Unilateral Guilt Turns into Love

"...I have to say, only shameless people could say something this shameless..."

"...If you've got the guts, don't argue with the dean. Argue with Ye Qingcang instead. I'll go make a forum post right now and get Ye Qingcang over here to confront you face-to-face..."

"...What the hell gives you the right to sit at the same table as this young lady..."

Blue Tyrant Academy's villa district.

Inside an ordinary three-story villa.

On the left side of the second floor, in the study.

A Level 7 Jade Seal Machine on the desk was playing Ning Rongrong's voice in lossless quality.

Those familiar with Ye Qingcang all knew that he was a man without taboos.

He had hundreds, if not thousands, of underhanded methods.

The difference was that, compared to Soul Masters who used such vile methods to satisfy their own desires, Ye Qingcang had an extra layer of justice wrapped around himself.

He used evil to restrain evil, and kindness to govern kindness.

He never interpreted others with the greatest goodwill, instead imagining the worst of them.

Yet he never confronted others with the greatest malice, instead approaching them with the greatest goodwill.

On the grand scale, he could scheme with Qian Renxue to usurp power; on the smaller scale, he could manage Blue Tyrant Academy in perfect order. On a larger scale, he had stirred up an endless wave against Evil Spirit Masters; on a lesser scale, he could also target anyone who displeased him.

The Level 7 Jade Seal Machine possessed control authority over Level 5 and Level 3 Jade Seal Machines. Ye Qingcang had deliberately left behind this backdoor.

It seemed despicable, but that depended on how it was used.

Using it to eavesdrop on the Shrek Seven Devils' calls was one such use.

But it had other uses as well.

Its most mainstream use was this: not long after Blue Tyrant Academy was founded, Ye Qingcang established a partnership with the master of Spirit Hall's branch in the Heaven Dou Empire. He connected with Spirit Hall's wanted list for Evil Spirit Masters and offered enormous academic-point rewards to encourage every Blue Tyrant Academy student to hunt them down. After the academy inflicted minor casualties upon Evil Spirit Masters in the early stages, it swiftly drew retaliation from large numbers of them. Many students were hunted down outside the academy, but the Jade Seal Machines they carried recorded who had killed them all. Ye Qingcang, the one who had created and controlled the backdoor, noted every name, issued kill-on-sight orders, and established the Must-Kill List. Under the same hunting difficulty, the academic-point rewards for every Evil Spirit Master listed on the Must-Kill List were multiplied tenfold. There was no upper limit to the rewards; the more Blue Tyrant Academy students one had killed, the higher the corresponding bounty became. Thus began a slaughter that lasted five full years.

That was precisely why Qian Renxue learned the name Blue Tyrant Academy.

And that was precisely how the story of Ye Qingcang and Qian Renxue meeting began.

It could be said that Blue Tyrant Academy had contributed at least one-sixth of the results in the campaign to eliminate Evil Spirit Masters, greatly easing Spirit Hall's pressure. The only flaw was that Blue Tyrant Academy's students were not particularly strong on average. Although some students could hunt Soul Kings or Soul Emperors, the Evil Spirit Masters struck on a large scale were still mainly members below Level 40. As for truly striking at the upper ranks of Evil Spirit Masters—those who hunted Evil Spirit Masters at the Soul King, Soul Emperor, and Soul Saint levels—that still depended on Spirit Hall's Angel Clan.

Using it to eavesdrop on other people's arguments really was a waste of its capabilities.

At least, that was how Violet saw it.

"Master, I don't understand..." The girl created through Alchemy sat quietly on the sofa beside him. Only after the argument playing from the Jade Seal Machine ended and Ye Qingcang pressed the stop button did she voice what she could not understand. "Why don't you use some extreme measures to uproot them completely? Why are you instead allowing these people to scheme against you with such filthy thoughts?"

"You don't need to call me Master. I never taught you anything."

"When I was at my youngest and most reckless, I made a mistake. I trampled upon life, created you, and gave you memories like those in the original work, stopping only at the point where you stepped onto the battlefield."

"I quickly realized my mistake, because you are an independent individual. Your innocence and persistence moved me deeply. But by the time I realized I had made a mistake, I no longer had the power to correct it. Whether humanely destroying you or stripping away your soul, neither would be the right way to correct that mistake. I could only try to make up for my wrongdoing by respecting you. You could live however you wished."

"I am not worthy of being called Master."

Ye Qingcang corrected Violet's form of address for him.

People grew gradually.

After he used the Illusion Realization cheat to materialize Alchemy from Genshin Impact, and after he became capable of creating life without relying on the cheat, his first thought was to recreate the miracle of Rhinedottir creating Albedo and find himself an assistant he could trust absolutely. However, he was a man and had no interest in male assistants. So, after thinking it over at the time, he chose Violet from the anime as a template and created a female assistant who could crush a major with one hand, score full marks on exams, and was innocent, beautiful, and highly capable.

But after he created Violet, he realized just how ridiculously wrong he had been...

Could you imagine how devastating it was to the soul when a little girl with independent consciousness looked at you with the reverent gaze one reserved for a saint?

In that instant.

The instant he saw Violet's eyes.

He realized that life was not his toy.

He also understood why Rhinedottir had raised Albedo in such a hands-off manner.

This was Alchemy's forbidden creation.

Any alchemist capable of doing it would never do it again afterward.

And any alchemist incapable of doing it could not create one in the first place.

Still, even after Violet watched the anime—watched an anime about herself—that stubborn personality of hers had miraculously remained.

That was what had always troubled and left him at a loss.

"You are my Master..." Violet repeated the words she had spoken for six years, a promise made after she had emerged from confusion. "The Master in that title is not the master in a master-servant relationship, but the Master of the Creator. Whether you acknowledge it or not, I am your Violet, and Violet for you alone!"

What a sin...

Ye Qingcang pressed a hand to his forehead and avoided a topic he could not handle himself.

He himself was the culprit.

Perhaps others could break this vicious cycle, but he certainly could not.

"All right..." Ye Qingcang pointed at his Jade Seal Machine—put plainly, a Soul Tool version of a mobile phone—and returned to the matter of eavesdropping on the Shrek group. "The reason I won't uproot them completely is that I can't be certain which version of the Shrek Seven Devils they are. No one can be certain that they aren't living in a parallel world. If they are truly loyal and righteous, but I target them through the lens of the original work, then they aren't the ones in the wrong. I am, because I would be unfair. Besides, living people are often far more useful than dead ones. I am confident they can't stir up any trouble, not to mention that there's a plan requiring their cooperation..."

"Is it the plan codenamed 'Correction'?" Violet tilted her head and drove the knife in. "Are you revising the plan again?"

"Plans are made to be referenced and revised in the first place." Ye Qingcang spread his hands. In a tone that brought many stories to mind, he analyzed Liu Erlong sentence by sentence—and human nature as well. "For someone with a conscience, it would be one thing if they never saw the truth. But if they do see it, making them pretend to be blind is impossible. Unilateral guilt turns into love, and unilateral devotion turns into hatred. Although there is an old saying that a great favor becomes enmity, if you never bring it up, then that favor capable of turning into guilt will never become hatred. That is why I said unilateral, rather than all guilt... Take this Jade Seal Machine to Mother. If you deliver it, she will understand that I am giving her a way to save face."

"All right." Violet did not ask questions like whether Liu Erlong would become his shape. Without any unnecessary words, she took the Jade Seal Machine and headed outside.

Once again, Ye Qingcang was the only one left in the room.

Along with the various documents he turned over and revised.

(:з"∠)