A brave man may not live, but he cannot die

Chapter 317 Cold War
"You son of a bitch, daring to cause trouble all by yourself—"

"Knife! Throw me the knife! Cough, uh..."

"Let's all attack together, this is a tough one!!"

The onlookers' expressions changed from enjoying the spectacle to being terrified and helpless. Soon, they stood up in twos and threes, abandoning the food and wine on the table and the women in their arms, and rushed away, fearing that they would be affected by the madman.

There's no rule about not harming pedestrians in gang fights. If you're watching, it means you know him, and if you know him, you're going to get beaten up.

In a short while, only the women, Quinn, and a few White bandits lying on the ground remained in the vast Caesars Baths.

The women were too frightened to breathe. These women, who made their living in the brothel, had a lot of contact with the underworld. Although they didn't know what a superhuman was, they knew that this kind of fierce man who could send someone flying with a slap was no ordinary person. In the underworld, he would be a ruthless character who would be easily persuaded to drink. The madam, who was in charge, recognized Quinn's face and realized he was one of the men brought by Sissa, which gave her the courage to come out—

"Guest, what are you doing?" She stood far away, her face full of a fawning smile, afraid of displeasing Quinn.

One of the men lying on the ground was clearly dead; his brains had been splattered out by a slap. The remaining few were barely alive, though crippled. The previous scene was too horrifying. This unassuming man hadn't moved an inch from beginning to end, and with a flick of his elbow, he had crippled all the burly men.

“I said I was going to cause trouble,” Quinn said, cracking his knuckles.

The madam's smile grew even stiffer. Golden Wind was disrupting the White Bandits' territory? In the past, the gangs in Westville had clearly defined their territories, which was related to race and region. Most of the girls in this shop were white, and the owner was a local. They had absolutely no connection with Golden Wind, which was mainly composed of people from the Western Continent. Was this a sign that the two gangs were about to go to war?

Quinn ignored the pleas for mercy from the men on the ground and instead examined his own heart.

Well, even if you act heroically and help the mother and daughter who were beaten half to death to vent their anger, you won't feel any satisfaction or sense of accomplishment; it's like you've done something superfluous.

But I was indeed a little happy. It had nothing to do with being a hero. It was mainly because I had just had a good time fighting, and the mood that had been affected by the bad woman in the afternoon was somewhat relieved.

He glanced at the little girl whose face was covered in blood, walked over and squatted down beside her. The little girl shrank back like a frightened rabbit, tears welling up in her eyes.

Quinn placed his large hand on her body and patted her rather impolitely for a while. It seemed he was lucky; it was just a dislocated shoulder. Although he didn't have much professional medical skill, with his assassin's understanding of the human body, he casually put the severed arm back in place.

Quinn withdrew his hand, his gaze calm, still showing no satisfaction.

But even though rescuing Amamiya Nene from the abyss would make him happy.
Is it because she knows me? It has nothing to do with justice, it's just the selfish instinct of human beings. We don't care about the plight of strangers, but we care about the plight of our friends.

The little girl felt her numb hand regain its movement. Although the pain was still excruciating, she understood that the ruthless man was helping her. She gritted her teeth and held back her tears. This process required a lot of effort for a child. Finally, she whispered "Thank you" to Quinn.

Quinn was taken aback for a moment, then smiled and nodded.

He was stunned not because the child thanked him, but because he felt a faint joy welling up inside him because of those words.

It wasn't because he helped anyone, but because he liked resilient children; people always tend to favor their own kind. This reminded him of his own childhood.

The lack of justice might have some impact on personality, but not that much. Quinn was reflecting on this when the little girl who had left ran back, clutching a notebook covered with newspaper.

She opened the notebook, inside which were a few pennies that looked like they had been saved up for a long time. With her still trembling hands, she handed the notebook and the money to Quinn and asked timidly, "Sir, could you cure my mother as well?"

Quinn's gaze lingered on the notebook for a long time before finally shifting to the woman beside him.

That madam is really heartless; she's been beaten up like this and she doesn't even try to take care of him.

This injury is much more serious than the little girl's. After a quick assessment of the injuries, Quinn looked away and shook his head, saying, "I'm not a doctor. She won't die. Go ask her colleague for help."

Hearing Quinn's words, the little girl slowly lowered her head. It was hard to imagine that a prostitute's child was so well-mannered; after being rejected, she didn't make a scene, but simply lowered her head, tears welling up in her eyes, and only began to sob quietly when she returned to her mother's side.

Amid the cries, wails, and gasps, Quinn suddenly heard a strange tone, like the heartbeat of a whale transmitted across the ocean, carrying cold and ancient laws, with a frequency so low that it was beyond human comprehension, spreading and echoing under the ravaged eaves.

Cesar slowly emerged, carrying the "Golden Commandments." As he read from the text, the priest pretended to sprinkle water droplets on the fallen man, like a long-haired angel warding off disease.

"The Heavenly Father says that the most precious thing is life. Health and life are paramount. The entire church across the country must firmly establish the concept of prioritizing health and life, and always put the safety and health of believers first."

As he spoke, the wondrous water droplets fell on them, and both the woman who was being beaten and the men who had been knocked to the ground by Quinn opened their eyes. They stopped bleeding and were able to stand up shakily.

Although their injuries had not fully healed, they were enough to sustain them until they went to the hospital.

As for the culprit, the man whose brains were splattered by Quinn's slap, he wasn't so lucky. Although his body had stopped bleeding, there seemed to be no risk of him coming back to life.

Seeing that most of the dirty water he had casually scooped up from the river had been shaken off, Xisa closed the book and calmly said to the group, "Go on your way."

He then turned to the madam: "Take Polina and Little Lysa to get bandaged up. No one will cause trouble tonight, right?"

The last question, "Is that right?", was directed at the White Bandit members.

They nodded hastily, not daring to look at Quinn again, and ran away supporting each other.

The prostitute, with her daughter in tow, looked at Sissa with a complex expression. She seemed about to say something, but ultimately simply lowered her head.

Praise be to God the Father.

Sissa saw Quinn to the door. Despite what had just happened, the long-haired priest acted as if nothing had occurred, simply smiling faintly as he asked Quinn, "The academy actually has such a righteous arcanist?"

Quinn glanced at him. "Is that little girl your daughter?"

"Why do you say that?"

"You bought her notebook, didn't you? It's full of copied texts. Religious schools don't teach these things, and a prostitute doesn't have the ability to send her daughter to school."

“Of course not,” Sissa said seriously. “In our line of work, the worst thing you can do is fall in love with a customer, let alone raise a child with them.”

"What the hell are you in?" Quinn asked speechlessly.

"I'm currently a priest." He implied that he might switch jobs later.

Quinn thought of the money he had given the madam, as well as the food and stationery. Then, looking into Sissa's deep, nonchalant eyes, he asked with some surprise, "You were paying for the brothel children's education before?"

Sissa neither confirmed nor denied it, only saying, "No matter how many people I convert, new prostitutes will keep appearing on the streets. The Heavenly Father says knowledge changes destiny. If they don't study, a prostitute's daughter will still be a prostitute. But if they do study, they'll help others when they grow up." "Then why don't you save them?"

“These are two different things.” Sissa seemed completely unfazed by the contradiction in her actions. “Even if her mother were beaten to death today, that’s still her life. This kind of thing happens every night in Seville, and forcibly changing it will only bring greater suffering.”

"You saved her, but in reality, you only prolonged her death a little longer. Do you think the White Bandits will swallow this insult? Even if they fear the superhumans and the Golden Wind, the blame will ultimately fall on the brothel owner. And through the chain of command, the prostitutes will ultimately bear the bitter fruit; they'll have to work even harder to make up for the losses."

"If we hadn't done anything, and those guys had vented their anger, we might have had a chance to live, and there wouldn't have been any trouble afterwards."

"But you clearly could have saved him?"

“If I save this one, I’ll start thinking about whether to save another one, then a whole group, until I can’t do it anymore and I’ll keep thinking about it.” Sissa said with a smile, “I’m a secret agent, thinking too much will kill me. Just like the heroes of the past, Merlin ultimately failed to completely abolish slavery, didn’t he? So just start with what you can do.”

"clever."

After leaving this comment about the eccentric, Quinn left alone.

Sissa stared at his retreating figure, lit another cigarette, and waited until Quinn disappeared at the end of the street before sighing to herself, "Sigh, another night of overtime."

A large loaf of rye bread was handed to him, and the little girl looked at him with sparkling eyes.

Xisa quickly stubbed out his cigarette. Being a man of good manners, he didn't want to leave a cigarette butt mark on the floor. Instead, he pressed the cigarette butt onto the World Tree cover of the "Golden Commandments." As expected of a sacred text of the religion, it didn't even leave a scar after he stubbed out the cigarette.

"Does it still hurt?" he asked gently.

The little girl shook her head. "Was that uncle a friend of the bishop?"

"Hmm, it's hard to say."

Sissa thought for a moment and asked, "Do you think demons are bad guys?"

"Definitely!" the little girl answered without hesitation, "Just as bad as those people from before!"

As she spoke, her eyes welled up with tears again.

Was that uncle a bad guy?

The little girl's mouth moved slightly, and finally she shook her head vigorously.

"He's a good guy!"

"Right. I hope he's a good person too." He patted the little girl's head. "Only good people can be friends."

Starlight, Demon King, Command Seals, Sissa, Abyss Transcendent, Righteous Hero
Although a lot happened that day, the next few days were uneventful, and Quinn's time at the academy was mostly peaceful.

If there's one thing that's not part of the daily routine, it's probably the start of a cold war with Amamiya Nene.

On Monday morning, there was a large divination class for first graders and two elective divination classes for fourth and fifth graders. As usual, Quinn prepared the teaching materials for Amamiya Nene and went to the administration office to apply for the teaching materials. However, after he finished preparing everything, he found that Amamiya Nene had already gone to class alone.

This woman completely disregarded everything Quinn had prepared, even though Quinn had prepared according to her instructions. She lectured haphazardly, without assigning any homework requiring the teaching assistant's assistance, as if the teaching assistant didn't exist.

Instead of returning to her office after class, she went to the Academic Affairs Office to help with the college's major projects as much as she could. Dean Fofmark, seeing Amamiya Nene busy in the lab, thought the sun had risen from the ground.

Quinn could only feed Wangcai in the office, like a neglected wife.

Wangcai changed a lot after it molted, but the biggest change was that it no longer pooped in the litter box prepared for it in the office. It was as if the dragon had suddenly awakened its territorial instincts and learned to hide its feces, which saved Quinn a lot of trouble.

Noticing that Amamiya Nene was deliberately ignoring him, he didn't understand why this woman was angry for no reason. Quinn wasn't the type to suffer in silence, so he waited in the office all day, thinking that she should at least bring Wangcai home with her after get off work.
So, after the school bell rang, Wangcai sneered at him—heaven knows how such a cute dragon face could make such an inhuman expression, and then disappeared from Quinn's sight with a bright smile.

Damn, spatial magic?

But the college is only so big, so if you want to create a traffic jam, you can still manage to do so.

On Tuesday morning, Quinn successfully spotted the little witch, who was commuting to work, on the academy's train platform. She looked like a noblewoman, wearing a high-waisted skirt, ankle boots, and a black silk choker around her neck, which made her skin appear even whiter.

Amamiya Nene saw Quinn, but seemed to deliberately ignore him, walking straight past him.

Quinn was waiting here early in the morning for nothing more than to say with a cold smile, "Hey, Onna—"

"Did you notice me standing nearby that day, and that's why you pretended to be shopping with someone?"

As expected of the hero handpicked by the Demon King, he stopped ignoring the little witch with just one sentence. She calmly retorted, "What do you mean by 'coincidentally' following behind? Didn't you start following me first?"

"Oh?" Quinn looked up, thought for a moment, and nodded. "Right, I was the one who followed you first. If you hadn't said anything, I would have thought you saw a colleague going to his girlfriend's house and got itchy eyes, so you deliberately ran out to pretend you were loved too and wanted to show off. Damn it, Amamiya—"

As it turns out, one shouldn't be too harsh.

Otherwise, you'd be swept off the train station thousands of meters in the air by the ancient dragon's tail, experiencing what it's like to freefall and trigger a restriction to be teleported back to the academy.

From then on, the two began a cold war, pretending not to see each other when they saw each other at the academy, which Quinn found completely inexplicable.

But right now, he had no time to think about what kind of demon the little witch was trying to create.

On Thursday, after finishing his piano lesson and listening to Celia's increasingly proficient and rapidly improving rendition of "5 Centimeters Per Second," Quinn, who had taken an extra day off, packed his prepared props and boarded a train to the city alone.

Tomorrow, the city council will hold a hearing on Elon.

Following the solution provided by the system, Branson performed a demonic prayer at his home during the hearing.

I beg the Demon King to kill the hero.

He walked out of the train station, looked up at the sky, and the dark clouds of the rainy season reflected in his dark eyes, blocking out the sunlight, just like the still unclear future.

(End of this chapter)