The World Isn't Like That

"Teacher?" The same doubt rose at once in the hearts of the three people present. Only Bai Zhou himself wore a strange expression. Picasso's spirits lifted. "The power hiding behind this brat has finally jumped out on its own!" "Just you? Who else is there?" The hoarse voice laughed, low and sinister. "Quite the hero, to have the courage to face me head-on." "But a worthless wretch like you... what use is there in stepping out?" The other's confident ease had at first left Picasso unsettled and suspicious out of caution, so he deliberately looked the man in the suit over a few more times. At last he was certain the man had absolutely not reached the titled level. Picasso's Spirit-Intent Domain covered the surroundings, and he sensed no presence of his own kind at all. No Spirit-Intent Domain meant the man was not level 6. For a low-level Extraordinary, if they did not actually make a move, it was indeed hard to judge which level they stood at. But high-level Extraordinaries could not conceal themselves from one another at the same level. The sensing and the pull between one mature Intent and another, and the mutual repulsion between one Spirit-Intent Domain and another—these were a high-level Extraordinary's most direct proof of identity. As for anything above level 6, that went even more without saying. A person like that, merely by standing there, could set every high-level Extraordinary trembling, as if they faced a natural enemy that suppressed their very form of life, and they would feel an instinctive fear born of the food chain. At that thought, Picasso gave a cold laugh. "So that mountain back there is your stronghold?" "No wonder the brat was rushing here in such a panic... All the more convenient for me to scoop you all up in one net!" Thank fate for the gift! What could prove the Fine Arts Society's sincerity better than this, and make the Major, about to achieve his Ascension to Sainthood, see him in a different light? "Yet no matter what trump card you hold, it's useless now... because you have no idea who you are about to face." Picasso said it in a heavy voice. "I've seen too many frogs at the bottom of a well like you, who don't know how high the sky is or how deep the earth. Maybe one or two Extraordinary weapons made you think you had a chance for the weak to topple the strong..." "But I will tell you just how cruel reality really is!" On the other side, Fang Xiaoxia stared, eyes wide. One moment she looked at this elegant old man in a proper suit. The next she turned to look at a certain low-key driver, innocent-faced and pretending he was not there, sitting on the tricycle with a staff to his left and a blade to his right. Master and disciple? For a moment, the girl found it very hard to connect the two. "Caw!" A crow's cry swept suddenly into Bai Zhou's ear. Miss Crow stood beside Bai Zhou. Her suspicious gaze was quietly sizing up the newcomer as well. After a moment, her faint voice rose beside him. "When did you pick up another teacher... How is it I didn't know?" Bai Zhou: "..." How was he supposed to answer? Because he himself did not know this was his teacher... But if he said it was not, it seemed he really had inherited a great deal from the man. "Still, Picasso isn't wrong. This man doesn't seem like a level 5 or level 6 Extraordinary, and even less like someone above level 6. He..." Crow studied the old man in the suit, her expression puzzled. "Something's wrong with him!" All at once Crow's pupils shrank, as if she had found something. Her gaze cut through the downpour and locked hard onto the old man in the suit. "He, it... it seems like...?" Crow had seen the clue. But Picasso could not. He even chattered on in high delight, his gaze clinging to Bai Zhou and Fang Xiaoxia like worms. Until the Principal opened his mouth. "Why are you still here?" He looked at Bai Zhou and said, quickly: "It's only dealing with a stray dog. A small matter like this needs no lingering thought." "You ought to go do what you are about to do, and meet fate head-on." "When a man, for a lady's sake, goes to do something of vital importance, the whole world will make way for him. No one can bar him." So he said. Then he turned his head toward Picasso. His voice was calm, without a ripple, like a proclamation, or a notice. "Including you." In the same moment the words were spoken. With a crack, the streetlight above the Principal's head shattered. The bulb's glass fell in a clatter like snowflakes. The Principal pinched one shard out of midair. Broken glass scattered beside his leather shoes. Rain fell onto the shard in the Principal's hand and slowly slid from the fragment's keen tip. The instant the broken raindrops struck the ground was the instant the last of his words fell. The Principal vanished from the spot. "When did he—!" Picasso's hair stood on end all at once. His sight and the perception of his Spirit-Intent Domain lost the target at the same time. A low voice arrived at Picasso's ear without the slightest warning, and sent a jolt through this veteran killer, long tempered by a hundred battles. "A killer like you, with the bloody stench seeping from every pore, had best not appear on this romantic stage." The Principal said, "Please be so good as to turn readily into a corpse. Faced with a request of mine so sincere, I do hope you will by no means refuse." "Otherwise, I shall be very troubled." The sharp fragment of glass refracted the raindrops beneath the streetlight. It was clearly nothing but a bit of broken glass, yet in the Principal's hand it swung like a folding knife, the motion elegant, without a trace of the mundane. Then the transparent folding knife found Picasso's neck. "Boom!" Brilliant pigment exploded. The Spirit-Intent Domain contracted in an instant. Picasso twisted his body in an inconceivable way and pieced it together again, dodging the edge even as he tried to strike back. A magnificent battle broke out all at once! Yet between the panicked Master Painter Picasso and the Principal—elegant and unhurried, strolling with a glass shard held like a folding knife—the gap was plain. Anyone could see the final result of this fight. At most, it was only a matter of time. The Principal even had the leisure, in the gaps of the dizzying fight, to straighten the rose upon his chest, then turn his head toward the tricycle that had set off once more and vanished onto the road up the mountain. In the darkness of the vast curtain of rain, he seemed to see Bai Zhou pedaling with all his strength, as if he were seeing a knight charging up the mountain with lance raised. "We will meet again... my heir." Expectation showed on his face. He laughed softly twice, and called across the distance toward the accelerating pedal tricycle: "But for now, keep charging, kid!" "Tell the whole world who you are." "And then—become this city's hero!" Bai Zhou, pedaling with all his might, heard the Principal's voice. "Who is he, exactly?" Crow's voice was grave. "Why do I feel... he isn't like a person?" She glanced at Fang Xiaoxia beside her, hesitated, then guided the spirituality within Bai Zhou's own body through a simple ritual—a ritual that let one person share another's heart. The Hearts-in-Accord ritual. "Not like a person?" "......Actually, you can just take off the 'like.'" Bai Zhou did not open his mouth. His inner voice passed straight across, and he spoke with Crow as he normally would. "It's the one you're thinking of." "The King of Wicked Desires!" Crow's guess was confirmed. Her pupils tightened. "No wonder..." Why had Picasso been fooled completely? Why was there, upon this old man in a suit, no Spirit-Intent Domain at all, nor half a shred of what marked a high-level Extraordinary—neither "Spirit," nor "Intent"? Because he was not human in the first place! Body, Heart, Qi, Essence, Intent, Spirit... The man was an anomaly of the Reflected Ruin Realm. He did not walk that path of advancement at all! "To think a King of Wicked Desires has quietly escaped a secret realm and come into reality! This is no small matter!" Crow's expression was grave. "And it seems no one has even noticed?" Crow stood at the edge of the tricycle, looked back toward the rugged mountain road in the dark, and slowly drew her brows together. "No wonder. This King of Wicked Desires is nothing like the others, cruel and without order, living natural disasters... He is too much like a person!" In Crow's mouth, the Principal who a moment ago had been very unlike a person was, this moment, suddenly "too much like a person" again. But this was no contradiction. Precisely so, one could see how terrifying the Principal was, and how special. What made Crow most curious, though, was this. "How did you come to be familiar with an anomaly this dreadful?" Crow looked Bai Zhou over, her gaze full of surprise. "You can even make him show himself of his own accord, and step in to help you?" "......" After a moment's silence, Bai Zhou shook his head. "To tell the truth, I don't know either." "But didn't he say it? When the matter here is done, there's something he wants to give me. Perhaps, when that time comes, we'll know everything." He thought, then added, "Also, as far as I know, he isn't a King of Wicked Desires. For now he's only a quasi-King of Wicked Desires!" Even the Principal—who, while everyone's attention was drawn by the demon, could fake his death and slip away in the chaos—was likewise quite special. One could only say that once a thing had brushed against a demon, one absolutely could not look at the Principal with the eyes one used for an ordinary anomaly. Bai Zhou had long known they would meet again. He had never thought the Principal would come out so soon. Escaping a secret realm could not be without a price, and abandoning everything of his own to come into reality could not be so easy either... Yet this Principal had only been hiding a few days. Looking at him now, his condition seemed unexpectedly good. Though far from the oppressive presence he had held in the minor secret realm as its master, he was already quite terrifying. A lift of the hand, a shift of the foot, and he could easily suppress a Titled Extraordinary like Picasso. What on earth did the man mean to give him? Bai Zhou knit his brows. The gatekeeper identity had already been cast off. Did this Principal still have some design upon him? Did it have anything to do with the man always telling him that he was, in fact, rather special? Though for now the man seemed a friend and not an enemy, Bai Zhou had always kept a considerable wariness toward this quasi-King of Wicked Desires, who had fled into reality and moved in secret. "Bai Zhou, that man—is he your teacher?" Fang Xiaoxia's voice brought Bai Zhou back to himself. Seated on a cushion made of cabbage leaves, the girl's voice was full of curiosity. "So many people are helping us... helping you. You must be someone remarkable." After a moment's silence, Bai Zhou, without turning his head, kept pedaling the tricycle. His two legs moved so fast they left only afterimages. "Actually, before tonight, I never thought so many people would step in." "After all, all along, I've only been a wanted man who comes and goes alone." Bai Zhou shook his head. "Never a next meal after this one. Once today is done, no knowing which outdoor air-conditioner I'll be up on tomorrow." A wanted man? An outdoor air-conditioner? If this had been before, hearing such things would have frightened Fang Xiaoxia until her lips trembled. But now, looking at Bai Zhou's back as he carried her along on the tricycle, she felt only steadiness, and curiosity. "Then you must have been wronged!" "Didn't the people flying the helicopter say so? A bad person wronged you... a bad person surnamed Luo!" At that, Bai Zhou blinked twice. He did not speak. He only pedaled, intent. The battered tricycle went a little faster, racing full tilt toward the mountaintop. The rainstorm could not catch it. In truth, Bai Zhou was genuinely astonished by everything that night. He had calculated in advance that the Fine Arts Society would turn out in full, and he had expected the Master Painters to bar his way. He had even prepared all sorts of plans for a fight. But he had never thought he would not need to swing a single blade, and could still come this far so easily. The Gem Witch, everyone from the Special Control Bureau, and the Principal of Yuanmeng Middle School. Every adventure of the past, all the different people he had met, gathered together at this moment and became the force pushing Bai Zhou forward. This was something Bai Zhou had never experienced. The feeling of being helped, one after another, left something rather peculiar in his heart. Crow had told him before that an Adventurer never fights alone. Crow had also said that one who has the Way finds many helpers. Only today did Bai Zhou understand what those words meant. In those adventures where death came nine times and life only once, companions could always appear at an adventurer's side. Perhaps they were not beside him in ordinary times, but at the crucial moment one could always hear a few voices say, "I'm here." This was the meaning of adventure. "Too bad there's no CD player on the tricycle." Bai Zhou pedaled until the tricycle threw sparks. Its speed passed two hundred and thirty kilometers an hour, and the whoosh of wind at his ears felt monotonous. "Otherwise I think I could ride a little faster." At that, Fang Xiaoxia shook her head again and again. "I've already said goodbye to Mom. There's no need to listen to Moon Boat anymore..." In fact, as Fang Xiaoxia saw it, this pedal tricycle under her—more than two hundred kilometers an hour, wheels madly spitting fire—was far more outrageous than any moon boat sung of in a song. "Oh, right." She thought a moment, then spoke again. "Those bad people have so many schemes, and they've wronged you for so long. Haven't you ever thought of going to the higher-ups and reporting them?" The girl weighed her words. "In that mysterious world of yours, isn't there some kind of... mm, official organization that upholds justice?" "Because these bad people are precisely people from the official organization. Otherwise, who else could put a warrant out on me?" Bai Zhou gave the answer calmly. "What's more, some of them even sit in high office!" "Didn't the people on the helicopter say it? Whatever you do, don't go turning yourself in." Bai Zhou shrugged. "Fortunately, a long distrust of this world, and my usual caution, saved me. I'd rather eat in the wind and sleep rough than try gambling on it once. That's the reason." "Actually, I already have quite a bit of evidence in hand." Bai Zhou smiled. "But if I really just handed this evidence in at random, then I'd be a true fool." "Because even if I reported it, it would do no good." He was a criminal, an A-rank wanted man of the Special Control Bureau, and coming from Wancheng he could not, by nature, be separated from the Blood Worship Cult. There were simply too many suspicions and secrets on him. During his flight, his swift rise as an Adventurer had left him even less able to explain himself. He had no way at all to account for where his strength had come from. He was simply born to it—a villain harder to wash clean than a ball of coal! And, by contrast, what about Major Luo? This man, nearing thirty and older than Bai Zhou by exactly one turn of the zodiac—twelve years—was a hero of the Special Control Bureau, the third young master of the Zijing Group, a young and accomplished idealist commanding a base of his own, an enemy that set the Blood Worship Cult gnashing its teeth, and a leader upheld by many agents of the Bureau. Most crucial of all: "Would you believe it? Even if I could prove the Major has a problem, that he's a bad man—he could still come through untouched. At most he'd lie low for two years." Bai Zhou said it offhand. "Even if he were disciplined, the one punished under his name would be someone else, while he himself went on free as ever?" Before, all Bai Zhou had in hand was one encrypted ledger, every line of it code that only the Major could read. It could serve only as a lead in his investigation, not as evidence that the Major had committed crimes. But now, Bai Zhou could in fact photocopy the encrypted ledger, and those files as well, and find a way to send them to the higher-ups of the Statute Hall and the Special Control Bureau. However. Bai Zhou had come to realize of late that the moment he did so, the Major might well get word the very next day, wipe away every corresponding trace, and need only push a few scapegoats forward to withdraw with himself intact. Why had the Statute Hall still not sent down an inspection team? Why was the Special Control Bureau's supervision team so quiet? Bai Zhou had been kicking up a fuss all through Tinghai for so long. Why had no one turned their eyes this way, toward Major Luo's base? It was probably not only because the web the Major had tied was large enough to cover many key posts. The importance of the Zijing Group was likewise greater than Bai Zhou had thought! Bai Zhou's enemy had long since ceased to be the Major alone. There was the whole of the Zijing Group! And even more! When it came down to it, if this world could be simply defined by right and wrong, then Wancheng's justice would not have been a full several decades late. Bai Zhou was an "outsider." Nothing in this world had ever held public credibility in his eyes, so he saw the matter with particular clarity. He did not know why, but Crow, who had tried to persuade him, seemed always to hold a certain confidence in the higher-ups of the Special Control Bureau. Bai Zhou did not believe it. After he had met the peculiar Deputy Director Liu, he believed it even less. In the end, the intelligence brought by the Gem Witch and everyone from the Special Control Bureau confirmed it. Bai Zhou's excessive caution, and his worst guesses... had all been right! Even the Gem Witch, a hero who cooperated with the Special Control Bureau, seemed to hold a certain wariness toward the Bureau—cooperating, but not joining. The instant she learned of Bai Zhou's situation, her reaction had even been to feel relieved on his behalf: relieved that he had not gone to the authorities and turned himself in, but had first sought her out, this "intermediary." But Crow was not to blame for this, either. What era Crow belonged to, no one knew. What the Special Control Bureau looked like in her understanding, and what stance the Bureau occupied at the height where she herself stood— that viewpoint was not necessarily the same one seen by Bai Zhou, an Extraordinary with no one to rely on. What changes had come over the Bureau in between, what changes had come over Tinghai—heaven knew. Bai Zhou had never spoken these thoughts to Crow. Not until now, when Fang Xiaoxia asked, did he tell them. Crow stood on the sheet iron at the tail of the tricycle. However the wind and rain tossed, they could not shake her slender figure by a hair. The hem of her windbreaker snapped in the gale. Wind and rain covered the sound of Bai Zhou's words. She listened to him speak, lowered her head, and made no sound. Bai Zhou had always been willing to trust Miss Crow. If he could not trust even Crow, then there was no one in this world he could believe. But toward this world— he would forever keep one measure of doubt. The lens of that doubt had saved him countless times before, and he would keep it hereafter. "An official organization that upholds justice..." "In truth, perhaps the world cannot be divided into justice and evil. Using 'order' and 'chaos' to divide the camps might be more fitting." Bai Zhou told Fang Xiaoxia what he had come to feel over this recent stretch of time. "An organization that maintains order. That is the meaning of the authorities' existence." But where there was order, there was rank—or rather, a weighing of value. Weigh the value and the potential influence of one side against the other, then sacrifice the side whose value is smaller. Precisely this merciless choice could, to the greatest degree, hold the city's stability together. This was the cruel mysterious world. No wonder every other word out of the Major's mouth was "value." And inside this system, the Zijing Group was, without question, a link whose weight of value stood extremely high. The daily life of everyone in Tinghai could not do without the Zijing Group's products. The moment Extraordinaries first stepped into the mysterious world, they met the Zijing Group coming to the door to sign a contract... They upheld the peace of all Tinghai, and for humanity's development in the Reflected Ruin Realm, and the fight against anomalies, they had made outstanding contributions and sacrifices. A power so vast was already a close, inseparable link within Tinghai as a whole. Their third young master, doing a little evil, walking a little astray... what of it? Even if it were truly made public, a light punishment as a heavy warning, raised high and set gently down, enough that everyone could say the matter passed muster—and that would be the end of it. As for Bai Zhou? As for Liu Zhen? In a world where an Extraordinary's personal strength could reach the peak, before a colossus like the Zijing Group, a community of interest made up of countless powerhouses, the lot of a few weak Extraordinaries, and all their noise, was in truth something no one cared about. "In fairy tales the bad are punished, the good all have a reunited ending, and the avenger is sure to get his wish... That is why they are fairy tales," Bai Zhou said, his voice low. "But this world isn't like that. The real Tinghai isn't like that." "Then... then what do we do?" All at once Fang Xiaoxia felt cold through her whole body. Even her fingertips were so cold they were nearly numb. "Does that mean you'll just be hunted like this forever? That we can never open our mouths and speak?" Fang Xiaoxia gripped the sheet iron of the tricycle's bed tight in both hands, staring blankly at Bai Zhou's back, so near she could have reached it. She had not thought a casual question would bring her all of this. Order was not justice! Just then, Bai Zhou pedaling ahead made her think of a snowy day when she was small and burning with fever, and her mother had ridden her to the hospital on a bicycle. Ahead had been a long mountain road, pitch-black, rugged and hard to travel, jolting all the way. Bai Zhou only went forward, charging into the depths of the dark without a glance back. Even one man against the curtain of rain, he could still come on fierce. But. If the road ahead was as dark as this... then what meaning was there in going on? The girl felt lost. "Not so." Bai Zhou's voice passed lightly to her ear. His voice was very calm, as if he had long expected this. "This is precisely the meaning of my alliance with the Gem Witch." "And it is the purpose of my coming here." "The purpose of coming... here?" Fang Xiaoxia repeated under her breath, doubt on her face. Squeak. The pedal tricycle turned all at once. The tires scraped a long stretch over the ground. The front whipped around, and the tricycle drifted to a stop. Fang Xiaoxia was just wondering why they had stopped when Bai Zhou had already swung himself down. While she was not looking, he also secretly rubbed his backside. This tricycle saddle... it really bit into the backside. Hard as a board! It could rival Miss Crow's divination crystal ball. "Have we... reached the top of the mountain?" With a creak, Fang Xiaoxia climbed down and looked all around. Trees crowded every side. Standing at the edge of the mountain road and looking down, one could take in not quite half of Tinghai at a glance. Flickering points of neon answered the towers and joined into one stretch through the wind and rain, hazy and dim, like a swarm of fireflies drifting beside a lake. "If someone plays deaf and dumb, then make them see by force." Bai Zhou said, "The Major Luo in their eyes is only sneaking about, stirring petty trouble. They need only look the other way." "But in truth, his ambition is greater than anyone's!" For the sake of the Zijing Group's value and influence, so that all of Tinghai would not fall into turmoil, many of Major Luo's doings had been tacitly allowed, as if he held any number of golden plaques exempting him from death. But a plaque that exempts one from death cannot exempt a rebellion that would see ten clans exterminated. Just as Major Luo cannot flip the table at which everyone eats. Some things are fated not to be tolerated. Just like what the Major is doing now. Bai Zhou had many straws in hand that could break a camel's back, but first he still needed to find a weight heavy enough. Before this, in fact, Yuanmeng Middle School in the Reflected Ruin Realm had been a similar chance. If someone had discovered that Major Luo had been secretly carrying out demon worship and a demon summoning, threatening the very survival of Tinghai, then even Major Luo, even the Zijing Group, would have had to pay a heavy price. That was utterly different from "petty trouble" like the Human Material industry chain, which did not threaten the city's greater situation. But the Major was too cunning. He seemed long to have foreseen that someday the demon's lair would be discovered and the demon slain there, so he had left no trace of himself inside at all. Even under investigation, it would be very hard to trace the matter straight back to him. But this time— Bai Zhou lowered his head. Standing on the highest mountain in all of Tinghai City, he looked down toward a quiet cluster of buildings somewhere in the distance. I won't let you get away again! "There. Is that where you go to school—Longluo Private High School?" Bai Zhou raised a hand and pointed at a pitch-black, silent cluster of buildings very far away. It was deep night, and the rainstorm blew. Of course the empty school held no one at all. "Yeah. That ought to be the place. Why do you ask..." Fang Xiaoxia did not understand. "Few people know that someone's secret base is hidden underneath." Bai Zhou worked both wrists. "But now I'm going to pry the cap off the bottle, and let everyone have a look at our Major's glorious exploit." Like lifting a stone, so the scorpion hidden in the dark would show its venomous tail. Fang Xiaoxia listened, baffled, and then saw Bai Zhou start to drink a potion. "Glug, glug, glug..." Bai Zhou drank an entire bottle of burst reagent down. The spirituality within him began to boil. Knowledge of the Nine Basic Slashes turned through the depths of his mind. He felt his strength surging. Then, under Fang Xiaoxia's stare, as if she had seen a ghost, Bai Zhou drew a strange great bow from inside his coat. So big! But broken and battered, like a length of rotten wood. Where had it come from... Fang Xiaoxia was nearly numb to it. She had long stopped finding it strange that Bai Zhou could pull all sorts of odd things off his person at any moment. "Do you still remember what you said to me before?" Bai Zhou asked. "What? Which line?" "I asked you then whether it wouldn't be fine just not to go to school." Bai Zhou reminded the girl beside him, denim jacket and white skirt, a plush doll hugged in her arms. "Do you remember how you answered?" Fang Xiaoxia recalled it at once. "If those people behind us keep staring and won't let go, can I still go to school tomorrow?" "Wouldn't it be fine just not to go?" Fang Xiaoxia, back then, had rolled her eyes. "If I don't go to school, are you going to support me from now on?" "Otherwise, you can blow up the school for me. That way I won't have to stay up all night tonight catching up on the weekend homework." "I remember... why?" All at once she had an ominous feeling. She whipped her head toward Bai Zhou. "That's right." Bai Zhou answered. "I'm planning to do something that will make you happy." "A man has to keep his word." The words left Fang Xiaoxia utterly flustered, her thoughts running wild. In the pitch-black night, he stood on the summit of Zhenlu Mountain, more than a thousand meters up. Bai Zhou straightened his back. He was trying to draw the bow. The Thunderous Heavenly Bow.