He had thought he would see an angry face, but instead Li Fei was looking at him with a faint smile.
"Uh… Pavilion Master?"
"Good."
"Ah?"
"The fact that you can think this way, and dare to say it to my face, is good. But, you know, just raising questions is not enough. You must also have the ability to solve them."
"Uh…"
"If all you can do is raise questions, yet you have no ability to solve them, what right do you have to question and harshly judge those who are burning up everything they have to solve them?"
"..."
"I once knew a man who also saw many of the problems of this world. But he did not complain, did not accuse others of inaction or of not doing enough. He too staked everything he had, trying his best to resolve the problems within his reach. He was my ntor. His na was Hao Yi."
"This subordinate knows."
"Oh?"
"This subordinate has heard about the matters between the Pavilion Master and your ntor."
"Mm. You're very similar to my ntor."
Li Fei said to Yu Hong.
Yu Hong was startled, then went blank.
Li Fei smiled and said, "If my ntor were still alive, he definitely wouldn't approve of Ye Ze'an's way of doing things either. But in truth Ye Ze'an and he are the sa kind of person. Just like my ntor, Ye Ze'an also put in everything he had, trying to tackle the problems he saw."
"I think that back when Ye Ze'an was in that position, he must have thought of countless thods, run into countless walls, made who knows how many attempts—but in the end, there was only one path left before him."
"He didn't know what lay at the end of that path, didn't know whether he was right or wrong. But when it was the only path he could see, he chose to walk it."
Yu Hong fell silent.
Although he still could not agree with Ye Ze'an's actions, at the very least he no longer had any way to pass judgnt on that forr Grand Secretary.
"'Sacrificing the few to save the many'—I've seen a lot of people waving that banner, but in truth they were only satisfying their own interests; their faces were disgusting to behold."
It was rare for Li Fei to bare his heart in front of soone else, and it was to a youth he had only t for the first ti today:
"Ye Ze'an did the sa kind of thing. But what did he ultimately get in return? He could have honorably retired as Grand Secretary, and after his death, he would surely have received the posthumous title of 'Wenzheng,' the highest glory a man of letters can obtain! By virtue of the rits he once established and the reforms he presided over, his na would have been destined to go down in history, praised for generations to co!
But he chose to personally destroy all of that… His parents and clan resent him, the common people of the realm curse him. Even soone as upright as you, even after learning the full inside story, still cannot understand him.
These past few days I've been thinking: in the end, what did Ye Ze'an actually gain?"
Yu Hong opened his mouth, but no words ca out.
Li Fei suddenly stood up and picked up the wooden box on the table.
Yu Hong hurriedly stood up as well.
"Co, accompany on a trip."
Li Fei said to Yu Hong.
Yu Hong did not ask where to; he simply nodded and followed.
The two of them went to the back courtyard of the Main Pavilion. Li Fei summoned a Black Boat, took Yu Hong aboard, and then flew off into the sky.
Piloting the Flying Boat, Li Fei quickly left Lanling City behind.
He opened the wooden box cradled in his arms, grabbed a handful of ash from within, and scattered it toward the earth below.
"Pavilion Master, this is?"
Yu Hong couldn't help asking.
Li Fei said, "These are Ye Ze'an's ashes."
Yu Hong said, "Ah?"
Li Fei turned his head to look at him. "Ye Ze'an once told when he was alive that after he died he wouldn't be able to enter the Grand Ancestral Temple, nor the Ye Family ancestral hall. So his ashes were to be scattered across the entire Da Lan Dynasty."
Yu Hong fell silent again, not knowing what to say.
In the days that followed, Li Fei really did take him flying across all twenty-three Provinces of the Da Lan Dynasty; they even went to the Grassland, the Great Desert, and the lands of the Northern Barbarians.
Wherever they went, Li Fei would conceal their identities and casually pick a place to have a look around.
As the number of places he saw increased, Yu Hong gradually began to gain so understanding.
This journey was both Li Fei's way of fulfilling his promise to Ye Ze'an and his search for that answer.
Or perhaps, it was so that Ye Ze'an's spirit in heaven could also see that answer—
Across the Da Lan Dynasty's twenty-three Provinces, in each Province, local officials, powerful clans, gangs, or so Martial World Sect had been implicated by the Ye Ze'an case.
When the Governnt publicly announced these people's cris and brought them to justice, applause, laughter, and cheers could be heard everywhere in the Da Lan Dynasty!
The Ten Clans still existed, and the evils of the world were far from being wiped out.
But the lives of many common people in the Da Lan Dynasty had indeed improved a little because of this, and their hopes for the future had grown a little brighter.
The Ten Clans might from this point on collapse and never rise again, eventually being swept entirely into the trash heap of history.
Or perhaps in the future there would be new Ten Clans arising…
Whatever that future might be, that old man would never see it.
In the end, Li Fei brought Yu Hong to Wu'an University, to the small mountain where the principal Shi Caiming lived in seclusion.
He scattered the last of the ashes from the wooden box on this mountain, then raised his head to look at the sky, his lips moving faintly.
"Chief Minister Ye, I have scattered your ashes across the entire Da Lan Dynasty. May your soul breathe with the nation, and from now on follow the rivers and mountains, witnessing together the future of the Da Lan Dynasty."
After all this was done, Li Fei took Yu Hong to the graves of Hao Yi and Shangguan Xiao, and said to Yu Hong:
"Yu Hong, are you willing to take as your master?"
"I will not promise you wealth and glory, nor will I promise that you will surely beco a top expert. The only promise I can make is the one you already knew when you beca an Inspector—from this day on, the human world need not be so cramped, and heroes may stand upright."
After more than a month of spending ti alone with Li Fei, Yu Hong no longer felt the nervousness he had at the start.
And in this period, Li Fei had given him much guidance; in his heart, he was already prepared.
Without hesitation, Yu Hong knelt before Hao Yi's grave and kowtowed to Li Fei:
"Your disciple Yu Hong pays respect to Master!"
...
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