"Oh…" Gan Qing's attention had yet to switch over and she was half a beat late in realising what Zhang Meizhen was talking about. "It… It's late at night. Is it okay for Sect Leader Yang to go through all this trouble?"

In actual fact, her implicit question was: right now, there's no distinction between good and bad for Beggars' Sect and Travellers' Sect, they've both become rats hunted down in the streets; the beggars that roamed around No. 110 in the past have practically all vanished; Yang Ping, who was missing for many years, is being isolated and interrogated, and it's still unknown what will happen to him; the old master has yet to fully recover from his illness—if he comes back to No. 110 now and faces this situation, can he recuperate well?

"He was the one who wanted to go back." Zhang Meizhen was a sharp person and could decipher her hidden meaning even through the phone signals. She said, "Let him do as he likes. At that age, how many more days can he have where things are the way he wants? What else can he not accept?"

"Then I'll keep the door unlocked." Gan Qing paused. Right then, the bedroom window that was not shut properly was blown open by the wind. A glass wind chime hanging on the clothes drying rack jangled noisily. Gan Qing seemed to be suddenly possessed by the spirit of the witch "Teacher Meng-Meng"; an indescribable feeling bloomed in her chest. "Meizhen-jie, wait!"

"Hmm?"

"Be careful on your way back."

Zheng Meizhen let out a disdainful sigh, finding Gan Qing's worries baseless, and hung up.

Before Gan Qing could tidy up the loose threads in her mind, her intuition had already leaped far ahead and was desperately signalling something to her. She frowned and looked at Yu Lanchuan. "You're saying that Elder Zhu and the others colluded with their own families to put on an act together with Yang Ping?"

"The reason why the kidnapping could happen silently and succeed was because the victims walked out themselves and the messengers were there to lead the way. The families of those who organised the thing would go to the outskirts to have fun while those remaining here would force the old sect leader to give them an explanation and provoke a conflict between both sides," Yu Lanchuan said. "But there's a problem here."

"Which is?"

"Firstly, there were too many people participating in this plot. Hence, when the plot was underway, there was a high chance that there would have been people having second thoughts. In the hearts of the Beggars' Sect disciples, there is affection and respect for the old sect leader. Using an underhanded method to threaten the old sect leader's authority—even if they meant well for Beggars' Sect, it would have been hard for them to overcome this internal hurdle. The moment someone hesitates and leaks the secret, the entire matter would become a complete joke," Yu Lanchuan said. "Secondly, since they were pretending to go missing, they would definitely have to come back after the fuss was over. At that time, these people would be completely unharmed with not a single one missing. With Zhang Meizhen's methods, it would be very easy for the entire matter to be revealed. Even the deep feud between the two sects that had gone on for generations was on the verge of being transformed from weapons of war to beautiful jade and silk in her hands, wasn't it? This is just a small ripple in the water in comparison. In that case, all their efforts would have been for nothing."

What was lacking between Beggars' Sect and Travellers' Sect was not small conflicts. It was a final, no-way-out, deep animosity borne from a sea of blood.

While some people were foolishly following the crowd and causing trouble, there were other people sharpening their knives and laying out the plot.

"If Yang Ping had colluded with Wang Jiusheng, with Wang Jiusheng's craftiness, they didn't even have to do anything themselves. The two of them only needed to find the right time to leak the news about this matter, fan the flames a little, and the extremists in Travellers' Sect would explode in rage," Gan Qing said lightly. "We held our nose and coexisted peacefully with you guys but you guys not only humiliated our North Branch Master in public, you're even playing this kind of unorthodox trick behind our backs and making us shoulder the blame."

In that case, they might as well make the accusation a reality.

"Those prepared to 'leave their homes to go on a trip' didn't expect that they were walking from the flock of sheep into the wolves' mouths themselves. Travellers' Sect made a sudden move that caught them unawares by helping them turn the pretense into reality," Yu Lanchuan said. "This is why Qiao-Qiao's uncle contained his hatred and committed suicide and why, after Elder Zhu destroyed himself in pursuit of revenge, he sent the children far away to the rural village."

This desperate all-or-nothing struggle was actually the result of hatred mixed with the inescapable guilt and shame for his part in the deaths.

Gan Qing tapped on the letter in her hands. "Many years later, Elder Zhu's orphan son, Zhu Cong, came back to Yanning for revenge. Did Zhu Cong know all this inside information?"

Yu Lanchuan calmly replied with another question, "If you were Elder Zhu, would you tell your thirteen-year old son the truth? If you were Zhu Cong, even if you were as brilliantly clever as your name implied, would your thoughts go in this direction? Putting aside whether or not you would think this way, even if someone directly told you this, would you believe them?"

Gan Qing had nothing to say to that.

If good and evil were as clearly separated as oil and water, if they were completely incompatible, how wonderful would that be. This way, all the victims in the world would be perfect and faultless and everything bad would have a villain they could pin all the blame on. Life would be as simple as the subjective questions in Year 3 of primary school. The people involved in the matter and the bystanders could all breathe a sigh of relief.

Yu Lanchuan asked, "And then? Where did those two revenge-seekers who were as directionless as headless houseflies went off to?"

"According to this letter, the ones who intercepted the kidnapping were extremists from Travellers' Sect but the ones who instigated the fire should be Beggars' Sect own people," Gan Qing said. "The two of them wasted a few years and after much difficulty, uncovered the ones who started the fire and carried out justice. Initially, they thought that this great revenge had been taken, they didn't think that there would be such twists and turns behind it. But the two of them had neither power nor might. Even finding a few old-timers who were living in hiding already took all the strength they had. How could it be easy to find the traitors after so many years had passed? At this point, someone found Wei Huan. In his letter, he said-"

Shifu, before this, I still dared to say that I picked up the blade for the sake of friendship and was righting wrongs on behalf of Heaven. But after this, I am too ashamed to face you again.

The entire time the two of us looked for those people, we also hid and dodged. We didn't have any other source of income and were also afraid of people investigating us. We had no choice but to use low-quality fake I.D.s and do illegal jobs. The little bit of money we earned was only enough to cover our travel expenses. The longest time we went without eating meat was half a year… But this is nothing. The two of us are not growing anymore anyway, we don't have to worry about our bodies not developing well. What makes us despair the most is that the path ahead of us is so vast. We have no direction. Just relying on ourselves to investigate, on our own without any help, what century would it be before we are done? Will we still have the chance to see the light of day in our lifetime? That's why, when the Xu clan came to me, I really had no way to refuse.

Back then, for the sake of gathering demonic skills, Xu Zhao set up an evil cult and harboured criminals. He is a wanted criminal. I still have a vague recollection of the time you and a group of the seniors from the older generation helped the police lay siege on Xu Zhao. That old demon Xu Zhao escaped and only a pack of evil cult followers were caught. I never thought that the centipede would survive even when cut apart and I also never thought that "Paoding Jieniu" would also one day become one of their targets. Shifu, I sold out Wan Mu Chun to this kind of person. I'm not fit to be human.

But after one wrong step, every step after that will also be wrong. There is blood on my hands and a mark on my fate that can never be washed away.

I started to "take jobs" from the Xu clan. They introduced me to people who wanted to hire assassins and I took the jobs. If any accidents happened, they would send people to help me clean up. The fee was split equally between us. They were equivalent to an underground intermediary. I thought of myself not as a murderer who could not differentiate between right or wrong—I sold my body but I still wanted to be memorialised—and only accepted revenge jobs. I only killed those who were extremely evil, who had done major crimes, as though I could assuage my conscience this way. The Xu clan agreed to help us investigate what happened back then.

I had Zhu Cong return home and wait for news. I told him that when this matter is over, he should go home and live peacefully with his wife and child. He could stay in the village and farm or he could come out to work. Either way, he should have some days of peace.

I didn't completely depend on the Xu clan either. After all, this was a business transaction. They wouldn't exhaust all means for me. Hence, I also kept an ear out for the slightest hint of trouble in Beggars' Sect. You should remember, eight years ago, something major happened in Beggars' Sect. The sect leader of Beggars' Sect's only child, Yang Ping, was ousted out of the sect. Yang Qing announced that he had severed his father-and-son tie with Yang Ping, and Yang Ping disappeared from then on. This matter was discussed heavily for a period of time but I could see that the list of his crimes had no strong standing at all. Yang Ping's martial arts had long since been destroyed by you. It's been so many years and he has basically vanished without a trace. What kind of wrong had he done to push the kind and generous Yang Qing into making such an extreme decision? There were also people spreading rumours of a love scandal, saying that Zhang Meizhen had returned to Yanning and that he didn't want his biological father to marry a second wife so he did something to Zhang Meizhen. I think that's even more nonsensical and laughable. What age are they now to still be able to do something like this?

A possibility suddenly appeared in my mind. Could the traitor in Beggars' Sect back then be him? This way, when things came to light many years later, Yang Qing finally severed father-and-son ties with him. Zhu Cong had the same thought and came to find me from thousands of miles away. The two of us returned to Yanning together but we didn't find Yang Ping. Hence, we used a blunt-force method and started by investigating the people around Yang Ping at that time. With this, we indeed found some questions.

Two Beggars' Sect disciples who had once had proper jobs in Yanning disappeared without reason back then. They had gone to work at an unremarkable and low-key flour factory in the neighbouring province. This matter was not at all logical. Why would someone living a good life in the city suddenly go to a remote village to work? Didn't they have anything better to do? But because the two of them had nothing at all to do with what happened to Elder Zhu's family and also because there are many in Beggars' Sect for whom the entire land is their home, no one had noticed this before.

And right at that moment, someone from the Xu clan brought me a job. The targets were none other than the two suspicious former Beggars' Sect disciples at the flour factory.

Shifu, can you imagine it? Our immediate reaction was that they were being silenced—by whom? If it was Yang Ping himself, he could have killed them much earlier if he wanted to. Then, the only possibility was… someone who had only recently discovered the truth behind what happened back then. The modest and gentlemanly Yang Qing.

This hypocrite, Yang Qing, is not at all incorruptible and impartial. If he truly is incorruptible, he should announce what his son has done to the whole world and not come up with a whole bunch of shoddy excuses to cover up.

Zhu Cong and I accepted this job and went to the flour factory at Xiaogang Village together. We found those two people, and interrogated and threatened them. As we expected, those two were the lackeys Yang Ping had sent to find someone to start the fire. This flour factory was Travellers' Sect's property.

Everything was clear.

Shifu, if it was a normal person, their immediate reaction at this point would surely be to capture the two of them, make a police report and get them to identify the culprit. What a perfect conclusion that would be. But ever since I collected the first coin from Zhu Cong, we have gone further and further away from this ending. I am an "underground" person and it is impossible for me to have any business with the authorities for the rest of my life. Zhu Cong was also enraged and insisted that blood debt must be repaid with blood. Hence, I took action to end the lives of these two people.

When it was over, Zhu Cong knelt on the ground and howled in anguish. I couldn't bear to watch him so I gave him some time to himself and went back on my own to the guest house we were stopping at. I was also very tired but I felt that I had at last not let down my brother. Only Yang Ping was left before we could bring all our efforts to a satisfactory conclusion. Hence, I slept. In the middle of the night, I was startled awake by a nightmare and only then did I realise that Zhu Cong was not back yet. I suddenly broke out in a cold sweat. I went back to look for him and only then did I find out that soon after I had left, the flour factory exploded. Eighteen people inside were all killed indiscriminately.

This can not be a coincidence!