Unexpected things can inherently catch a person by surprise and throw their emotions into chaos. Xu Qing had been engrossed in the lieutenant governor’s lecture about the history of humankind. It was his first time hearing about such things, so it was only natural that he was deeply interested. Perhaps because of that, he was caught completely off guard when that one particular name came up.7

Based on what the lieutenant governor was saying, that person... had once done amazing things for humankind. But Xu Qing was not so great of a person that he could just forget about the past. His way of thinking was simple: he still wanted to find the crow and kill it. [1]11

It didn’t matter to Xu Qing if that person’s past accomplishments were truly as the lieutenant governor had recounted. And Xu Qing didn’t think he needed to sit around wondering about the truth.1

Maybe it was true that the world could be described in terms as simple as good and evil. But Xu Qing knew that things between people were never simple. No, they were deeply complex. Very rarely were things simply ‘good’ or ‘evil.’ Virtually everything came down to one’s perspective.1

Perhaps one person, in order to keep living, would steal another person’s final white bolus, thus causing that other person to experience mutation and die. Maybe that thief would go on to do the same thing over and over again, just to keep living. Every person who died because of that thief would call him ‘evil.’ But perhaps that thief would use the life he had earned to help people, perhaps even save the lives of others. In that case, all those other people would call him ‘good.’2

In the end, was he evil, or good? Such matters are complicated, as there was a bad side to either decision. Any judgment about a situation like that would be informed by one’s personal situation. The ‘correct’ answer would differ from person...8