The glow of the computer monitor illuminated the dark room, highlighting dust particles dancing silently in the air. Bao Ming typed with a mechanical rhythm, the click-clack of the keyboard the only melody accompanying his quiet night. As a Software Developer, his life consisted of complex code and bugs that needed fixing—a routine that was almost lifeless.
The world behind the screen was far more colorful. During his spare time, which he always stole from his already limited sleep, Bao Ming immersed himself in another world through webnovels. This was his main entertainment, an escape from the misfortune that seemed to follow him like a shadow. He was a story addict, enjoying fictional lives more than his own bitter reality.
His eyes, which could only see half-perfectly, shifted from the screen to an object on his desk. An old wooden box. Inside, carefully stored, was his dream—an intricately designed iron chain, with a dull silver finish and small, perfectly interlinked rings.
His slender fingers touched the chain, feeling the cold texture of the metal. He was obsessed with chains. To most people, they might symbolize bondage, but to him, chains represented order, connection, and hidden strength. Every linked ring was like a line of code that composed reality.
His vision then blurred with memories. His left eye, which had been completely blind since the accident when he was 13, sometimes still ached—not physically, but in his memory. He recalled the sound of screams, shattering glass, and the sudden darkness that swallowed half of his world.
His mind drifted further, to brighter times. He saw the shadow of his best friend, Lin Qiang, whose face had grown blurry with the passage of time. They had promised each other that one day, they would travel the world together, freeing themselves from the monotonous chains of life. But fate had other plans. Lin Qiang was gone forever, taken by an unexpected illness.
"We'll be like chains, Ming," Lin Qiang whispered in his memory. "Separated here, but connected somewhere else."
Bao Ming sighed. He spoke to himself, a habit he had carried since childhood. "Connected? Or just shackled?"
His office world was full of people, yet he felt alone. He remembered his school days, when he was a quiet child often teased for his thick glasses (before the accident). Then there was his first love, which ended without confirmation—just an unsent letter and gazes from afar.
He also smiled bitterly at the memory of his childhood mischief with Lin Qiang; stealing guavas from a neighbor's tree, skipping piano lessons, or watching horror movies until they couldn't sleep. Those sweet memories were like an oasis in the desert of his barren adult life.
His childhood dreams had once been so grand. He wanted to be an explorer, an inventor, someone who was free. Not a programmer confined to an air-conditioned cubicle, counting the days until payday.
The night grew late. Bao Ming gazed at the city through the window. The city lights flickered like artificial stars. He began to appreciate his own life, how precious every second spent in this solitude was. He could still feel, still remember, still... live.
The next day, during his boring commute home, fate asked him to make a choice. A scream, the glare of train lights, and a child slipping on the platform.
Without a second thought, his body moved. It was a spontaneous, pure act—perhaps for the first time in his life, he didn't overthink or calculate the pros and cons. He pushed the small body to safety.
And the world turned white.
The deafening crash was the last symphony he heard. A sharp, brief pain, and then... silence.
Bao Ming didn't know that his death on the train tracks was not the end. It was merely the first link breaking free from one life and locking into a new one. A much larger, darker, and more mysterious game awaited him.
He would soon awaken in a world where chains were no longer just a dream, but perhaps reality.
[And so, the journey of The Chain of Domination began.]