Volume Three: The Ancient City and the Clear Wind Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Great Derivation’s Escape

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By the time the tournament to strike down the Ten Evils had reached its eighth bout, the martial contest was nearing its end.

This time, the two fighters stepping into the ring were men who had long harbored grievances against one another.

Standing there together, they both struggled to maintain a semblance of civility.

“You’re fighting me today?” The representative of the opposition had, for many years, been deeply resentful of the military representative who served in the imperial court.

“So it seems.” The military representative offered little in the way of pleasantries. The two had once been acquainted, but many years ago, each had stood on opposite sides because they served different masters.

Now, after all these years, they remained adversaries—yet at last they had the chance to fight one another.

Neither man looked particularly pleased as they stood in the ring.

“Look at that bitter face of yours. Don’t think I owe you anything.” The speaker was the military representative. Before the fight had even begun, he made it clear to the representative of the opposition that the grievances of those years had arisen solely because they belonged to different camps. They had merely been forced to exchange blows in defense of what each held sacred.

“You know what kind of business I was in back then. You brought people to raid my place and arrest my men. That concerned my very survival. I had to pay the wages of everyone working for me.” As he spoke, his fists tightened even before the fight began. Remembering what had happened in those days was like recalling a thunderbolt striking from a clear sky.

“I don’t want to say much about the past either. Let’s just fight properly here on the platform.” The military representative had no desire to explain himself further.

In his eyes, the military faction was the firmest support he possessed.

Now that he stood in the ring, betraying the organization was impossible.

Only by defending the collective could he remain himself.

“Fine! You said it yourself. Don’t blame me for showing no mercy.” With that, the representative of the opposition clenched his fist and drove it toward the military representative.

At that moment, Chen Chen arrived. Seeing the two men on the platform poised like drawn swords, he knew that a new bout was about to begin.

In his capacity as an employee of DD Beating People, Chen Chen learned from the recruiters that the contestants in this round truly represented the interests of both the underworld and the legitimate world.

The clash between black and white was, at its most basic, a contest of bare fists.

To an individual, the affairs of the martial world were nothing more than the simplest of grudges and grievances.

Chen Chen merely watched that battle. No definite record remained of how far the fight went.

Before long, the platform was dismantled.

The bouts that followed were also glossed over in a few strokes, becoming sealed away in the past.

Vanishing along with them were the many people who had arrived at that place through the workings of fate.

The bonds between people in this world were the strangest things. When fate brought you together, you and I might meet in a place neither of us had ever imagined.

Perhaps the conditions there were less than ideal. Perhaps new stories awaited there. Yet the struggle to survive in this world was itself a mystery.

Before setting out, no one knew whether that place possessed everything necessary for life. Nor did anyone know whether, once the story ended, they would receive all that had been promised at the beginning.

The finest stories unfolded along the road, in the chase between those who pursued and those who fled.

In the end, Chen Chen too left the Ancient City of Clear Wind and went elsewhere to make a living.

The Ancient City of Clear Wind had buried too many memories of the past. There were no longer so many restraints, and sometimes life itself became a story.

As all living beings attained the Way, the Ancient City of Clear Wind gradually lowered its curtain.

Some among those people had come from far away. In the end, they became travelers returning to the destination of their lives, each heading back the way they had come.

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The multitude knows not the meaning of a single thought; drop by drop, they gather strength and travel to the ends of the earth.

Grudges and gratitude once brought us together; when fate runs out, guests scatter and return to the road home.

Every stretch of fate is beautiful in its own way. Some people, though we may never have the chance to meet them again, remain worth remembering and cherishing.

The same people, and the same scenes, would become fewer and fewer in the days ahead.

Chen Chen’s entanglements in the Ancient City of Clear Wind had come to an end. Even Netherworld Mountain gradually blurred within his memory.

Only the phrase “another mountain is also a Netherworld Mountain” reminded Chen Chen that every range of green hills concealed the bones of the loyal dead, and wherever bones were buried, there stood a Netherworld Mountain.

There was likewise an endless Netherworld, one that still required the descendants of a hundred schools to guard faithfully.

They must not dig into graves or rob tombs, nor damage the accumulated possessions of those who had passed away.

The dead lying there had conquered the world in their time. The places where their bones rested were their lands of repose.

Those who were still alive, with hands and feet intact, ought to work diligently. Could it be that they would stoop to stealing the dead men’s belongings? Would they truly prove themselves inferior to someone who merely lay still in the earth?

Chen Chen received another mission. This time, the official forces of DD Beating People, together with the military and the Council of All Beings, were to eliminate a dark power.

It was said that the culprit specialized in writing erotic novels. Across the nation, he sought out women of exceptional talent and beauty, supplying them to buyers for amusement and pleasure.

The military had once searched for this man in various places. Unfortunately, the underworld had intervened to obstruct the investigation and conceal his whereabouts, and in the end he had not been brought to justice.

Now the old case had been reopened. According to intelligence, someone had called the DD Beating People hotline.

After receiving the report, Chen Chen and the others rushed to the area in need of support, determined to eradicate the source of evil.

“The Demon City is a fine place!”

The Demon City was just as bustling as ever, with streams of traffic and towers of high-rise buildings standing everywhere.

The lawbreaker was hiding somewhere within this metropolis. In the past, the Heavens themselves had also carried on a grievance with this place.

Back then, the dark writer had written out the secrets of Heaven, provoking the wrath of the Celestial Powers, who sent down a calamity from the void.

The people of the Demon City were given one day to find the dark writer behind it all. Otherwise, heavenly punishment would descend once more.

From that day onward, many people felt that a crack had appeared in the sky above the Demon City.

Endless spiritual storms and boundless spiritual pressure weighed upon everyone’s hearts.

Several days had now passed, yet no one had ever fully determined what that calamity truly was: whether the Celestial Powers had shattered the Demon City’s sky from afar, or whether the writer himself had torn apart the homeland on which he depended with a single stroke of his pen.

All that was known was that the admonition that Heaven’s secrets must not be revealed remained deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.

The scene in which one stroke shattered the illusion of worldly glory was still discussed with emotion by all living beings to this day.

Chen Chen arrived in the Demon City with the others.

In a concealed office building, they discovered the dark writer and captured him in a single operation.

Another person had joined the dark writer in committing his crimes. She too had once been sought by both the underworld and the legitimate world.

Through the DD Beating People hotline, the group found her as well.

They knew that her business could not withstand the light of day, and that it was the sort of trade neither side wanted to touch.

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On the day the DD Beating People team found her, she was still committing crimes in front of her computer.

In the end, the military branch of DD Beating People arrested her on suspicion of involvement in gambling, drugs, and prostitution.

In the years that followed, perhaps she would have many more opportunities to examine human nature.

There would be temptations from criminals abroad, threats and inducements from lawbreakers at home, and a series of choices forced upon her whenever life became difficult.

Everyone walked beneath the Great Way. Everyone belonged to one collective or another.

Every place had living beings suited to survive there.

Chen Chen heard that, in the final confrontation, both sides had mobilized their manpower, material resources, and wealth.

Those who stopped at nothing for profit were like a thorn driven permanently into the hearts of all living beings.

Those who defied the law for money and beautiful women, for profit and personal disputes; those who defied morality and preyed upon ordinary people—all of them became calamities in one tribulation or another.

The day they were purged would be the day prosperity arrived for all.

Prosperity meant a peaceful nation and a settled people. It meant living in the present, no longer trembling with fear, no longer forcing everyone into a single set of values, and no longer fixing one’s gaze upon a single person in the hope of finding a business opportunity.

A society centered on human beings did not mean exploiting individuals for the sake of enormous profits.

It meant believing that when people lived well, their work would become more productive, more goods would be created, society would grow wealthier, and that wealth could be returned to society.

Those who made vast profits by trafficking in human beings, who used some system of distribution to assign a price to a person, and who joined with others to capture and sell people—those were the true enemies.

So too were the criminals who, driven into poverty, harvested kidneys and harmed the flowers of the nation for profit.

Their deeds were those of a backward and impoverished gang, ignorant of the priceless value of health, destroying the bodies and minds of victims who had been deceived.

Telecommunications fraud, kidney harvesting, human trafficking, cannibalism—these vast dark forces had spread across the country, committing crimes everywhere.

On the surface, such people looked no different from us. They had two arms and two legs, just as we did.

Yet in the real world, they had crossed over to the opposite side of humanity.

As human beings, cultivate the Three Virtues; do not commit the many forms of evil.

Beneath the boundless heavens, day follows day. Little by little, justice sustains the people.

Another day had come to an end. Sometimes Chen Chen’s role in the drama was simply that small.

Life was a play. Passing the day idly was one way to live it; working diligently was another.

No matter who Chen Chen was, no matter what kind of living creature one might be, only through striving could one live better.

The forces of DD Beating People vanished into the distance.

And vanishing with them were the grievances and feuds of all living beings.

When would the dark forces finally be brought to justice? When would righteousness once again judge the human world?

The net of Heaven was vast and fine. In the end, it remained the most beautiful refuge of all living beings.

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