Dual Cultivation God Returns

Hong Yue had a brooding expression as she sat on a balcony in the inn, looking outward at the scenery. And yet her crimson eyes did not see it.

She was lost in thought, and completely confused.

“He didn’t kill anyone… but he solved the problem”, she mumbled under her nose, the scenes from earlier today in the warehouse area of the Harbor District flashing before her eyes.

The fact he picked out the leader of the thugs, fought him, and didn’t kill him, the fact that if he did kill him the other thugs would likely have attacked and he would have to kill them all, or the majority at least.

Along with that, the thoughts that were swirling in her head ever since their conversation about morals and empathy in the woods also surfaced once again.

‘Wait, but maybe it was just efficient’, she thought as Wu Long only had to fight one opponent that way. So it might have just been the case that not killing was simply less work, and thus a logical choice rather than a moral or empathetic one.

But then she remembered the conversation she overheard between Old Yen and Lu Mang, the leader of the thugs.

From that she learned that Lu Mang and most of his men were originally dock workers who organized against gangs that oppressed them and others for a very long time.

To an extent, they still led the same lives of being outlaws, but their protection over the areas they controlled meant safer lives and better working conditions of the workers.

To financially maintain their operation, however, without resorting to the extorting and exploiting methods of the other gangs in regards to the areas they ruled over, and to not turn into the very thing they rose to fight against, they started doing dirty jobs for the nobles and wealthy merchants for pay.

Still dirty work, but it was mainly intimidation, it rarely went to actual violence, and if it did the other side were gangs they fought against regularly anyway.

She shook her head, not sure if all their justifications changed what they did.

‘Or did they just want to feel good about thems-…’, as her thoughts wandered there, she froze.

‘Feel good about themselves? Why would making excuses make then feel good about themselves? Why would they even want to feel goo-“, she groaned in frustration, grabbing her white hair, unable to find a way out of this confusion.

‘Did he know about that?’, she then thought if Wu Long knew who those people were, and was it the reason he spared them. She knew he could kill them all, it would not be that hard for him.

His strength was beginning to enter a realm which was hard to understand as it seemed to exponentially grow way beyond the pace at which his cultivation grew. So he could do it, but he didn’t. Why?

Maybe he knew, and maybe he didn’t. The fact that the path that he took required the least effort for him to resolve a situation still didn’t change.

And at the same time, would one who had the strength even search for that path?

Then her mind went to the conversation Wu Long, Hong Ye and Hong Yue had on the Beast of Burden at night.

“There too, he was right… “

He spared the son of the Ruo Family then, and as a result was able to get a deal. She was watching. She was there when he made that deal. She asked to be there, to see if it really will be solved as he said it will. And it was.

Even his words afterward, anticipating that the Ruo Family might bare its fangs was conditional on the possibility that he failed to maintain their interest in keeping good relations. If he did not fail, the decision he made to not kill that young master on the Beast of Burden was ultimately right.

But then again, is it not, once again, just a better way to deal with trouble? Did it matter if it was the better way?

All of the experiences she had, from the moment the paths of the twins and Wu Long crossed up to now, were clashing with the world she knew before.

Her mind was struggling against those thoughts, resisting, raising objections and various reasons why they did not matter. By now she knew for certain that whatever they were, these realizations were deeply uncomfortable for her.

Wu Long’s words and the concepts he introduced to her on that day in the woods were repeating over and over in her head.

And the point of reference Wu Long made for her to understand…

‘What if Wu Long killed all those thugs… what if any of them had someone who thought of them as I thought about Ye’er’, that thought finally appeared in her head, and it clicked, as she finally got what he was saying to her, what it all meant.

And then it all came crashing down on her, as she finally understood why she didn’t want to understand it, why it was so uncomfortable.

Her blade ended so many lives, and she knew nothing of their lives. Who they were or what they did, why was their life ended by her blade.

As her mind stirred with all of her world breaking and crushing down onto her head, a memory flashed in front of her eyes.

A crimson world, enough corpses to create mountains, and fill everything as far as eye could see, and surely well beyond the horizons. Pale, ghastly, and ghost-like hands clinging to the legs and lower robes of a strikingly handsome, terrifying man.

And those words, to remember it.

She knew at this very instant, this was the moment he told her about, this was why he showed her that scenery.

“That’s right”, she raised her head with a whisper, “He is able to bear it… how? His is…”

She could not find a suitable word to describe just how big of a disparity there was between how many the two of them killed. And yet, she saw that he was not crushed like she was now. She had to know how.

Why, knowing what he himself taught her, he was able to stand straight and not despair.

“…And if you need to ask me questions then, you can”, those words he uttered at that time reverberated in her ears.

And just in time, Wu Long’s presence approached the inn, returning from the palace.

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