32 About the Blade, About the Mine Pit (1)

Standing on the edge of the building housing the Sanctuary, feeling the biting wind whip against his face, Karyl narrowed his eyes and slowly shook his head.

A peaceful sleep is truly a rare thing, he thought.

Last night, he had experienced that sensation again, a rarity. No dreams or other things waited for him in the darkness, only a calm, heavy stillness.

He had spent six hours in quiet slumber; he could have asked for more, but he refused.

There was always real work to be done. Besides, indulging in comfort breeds laziness.

"We need to wait, Wraith."

Facing the foul-smelling, frigid wind, Karyl squinted and spoke.

"Everything that happened last night will soon be known to all the nobles."

"Such things cannot be hidden for long, not to mention those families with intertwined interests. Even those nobles who hole up in their own worlds, concerned only with their own pleasures, should notice something amiss after a while."

"Their reactions might be exactly as I predicted—scrambling to seize the vacated seats and power. Or perhaps not. But regardless, it requires us to wait for a time."

Karyl paused and sighed.

"After all, this period is the eve of The Great Purge."

Wraith pondered for a moment, then nodded, though he offered a different opinion.

"Why don't we just kill the other nobles as well, Karyl? We know where they are, and we know how to find them."

Karyl raised his eyebrows in slight surprise, then offered a faint smile, one filled with genuine pleasure.

"How about this, Wraith—let me ask you a few questions, shall we?" he said softly.

Wraith nodded in silence.

"You see a gang member committing a robbery; what do you do?"

"Kill him," Wraith said without hesitation. "He has surely done it more than once."

"Correct. Now, the second question: you see a group of gang members committing a robbery; what do you do?"

"Kill them all," Wraith frowned. "Gangs deserve to die."

"Correct. The third question, Wraith—you see a group of youths trying to join a gang, committing the first robbery of their lives. This time, what do you do?"

Wraith fell silent.

And Karyl continued.

"They are starving, their bodies barely covered by rags. Several gang members watch their actions coldly from a distance, even shouting at them to hurry up and finish the killing. What do you do?"

Wraith remained silent, though the index finger of his right hand twitched, and his expression grew increasingly grave. This was rare, and something Karyl was pleased to see.

It meant that Wraith was beginning to ponder these difficult questions.

"Well, do you have an answer, Wraith?" he asked patiently.

"...No," Wraith replied in a low voice. "I have no answer."

"Then let me tell you what is likely to happen next."

Karyl lowered his head, looking down at the filthy streets that were gradually descending into chaos as time passed. He narrowed his eyes, his voice growing softer.

"Kill those gang members, and the youths will scatter and flee. But that doesn't mean they will give up. They will continue, join the next gang, or return to this gang's base to report what happened."

"Then, if you are lucky, you might see a few of them again."

"And then, you will have to kill them—because they joined a gang."

"If you choose to stop those youths, to tell them not to commit crimes, they will ignore you. Some will be emboldened to continue what they intended to do, while others will seek help from the gang members."

"Only a few will feel a prick of conscience because of your persuasion, but they will do nothing. After that, the gang members they sought out will walk over from across the street."

Karyl turned his head to look at Wraith. His expression now held something Wraith could not understand, his eyes filled with heaviness.

"...And so, in the end, you still have to kill them."

Karyl shook his head: "That is the likely progression, Wraith. I am finished."

"..."

Silence—then, Wraith asked in a strained voice: "Why?"

"Because they have to."

Karyl answered gently. "They have seen their own parents with their own eyes, Wraith. You have seen them too, haven't you?"

"The workers in the shantytown, and those soot-blackened faces in the mines on the edge of the city—gaunt, skeletal, and riddled with disease."

"Laboring day and night, only for the factories to kick them aside once every ounce of value has been squeezed out. Afterward, they cough up black dust and blood on rotten wooden beds by the roadside until they die."

"Who would want to live like that?"

"But," Wraith asked, hesitant and dejected. "Must they join a gang?"

"Otherwise, what?"

Karyl could not help but burst into laughter.

He was no longer as pessimistic as he once was, yet he still harbored a profound hatred for the current state of this world. The laughter dissipated into the cold wind, sounding not like joy, but like a shattered sorrow.

"They had no choice, Wraith."

Karyl said softly. "Between looking like a human and living like a dog, they chose the former. We cannot blame them for that, but we also cannot offer forgiveness on behalf of the wrongfully dead."

Yes.

Wraith understood this clearly—they could not offer forgiveness on behalf of the dead. No one possessed that right, save for the dead themselves.

"Therefore, slaughter is never the best solution to the problem. Even if you were to kill all the nobles, there would still be the gangs."

"And the gangs would, sooner or later, become the new nobles. It is a cycle, Wraith. What we must do is not join this cycle through slaughter, but break it."

"Break it?"

"Yes, break it." Karyl nodded.

Wraith blinked, shifting the topic to something they had discussed before: "So, Karyl, have you found that method?"

"I have seen its prototype."

Karyl answered gently. "But I do not know how to explain it to you clearly, Wraith. My ability to express myself is not very good; I can only try my best to describe it to you."

He raised his right hand and opened his palm.

"It is like a flame that has just been ignited. But in this world filled with special fuel, it will soon consume the entire world."

Karyl clenched his right hand abruptly.

"By then, perhaps this method will no longer need me to explain it to you."

Wraith nodded silently, committing every word firmly to the bottom of his heart. Some of these words he understood, some he only half-understood, and some he did not understand at all. Yet his intuition told him that he should remember them.

"Besides. Given that we do not need to work today."

Karyl smiled slightly: "Don't you want a blade of your own?"

Wraith's eyes lit up suddenly.

Nostramo is a world rich in adamantium.

In fact, if you were to use the prefix "rich" to describe it, it would even seem biased. The reality is that the crust of Nostramo contains a massive amount of natural adamantium.

Massive.

Therefore, we might as well say that it is a world encased in adamantium.

Of course, just like everything else on Nostramo, the adamantium is firmly held in the hands of the nobles.

They use it to trade with surrounding worlds; it is an extremely reliable source of income. The nobles use adamantium to amass great wealth and to exchange for anything they desire.

They certainly do not care how much blood is stained on these ores.

Jump, fall, and finally land—the movements were the same as always. Karyl had experienced this many times, but this time, something was subtly wrong.

He frowned.

In the past, Karyl was accustomed to preparing his body to dissipate the impact before landing. He had done the same this time.

However, just now, after he landed, his muscles and knees seemed to be telling him that he did not need to do so.

You do not need to be so cautious, they told their master with a gentle, rebounding force; you have become vastly different.

What is going on?

Everything was normal on the way back to the Sanctuary last night; why would such a change occur after only a single sleep?

Is it some side effect of the resurrection that I am unaware of? Or has the enhancement from that power not faded?

Is it permanent?

Karyl began to ponder, his brow furrowing tighter and tighter against his will—this feeling of being unable to fully master his own body disgusted him.

"What's wrong, Karyl?" Wraith asked from behind him.

"."

Karyl did not answer, only slowly widening his eyes.

He had discovered something.

That sense of threat—the one born from life's instinct that occurred whenever Wraith was behind him—had vanished.

"Karyl?"

".I'm fine."

Karyl spoke in a low voice, forcing himself to temporarily forget the matter. He raised his hand and pointed toward the other end of the ruins: "Do you remember that mine, Wraith?"

Crouching on the edge of a dilapidated house, Wraith nodded.

He certainly remembered; it was in that mine that he had met Karyl.

They were currently on the northwestern edge of Quintus. The outskirts of the Hive City were slightly better than the wilderness outside, but only slightly.

There was no electricity, the houses were in disrepair, and no one came here except for the miners. And even the miners did not live here; they were merely passing through. They would choose to set up simple tents near the mine shafts to use as a place to rest.

After all, houses on the edge of the city are dangerous—so dangerous that not even many rats remain, as most of them are active within the mines.

You wouldn't want to know the reason why.

"That place has been abandoned."

Karyl stood up straight, lifting his foot to step over a crater that had appeared on the spire of the house. Darkness surrounded them, save for a faint glimmer of light near the entrance of the abandoned mine in the distance.

"But, it seems there are still people there," Wraith whispered.

"Of course there are people there."

Karyl answered calmly. "The mine may be abandoned, and the gangs and mine owners responsible for transport may have walked away, but the miners cannot."

"...But, the mine was abandoned, wasn't it?" Wraith said, bewildered.

"The miners were abandoned, too," Karyl replied, turning his head.

"..."

Wraith pursed his lips, not knowing what to say. Karyl shook his head in a gentle, comforting gesture.

"No need to say anything," he said softly. "Shall we go see them? If luck is on our side, you might even run into a few people who recognize you."

Wraith's eyes widened.

First of all, thank you all for your support. I am truly grateful; a failure like me never dreamed I could reach a spot on the new book rankings.

Next, please allow me to recommend two Warhammer fanfics.

The first is Reading the Black Library. Perhaps some readers have already read this masterpiece on other sites, but the author has brought it over to Qidian. It is a "reading" style story where the Primarchs and Malcador read the Black Library series. I caught the author surfing in the group chat yesterday; now, not only have they started two other new books, but they also have to write 6k words every day. Hehehehe.

(By the way, this author's other two books are also on this site.)

The second is Son of the Emperor: The Nirvana of the Purple Phoenix.

The title alone is attractive enough, isn't it? The author's prose is solid and rich with a translation-style flair. Although they are a fledgling writer like me, there are already some interesting signs of potential, so I won't spoil anything. If you are interested, please go take a look.