Chapter 2135: Chapter 57: The Silent Lambs (Part 1-3)
No one had any objection to it, no one felt anything was wrong, no one dared oppose it.
Senan would not. Because he knew that the profits from the catch would be shared out to everyone; if one person hid some away, it meant everyone else got less, and if everyone hid some away, then joint, coordinated fishing would turn into an arena where each used shameless tricks, the crew would fall apart, and there would be no way to keep going out to the far sea.
But he also knew that the dead manâs family had been desperately poor. His old father was gravely ill, his old motherâs health was bad, and his wife was no easy person eitherâshe would often scold him for not earning enough, call him a useless waste...
After he died, the family quickly fell apart. The old father soon passed, the old mother followed a few months later, and the mother wanted nothing to do with the child, even tried to abandon the child outside the city, for which Elder Pude sentenced her. He did not know how it all ended.
The child was taken into the clan hall; he did not know whether the child was dead or alive.
The captain had not done anything wrong. What he did was only what he ought to do. Those who try to snatch a petty advantage will, in the end, pay the price.
In that era, a captain who was not ruthless would never have a good end, and neither would his crew.
To satisfy a momentâs desire in their hearts, people will ultimately pay a price they could never have imagined.
And yet, from time to time, Senan would still think.
He would think: could it have been done a little better?
No, it could not.
It was povertyâs fault, greedâs fault; it was the tide of the times, the light wind of the world.
"I only wanted to teach Boer this lesson..."
Looking at his own son hiding behind the railing with that shifty, evasive gaze, Senanâs anger ebbed away, and he only sighed: "If heâs still like this when he grows up, if he thinks this kind of petty cleverness is enough to deal with work and âresponsibilityâ, heâll regret it in the end."
"We only have the life we do now because we received the Grand Dukeâs grace. He can play games with me, but can he play games with the Grand Duke?"
"Mm..."
Brin was stroking his daughterâs little head. He turned to look at the little boy and said softly, "But... donât hit the child. Is there anything you canât just talk through?"
"Come here, young man."
He beckoned to the little boy: "When you get home today, youâre going to make up all your assignments, all right? Your uncle and your dad have agreedâwe wonât beat you, but you still have to be punished!"
Hearing that he would be spared the lash, the little boy immediately came running back thud, thud, thudâand as soon as he got back, his father pinched his cheeks so hard it hurt, and he yelped, "Dad, didnât you say you wouldnât hit me!"
He really hadnât hit him. Senan gave Boer a ferocious scolding, punished him by making him finish his homework and water the garden every afternoon.
"Youâre just too soft on your kid!"
When the two childhood-sweetheart children skipped and hopped their way toward the academy, Senan followed behind, shaking his head and muttering, "Sometimes you do have to teach them a lesson... If you donât discipline and correct them when theyâre little, theyâll definitely have problems when they grow up."
"By then, we... might not be able to cover for them anymore!"
"Yeah, boys really do need a whipping now and then, or theyâll fly up to the sky like Iron."
Brin agreed with Senanâs view, but watching the childrenâs carefree steps, he couldnât help sighing: "But you canât really go too far. You still have to explain things clearly to them. Even if you really need to punish them, at the very least donât do it in front of their peers, and not today... Today is the parentâteacher meeting, and thereâs an open class. Think a bit more for the kidsâ sake."
"Mm." Senan grunted. He knew he had gone a bit overboardâmainly, his blood pressure shot up the moment he thought about being hauled in by the teacher today to talk about his kidâs homework.
But in the end, he only shook his head: "In the final analysis, theyâre different from us."
"Theyâre a generation thatâs allowed to make mistakes..."
"Yes. What a precious treasure..." Brin nodded in agreement. He couldnât help thinking back to the past, lowering his head: "This is the best thing we could ever have gotten."
"Who wouldnât want..."
He said softly, like speaking a dream, "to give the best to their children?"
When he raised his head, under the sunlight, there seemed to be a glimmer at the corner of Brinâs eye.
âStarting from his grandparentsâ generation, had that wild beast roaring day and night in his heart finally stopped screaming now?
"Hey." Suddenly, Brin furrowed his brow. "Whatâs your boy doing?"
It turned out Boer had caught the fragrance on Sophieâs cheek, leaned in to sniff, discovered it was the smell of butter, and laughed that sheâd gotten bread all over her face, that she really was one big bun. Sophie, flustered and angry, whipped her hair into his face, and the two of them started chasing and roughhousing.
"Theyâre just kids." This time it was Senanâs turn to hold back the red-faced Brin with a laugh: "A little fooling around and roughhousing is perfectly normal, hahaha..."
...
The academy.
An educational institution that once existed in The Nations of the Tera Era and then gradually declined.
Its decline back then was because it was out of step with the times. The truly important technology in this world, the true core of productive powerâthe âSublimation Powerââcould not be taught.
Everyoneâs Bloodline is different, and so is their adaptability to the True Form. Even instruction in the relevant knowledge could only cover the most basic part, because without the power of the Bloodline True Form, Humans cannot even possess a âsoulâ.
Without a soul, how could one climb the tech tree related to Sublimation Power, how could one create an entire system?
If the teacher has a soul but the students do not, how is he supposed to describe those special modes of vision?
It is like how you cannot speak of ice to a summer insect, and the ant knows only morning and evening.
But now, things are different.
Because of the existence of the Meditation Technique, because of the existence of the Cultivation Method, because Artificial Souls have been made universal, in the Terra World today, everyone possesses a âsoulâ.