chapter Four — The Echo of the Breaking
- Chapter Five — The Bureaucrat’s Halberd
- Chapter Six — The Long March
- Chapter Seven — The River of Rot
- Chapter Eight — The Shards of Home
- Chapter Nine — The Ghost in the Glass
- Chapter Ten — The Dangerous Bargain
- Chapter Twelve — The Ink and the Ache
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