Winter in was always cruel. Beyond the office window, white snowflakes drifted on the wind and settled silently upon the streets below. Outside, crowds moved in restless currents—sleek modern cars, electric trains gliding past, people clutching smartphones as they hurried through their busy lives. Yet inside this office, time itself seemed to have come to a standstill.

  Alister—known by his true name more than two centuries ago as Arthur Wellesley—leaned back in his leather chair and released a slow, heavy breath. Between his fingers lay a yellowed envelope, its texture like that of ancient parchment. Today was December 21. Ever since December 21, 1900, without fail, once every year, on this day alone, the envelope arrived.

  His age had frozen at around thirty long ago. In 1825, on the banks of the Varanasi River, when he hovered between life and death, a mysterious yogi had forced him to drink a “black elixir.” From that moment, he became a man untouched by aging, forgotten by death itself. Who that yogi truly was, and what that liquid had been—these questions remained unresolved mysteries throughout his more than two hundred years of existence. Disguised now as a manager at , Geneva’s leading news agency, Alister waited for one thing only: this envelope.

  He opened it carefully.

  This year’s letter read:

  “Alister, I trust you still remember what I told you in earlier years about ‘Emperor Ashoka’s First Book—Propaganda.’ The art of controlling the minds of the masses. This year, however, allow me to speak of something far more intriguing: the Second Book.

  More than two thousand years ago, after witnessing the brutality of the Kalinga War, gathered the ‘Nine Secret Scholars.’ Legend says that each of them guarded a book containing knowledge powerful enough to shake the world. The second among them was a biologist—one who understood every secret of the human body. It is said he could kill with a single touch, or heal all disease just as easily. To prevent such power from being misused, they preserved these arts in absolute secrecy, for as long as they lived.

  Now, in the year 2026, efforts are underway to resurrect that ancient knowledge in the modern world—especially the power of the Second Book. Consider carefully why this is happening. And remember: do not trust the light.”

  Alister’s hands began to tremble. Of all the letters he had received over the past 120 years, this one came closest to his own life story. Was he not himself living proof—made disease-free and immortal by the touch of that yogi? The sender of these letters was not merely recounting ancient legends of Ashoka; he was speaking directly to Alister’s fate.

  He walked to the massive antique wooden cabinet in his office and opened a hidden compartment at its base. Inside lay every envelope he had collected since 1900. The letter from 1914 spoke of the “First Book,” hinting ominously at a coming world war. The letter from 1969 discussed the “Sixth Book—Gravity,” foreshadowing humanity’s first steps onto the Moon.

  But this year’s message was different.

  Along with the letter was a photograph. It showed an ancient stone pillar in India. Yet at its base, etched faintly into the stone, were symbols readable only through modern quantum code. The sender clearly knew more than fragments of old legends—could he himself be connected to that secret order?

  “So then… was the ‘Second Man’ that yogi? Or is it the one who’s been sending me these letters?”

  Alister turned back toward the window.

  For a brief moment, through the falling snow, he thought he saw a man dressed in black, standing outside and looking up at the newspaper building. His eyesight had been unnaturally sharp for a long time now. This was no ordinary trick of the eye.

  Not something a normal human should be able to see.

  ???????? ??????????? ????????????????? ??? ?????????????????—

  Alister reached into the thick stack of yellowed envelopes on his desk and pulled out one marked “2009” in faint pencil. He had read this letter countless times before, yet every reading felt new, as though its meaning shifted with time. The 2026 message he had received today seemed to push him backward, dragging him into the gravity of old memories.

  He settled deeper into his chair and began to read the words written seventeen years ago.

  “My dear Alister… did you know that some of the greatest minds who altered the course of human history were granted secret contact with Emperor Ashoka’s Nine Hidden Men? They did not inherit the knowledge in its entirety—but even a fragment of that ‘illumination’ was enough to reshape the world.

  Take , for example. He was entrusted with rudimentary principles of the Fourth Book—Metallurgy. Yet knowing how dangerous such knowledge would be if revealed too early, he concealed it within his art, encoding secrets as geometric symbols. Would you believe that the hidden curves behind the smile of the Mona Lisa are, in truth, formulas capable of transmuting matter?

  Then there is . He grasped only half of the laws contained in the Sixth Book—Gravity. Even so, he never committed everything he knew to public record. Instead, he buried Ashoka’s wisdom within cryptic manuscripts, written in codes only he could decipher.

  In music, the harmonies of carry frequencies of ‘mind control through sound’—the science of propaganda. And within the verses of the poet , the secrets of cosmology lie dormant, waiting for those who can read between the lines.

  They all chose to hide knowledge inside art rather than pass it on directly. This, perhaps, was Ashoka’s original intent—to ensure that such power never fell into the wrong hands. And you, Alister… what kind of art lies hidden within your immortal body?”

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  As he read, the image of the old yogi from Varanasi resurfaced in his mind. When the man had forced the potion down his throat, his lips had been moving—softly chanting. Was it a mantra? Or some form of mnemonic melody, meant to preserve knowledge through sound?

  Alister’s fingers began tapping unconsciously on the desk, falling into a steady rhythm. That rhythm matched the pulse flowing through his veins, as if his blood itself were keeping time.

  Knock… knock… knock…

  The sound shattered his thoughts like glass. He quickly folded the 2009 letter away and looked toward the door, his brow tightening.

  “Come in.”

  The door opened, and his secretary, Sophie, stepped inside. She held a tablet in her hands, her face pale with unease.

  “I’m sorry, Manager… there’s a situation downstairs. A group of people just arrived and are demanding to see you immediately. They claim they’re from the … but something feels off.”

  Alister rose from his chair. His heartbeat accelerated, syncing again with that earlier rhythm.

  “Is there a man wearing dark glasses among them, Sophie?”

  She froze, then nodded slowly. “Yes… he’s the one asking to see you. He said he wants to meet Arthur Wellesley. I told him no one by that name works here, but he replied—he said you are Arthur Wellesley.”

  A chill ran straight down Alister’s spine.

  A name buried for more than two centuries. A name no one in this age should know. The warning from the anonymous letters—sent year after year—was no longer abstract. It had begun.

  The cold spreading through his back felt sharper than the snow falling outside. Arthur Wellesley. How did Sophie know that name?

  As he turned to look at her, he realized the face before him was no longer that of the ever-smiling secretary. In her hand gleamed a silver semi-automatic pistol, already leveled squarely at his chest.

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  “Come quietly, Manager… no—Arthur.”

  Sophie’s voice was cold and rigid, like a machine stripped of emotion. “We know your body has been alive for a very long time. But what’s inside these bullets is a toxin that will put your blood to sleep—temporarily. One shot is all it takes to make sure you can’t move.”

  At that very instant, the office door burst open with a thunderous crash. The man in dark glasses stormed into the room like a violent gust of wind. His movements were faster than any human’s—too sharp, too mechanical.

  He stopped directly in front of Alister and calmly removed his sunglasses.

  Alister nearly stopped breathing.

  Where natural eyes should have been, two mercury-bright lenses gleamed coldly in their place.

  Veeee—

  With a sharp, piercing whine, crimson laser beams erupted from the man’s eyes.

  The beams struck the cabinet atop Alister’s desk, slicing through the steel lock as easily as a knife through butter. In one fluid motion, the man expertly pulled out every secret envelope Alister had collected since the year 1900.

  “Item secured,” the man in dark glasses said, nodding to Sophie in a flat, mechanical voice.

  “Bring him.”

  They shoved Alister between them and forced him out of the office. Outside, employees stood frozen in terror—but a single sweep of the man’s laser eyes silenced the entire floor.

  “No one move!” Sophie shouted. “If you want to live, stay exactly where you are.”

  When they reached the ground floor, an armored SUV with black-tinted windows was waiting. As passersby on the street stared in confusion, unaware of what was unfolding, the man in dark glasses roughly shoved Alister into the back seat.

  The door slammed shut.

  In the pitch-black interior of the vehicle, Alister was trapped with Sophie and the man in dark glasses.

  “You’re probably wondering where we’re taking you,” Sophie said as she floored the accelerator, glancing at him through the mirror. “We’re taking you to the ones searching for Emperor Ashoka’s Fourth Book. You’re the key to it.”

  On the snow-dusted streets of Geneva, life and death began competing within the span of seconds.

  Directly ahead on the road, a man dressed entirely in black stood motionless. Sophie blared the horn—but the man remained still, like a stone statue.

  The armored SUV accelerated, aiming to plow straight through him.

  He did not move.

  Planting his feet into the asphalt like a stone pillar, he thrust both palms forward to meet the oncoming vehicle.

  BOOM!

  The entire SUV lifted off the ground, its rear wheels hanging in the air for a brief moment. The reinforced steel front crumpled inward under the imprint of the man’s palms, steam and smoke bursting from the engine. His strength had surpassed the limits of human possibility.

  “Shoot him! Tear him apart—now!” Sophie screamed hysterically from inside the vehicle.

  The doors flew open. Three men in black suits leapt out and opened fire with HK-MP5 submachine guns.

  Rat-tat-tat! Rat-tat-tat!

  Bullets poured toward the man like a Himalayan snowstorm, but with astonishing speed he twisted through the air, evading them. His movements were fluid—like a shadow dancing.

  Sliding behind a parked car for cover, the man in black drew a gold-finished turbo pistol from his waist. His shooting stance was almost artistic. Without exposing more than his arm, he fired with precision.

  Bang! Bang!

  Two attackers charging from the front collapsed—one shot clean through the neck, the other through the forehead—blood staining the snow beneath them. The remaining enemies returned fire, bullets slamming into the car’s frame with sharp metallic cracks.

  At that moment, the man in dark glasses stepped out of the SUV with chilling calm. Shattered glass crunched beneath his heavy footsteps.

  “Are you trying to steal our property?”

  His voice grated like metal scraping against metal.

  With one hand, he tore the rear door off the SUV.

  CRAAASH!

  The massive steel door ripped free like paper, and he hurled it with terrifying force—spinning it like a discus toward the gunman’s hiding place.

  The man in black vaulted over the car, flipping through the air in a somersault as the door smashed into the vehicle, nearly tearing it in half.

  “Release the gas!” Sophie shouted from inside the SUV.

  But the man in black moved first, tossing a small canister that burst into swirling green toxic vapor. Ordinary soldiers collapsed almost instantly, eyes rolling back—but the cyborg strode straight through the fumes, advancing relentlessly.

  Now, the battlefield narrowed into a one-on-one clash between two beings beyond the ordinary.

  The cyborg’s punch missed the gunman’s head by inches and smashed into a nearby streetlamp, bending the steel pole grotesquely. The gunman answered without hesitation—driving a knee into the cyborg’s abdomen, then slamming a fist into his face.

  The impact of flesh against steel echoed across the street like a war drum.

  “That all you’ve got?” the man in black sneered, gripping both of the cyborg’s arms and twisting, his fingers straining to crush reinforced metal joints.

  The cyborg’s eyes flared red—

  —but in that instant, the man in black ducked low and drove his hand into a dented section of the cyborg’s chest plating.

  CRACK—ZZZANG!

  His arm punched straight through steel, ripping out a mercury-bright main power source. The cyborg convulsed violently, electrical surges rippling through its body. The red glow in its eyes faded, and the massive metal form collapsed lifelessly onto the snow-covered road.

  Breathing hard, the man in black tore open the SUV door and pulled the trembling Alister out.

  “Arthur,” he said firmly, locking eyes with him.

  “The world has been waiting for you.”

  “Let’s go.”