Jiang Chen deliberately chose to leave the city through the gate on the side opposite the great turtle beast.
Within the city he moved at a measured pace, but once outside the gates, he hurried straight along at speed, and in a matter of moments reached the open country.
"Alas."
In the roar of the wind, he suddenly heard such a sigh.
"Might I ask this traveler, for what matter are you running so urgently?"
Jiang Chen stopped, and pressed a hand to his sword.
Looking at the figure that had suddenly appeared before him, he said slowly: "Fleeing for my life. I have no choice but to hurry."
The figure that appeared was a handsome young cultivator, wearing plain garb. On his face there was truly no expression, yet his eyes seemed somehow melancholy.
He smiled. "You are the great savior of the State of You, the great hero who destroyed the Thousand-Absolute Curse. What life would you be fleeing?"
Jiang Chen let out a sigh. "Perhaps I am not."
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. I came chasing after you only to have a close look at what our envoy of justice, our model of virtue, actually looks like." He shook his head with a sigh. "And, in the end, nothing more than this."
Jiang Chen said: "I merely did what I ought to have done. There is no great justice in it. If Castle Lord Yin has nothing else, I must be on my way."
Back on the tavern rooftop, seeing the crowd of officials who had gone up to the Upper City to deliver their reports, one of them had been Yin Guan — and so Jiang Chen had remembered his face.
Everyone thought he was still hiding within the Twenty-Seventh Castle. The Stele-Bearing Army was still searching the city, and Zheng Chaoyang, its commander, was personally sealing the gates. Yet before the very eyes of all, he now appeared in the wilds outside the city.
"Ha! Do you truly think you saved this city?" Yin Guan sneered. "This Heaven-Blessed Kingdom is, at bottom, a country without hope!"
"Perhaps it is saved, perhaps it is not. But at least I saved an innocent young woman." Jiang Chen said. "As for whether the State of You has any hope, that is a matter for you people of You to consider."
"You stopped Muqing, and you wiped out the first curse. Then you must have seen Muqing's wet nurse by now. Do you know why she harbored such resentment? Did you ask why she would do such a thing at all costs?"
There was anger in Yin Guan's voice: "Do you know how her only son died?"
"I had no time to ask, and no wish to, either."
"Her only son was the Castle Lord of the Twenty-Seventh Castle of the year before last!"
The boy Qing, as Su Muqing had called him?
Jiang Chen's heart shook. He had thought that perhaps the old woman's son had suffered some grievance, or been persecuted by someone — the sort of pitiable stories one could imagine, pitiable as they were, yet not a reason to hate the whole world.
He had thought of many possibilities, yet this answer was still beyond expectation.
Almost at once, Jiang Chen recalled Su Muqing's words — "My cousin was very good, he was. But no matter what he did, he would die."
By Su Muqing's account, Yin Guan, as the Castle Lord due to report to the Upper City today, was fated today to fail his evaluation and end up devoured by the Guardian Sacred Beast.
And he had directly laid his own devices to trigger the Guardian Sacred Beast's frenzy, and slipped away with his life. He had even very nearly destroyed the Twenty-Seventh Castle outright — had that giant turtle beast gone on raging, the danger of the state's ruin would not have been impossible.
So he was merely saving himself?
"He was a very fine man. The three of us — Muqing and I — grew up together. We both cultivated with all our might. And so, to have more time to spend with Muqing, I deliberately held back my talent, and let him become that year's Castle Lord. I took it for a compensation. Little did I think... it would push him straight into hell!"
"Do you know what being a Lower City Castle Lord means?"
"The State of You divides only into Upper City and Lower City — which is to say, above the shell and below the shell. There is only one Upper City, the capital."
"There are thirty-nine Lower Cities in all, their names running from First City to Thirty-Ninth City. Where have you ever seen a city that only has a number? You would not name a dog kennel or a chicken coop, because knowing it is a dog kennel or a chicken coop — that is enough."
"Because this so-called changing of Castle Lords is nothing but a blind! What the current political system of the State of You wants is merely to pick out the finest and most gifted cultivators from every region of the realm, to serve as food for that blasted Guardian Sacred Beast! The one judged worst in the review is in truth the most gifted of all. But talent itself becomes the reason for death!"
"Only thus can it keep growing forever, keep staying in the State of You, and forever keep, 'guarding' this place!"
"But the guarding the people give thanks and praise for is nothing but the instinctive food-hoarding of a wild beast!"
Yin Guan's gaze was twisted by a kind of pain.
He was laughing. Laughing at himself, and at this deformed country.
"Ah, I see!" said Jiang Chen.
"You see?"
"I only just figured something out." Jiang Chen said. "I had thought Zhao Cang wanted to kill me. Only now do I understand that he truly did want to kill me — but he did not need to do it himself. In front of everyone, he announced that I had dissolved the Thousand-Absolute Curse, in order to borrow your blade."
"Because you are clever. You refused him. A clever man can see the shape of this country clearly. If you have backing, then so be it. If you have none, then it is better that one fewer person knows of you. And as for me... do you think I should kill you?"
"Perhaps I should." Jiang Chen's grip tightened on his sword. "For you have your road, and I have mine."
"You still don't think you were wrong?" Yin Guan frowned. "The righteousness you think is, in truth, nothing but abetting the tiger in its crimes!"
"Do you know..." said Jiang Chen, "your cousin truly loves you."
"What do you want to say?"
"Then do you know what effect that cursed paper effigy will have on her?"
"It will make her fall gravely ill. And everyone in the Su family besides her will die."
"If I remember right, the members of the Su family are your kin as well."
"Kin?" Yin Guan laughed. "Then do you know who it was that exposed my true talent and made me the Castle Lord of the Twenty-Seventh Castle? It was none other than Su Muqing's father — my own uncle by marriage!"
"All to consolidate his power with me, the very foodstuff that could glut the turtle beast — to the point of letting himself crawl up into the Upper City. He has entirely forgotten how he became family head back then, forgotten how my mother died!"
Jiang Chen fell silent. Indeed, he could not readily condemn the man for this. But he too had his own road, and would not be shaken by another's wretched circumstances.
Jiang Chen said: "But have you ever considered — if that great beast goes mad and attacks the Lower City, how many would die? You cannot correct one wrong by committing a greater one."
"Then it all depends on how one defines wrong." Yin Guan said flatly.
"Then, one final question." Jiang Chen asked. "Why did you say all this to me?"
"Ha ha ha ha." Yin Guan burst into laughter. "Only now do I find you interesting."
He answered: "Because I am like you... we are both waiting for someone. You are waiting for him to come kill me, and I too am waiting... for him to come kill me!"
As his words fell.
There came from the direction of the Twenty-Seventh Castle a figure standing ramrod straight, like an arrow loosed from the string, shooting straight in at a speed that seemed to tear the very air with a whistling shriek!
If he were the arrow,
then this bow must have a mountain for its back, and rivers for its string.
If he were the arrow, he would surely pierce the open skies!
Those rippling muscles, that overwhelming pressure — from even the greatest distance one knew his identity — Zheng Chaoyang, commander of the Stele-Bearing Army!
And Yin Guan flicked his wide sleeve and stepped past Jiang Chen's side.
"They miscalculated only one thing. And that is..."
Even as he spoke, he began to accelerate toward Zheng Chaoyang!
"They never truly understood just how gifted I am. Just how strong!"