Yung had a nightmare. He was gutted like a hamburger by a voidfiend that looked like a clown. The occultic foxball ended up with Youjin Chao. Su Nanya went back home to marry her fiancé. Someone stepped on Silky, and Floofy didn’t want to go out for walks.

Then Yung woke up.

"When do we leave for the Twilight Blood Palace?" He asked. He was feeling a distinct lack of motivation. I wanna lie down more. Ugh, I, but there’s the foxball and the foxmoths… Ugh, don’t wanna!

He woke up at the wrong time. It was after brunch but before lunch. He felt refreshed as a six-hour sleep could make a 5th stage Imperfect Heaven 1st realm cultivator. "When did I break through?" He asked again, confused.

"Does it matter?" Su Nanya patted the red seat beside her. She sat on the bedded velvet sofa by the giant open window, and was sitting in the elegant manner that princesses who wore bikini armour did, with two legs crossed, pressed together, and angled slightly up at her knees to give Yung a total tease of her under thighs. "You must tell us what you desire. Come now." She beckoned, placing her other hand on her bosom.

Yung gulped, "I-I didn't think yesterday's events would rattle me so much. I must've looked so weak." He felt pathetic. He thought he was above forced machismo, but the sheer shame of his reactions threatened to make him lie down again.

Su Nanya nodded, then scowled. "That is not it." Her adorable fangs snarled out, “Such a claim misses the mark entirely!"

"What… misses what?"

"But we suppose it is as good a place as any to start our interrogations."

When Yung sat down beside her, Su Nanya suddenly grabbed his head, gently cupping his ears and making him lie on her soft, pillowy lap. He faced up, and beyond those amazing mounds that defied the heavens, her coquettish smile beamed. It was barely visible beyond the peaks, but it caused Yung to feel an intense sense of déjà vu.

"Tell us.” The vixen licked her lips, “Why did the events 'rattle' you so?"

"I don't know. I—" Yung stopped, thinking about how much he wanted to share at this moment, and deciding that it did not matter. What secrets he shared, it was hers to have. "I've never seen such... Meanness before. Renyao malice. I don't know. I guess I did know, in my head? But it hit me. The reality of it did."

Because—I don’t get it. Maybe because it was the first time I saw such… animosity, after I regained memories. I miss Earth. I miss the safety I always took for granted.

"The world of cultivation is where the winner takes all. Those who triumph do so standing upon a mountain of corpses," Su Nanya said. Her eyes were knowing, her smile blood red. It had a tranquil quality hidden behind her playful savageness. "But that is not it, and you dare still feed us such misconceptions? Do be honest, my heedless servant."

"It feels strange when others read my emotions."

"We are all perceptive!" Su Nanya preened, neither denying nor confirming.

"I—I like to think that I managed to get the Youjin clan and the Free Sparrow Gang to revamp the slum areas, to do good. It's not like I'm losing anything in the process. It's actually the Blood Spirit Contract Scroll Miss Yafeng gave me that's doing most of the work," Yung held up the Pink Heart Ring to his girlfriend's eyes. It constantly sapped his abundant Heart qi. "People worship me, the Fortune Fox Totem, so fervently, and somehow I convinced myself that by helping the less fortunate, I was fulfilling my part of the bargain."

"And are you not, oh boy of so many doubts? You should be proud, jubilant even! Perhaps another man of higher yang and prowess but lesser fortitude of will would, in your place, desire to use such a scroll for riches and women. The less fortunate would not even be in their thoughts, and surely not in their responsibilities."

“That’s the problem! I don’t like the less fortunate! At all.” Yung confessed his deepest sins, and Sister Su Nanya took all of him into her magnanimous heart without judgement. “I hate them. Why can’t they just suffer some-place where I can’t see? Just take my money and make better lives. Why do I have to…” Yung touched his chest. It squeezed with pain. Of shame, guilt, and release. “I… I know why I have to.”

“Pray tell, oh beloved boy.”

“Because I’m a hypocrite! I’m just doing this to make myself feel better.”

Yung’s life had no divine purpose. Moira had said so. A purposeless life with endless possibilities was still that, purposeless. There was no meaning in what he did, so these random, bipolar, and quite selective acts of good were what he had selfishly decided on. To feed the ego he so liked to deny. It had seemed like a good use of his time. He was pretty egalitarian in his college days, joining activist protests for the most trivial wrongs all over the country.

But the issues he had marched against—before his disease took over and he had learnt to let go of his hormone- and social-media-driven radical values—were mostly things with intangible consequences. Stuff like store owners not selling wedding cakes to lesbian couples or a college tutor misgendering a woman with gender dysphoria.

They now seemed so minor and petty in the face of actual, bloody, and brutal violence. Physical violence; backed by a thirst to make others feel pain in their flesh and bones.

It was uncivilised. Not to be reasoned with.

It was bestial. Driven by the law of the jungle.

It was sheer disregard for life and taking glee in snuffing it out. It was pure, unadulterated evil.

Again, when he was Jung, and after becoming a paralysed fossil, he had embraced more conservative values, becoming a centrist, a moderate liberal at what he deemed was the happy medium. Yet he still rallied against racial injustice, against capitalistic corruption, and against systemic oppression.

Online.

All those were present in this world too, and at much higher intensities. All backdropped by the malignant fact that this world’s ruling class viewed the lives of mortals as that of worker ants.

To live for their whims, to die for their pleasures.

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Yung's egalitarian mindset was woefully unequipped to handle such madness of super-powered genocide machines. Was he supposed to tweet at them?

He didn't want to be hurt either, but he hated feeling the pain of others way more. To witness their suffering was, to him, a torture too uncensored to fathom.

“Our eyes see all,” Su Nanya said. “Your heart is far gentler than mine. Than anyone else's in this quaint village.”

“Thank you,” Yung said. “That means a lot.” This was true, but he did not agree with her statement.

Yung's own perception of himself was 'a good person.' He was a nice guy, he'd thought. He lived a life of the so-called 'boring existence', a life of no merits nor sin. With boring first-world problems where the solutions were comfortable. Type a few lines, click a few buttons, and when his bank was charged, he would feel like he had achieved something.

“Do you think it’s wrong of me to profit from other people’s misfortune?” Yung asked.

“We would honour you nonetheless. For your cowardice, and for your desire to help despite such weakness,” Su Nanya said. “You are a true man, keeper of our yin. In your own unique way, for you bring forth benefits that extend beyond your own gains. And this ‘profit’ of yours profits the less fortunate too.”

“Am I your true man?”

“We unreject you.”

Smooch!

Her tongue entwined with his, and suddenly, Yung felt much better.

“Dim Gold City isn’t that bad.” He said.

Su Nanya stared with a silent twinkle. Yung took that as permission to go on.

"It's… civilised here compared to bigger cities, from what I heard. Places with more cultivators have a lot more killing," Yung paused, "and sexual assaults. And family genocides. And they only get slapped on the hand as punishment. If I go to the Moonvalley trade city, or some weird sect, I'd have to see more injustice. And unless I do something about it, it will hurt. It hurts even now."

Su Nanya placed her palm above Yung’s heart, then her vulpine ears as if to measure his beat. It tickled.

“If I don’t see people getting killed,” Yung continued, “it won’t hurt. Out of sight, out of mind.”

After lifting her head, the vixen’s palm traced soft circles.

“I want to stay here,” Yung finally said. “And I want you to stay with me.”

The silence lasted a while. It was companionable. Yung didn't want an immediate answer. Or any answers, really. He wanted to lie on Su Nanya's lap forever and bubble in her warmth.

“Why do you suppose those thugs assaulted that maiden?” The vixen asked.

"An easy target. They knew Wang Gangbao was weak and had no connections. They knew that if they paid some spirit stones, they'd be let off the hook."

“That was not my question,” Su Nanya said. “Why the maiden, and not her equally weak man?”

"Ehh," Yung was stumped. He was all for inclusivity of opportunity, but not like this. Not the 'opportunity to get assaulted'. "Men usually lay with women. At least, from what I know. I mean, nothing wrong with the other case—”

"Think with your brain, oh dear servant. A-And everything is wrong with the other case, h-how savage you are!" Su Nanya said, the defensiveness oozing out of her empathic link. Her eyes were shifty, and her lips pouty. She flushed, then pointed at the Pink heart ring. "We had predicted such. This mystical artefact corrupts your mind!" She snarled.

“W-What?” Yung asked with suspicion and trepidation.

“Do you not know of its vile history?”

“It’s from a devil cultivator, right? He made some cult in some village,” Yung said.

“It is a depraved village where men lay with men, women with women. Worse than smoke-mongers!” Su Nanya yelled, tears in her eyes.

Yung gaped, then closed his mouth.

Wow!

He did not expect incest to be preferable over freedom of love. It put many things into perspective.

“Wow,” Yung said out loud this time. The girl I love is a conservative boomer! He chanted the mantra in his head a hundred times over, ‘Judge people not by the common sense of the future but by the common sense of their time.’ I love her; this is the girl I love!

"Truly a grotesque happening. But after the devilman was killed in hellfire, the village was freed from forced sinful acts." Su Nanya had calmed down.

Babe, I don’t think being gay is evil—Well, if this devil cultivator was forcing his sexuality on innocent villagers through his superior cultivation, then that's rape, and he probably deserved hellfire. Yung paused. If this world was more accepting of the freedom of love, and that 'devilman' did not hold resentment from a lifetime of denial and prejudice, would he make a different choice? No, I am projecting. I should stop speculating before knowing any of the facts...

Yung finally understood his girlfriend's question. "You mean to ask why women are thought of as such weak beings, free to own and violate?" He asked for clarification. "While men are killed off, women are traded like playthings among bandits. Why… fair maidens are seen as weaker than men?"

Su Nanya nodded.

"I don't know. Mortal women are primarily responsible for childbearing and domestic tasks in most places. They get incapacitated every month because of their menstruation, and then for nearly a year when pregnant. Men are physically stronger, bigger, with a more goal-oriented brain-wiring." Yung said. "Cultivation follows the law where the strongest fist rules. The traditions here suck-arse." Yung thought more, trying to tease out an answer from his subconscious, and failing. "I can't answer that question. Sorry."

“The traditions here are vile, as such is our judgement. But you are trying to change them. In the Madlander slums, and in the whole city.” Su Nanya shook her head.

“It’s easier if the place is smaller. And I have a magical fox girlfriend who is all-powerful and scares everyone.” Yung grinned.

“We mesmerise all. The fear heightens that.”

Yung laughed. The hope in his heart grew. "Removing prejudice against Madlanders won't be easy. It will take many years, decades even. And integration will be harder. The rules need to be rewritten and enforced. They have to be flexible too. But…"

“But?”

“But if one type of prejudice can be removed, maybe another can too. Or maybe, I… we can tackle more than one kind of prejudice simultaneously. Without replacing the previous prejudice with new ones in the future.”

“Such as granting fair lives for fair maidens?” Su Nanya said. “Fair power and fair rights, fair to be touched by only whom they desire?”

Yung reached up and ruffled Su Nanya's golden locks. The Vixen was pleased. "Money talks, so do fists." He said, "Ironically, I'm abusing the law of the jungle here. As long as the Youjin clan and other forces get enough monetary interest, they'll try to be the 'good guy.' As long as you and I remain in this city, they will act honestly and not put on fake shows to scam us out of our investment."

"Yet if we do depart from this village, all your 'improvements' might be for nought because what you desire, oh man so wicked, is absolute specificity!" Su Nanya said, and Yung nodded. "The actualisation of your daydreams with no sudden variables. A shell, perhaps they might merely pretend when your eyes roam elsewhere. To use your own vision to see, and you can confirm the truth from falsehoods. Yet if you become strong enough, you can see such truths from a thousand miles away."

“Maybe one day I’ll leave,” Yung said, “So did you buy my bluff?”

“That you wish to use such reasoning as an excuse not to leave this village, so mayhap you won’t witness larger scale tragedies and violence in the future?”

"And so that I can monopolise these beauties," Yung squeezed Su Nanya's round mounds. Gently, of course, and she squirmed with love. "And send creeps like Chao to fight it out at the bloody sects."

“We do accept the latter as good reasoning!” Su Nanya giggled. But her expression turned stern. “We cannot accept Ding Shi being defiled just for being a maiden.”

“I-I know something that might help.”

Smooooooch!

Wow!

“Oh, do tell us your wondrous otherworldly ways, dear servant who is so gallant in his touch of love,” Su Nanya said, pulling her lips back. It was a long kiss. Yung was almost suffocated and missed her saying ‘otherworldly.’

But he could have that heart-to-heart talk with her later. Right now was the time for another kind of heart-to-heart talk.

Yung had thought up a thing. It wasn't perfect. But it was better than nothing, and hopefully, Su Nanya wouldn't screw it up in the worst possible way. After all, he couldn't do everything alone. He didn't want to be responsible for everything either. His cripplingly empathic heart needn't feel like being torn open by rats every single time he saw something terrible happen to someone.

Judging by her moral character, Yung knew Su Nanya would be a good fit. So he would let his girlfriend take some of his pain away, even if that meant opening Pandora’s box.

“Nyanya,” Yung said with an ambivalent, hopeful, yet nervous smile. “Let me tell you about feminism.”