Devils run amuck
In an internal affairs hall interrogation room, three elders question Fang Yuan for a full hour, and by his fifth retelling of the day’s events they find no gap between his tellings even though he has hidden some of the details. One elder, a middle aged woman mourning a daughter who died as the sickly snake group’s healing Gu Master, presses him coldly over cutting the knife scales net with his moonblades and over hiding inside the wild boar king’s stomach where his female teammate died fighting him for the same space, and Fang Yuan answers only that he acted from fear and states the bare facts without admitting any intent, leaving the elders unable to declare him guilty. It has been three days since the small beast tide, whose casualties have left the clan’s higher ups grim, and the narration notes that the small beast tide is only a prelude, since a year off waits the real terror, a large wolf tide bringing tens of thousands of lightning wolves and their king toward the village. Asked what he plans to do, Fang Yuan says he means to apply for the family assets and carry on his family’s heritage, and an elder tells him that the internal affairs hall’s missions, family inheritance and the compulsory monthly missions alike, are built for groups and too hard for one person, offering him a choice between joining another group or testing to become a captain of his own; Fang Yuan answers only that he needs time to think, and after leaving he applies at the internal affairs hall for the family inheritance mission, learning he can only collect it in three days because of the recent chaos. ch. 97
Outside on an ordinary winter afternoon, Fang Yuan meets Mo Bei walking with Fang Zheng, Chi Cheng, and others toward Gu Yue Jin Zhu’s group memorial assembly, and when Fang Zheng asks him to come, Fang Yuan says only that dying of old age or sickness is a normal sight once one has seen enough of it, and walks on indifferent. The group calls him cold blooded and without feeling, someone in the crowd repeats the rumor going around that Fang Yuan survived by hiding in the boar king’s stomach and using his female teammate as a shield, and Chi Cheng follows by calling him a disgrace without a man’s manners, folding his arms and laughing coldly, which leaves Fang Zheng, as Fang Yuan’s own younger brother, ashamed in front of the others. ch. 97
Walking on, Fang Yuan is untouched by the insults behind him, reasoning that only the weak hearted fear rejection and that people who live by others’ opinions of them are pitiful, and he recognizes that some of the rumor’s spread has been deliberate, meant to degrade his name. He judges that entering the clan’s system would make him a pawn bound by its rules when what he needs most is resources and solitude, so he chooses on purpose to be a loner: unlike on Earth, where social ties decide survival, this world’s strength lets one person overpower ten, a hundred, or a thousand, so being cast out costs a strong person little. Every world’s rules shape its people differently, and in a world ruled by martial strength, group loyalty counts for little, so in this world devils run amuck. ch. 97
