Black Crow

Black Crow had once been hunted continuously by an evil cult for three days and three nights without closing his eyes for even an instant; he could brace himself through paralysis of his lower body to keep fighting, and had fought on through chaotic brawls even after being struck blind; he had clashed head-on against bronze-skinned, iron-boned ascetic sorcerers, and had plenty of experience tangling with wind and water sorcerers who wielded hardness and softness in tandem. Anyone who knew Black Crow, whether friend or foe, whether they liked or loathed him, would readily admit that he was a ruthless, indomitable hardcase—a copper pea that couldn't be steamed soft, boiled through, hammered flat, or fried to a pop, ringing loud and hard to the very core. When Yaxiu and Igola chatted, they had once evaluated him as such: "It's as though his heart is forged of iron, his entrails run cold, and even his veins flow with black blood." It was as though the Void Realm, while cursing him, had stripped away all his weakness as well. The idiom "viewing death as returning home" seemed tailor-made for him, though unlike Harvey's eager desire to wrap death in an embrace and shower it with kisses, Black Crow was more the type to charge forward with his Grey Fox blade, proactively welcoming his life's final challenge—after the destruction of Slay All Crows, he had nothing left to fear. Yet such a stainless-steel saint walking this rotting mortal world found his arm trembling faintly at this moment, nearly losing his grip on the Grey Fox blade. As a result, he slipped another meter downward, while Mercury Trojan slid down 1.1 meters—Mercury Trojan couldn't keep a firm grip on his arm; her palms were so delicate that exerting even a little force would break her skin, and if Black Crow didn't hold onto her, she would slide down on her own. Black Crow had been gripping her forearm until now, but with that slight slip in strength, his grip shifted down to her wrist. "Ah." Mercury Trojan was startled by the sudden drop. Breathing shallow and fast, she said, "If you don't hold me tightly, I'm going to disappear." "There's such a good thing?" Black Crow tried his best to steady his emotions, looking up at the rift above without glancing at her. "You'll save me, right?" Mercury Trojan's voice sounded somewhat brisk. "You won't give up on me, and you won't let me die here." "Is that so? But did you know I had just said goodbye to Igola and the others, preparing to track your trail and hunt you down?" Black Crow said. "If I hadn't fallen into the fissure just now, if I hadn't reflexively grabbed you as I fell... perhaps I would have already achieved my goal." "Why?" Mercury Trojan asked in a very puzzled tone. "Why are you still trying to hunt me down?" Black Crow froze. He opened his mouth, countless words seeming to clamor in his throat to burst out, the tangled emotions of fury, sorrow, and regret nearly suffocating his heart. He desperately wanted to start speaking from the destruction of the Kill-All-Crows Cult two years ago, wanted to speak of every single person he had ever known, wanted to... but he took a deep breath, and those thousands of words coalesced into a single, weary sentence: "Because I am Tamashi, and you are Tanomu." Mercury Trojan understood what he meant. After a moment of silence, she said, "You had no idea I came to the Silent Spiral; in fact, I've only been here for a few days. So your destination was also the Silent Spiral, and on top of that, you, an insulator to the Void Realm, are so familiar with the Empty Door sorcery spirit... "You originally came to the Silent Spiral to leave Senluo through an Empty Door passage, didn't you?" she said. "And since you were traveling with them, were you also..." "Yes." Black Crow was very straightforward. "I did consider leaving." "In that case, why didn't you leave, instead choosing to stay in Senluo to hunt me down?" Mercury Trojan said. "I was actually very happy for you—not because you gave up pursuing me, but because you finally learned to seek your own happiness. "I thought you were finally going to move past your long, wandering adolescence and find a place where you belong." "Leaving Senluo might bring happiness, and having a place of belonging might bring happiness," Black Crow said. "But if I cannot bring you to justice, I will certainly never be happy." "The mark of maturity is accepting the pain of your own powerlessness," Mercury Trojan said. "Do you remember the question I asked you the first time we ate fish?" Black Crow considered for a moment. "'With so many bones inside a fish's body, doesn't it hurt?'" "I've always felt that it must hurt; after all, they're sharp thorns. But if you get used to them and accept them, they become bones that support you, not thorns that leave you battered and bruised." Black Crow said, "I don't care if I end up battered and bruised, so long as I can prick the people I despise." Mercury Trojan gave a bitter smile. "It seems your adolescence isn't over yet." "I will save you." Black Crow, having thought it through clearly, said in earnest, "You are still within the territory of the Silent Spiral right now; if you die, you will reincarnate into Igola. That's why I must save you and imprison you in the Silent Spiral. Once Yaxiu and the others have left, and once everyone else has withdrawn from the Silent Spiral, ensuring you have no target to reincarnate into, only then will I execute you." "Saving me just to kill me? That's so like you." Mercury Trojan chuckled softly. "But what if I tell you that this body's original owner isn't dead yet?" Black Crow froze. "She's very cute, very pretty, and very pitiable, isn't she? I didn't pick her at random. As a reincarnation vessel I carry with me, she is practically a work of art, and she isn't even a sorcerer," Mercury Trojan said. "I originally planned that after reincarnating, I would start anew from the Sea of Knowledge. Over these past two years, I gathered many secrets of the Void Realm. It was a pity that I was already a Sanctuary Sorcerer and couldn't turn back, but if I could start from scratch, I'm confident I could scale Ruby Mountain. "Yet precisely because she isn't a sorcerer, I have no sorcery power and cannot directly affect her soul. Our state is closer to dual personalities, only she is asleep." Mercury Trojan said, "She is merely an ordinary, unremarkable girl, raised by me all along, spending most of her time asleep to strengthen her soul, having never done a bad thing in her entire life. Are you going to kill her just because of me?" Though she said this, Mercury Trojan hadn't expected to truly threaten Black Crow; she only wanted to place a psychological burden on him to gain leverage for the conversation to follow. Yet Black Crow thought it over and said, "I will find a way to confine you in the Silent Spiral, and I will be your jailer. If you attempt to become a sorcerer, I will kill you immediately; or when my lifespan nears its end, I will also execute you. Aside from those two situations, I will keep you imprisoned forever." Mercury Trojan gripped Black Crow's wrist tightly. "That doesn't align with the doctrine of Slay All Crows," she said. "Eradicating evil is always more important than saving lives. Saving a person only saves a single life, but killing one wicked person might indirectly save hundreds." "It indeed doesn't," Black Crow nodded. "But I believe I am in the right, so long as I bear all the consequences of my choice. Earlier, I spared you to save Igola, and I am willing to spend the rest of my days hunting you down for it; right now, I can also spare you to save the girl you reincarnated into, so long as I am willing to imprison you for life." Mercury Trojan said in a low voice, "If you kill me right now, you could go out and kill more evildoers, saving more lives, instead of squandering your life on me... That is the way of Slay All Crows." "Yes," Black Crow said. "If life truly could be weighed, then the yield of killing you is obviously greater than letting you live. But without me, would there truly be no one to stop you? "Over the past two years while hunting you, I've traveled to many places. At first, I believed that with the annihilation of the Kill-All-Crows Cult, evil sorcerers would face no restraint, and ordinary people would surely live in utter misery while sin rampaged across the earth. The situations I initially witnessed were indeed like that—evil sorcerers running rampant and mortals suffering brutal ravages. "Yet that state of affairs didn't persist. Sometimes other cults sent people to suppress them; sometimes new sorcerers emerged from among the common folk; and some evil sorcerers were even stabbed to death with pitchforks by ordinary mortals. "Sin will never go extinct, and wicked crows will screech forever, but wherever there is oppression, there will be resistance. Slaying all crows isn't just our ideal; it's the shared aspiration of ordinary people as well. "Tanomu, do you know what the happiest thing I experienced over these past two years was?" Mercury Trojan asked, "Catching me?" "It was when I passed by a border town of the Bronze Law Cult. Others avoided me in fear, but a few children came up and asked me if there was a Kill-All-Crows Cult in the south dedicated to killing bad people, and whether I was a member of Slay All Crows. You know the Bronze Law's statutes are strict, forbidding commoners from carrying weapons, so when they encounter evil sorcerers, they can only wait for Bronze Law sorcerers to come enforce the law." Mercury Trojan said, "They wanted Slay All Crows to come hunt down the evil sorcerers, right? Hearing that Slay All Crows had been wiped out, they must have been very disappointed." "Yes," Black Crow said. "But they told me they were training secretly at home, just hoping to have the strength to fight back the next time they met bad people. They even told me to rebuild Slay All Crows quickly, to scare those bad people to death. "So, Tanomu, do you understand? Even if Slay All Crows truly was nothing more than a bunch of murderers satisfying twisted desires, our cause still had meaning. The people of Senluo will remember that there was once a group of people who took pleasure in hunting down bad people, and that those wicked, arrogant villains were nothing more than prey to them. "Sin is actually very weak. "Though Slay All Crows was destroyed, the spirit of resistance will never be extinguished. As long as ordinary people possess the heart to resist evil, then even if the name of Slay All Crows vanishes, more people will emerge to fight against the wicked crows." Black Crow said, "Lives can indeed be weighed, but not by me, nor by any single person; they are weighed by everyone together, saved together, and the crows killed together. "I won't presume to save the lives of countless people in the future; other people's lives will be saved by others. It is enough for me to save the lives that 'cannot be saved without me'—like Igola, like your vessel. "Yaxiu once told me that in this world, crimes are being committed every minute and every second, but since he can't see them, there's nothing he can do; sometimes crimes happen right where he can see them, but if he lacks the capability, there's nothing he can do either; only when it happens right in front of his eyes and he has the capability will he try to crush evil to gain moral satisfaction. "For weaklings like us, it's enough to simply do well what is right before our eyes." These words had fermented in Black Crow's heart for a long time, but had never taken shape. Only after experiencing this series of events in the Silent Spiral was it as if the fog before his eyes had parted, finally making his path clear and allowing him to reforge his own understanding of Slay All Crows. By the end, he was no longer speaking to Tanomu, but to himself. When he finished, his body and mind felt at ease, his spirit luminous and clear, as if he had been reborn and shed a thousand-jin burden. At this moment, the Kill-All-Crows Cult truly met its end. But a new Slay All Crows was being born within the rift. "Don't you dare abuse the word 'weakling,' will you?" Mercury Trojan said coldly. "It sounds genuinely sickening. "You always live so purely. That's why I've hated you ever since we were kids."