Winning and Losing

"Hmm..." Tong Shan rubbed his chin and sank into thought. Ji Jue's sudden question was something he needed to ponder carefully as well. "Me! Me! Me!" An Ning's eyes lit up instantly. She shot her hand up, eager to chime in. "I know!" "Even you don't know, Brother Shan?" Ji Jue asked in disbelief. "Me! Me! Meee!" An Ning had already crowded forward, barging straight into Ji Jue's field of vision with both hands raised high. *Ask me! Ask me! Ask me!* "Oh, right," Tong Shan said, finally catching on. "Isn't our expert sitting right here?" *That's why I was asking you in the first place!* Ji Jue sighed inwardly. If he asked her directly, who knew how many opportunities she would seize to take advantage of him? Was his pure, innocent body not precious?! Hearing Tong Shan's remark, he feigned realization and looked up at An Ning with manufactured surprise. "You actually know?" "Of course!" An Ning put her hands on her hips, puffed with pride. "My family is in the trade, all right?" "Then why don't you start us off, Miss An, and I'll add anything that's missing," Tong Shan suggested. He shot a glance at Ji Jue and sighed, truly unsure whether he had unwittingly become a prop in their little game. "To be honest, though I've read general summaries in plenty of records and files, I'm still fuzzy on some of the finer details." After all, no matter how comprehensive the Security Bureau's files were, they would never lay out such matters in plain ink. What else could they do? How could it be otherwise? Wasn't this all the sin wrought by Tianyuan? For centuries, this godforsaken place called the Mid-Continent had known no peace. Before, various nations had been at each other's throats, locked in endless slaughter. Stability was nonexistent, but if you gritted your teeth, you could still scrape by through the hard times. Unfortunately, ever since the discovery of the Mid-Continent's boundless resources and staggering reserves of phlogiston, no one had much time left to live in peace. *Don't be afraid, everyone! Don't worry, the Federation and the Empire are here to bring you warmth!* Subverting regimes, propping up puppets, stoking tensions, forging blood feuds—bearing the brunt of it all was the White Nation, blessed with a relatively prime geographic location and an abundance of metals and phlogiston. Life there had never known a moment's rest. Marrow-sucking exploitation and ceaseless interference escalated until, in the end, they even meddled in the succession of the Priest-King. Humiliation upon humiliation, sovereignty stripped bare. Yet the appetites of the Federation and the Empire only grew vaster. Ultimately, they settled on a joint strategy to carve up the White Nation, splitting it once again into two factions so each could feast to its heart's content. Facing the gaping maws of the contemporary dual poles of Tianyuan poised to carve up his land, the Priest-King of that era had no choice but to step forward. Regrettably, there was no chance for him to become a savior. Instead, he chose to smash the pot completely. He ushered in the Wolf Sin. *Fine. If you won't let me live in peace, then no one gets to live in peace!* *As long as I turn myself into shit, nobody will dare eat me!* How dire the crisis was decades ago and how labyrinthine the circumstances, Ji Jue, as an outsider, could hardly truly experience. But he could imagine it: facing an ancient nation that was falling to pieces in his very hands, a populace drifting irreconcilably apart, simmering outrage from below, and the aggressive erosion and dominance of both the Empire and the Federation from without—if one wished to accomplish anything, there was no other choice left. When every path is cut off and you find the gates of hell standing before you... what choice is there other than pushing them open? Succumbing to corruption suddenly became the optimal choice. The White Stag stood in direct opposition to Tianyuan. And the Wolf was utterly incompatible with Tianyuan—like fire and water. Once the Wolf Sin descended upon this land, the Empire and the Federation could kiss goodbye to using their invincible power of Tianyuan to continue nibbling away at and controlling the White Nation. Unfortunately, even so, the ultimate plan crumbled halfway through. The White Nation's actions incurred the wrath of the White Stag. From top to bottom, nearly every priest involved was slaughtered by the White Stag Hunters, along with devastating losses among the old wolves who had gathered from all directions at the scent of blood. In the end, the Priest-King's gamble was a loss. Yet, it was also a win. Just as he had hoped, regardless of the gamble's outcome, once the plan was set in motion, every gambler at the cracking card table would end up a loser. The White Nation lost, completely stripped of its land and sovereignty. The Hunters lost, as the Wolf's gestation progress was pushed forward by a massive leap. Tianyuan lost as well: its ambition to completely dominate the White Nation through the Decree of Tianyuan was shattered beyond repair. To prevent their own construct of Tianyuan from being contaminated by the White Nation, they could no longer swallow the country whole. They had no choice but to prop up puppet government after puppet government, pinching their noses to slowly sip the filthy water after filtering it layer by layer. Everyone in the White Nation lost, but to them, it hardly mattered. They had never won to begin with. It was merely staying in the mire. Sinking a little deeper—what did it matter? Yet had the Priest-King lost? His gamble was far from over. As everyone knew, when corporate executives and key talent looked to jump ship, compensation and perks usually bumped up a tier. The voluntary defection of a Celestial-Human was vital new blood for the Unborn Wolf. A Great Sin was never stingy when it came to compensation. Unlike the conservative Supreme Goodness, it was often terrifyingly generous when facing genuine, brilliant talent. Had the Priest-King succeeded, the power of the Unborn Wolf would have surged once more. And if the Unborn Wolf could truly complete its birth beneath the Vortex and descend upon the world in the future, the Priest-King would have become a worldly abomination blessed by the Great Sin, or a veritable extension of the Great Sin itself— Stepping into the realm of Sages and Dragons would be child's play. When that time came, even with the whole world as his enemy, he might well have carved out a path of survival for the White Nation from under the grasp of the Empire and the Federation. Too many possibilities, too many 'what ifs,' and far too many events that had yet to unfold. Present-day Ji Jue had no way of judging whether this had been a masterstroke to seek life from death, or an act of sheer folly courting self-destruction. Yet wasn't this how most things in the world worked? Who could know what their choices would bring in the future? Absolute certainty was never a luxury granted to the weak; there was only the reckless, all-or-nothing gamble. *Who gives a damn about the deluge that follows?* And so, under siege from all sides, the Priest-King ultimately died. Half of him died. More precisely, the greater part of him. "And the remaining half?" Ji Jue asked instinctively. An Ning's expression instantly grew complicated, an indiscernible mix of pity and disgust. She turned her head and looked out the car window. "Isn't it everywhere?" Endless venom, right before their eyes. With the Priest-King's death, blood seeped into every inch of the White Nation's soil. From then on, the Wolf Sin became entangled with this land. In his final death throes, the Priest-King's soul tainted everything. The wolf-blood covenant born of the Priest-King was now intertwined with the blood and souls of every person of the White Nation. It was precisely this that preserved a sliver of hope for him. As long as there were enough wolves, as long as the corruption of this land ran deep enough, sooner or later, drawn and pulled by this blood covenant, he could be resurrected. Resting in peaceful slumber, right under everyone's noses. It wasn't that the Federation and the Empire hadn't sought ways to grind the Priest-King's bones to dust and scatter his ashes. Sadly, they could no longer afford the price of severing everything. If they wanted to truly extinguish it all, the best method was to slaughter every single soul in the White Nation, leaving none alive. When that happened, the Priest-King's soul would have no path of return and would naturally vanish into thin air. Yet what would be the cost? When the blood debt, curses, and resentful malice of tens of millions coiled around Tianyuan, did they think the contamination upon the Heavenly Overseer and Earthly Warden wasn't already severe enough? The Lord of Soldiers, who had slacked off for over a century, certainly wouldn't carry out a slaughter in the name of justice on either side's behalf. And for the stability of the Lock and the mortal realm, neither side would ever permit the other to commit such an atrocity. Thus, trapped in this stalemate, it dragged on to this day. Neither clean nor decisive, neither rising nor falling, slowly and sustainably sinking into a bottomless hell and mire, until now, incurable and rotten to the core. In his mind's ear, Ji Jue suddenly heard the sneering laughter of Huazhijun: *If one day your Lock ceases to exist, and everything beneath the Vortex returns to the mortal realm, what will your world become?* Ji Jue remained silent. He said no more, quietly gazing at the desolation outside the window. Suddenly, he felt an urge to contact that old codger from the Strange Chronicles: *Hey, care to have some fish?* "We're almost there." Ji Liu, who was driving, slowed down. A checkpoint had appeared up ahead. Expertly pulling out his permit, he spoke in fluent Mid-Continent tongue, playfully buttering up the soldiers at the post. The soldier glanced up, took a look at the illusion of jars and cans filling the back of the vehicle, and waved them through. Like an ordinary delivery driver, he slowly approached the market and merged into the gridlocked traffic. Inside the cabin, An Ning suddenly jumped up. Stepping on the seats and ignoring Ji Jue's resistance, she crawled over him and slid open the window. She took a delicate sniff of the air, which was thick with the stench of rotting produce, dust, and muck. "Something feels... not quite right?" She narrowed her eyes suspiciously, looking out at everything beyond the window with a grave expression. Yet her little hands restlessly wandered over Ji Jue's legs— Until Ji Jue caught them in his grip. *Groping me every chance you get—what the hell are you White Stags playing at?!* "What is it?" Ji Jue asked bluntly. "There seems to be a wolf?" An Ning pulled back her gaze, scratching Ji Jue's head in a daze. "Then again, it feels like there isn't..." A wolf being here was unlikely, but it being absent was also unlikely? Ji Jue rolled his eyes and swatted her hand away, sorely tempted to grab her head and check if little horns were sprouting on top. "Stop taking endless advantage of me. What are you even talking about?" "It's just so bizarre. Something's wrong." An Ning sat down, looking serious. "If you go looking for it deliberately, you really can catch a faint trace of a wolf's presence. But no matter how you look at it, it just feels wrong. It feels like there is one, but also like there isn't. Argh, so annoying!" As she spoke, she worked herself into a huff. "Could it just be that your skills aren't up to par?" "Ah, how should I put it? It's like solving a test question—the answer is either yes or no, right? But when the result turns out to be 'yes and no at the same time,' you have no idea what's going on!" An Ning argued indignantly. "This has nothing to do with skill! If I can't figure it out, my uncles wouldn't be able to either!" "Well said!" Ji Jue nodded blankly. "So, can you get off me now?" Utterly reluctant, An Ning shifted an inch, then another, before finally slumping back into her original seat under Ji Jue's stern gaze. She blinked obediently and gave him a placating smile. This left Ji Jue feeling a twinge of regret—he had planned to seize the chance to get angry if she kept fooling around, but she seemed to have noticed and quit while she was ahead. The result: he was even more exasperated! He was usually the one pushing boundaries and playing coy—how could someone else turn the tables and play him instead? He was just about to speak when Tong Shan's expression abruptly shifted. *Boom!!!* The ground jolted violently. A colossal detonation erupted across the entire Mercy Market. Amidst the muffled roar, violent gusts whipped up, accompanied by the endless sounds of crumbling structures. Dust billowed outward. Terrified screams and shouts instantly rang out. An earthquake? No, a dilapidated building had suddenly collapsed, engulfed in flames as dense plumes of smoke billowed skyward—perhaps too many hazardous goods had been stored inside, such as gas canisters and charcoal; perhaps it was packed with flammables; or perhaps it was simply worn down by years of disrepair. Yet why, out of all the buildings that could have collapsed, was it the very hookah shop Ji Jue's camera had locked onto? Destroying evidence? Or erasing all traces of the corpse? Ji Jue's mind raced. An Ning, however, suddenly sprang to her feet again. Gone was her earlier nonchalance and playful ease; her entire body went taut. "The guy inside ran out in the chaos!" She pointed her finger: "Brother Ji Jue, that's him!" Amid the chaotic, fleeing crowd, a shepherd whose skin was baked dark by the sun held a little lamb in his arms, running along with the panicked mob in every direction. Getting further and further away. Pursue!