Chapter 283: Cutscene of Trains and Infernals (2)

Han Jing was frozen in place, which was strange when he could feel the fire bubbling around the Being close to him. It was a flame that burned brighter than anything Timothy could have wrought himself. This was actual fire. Not simply fire conjured from magic or skill, but a living fire in its purest states.

Gone was the appearance of a seductive and attractive woman, but an outline of a person wrought from magma instead came to life. The couch that he was sitting on began to scorch—

"We've already decided to agree to disagree, Mursiel," the Wood Elf said.

The image of the fiery demon ended in a flash, and the presence of the same woman he had met earlier with his family reappeared. This was Anya. The woman's shapely legs were crossed together, revealed through a slit of her tight dress, and she was showing off dark stilettos glittering in the darkness.

But then she threw him a glare that ruined the allure surrounding her. "Regardless of the case, I do not care about this friendship between the two of you and your little agreements. Tell me, human… How strong have you become? Or will you still expect this spineless Wood Elf to protect you from me once again?"

"Hey!"

The Wood Elf's complaint was left unnoticed as Han Jing's nerves sparked. He looked at the woman seated across from him and tried for a quick laugh to ease up the tension in the air. It was a suffocating thing. He scratched the back of his head and attempted to smile. "Well, it hasn't actually been such a long time—"

"Precisely fourteen spins in this planet's axis since I've put you in place, human. Have you not grown strong since that period… oh wait, selling flowers and then pearls?"

A smile curved on her red lips, returning his own. And yet there was no kindness in her eyes, only an unbridled rage barely kept back in those eyes. Her previous actions might have been laughable, but the intentions were not.

"What a terrible waste of potential, but then most of you humans are that way. It goes to show that even those chosen applicants to confer in the Creators' Worlds are paltry and worth nothing. Imagine how many of your kind have fallen when they've been plucked out from the comforts of your world and tossed into a world foreign to them. The weak die and those are your people."

"Uh, Jilanya… doesn't that sound a little too much—"

"No—it's fine, she's right."

The Demon Lord blinked, but then she nodded. She raised her chin haughtily and huffed, "Of course I am. Pathetic beings like you are beneath us—"

"Yes, I get it. We don't have horns sprouting out of our foreheads, have a magic in us that can make the world a better place or live forever like you guys with immortal bodies—it makes us look inferior and we feel that way. Some of us don't even have a chance to do anything beyond surviving."

Jilanya didn't say anything, instead she pursed her lips.

Only nodding.

Han Jing smiled weakly and motioned to himself. "There are those who are able to live like kings and emperors in splendor, but for each one that does, there are a countless million carrying a burden that they can hardly bear. Living from day to day. We struggle, survive, and at the end of our lives, we finally breathe our last… and then we're meaningless. Nothing."

"Uh, well, there's rebirth—"

"If that actually worked in helping other people get a better life, then it's great. But from age to age, suffering never ends… and yet here I am? Chosen from what seemed like billions of humans to take part in this Creators' Will and try to find peace in the universe? I don't think it's possible for that idea to work when even just humans themselves can't get along. There's a reason why utopia is a place that doesn't exist."

"Are you trying to say that the Creators' Will—"

"Maybe they're so far off and detached from this universe of ours to understand the grand scale of what they want to happen. If they really wanted to have peace then… then, wouldn't it be better to end it all?" Han Jing sighed and rubbed his face. "But that's just me letting myself feel pessimistic and hopeless about life."

It earned a laugh from the Wood Elf. Their gaze on him from one being to another. "Well, said. I suppose you've let this thing be bottled up in your chest?"

"... Did I sound like some edgy teenager who thinks he knows everything that there is to life?"

Jilanya was silent, but only wrinkled her nose. Faeran nodded.

"Well, I don't know everything. I probably never will… and I guess that's fine. If I try to understand all the secrets of the universe and claim to know more than the Creators—that's just me being arrogant, right? That's probably going to burn all of my brain cells, anyway." Han Jing ran his fingers through his hair and let out a long and heavy sigh.

He couldn't do anything like shout because it would garner some unwanted attention.

So instead he sighed and then leaned back against the semi-soft seat in the train. "Well, I guess this kind of brief vacation has been long overdue. I don't think I've ever been really out of my home for nearly a year."

"You think that you deserve such things?" the Demon Lord asked. "In spite of all your words of other people suffering and how you've been chosen by the Creators—you're here wanting to experience rest? What an indecisive and listless mind."

"... I don't know. Maybe thinking that I'm entitled to such things makes me sound pompous and prideful? Well, if that's the case—I don't care about what you'll say." Han Jing weakly laughed. "Us humans can be arrogant and self-serving like that. We can be a selfish bunch, and I think that's fine. We're limited like that, and there's not enough time for me to be a buddha."

"And so you admit your weakness."

"I can't save the world—heck, I can barely change my own life, Anya. There's the fact that I'll try to save myself first and the people that I can… and I hope that would be enough? I think it'll be enough, because that's what I can do. Because I'm human and that's fine."