Chapter 425: Heaven and Earth Are Partial

Chapter 425: The Universe is Partial

Two days later, a rare sunny day arrived.

Under a withered tree in the courtyard of Dogeyama Castle’s Hundred Households, Li Jun reclined in a chaise longue. Warm sunlight filtered through the intertwined withered branches, casting a glow on his still sickly yellow face.

“What on earth happened?”

A clear voice echoed before him. Li Jun opened his eyes to find Yang Baze, dressed in a simple green robe, standing before the chaise longue.

Li Jun followed his gaze to his right arm, where a faint red line stretched from the back of his hand, through the knuckles, all the way to his shoulder.

It was the mark left by Luo City’s flying sword that pierced the stars.

After being treated by the Hundred Households’ medical officers, who specialized in skin painting, and with Li Jun’s own strong physical recovery ability, the once hideous wound now only left some faint traces.

“You mean this?”

Li Jun raised his hand and smiled, “Others, after all, come from respectable families. How could they dare to single-handedly challenge my Dogeyama Castle’s Hundred Households without some backing?”

“That’s true. But Luo City, that strong dragon, still couldn’t defeat the local snake.”

Yang Baze nodded, paused for a moment, and continued, “Is the person really dead? I heard that the people of Daoxu, especially the high-ranking followers of the Four Mountains and One Palace, have many ways to die in their place.”

“The Luo City that entered Dogeyama Castle is dead.”

Li Jun spoke confidently, tapping his temple with his hand, “Including his body and his brain.”

“A cunning rabbit has three burrows. He may have other consciousness backups left in the Gezao Mountains.”

Yang Baze seemed to know some inside information and spoke gravely, “But whether he will continue to use Luo City’s name, I don’t know.”

“If he dares to continue using this name, it’s just another battle. One slow step leads to many slow steps. When he has the courage to stand in front of me again, killing him again won’t be too troublesome.”

Li Jun lazily waved his hand, “Did you come here today just to remind me of this?”

“Of course not.”

Yang Baze declined the chair that Huapi had brought for him, lifted his robe, leaned against the tree trunk, and sat cross-legged on the ground.

“I went to see the place where you and Luo City fought. I had a lot of feelings.”

“Oh? Tell me.” Li Jun became interested.

The young man placed his hands on his bent legs, his face full of emotion.

“When I saw the destroyed neighborhood, I first felt shocked, then afraid, and finally only numbness.”

Li Jun looked up at the branches above him, covering his face with one hand, “What shocked you?”

“I was shocked that when a sequence rises to a certain level, an individual can have such terrifying destructive power.”

Yang Baze said softly, “I once heard my elders say a sentence: ‘Martial arts violate prohibitions with force, Confucianism disrupts laws with literature, Buddhism disturbs the mind with compassion, Taoism deceives the people with longevity, warfare is a disaster that upends the social order, and yin and yang confuse truth and falsehood. Below the sequence, everyone is a mole.’”

Li Jun laughed, “I’ve heard this sentence too, and that person pointed at my nose and said that the empire’s decline into its current deformity ultimately stems from the disease within us.”

“In the past, I had no feelings about this sentence, and even thought that no matter how strong a person was, it was just personal bravery, how could it compare to the empire’s power machine?”

Yang Baze’s expression was complex, “Until later, when the Zhu Ming royal family declined and became puppets, only being paraded out as a mascot for worship during festivals. The imperial army gradually disintegrated and was divided up. Even the temple, once a place to petition for the people, became a place to satisfy rituals and conduct experiments.”

“It was then that I suddenly realized that the foundation of power is the system, and the foundation of the system is people. When an individual’s power becomes so great that even the system cannot contain it, the system can only crumble, and the country will inevitably cease to exist.”

Li Jun neither agreed nor disagreed with Yang Baze’s words, his tone calm, “There will always be stronger people who establish new orders.”

“If that day comes, can the person who establishes this order still be called a ‘person’? Perhaps the word ‘god’ would be more accurate.”

“Even if a ‘god’ appears, that’s normal. Don’t forget, the Son of Heaven, our Ming emperor, has never considered himself a human.”

“But the millions of common people living in the empire’s vast territory are just ordinary people.”

Yang Baze spoke seriously, “They are just ordinary people because their genes are not strong enough, and they are cut off from the future by a deep abyss, shackled with chains that they can never break free from. This is not their fault, it is God’s injustice, the universe is partial!”

Li Jun’s heart suddenly jolted, and his eyebrows involuntarily furrowed.

“Yang Baze, with your current status, having such thoughts is not a good thing.”

“That’s why I’m afraid that one day I too will become a swan, raising the banner of ‘How can kings, nobles, generals, and ministers be born?’ to rebel against these ‘gods.’”

Yang Baze leaned his shoulders against the rough tree trunk, a bitter smile on his face, “I’m also afraid that the life I’ve worked so hard to reclaim will one day be easily taken away by someone, and I’ll have no power to resist.”

Li Jun sat up from the chaise longue, his eyes meeting Yang Baze’s, “The swan’s rebellion is not for ordinary people, but to send themselves to the altar of gods!”

“But the idea proposed by the swan is indeed the only hope for ordinary people, the only thing they can see. So over the years, no matter how the three teachings and nine streams have targeted the swan, they have never been able to completely eradicate them, and instead they have grown stronger. These actually prove from one aspect that perhaps the swan is truly the will of the people.”

Crack.

The chaise longue under Li Jun suddenly crackled with cracks, but Yang Baze, leaning against the tree, didn’t notice the change beside him. His eyes were blank, still lost in his own world, talking to himself.

“But the current swans are only mischievous little clowns harboring evil intentions, and I don’t want to be among them. But being in the Confucian order, I feel suffocated.”

Yang Baze’s tone gradually became low, “So, in the end, I was left with only numbness.”

Li Jun’s lips moved repeatedly, but he couldn’t speak another word for a long time.

This wasn’t because he couldn’t refute Yang Baze, who was experiencing an ‘ideological slide,’ but because a strange feeling suddenly arose in his heart.

The young man in front of him was not so much reflecting on the impact of the sequence on the imperial system, but rather exposing his weaknesses and vulnerabilities to Li Jun.

Yang Baze couldn’t possibly not know that there were listening devices everywhere in the Ming Dynasty’s household. If Li Jun spread these words, this young talent, who was currently popular throughout the Japanese region, would immediately be rejected, even persecuted, by the Confucian order led by the new Donglin Party.

But Yang Baze still did this, undoubtedly to give Li Jun a handle and express his loyalty.

A boy of only thirteen or fourteen years old would do such a thing, and Yang Baze’s maturity far exceeded that of his peers.

But Li Jun didn’t like this feeling. There was a bone stuck in his throat, a suffocating anger in his heart that he couldn’t spit out or swallow.