Night falls and a biting wind sweeps across the barren wasteland of the northeastern frontier. A hundred miles north of Haishi’s suburbs, among abandoned coal slag heaps and collapsed mine shafts, stands a fortress of steel and stone— the region’s largest maximum-security prison. Hundreds of hectares of razor-wire fencing and reinforced towers form countless forbidding enclosures. Inside the guard towers, searchlights slice through the darkness, their beams reflecting off the metal bars. Uniformed guards grip batons, sparks dancing in the gloom between iron gates. This grim institution holds the country’s most dangerous offenders—murderers, arsonists, rapists—whose roars of rage and cries of despair have been etched into the walls and bars. Rumors swirl that this is the “gathering place of evil,” the gateway to the underworld. At night, prisoners whisper of a singular inmate who once snapped a baton in half with his bare hands, his strength shaking the cellblock. They claim he was a special-forces operative, now cloaked in mystery. Though everyone speaks of him, none have truly seen his face. Time moves as though frozen here—cold, indifferent, despairing. Outside contact and family pleas are severed by steel and earth. Yet within this “city of darkness,” a legend quietly takes shape. He alone is spared the customary head-shaving; his long hair brushes his collar, and when he walks the tiers no guard or inmate dares challenge him. His presence pulls every eye. As dawn’s first pale light brushes the walls, he lifts his gaze to the prison’s four-meter-high ramparts—eyes burning with the promise of upheaval.