Allow Me a Few Words of Sophistry

*Pfft.* Faced with Andere's accusation, Financier actually laughed. He laughed loudly, arrogantly, as if completely disregarding the viewers watching the broadcast. The ogre laughed until tears nearly spilled from his eyes. Wiping the corners of his eyes, he said, "Andere, this display of yours is far too pathetic. In your scramble to survive, you've lost whatever composure you once possessed. You are completely unworthy of being my enemy. "Yes, I approved the exploration into the Void Realm turbulence. In every sense of reason and principle, I must bear the primary responsibility, which is why I am here undergoing investigation. But if you think you can use this to bring me down in front of the citizens of the entire city, you are being far too naive. "How could an expedition involving the Sin Hunting Hall, the war zone, and even the prison ever be a trivial matter decided by my word alone? As the saying goes, big meetings handle small matters, and small meetings handle big ones. Before the operation, the leadership of all parties held three preliminary meetings. Andere, as a representative of the councilors, surely you haven't forgotten that? "Only after all parties voted was the operation finalized. The '422 Incident' was a catastrophe, but even more so, it was a man-made disaster born of our collective misjudgment. I am not shirking my responsibility, but Andere, your share of the blame is no less than mine." Andere nodded. "Indeed. Strictly speaking, it was nothing more than a war launched by rulers for their own self-interest. It's just a pity that this time, we ended up on the losing side. If we had been the ones to find a proper Void Realm passage first, then Financier, not only would you have escaped all blame, but you would have secured support from every faction, guaranteeing your reelection as mayor with one hundred percent certainty. "At most, I can only accuse you of pushing this operation for your political track record. Besides, now that you've apologized, the citizens have nothing left to say." Andere glanced at the ogre's stone pillar; it had barely changed at all. This meant that the citizens' resentment toward Financier had not deepened because of his accusation. This was outside his expectations. After all, though the 422 Incident had resulted in tens of thousands of casualties, what did that have to do with those who were still alive? It wasn't as if *they* had died. Perhaps there were friends or even lovers among the dead and wounded, but... so what? It wasn't as if they were dead. If anyone suffered property losses from the raid, the Administrative Hall was more than willing to compensate them. As for the casualties and collapsed buildings caused by the attack, they brought nothing but advantages to the living—vacancies left by the deceased opened up jobs, collapsed buildings meant new reconstruction work, rents dropped due to fewer tenants, and the streets became far less congested. Kaimeng City had already been rather crowded. Once the raiders came, killing a batch and scaring another away, the remaining survivors naturally had access to more urban resources. At this very moment, who knew how many people were quietly thanking the raiders for their butchery, having extracted considerable benefits from the aftermath? Consequently, even Financier, the primary person responsible, failed to draw much hatred. The resentment he attracted over this matter was even less than what he drew for the Dragon Cave Apartments or rigging the civil service examinations. After all, those who truly hated him were already dead. Among the living, many had indeed been swindled out of their savings by the Dragon Cave Apartments or had their civil service posts stolen by someone else. In the Blood Moon Country, the living did not empathize with the dead. Dreaming of bringing down Financier with the 422 Incident was sheer delusion. Andere was not that naive; he merely needed the topic as a springboard. "Indeed. If we speak only of the cause, every decision-maker shares the blame; it was the collective responsibility of all of us in power," Andere said. "However, the handling of the incident was your personal stage, my dear Mayor." The ogre narrowed his eyes, staring coldly at his political rival. Andere said, "Twenty minutes after the outland sorcerers descended, the Church had already informed you. Yet for the first three hours, your response was to claim that nothing was wrong. Only after multiple attacks broke out on the fringes of the city did you finally warn the citizens not to go outside, deploy the Sin Hunting Hall to face the enemy, and summon adventurers from the war zone..." "Notifying the citizens before the outland sorcerers arrived would have only induced panic!" the ogre retorted bluntly. "If frightened citizens gathered and fled in chaos, it would have handed the outland sorcerers an ideal opportunity to slaughter them. The casualties then would have been far greater than they are now!" "Yes, you are quite right," Andere replied. "If the only fighting forces around Kaimeng City were truly just the Sin Hunting Hall and the war zone, your decision would have been correct." At that moment, everyone, including Financier, turned pale with terror! Mencken shouted even more loudly in reprimand, "Andere, do you realize what you're saying?! Do you think blurting out everything will let you scrape by and live?!" "Even if I keep silent, I am certain to die," Andere said, articulating every syllable deliberately. "I have never harbored any thought of clinging to life. I only hope that before I die, I can have a clear conscience." Financier sneered, "As expected of Andere, who hails from an elite rearing institute—to harbor such an extravagant, highbrow sentiment. How hilarious. You never found your conscience before, but the moment you enter prison, you're yearning for the light?" Andere shook his head. "Financier, sometimes I also wonder: Was I truly qualified to sit in your seat? Did I truly possess the ability to dictate so many people's fates? Could I truly be like you, watching so many lives perish before my very eyes while remaining utterly indifferent inside?" He looked toward the camera eye, as if addressing the hundreds of thousands of citizens across Kaimeng City. "In the Kaimeng region, the strongest armed forces are neither the Sin Hunting Hall nor the war zone, but the research institutes and the Church!" he proclaimed. "Every single member of the Blood Saint clan in the research institutes, and every single member of the Moon Shadow clan in the Church, is a sorcerer—and most of them are Two-Winged Sorcerers! "Perhaps some of you have heard that the research institutes are filled with scholars useless in battle, and the Church with priests who only know how to pray. But those are lies woven purely to cater to ordinary people who demean the strong, an information cocoon spun to soothe your inward jealousy. "After all, you are not sorcerers, nor are you Blood Saints or Moon Shadows. Therefore, the Blood Saints and Moon Shadows must be given ridiculous weaknesses, like fearing sunlight or fearing fire, so that you can feel a sense of superiority, convince yourselves there is no need for envy, and carry on with your lives. "Yet anyone who is a sorcerer cannot possibly be weak, much less incapable of fighting! "Had the research institutes and the Church deployed, though they might not have suppressed the outland sorcerers immediately, they certainly could have contained the situation to a far smaller radius and driven the death toll down to four or even three digits! "Yet they were unwilling to intervene because it had nothing to do with them; the outland sorcerers would never attack their domains. More importantly, the Blood Saint clan craves corpses, and the Moon Shadow clan admires death. This unexpected massacre actually served their interests. "The only person who could have changed the situation was you, Arandor Financier," Andere said word by word. "As mayor, you hold nominal authority to command the Church and the research institutes. If you had been willing, you could have summoned the Blood Saints and mobilized the Moon Shadows, completely turning the tide against the rampaging outland sorcerers." The ogre's expression remained tranquil, seemingly not caring in the least about Andere's accusations. "Yet you did nothing. You didn't dare harm the interests of the two clans, because you still needed their backing. Not only that, you knew well that the enemy crossed through a Level 2 Void Realm passage, meaning the attack would last three days at most before the outland sorcerers would inevitably withdraw on their own. Thus, you did not hesitate to sacrifice the citizens' interests, presenting their corpses as gifts to curry favor with the two blood moon clans." A faint trace of mockery surfaced on Andere's face. "Nobody told you to do this, nor did anyone warn you against it. You made the choice yourself—using tens of thousands of lives to demonstrate your humility to the two blood moon clans." The ogre glanced at the squirming chains bound across his body and sneered, "It seems your speech hasn't achieved much. Everyone understands my predicament. While it's hardly an honorable deed, fawning over the blood moon is nothing to be ashamed of." "Is that so?" Andere smiled. "What if I told you that the Dragon Cave Apartments incident was also the result of your deliberate indulgence, all to curry favor with the research institutes? "Everyone knows that the Dragon Cave Apartments absorbed vast sums of capital through financial fraud, and that their chairman has already fled. But very few know where those funds went—before fleeing, the chairman went to the Four Great Research Institutes to undergo a surgery extending his lifespan by two hundred years. That surgery alone consumed one-third of the Dragon Cave Apartments' liquid capital. "Moreover, several other board members successively visited the research institutes for life-extension procedures, bodily reconstruction, and the like. It can be said that the vast majority of the Dragon Cave Apartments' cash assets ended up in the research institutes. Immediately afterward, the scandal erupted, the directors vanished, and tens of millions of people were saddled with debt. "Whether it was your Gallery in the Woods or my Wine of Immortality, we only reaped petty profits from the matter. The ones who truly swallowed the wealth of tens of millions were the research institutes. "And that was merely one of the more conspicuous 'achievements' of your political career. If we were to examine them in detail, half an hour wouldn't even scratch the surface. Yet boiled down, it all amounts to a single principle: "Exploit the populace; flatter the blood moon." Andere looked up at the blood moon hanging in the night sky, exhaustion showing in the crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes. "That is why your polling approval dropped, yet you still managed to govern for eight years. That is your sole purpose of existence—the research institutes and the Church need someone like you to serve as a puppet on the stage. Once you've drawn enough of the people's fury, they send you to Shattered Lake Prison to satisfy the public's thirst for justice. "Even if the 422 Incident hadn't occurred, you would have stayed mayor for a few more years at most before facing a Blood Moon Trial anyway. Because you are, by design, a 'sinner' who traded away the people's welfare for the mayor's seat." The smile had completely vanished from the ogre's face. The stone pillar beneath him seemed to be melting. Hundreds of wildly dancing chains coiled around him like outstretched hands, looking as if they would drag him down into the dark red waters of the Shattered Lake. "Yet if it were only that, you would merely be an 'ordinary mayor,' no different from your predecessor, or the predecessor before him. Every mayor is a future sinner—or rather, only a sinner can ever sit in the mayor's chair. "Financier," Andere said, "the reason I racked my brains to compete against you for the mayoralty was that you sought to elevate the betrayal of the people into a higher art form—you united the Racial Rights Protection Associations of the elves, orcs, ogres, and goblins to drive forward the development of a professional combat league. "Naturally, your justification sounded thoroughly noble: absorbing unemployed populations, reducing crime rates, cultivating promising sorcerer seedlings, developing the service sector... It was utterly beyond reproach, so much so that anyone seeing your proposal for the first time would wonder why nobody had thought of such a brilliant idea before. "That is because past rulers were never as vicious as you, nor as despicable!" At this point, Andere's eyes turned bloodshot, his wrinkles bunching together in fury, entirely abandoning any effort at composure. "Financier, could you really not anticipate what would happen once a combat league emerged?! Masses of young people will flock to an industry that promises overnight ascension, gambling will run rampant, bodily modification will become the new trend, the ring will be painted in a thick layer of flesh and blood, and there will even be rearing institutes dedicated exclusively to churning out combat machines for the arena! "Violence, death, and corpses will become the city's only rhythm! Financier, it's not that you couldn't foresee this future—you were smart enough to foresee everything, and that is precisely why you pushed the plan! "The Blood Moon Sovereign locked the Blood Saints and Moon Shadows inside the research institutes and the Church precisely to stop them from manufacturing slaughter, to suppress their torment of the people, and to win breathing room for all races! Yet you, Financier, for the sake of your own desires, did not hesitate to lay every citizen on the sacrificial altar, standardizing, formalizing, and streamlining slaughter and death on an assembly line, all to please your masters! "You allied with the upper echelons of every race solely to establish an immense, shameless ruling syndicate. The populace is your prime merchandise, and the blood moon is the client before whom you kowtow! "But Financier, don't you forget: you are still an ogre! You have neither crimson pupils nor a fluffy tail! No matter how much you flatter them, in their eyes, you are just food!" Andere's furious denunciation echoed over the Shattered Lake. The others sat silent as cicadas in winter, shrinking into their seats as if praying that the Blood Saints and Moon Shadows watching the broadcast would not notice them. For a moment, the broadcast was so quiet that only the sliding of chains could be heard. Just then, Financier suddenly glanced at Yaxiu and flashed a peculiar smile. "Are you finished?" The ogre looked around. "Then allow me a few words of sophistry."