Whatever each side had hoped for, the Three-City Dao Debate had come to an end at last.
The folk of Fenglin City who had gathered to watch dispersed, still chattering away in high spirits. This time, the showing of the Fenglin City Dao Academy could not truly be called poor, and they basked in reflected glory.
Most of the ordinary people who lived in this city had not the least idea what had taken place here today. The blood-soaked battles fought in dark rooms, the killings at the street corners and in the alleyways, those entanglements of life and death — all of it had passed silently, unmarked, like air vanishing into air.
The waves raised by the White Bone Path had been smoothed away without a sound; out on the main streets one could not see even a single drop of blood, and the few folk who had chanced to witness the fighting had all been placed under a gag order.
For most people, today Fenglin City had simply held a grand gathering with excellent entertainment. The supernormal cannot escape pain, and ignorance is not always unhappiness.
For Wei Quji, the seventeen severed heads of White Bone Path cultivators piled before him — and the far greater number of corpses not deemed worthy of collection — washed away his humiliation.
Wei Quji said to Dong A: "Today, great grievances have been avenged. How about organizing the academy's students to recite a few rounds of the Scripture of the Supreme One Who Delivers From Suffering, to offer requiem for those who died wrongly in Little Grove Town?"
As lord of this city and domain, he could at last pay some small obeisance to Little Grove Town, which lay under his rule. This was no difficult matter — as a commonly used requiem scripture, it was memorized to shreds by almost every Daoist cultivator.
But Dong A's demeanor was cold: "Souls scattered, dust. What use is requiem?"
Wei Quji only felt this fellow was simply unreasonable — they had barely finished working together, and still he could not spare a good face. A temper like that, no wonder he had once been driven out of Zhuangdu.
...
When the Sanshan City cultivators left, Jiang Wang went specially to see them off.
He held genuine respect for Yang Xingyong, and he honored the will the Sanshan cultivators had shown in this debate. Set against the mighty, thronging company of Wangjiang City, they looked lonelier than ever. Had it not been for Dong A personally stepping in to treat their wounds, they could not even have returned at full strength — these people had fought too desperately.
That Jiang Wang came to see them off gladdened Yang Xingyong: "I accept my defeat willingly. You are very strong. Next year, I'll come and challenge you again!"
The two talked for a while. Jiang Wang hesitated, but still asked: "The Three-City Dao Debate is not the commandery academy's great examination. Why did you all fight so desperately?"
Yang Xingyong fell silent.
"Forgive me. If it's not fitting, pretend I never asked." Jiang Wang said with sincerity.
"Because we... because Sanshan City, it's hard." Said Sun Xiaoman, who had stood beside them all along, downcast and silent.
"Sanshan City, you see — many mountains, many beasts, and many fierce beasts. Beasts are one thing; they're as good as food. But fierce beasts are a real trouble..."
As Sun Xiaoman told it, Jiang Wang came to understand Sanshan City's plight.
The human race had risen in the ancient era, but before that rise, life had not been easy. Though it is said now that humans are the soul of all things, in truth they are born for the most part with their Dao meridians sealed, and only a rare few geniuses emerge with Dao meridians laid open, able to cultivate from birth. Whereas demon-beasts each and every one possess open Dao meridians by nature.
Later, a supreme human strongman invented a pill formula and made it public, and that lifted the curtain on the rise of the human race. The strongman's name is lost to history, but his formula has come down through the ages: it was the original Meridian-Opening Pill, whose chief ingredient was the Dao meridian of a demon-beast.
From then on the human race was no longer bound by talent — with the Meridian-Opening Pill, anyone could cultivate! And this meant an era of frenzied demon-beast hunting had begun.
Before he began to cultivate, Jiang Wang had long puzzled over one question: in such a torrent of a cultivation age, why had the human race, with all its strength, never swept the wilderness clean? Why did each kingdom under heaven merely keep the main roads open, leaving beast and demon to roam free over so much of the land?
Because these demon-beasts are a resource! In a sense, they are livestock being raised free-range; the beasts, even the wilderness itself, are simply the ecology needed to sustain that free-range farming. After all, a demon-beast favored by heaven and earth, born with its Dao meridians laid open, cannot be penned and bred.
The fierce beast, however, is a different sort of existence. In force it is generally formidable, yet it lacks all spiritual nature, and even its meat cannot be eaten. Simply put, its power to wreck is little less than a demon-beast's, yet in itself it is utterly worthless.
Hunting a fierce beast is a task of nothing but loss with no gain whatsoever — yet Sanshan City had no choice but to do it, which made its long-running losses a hard fact. All the strong need resources heaped up to their full height, yet Sanshan City's outflow always outweighed its intake. And worse, the fierce beasts of its domain were too many to be killed to the end. They wreck the main roads, attack towns and villages, gnaw on humans.
Sanshan City's environs meant most of its grain had to be shipped in from elsewhere; the city could not remotely feed itself. And the broken roads, in truth, only raised the danger of that transport. Lately especially, when the Sanshan City Dao Academy suffered heavy losses at the hands of the Swallow-Heart Human Demon, Sanshan found its manpower scarce beyond measure.
The upkeep of the main roads was the affair of Sanshan City's domain. To ask the Court of Zhuang to dispatch high powers to sweep the beasts away, one had to pay out resources of equal worth — and Sanshan City could no longer take out any surplus to speak of.
So even with its eldest senior brother, Chu Ping, fallen in battle, the Sanshan City Dao Academy still saw this debate as a lifeline. They fought to the death on the martial exercise ground not for their own honor, but for the folks behind them — for those fathers and elders of Sanshan City scraping by from day to day.
"Do you know? Every bout we win, at least ten more people in Sanshan City live." Yang Xingyong's eyes were plainly reddened, and he lowered his head: "So long as we perform well..."
He felt guilty for his defeat, though he had given everything he had.
For a long while, Jiang Wang was silent.
He clapped Yang Xingyong on the shoulder: "This year's first-year championship in the debate, I picked it up by chance, and it shames me to hold it. The fifty points of Dao Merit that came with it — when I get back to the academy, I'll go to the Hall of Dao Merit and transfer them to you."
Fifty points of Dao Merit was no small sum. Though it could not solve Sanshan City's problems, it would somewhat ease the burning urgency at hand. And step back: for a student of the Dao Academy whose name was recorded in the Dao register, fifty points of Dao Merit was half a Meridian-Opening Pill, the worth of half a supernormal cultivator.
That was precisely the strength Sanshan City needed most at this moment.
"How can this be fitting?" Yang Xingyong looked up in astonishment.
Sun Xiaoman had already punched Jiang Wang square in the belly. "This friend of yours — we're sworn brothers for life!"
She had meant, in her grand way, to smack him square on the chest, but alas, her height did not allow it. Jumping up to smack him would only have spoiled the mood, so she settled for thumping him in the belly.
Jiang Wang felt a mouthful of old blood clogging his throat; had the Four Spirit Body-Tempering Art not been so formidably hardy, that one blow would have done for him.
This little girl — her fist was simply terrifying. Of course, Jiang Wang knew it was not because this young miss was so free and easy with herself. He could even see the pinch and the discomfort hidden beneath her proud, easy smile. She was only unwilling, out of her own bashfulness, to cast away the help that the folk of Sanshan City could receive.
"And so, until we meet again."
"Until we meet again!"
However far one sees a guest off, the parting must at last come. Jiang Wang stopped at the city gate, watching his newly made friends leave.
...
"Sis, buy me a new set of clothes." The little fatty Sun Xiaoyan, draped in that hooded black robe, padded along, hiding and skulking as he went.
His original clothes had been torn to shreds in the fighting.
"No money."
"I can't go home like this, can I? Such a long road — how many people would see me! What if I'm exposed?"
"What if they do see? You're still a child."