The sunlight of the old mansion fell upon the lion statues.
Leaning against the stone wall of the courtyard, Lu Nanjin stood in silence for a while, and when the voices from the inner courtyard ceased, she also left without a sound, walking for a dozen steps until she reached the end of the alley.
Song Ci, who was squatting and smoking, felt a pat on his shoulder.
Lu Nanjin handed over the suit jacket she had draped over herself.
Perhaps it was because she had drunk Lion Awakening Wine, but her mind was still a mess... There was a sense of hangover confusion, which was quite inappropriate for a messenger of the Judgement Institute who, every day of the year without a break, wielded a knife to cut people.
Moreover, getting drunk and spending the night outside with a man sounded a bit...indecent.
Song Ci hurriedly put out his cigarette butt on the ground and took the suit jacket but did not drape it over himself immediately; he chuckled and asked, "Won’t you come in and sit?"
Nan Jin shook her head, clutching the hem of her formal gown, and sat woodenly at the entrance of the alley, her eyes unfocused and drifting off into the distance, her thoughts flitting a thousand miles away, unaware of what she was contemplating.
Passersby kept casting curious glances... In the old city area, it was rare to see a girl as beautiful and fashionable as her.
"Madam once told me... In this world, many things have boundaries, take Da Du for example."
Song Ci squatted next to Nan Jin.
His gaze wandered into the distance like Nan Jin’s as he spoke aimlessly, "The dividing line of Da Du is the old city district, where those who live here can never imagine what the nights on the river bank are like."
"Likewise, in the world of the Transcendents... the Sincere Heart Association marks the dividing line between the upper and lower tiers."
"The surface and the underground are two different worlds; rules of the Sincere Heart Association don’t apply in the top floor of the flower-flagged buildings. The Sincere Heart Association values fists; whoever is stronger and crueler in action becomes the boss."
"But the game rules on Madam’s side... They’re kind of different."
Song Ci smiled with downcast eyes, "I always thought they were hypocritical, clearly boiling with anger and just shy of breaking into open conflict, yet they would maintain a facade of ’decency.’ It took some time to realize that the world of civility is simply barbarism by another method. Their rules of the game are just another form of cruelty, and tearing off the facade does nothing."
"... What are you trying to say?"
Lu Nanjin, who had been lost in thought, slightly furrowed her brows after listening for a while.
"Even though I wasn’t squatting in front of the mansion, I heard everything I needed to," Song Ci said with a half-smile, hanging the suit jacket over his shoulder while brushing off extinguished ashes with his other hand, "We’re all Transcendents, our six senses shouldn’t be this dull, should they?"
The lanterns of the inner courtyard had long since been extinguished.
Transcendents of the aggressive type, naturally had better vision and hearing than ordinary people, especially a fighter like Song Ci, who could listen to all directions while squatting at the mouth of the alley, capturing the sounds from a dozen nearby mansions.
Lu Nanjin looked troubled.
"Your mentor is truly a good person, you know," Crow stated with feeling, "Before today, I’d sum up my impression of him with ’old hooligan’... but now it’s changed to ’a distinguished man of virtue’."
"If I’m not mistaken, you’ve come back to Da Du to chop someone, haven’t you?"
Before Lu Nanjin could speak, Song Ci laughed, "Who are you going to chop? Cui Zhongcheng? Zhao Xilai? Or... me? Or maybe, all of them? Whoever fights for the flower flag, whoever was the accomplice back at Lion Alley, whoever stands in your way, stopping you from avenging Lu Cheng, is the true murderer."
Lu Nanjin hung her head in exhaustion.
A long time ago, that was exactly what she had thought.
Every time she unsheathed her knife, every time she trained desperately, honing her strength, every time she imagined her return to Da Du... she had already identified her enemy.
That was the Zhao Family, who had taken over her father’s business!
She had also prepared herself for the worst... that everyone standing on this front line could potentially become her enemy.
Including... her sister.
It sounded cruel, but looking back, she realized it was actually quite a naive idea.
Isn’t a person’s relentless pursuit of something often driven by a stubborn thought?
When she first gripped the knife, if she didn’t know where it was ultimately going to land, could she have continued on that path?
Now she had returned to Da Du, adopting the identity of a revenger... only to find that even if she drew her knife, she didn’t know who to strike.
Neither... The girl who had started her Extraordinary Cultivation out of anger, holding the knife so many years ago, had considered the whole world her adversary. But ten years later, as she touched the stone walls of Lion Alley once again, she could not deceive herself.
She too had realized... the Zhao Family was not the real murderer in the old case of Lion Alley.
"Madam, there’s less than a week left until the alternate council member’s inauguration," Zhou Jiren said, sitting on a stone stool and speaking softly to the tightly closed wooden door of the chamber, "The legislation is critical, and the Zhao Family won’t give up easily. This week... they will mount their final counterattack."
Lu Nanzhi was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the chamber at this moment.
Dim light filtered through the window lattice, casting delicate patterns on her face.
Her demeanor fluctuated between relaxation and tension, her face at ease, her hair at her temples fluttering in the breeze that blew through the window lattice. The meditation posture was taught to her by her father, said to be a technique left by the ancients for calming the mind, adjusting breathing... sharing the same principles with the "Breathing Technique" in Extraordinary Cultivation.