There was nothing but silence. Everybody held their breath and waited for Gu Zhengyang's decision.
Gu Zhengyang did not look at the saber below his feet at all. He said casually, "I won't kill you."
Zhao Lie coughed violently for a few more times and vomited blood that was almost frozen. Finally, he stood up, shivering. Staring at Gu Zhengyang for a while with a complicated expression, he walked out without looking back.
"Zhao Lie, you can still stay in the Village of Peace as the captain of the exploration team," Gu Zhengyang shouted.
"Nobody is going to kick you away. You are indeed a very qualified captain of the exploration team!"
Zhao Lie turned a deaf ear to him and staggered forward. When he reached the edge of the tank, looking at the wounded soldiers on the ground near and far, he suddenly asked, "Leader, a lot of wounded soldiers were left behind after the fierce battle last night. Other than our own people, there are also people from other villages that we did not manage to take away in time. What are you going to do with them? Kill them all?"
Gu Zhengyang was slightly dazed. He shook his head and said, "You know that I won't kill them. I'll just throw them to the other side of the red line."
Zhao Lie smiled and continued asking, "You won't kill the old, the sick, the women, and the children from other villages, either?"
Gu Zhengyang still shook his head. "Of course, I won't kill the women and the children."
Zhao Lie's eyes turned sharp again. "Even though the women and the children were involved in the battle last night and killed our warriors?"
Gu Zhengyang hesitated for a moment and sighed. "Like I said just now, a reckless assault is too risky. I only want to return to the Village of Peace with my brothers and assets as soon as possible."
"Haha. Hahahaha!"
Zhao Lie suddenly raised his head and laughed miserably. He turned around and pointed at Gu Zhengyang's nose. "Leader, you think that you are being benevolent by not killing the defeated soldiers, their wives, and their children in person, don't you?
"What they don't know is that those people who are heavily wounded will still die if they don't have enough medicine or food to recover!
"Without the protection of the young men, how can the old, the sick, the women, and the children survive in the Land of Sins? If they didn't starve to death, they would be enslaved by the bandits and other large villages, becoming slave soldiers and prostitutes. They would end up with a fate worse than death!
"Hehe. Killing them now is actually giving them a quick death, but your 'benevolence' is cutting them into pieces and torturing them slowly. They will suffer a pain a hundred times worse than death!
"Have you really never thought about this? Or are you just insisting on some senseless morality and don't want your hands to be stained with blood?
"It's useless. In the Land of Sins, your hands and mine are already stained with the blood of countless weak women and children. We can never wash them clean!"
Gu Zhengyang was not knocked down by Zhao Lie's bloody claw just now, but his internal organs seemed to have been heavily wounded by Zhao Lie's words. He grunted, and his face turned pale.
"You let me go today. From my perspective, I should thank you for letting me go," Zhao Lie said gloomily.
"However, from the perspective of the Village of Peace, it is further proven that you are an indecisive, cowardly, and wavering coward. Such a person is not qualified to be the leader of the Village of Peace. You are incapable of protecting the safety of so many people, no matter how strong you are!
"I'll ask you one last time. The saber is right below your feet, and my neck is right here. Are you going to kill me or not?"
Gu Zhengyang gritted his teeth so hard that veins were bulging on his forehead. After struggling for a long time, he finally spat out a word that was as hard as iron. "Get lost!"
"You will regret it."
After saying this, Zhao Lie did not even turn his head. Like an eagle with broken wings, he walked out step by step.
Zhao Chong watched in bewilderment for a long time. Glaring at Gu Zhengyang and Han Te with the most vicious eyes, he stomped hard and chased after his father, supporting him.
Leaning against each other, the father and the son disappeared into the dust and the ruins.
Many villagers were about to say something but hesitated, only to be stopped by Gu Zhengyang. "Don't say anything. Treat the wounded, collect the assets, and return to the Village of Peace as quickly as possible!"
…
Despite the heavy casualties in the Bliss Ceremony, the harvest was much more than in previous years. It took an entire day for all the assets to be moved back to the iron-shelled warship of the Village of Peace. Then, the power rune arrays at the bottom of the warship were activated, allowing the warship to be anchored at the center of the lake again.
Gu Zhengyang, on the other hand, seemed to have been heavily wounded. After the fierce battle, he resumed his sickly appearance. Delegating the chores to other people, he dove into the greenhouse where the Gold Barley was planted and never came out again.
When Han Te and Coloured Glaze brought Li Yao in to check, he was holding a stalk of Gold Barley and smelling its fragrance, as still as a statue.
"Dad, are you alright?"
Coloured Glaze was the first to lunge at him. She grabbed Gu Zhengyang's big hand that was riddled with wounds worriedly.
"Rest assured. I'm fine."
Seeing his daughter, Gu Zhengyang finally put on a rigid smile. He opened his hand and rubbed his daughter's head. Then, he looked at Han Te and said, "Thanks to the few amazing electric currents that were running everywhere inside Han Te's body due to the anomaly half a month ago, I vaguely grasped the trajectories of the electric currents. That's why I was able to recover to my previous level and defeat Zhao Lie."
"Master, you are the best!"
Han Te looked at Li Yao and grinned. "'Blood Eagle' Zhao Lie? He is nothing but an old hen. Of course, he is no match for you!"
"However —"
Gu Zhengyang's smile was gone. A dark cloud popped up on his face, and his eyes were hollow. He said softly, "Although I defeated Zhao Lie, I could not convince him. I could not even convince myself.
"Was I really right? Was Zhao Lie really wrong? Should we not have attacked the camp of the village across the street at dawn today? Should I have let Zhao Lie go at the last moment? "
"Dad!"
Coloured Glaze grew anxious. "What — what are you talking about? Of course, you were right. Didn't you always say that we are good people? At the very least, we are human beings. We cannot be like those insane, evil guys!"
"But the result is the same," Gu Zhengyang said gloomily.
"Zhao Lie is quite right," Gu Zhengyang said gloomily. "Even if we do not kill the wounded soldiers and their families, they — they will not live for long. They will either attack each other for the few assets left or be enslaved by the gangs and other big villages. In the end … nobody can avoid death. However strong they are, they are destined to be swallowed by the Land of Sins!
"If Zhao Lie is said to be a truly vile person, then I am a complete hypocrite. I knew that they would die, yet I did nothing. I simply did not want to kill them with my own hands. I did not want to dirty my own hands."
In front of his daughter and his disciple, Gu Zhengyang's seemingly solid armor finally collapsed. His voice was shivering violently.
"It was not our fault!"
Han Te waved his arms hard in a hurry. "There were only so few assets, and so many hungry people in the Land of Sins. We could not even save ourselves. How could we save other people? There was nothing we could have done! "
"Yes, there was nothing I could have done. None of us … could have done anything!"
Gu Zhengyang coughed in pain again. He coughed so hard that he was almost coughing out his internal organs.
He seemed to have made a decision in his coughing. Pushing away the hands of his daughter and his disciple, he said, "I'm fine. Coloured Glaze, I … have something to tell you. Han Te, why don't you listen too?"
Han Te and Coloured Glaze looked at each other. They both heard the unprecedented solemnity in Gu Zhengyang's voice.
"Or rather, it is a story. A story that your mother told me before she died, a story about some very special people," Gu Zhengyang said slowly.
"The story of the Cultivators," Gu Zhengyang said, one word after another.
Li Yao's soul shook so violently that it was almost leaking out of the iron shell.
He did not expect that he would discover the Cultivators lurking in the Land of Sins in the Martial Meritocrats Sector so quickly!
He increased the senses of his soul to the maximum and did not miss Gu Zhengyang's every heartbeat and pulse, making sure that he was telling the truth.
Han Te and Coloured Glaze looked at each other. It was obvious that they did not know the first thing about the name 'Cultivators'. "Cultivators? What are they?"
"A groundless legend, a bizarre story, and perhaps some … hesitant, cowardly, and merciful cowards."
Leaning against the wall of the cabin, Gu Zhengyang closed his eyes and mumbled, "Before, I was hesitating whether or not I should tell you about the Cultivators because those people and their stories are too different from the Land of Sins and the entire world that we live in. It is a great contradiction! I vaguely sensed that the story of the Cultivators would not bring you any benefits. Instead, it might bring destructive catastrophes to you, the Village of Peace, and even the entire Land of Sins.
"However …"
After a miserable smile, he went on. "Now that I've thought it through, what catastrophes can possibly make the Land of Sins worse than it already is?
"Also, according to Zhao Lie, the gangs in Double Dragons Valley are trying to deal with the Village of Peace. If I don't tell you now, I may never have a chance.
"Coloured Glaze, do you want to know how your mother came up with the idea of planting Gold Barley and saving everybody in the Land of Sins? It was a story that she accidentally heard when she was very little. According to the story, a long, long time ago, when the Land of Sins was still known as the 'Martial Meritocrats Sector', when it was still a place of green mountains and rivers, there used to be a bunch of people known as' Cultivators'. "
With a solemn face, Gu Zhengyang took out a vintage metal box from the leather bag on his waist and opened it carefully. Inside was a piece of delicate velvet, on which a chip the size of a fingernail was placed.
Li Yao scanned the chip with his soul. Based on the structure and nesting of the hundred rune arrays on the surface of the chip, he concluded that it should be some sort of storage chip that was equivalent to a mini jade chip.
Judging from the traces of friction at the edge of the chip, it had a very long history. Perhaps, it had been passed on for hundreds of years.
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