Why So Serious

In Kaimeng City's Sin Hunting Hall, Vice Captain Amy walked through a brilliantly lit, magnificent corridor and threw open the door. "Chief, give me an inspection warrant! I'll go take control of the broadcast station right now!" Behind a long, carved ebony table were two transparent floor-to-ceiling glass walls, allowing the Blood Moon's glory to pour unhindered over the curly-haired woman seated in a red leather armchair. Her uniform looked rather slovenly with several buttons undone, her silver hair—which should have been lovely—was as messy as a bird's nest, and her delicate features were completely ruined by heavy eye bags and clown-like dark circles. Hearing the door open, she switched off her light screen. "Is it time to get off work yet?" "What getting off work?! The prison escapees haven't even been caught yet!" Amy stepped forward and slammed a hand on the desk. "I notified the broadcast station to cut the trial's live feed, but they actually refused! Chief, hurry up and sign an inspection warrant for me! I'll take a squad and wipe them out right now!" "Keep talk like that inside this office. Don't go outside ruining the Sin Hunting Hall's reputation," the chief said faintly. "Gerard and his hundred complaint letters a month are already more than enough for me to deal with." "Chief, the warrant!" "Inspecting the broadcast station requires cooperation from the Administrative Hall. Have you contacted Vice Mayor Guluo?" At the mention of that, Amy grew even angrier. "I placed a call to the Administrative Hall, but only the mayoral secretary answered! He said the vice mayor is in an emergency meeting with other departments and can't respond right now!" "Isn't that completely normal? When something like escaped convicts happens, of course they have to coordinate various departments to formulate contingency plans—" "He's doing it on purpose! He just wants to stall until Financier dies in the trial so he can take a step up and drop the 'vice' from his title!" "Don't think so ill of people. Under the Blood Moon's glory, the bad guys are all in prison," the chief murmured languidly. "The Sin Hunting Hall is subordinate to the Administrative Hall. Without orders from them, we can't just go inspecting a peer-level institution like the broadcast station." "Are we supposed to just stand by and watch the trial continue?!" "Why not?" The chief scratched her head. "It's not just the Administrative Hall. The Research Institute and the Church haven't said anything either. If they aren't in a hurry, what are you panicking for?" "But—" "Don't forget, the people who truly hold dominion over the trial aren't in prison. They're in the city, out there, right here." The chief spread her hands. "Why so serious?" Faced with such "politically correct" rhetoric from the chief, Amy was momentarily speechless, her big wolf tail drooping. Pouting, she thumped the desk in frustration. "Tsk, why are the priests and everyone completely indifferent to this..." "You know full well how strong you get at night. This desk of mine won't survive many more hits from you," the chief grumbled. "As for why, it's because this isn't any big deal." "This doesn't count as a big deal?" "Amy, how old are you?" "I was born in the '20s." "Oh, so you're only in your forties. No wonder you're making such a fuss." "What's wrong with being young?" "When you get older, you'll realize that the things you consider so grave are nothing more than negligible interludes on the scale of centuries or millennia." The chief raised her dark-ringed eyes. "By comparison, abiding by the tenets is far more important. "'Moon Shadow governs life, Blood Saint guards death.' That is our tenet. Beyond that, we are not to intervene in anything. Let the secular world govern itself." The chief's argument was so irrefutable that Amy could only clench her fists unwillingly, her fluffy tail bristling upright. "...Yes, Chief!" "Get back to work. Remember to close the door. And can you please retract your tail? It's a real pain cleaning shed fur out of the carpet." Amy shook her head vigorously. "No way! Permanently manifesting a Moon Shadow trait is proof of my strength! Besides, everyone loves it!" The chief buried her face in her hands and sighed. "The Church and Research Institute really love dumping troublemakers here... Do they think my hall is an adult rearing institute?..." As Amy closed the office door, she suddenly heard laughter coming from inside. "Ha, this Yaxiu is quite amusing. I'll have to tell Gerard to spare his life." Dammit! The chief clearly just wanted to watch this farce unfold, which was why she adamantly refused to sign the inspection warrant! Amy had almost been fooled by her! Amy instinctively wanted to barge back in to reason with her, but then she remembered a Blood Saint joke an old priest had once told her: "When a Blood Saint becomes intrigued, the only way to stop them is to nail them into a coffin—an accelerated bat heartbeat drops their IQ." And so Amy gave up. Swallowing her anger, she returned to her department, sat down, and opened her light screen. She would see just what tricks Yaxiu could pull off! ...... ... "Cough, cough cough!" Astride the crimson stone pillar pedestal on Shattered Lake, Financier coughed violently twice, hacking up two mouthfuls of foul-smelling black blood. His abdomen felt sour and itchy, and his clothes clung uncomfortably to his body in a sticky mess. Combined with the dizziness of having just regained consciousness, he momentarily felt as though he had returned to his youth. Born in the "Club Bone" rearing institute, he had had to squeeze in time to study between bouts of fighting every day. It was a rearing institute located in the lower district of Kaimeng City, and most of its wards were orcs and ogres. The sour-faced, mean-spirited director didn't favor these blue and green races out of affection; it was purely because the subsidies for rearing them were high. At prestigious rearing institutes like "Emerald Garden," not only did the Administrative Hall provide no subsidies, but the institute even had to pay hefty sums to select infants from hospitals. This was because any adult race raised in a rearing institute had ten percent of their earned income deducted over their first fifteen years of work as "repayment" to the institute. Emerald Garden Rearing Institute had clearly chosen the most illustrious and noble path: pour every effort into cultivating top talents, expand the institute through the "repayments" of those successful individuals, continue selecting premium infants, and keep producing outstanding talents for society. One could say that first-rate rearing institutes like Emerald Garden all followed this virtuous cycle, serving as models for rearing institutes across the nation. But not all institutes had the means for this. After all, premium infants were limited in supply, which gave rise to another business model: scamming subsidies. Club Bone Rearing Institute chose the orc and ogre babies rejected by other institutes—infants that had to be raised under the mandate of "maintaining species diversity." By doing so, the institute received substantial subsidies allocated by the Church. The director pocketed every cent of these funds and adopted a free-range approach toward the infants. Orcs and ogres were remarkably easy to keep alive anyway; once they reached adulthood, they were kicked out, with zero regard for any "repayment" from their future employment. In the hierarchy of infant supply, orcs and ogres were considered bottom-tier stock: difficult to educate, possessing low average intelligence, intractable, and hideous in appearance compared to the standard races, with slovenly living habits to match. As a result, Club Bone Rearing Institute differed little from the wilderness. Everyone relieved themselves wherever they pleased and lived like animals. Whenever mealtime arrived, someone would wheel in several buckets of food, prompting a chaotic brawl that escalated into armed racial clashes. Once beaten black and blue, everyone simply collapsed to sleep, and another day went by. The outside world raised no objections. The rearing institute euphemistically called it "naturalistic rearing," which was even met with widespread praise across society. Many scholars argued that this unleashed the natural instincts of orcs and ogres, respected the blue-skins and green-skins, and represented holistic education tailored to individual potential. Then they would turn around to criticize institutes like Emerald Garden for prioritizing academic performance, stifling children's natures, robbing them of their childhoods, and so forth... Financier, born in a civilized nation, had grown up in just such a "naturalistic" environment.