Emiya Shirou doesn't want to work overtime

No matter what kind of support Emiya provides to those civilians, it will be of no use in such an empire.

One person's kindness can never erase the evil in the world.

Chapter Sixty-Seven: Rot from Top to Bottom

The main streets of the capital were still bustling with people, and the sounds of vendors shouting could be heard everywhere.

This lively atmosphere reminded Emiya of the days he spent wandering around Yoshiwara.

It was also extremely prosperous there, but compared to Youguo, the prosperity of the empire was only superficial. In every dark alley, countless people were being bullied.

It wasn't just the upper echelons who were corrupt; the common people were too.

Bullying the weak and abusing others are commonplace among both the upper echelons and the common people of the empire.

Emiya was walking down the street when, in a nearby alley, several people dressed in tattered clothes were punching and kicking a very thin-looking child.

"What are you looking at!"

Seemingly noticing Emiya's gaze, a rather robust man stepped forward.

The men in tattered clothes stopped what they were doing and looked over.

Judging from Emiya's attire and demeanor, he doesn't seem like a nobleman.

Besides, those nobles don't care about any of that. He'd be happy to see these things happen.

They might even applaud and give the perpetrators a tip.

The frail-looking child also looked in the direction of Emiya.

There was no pleading in his eyes, only a plea for Emiya to leave quickly.

Emiya suddenly remembered what happened between him and Shinji when they were in middle school.

That was a boy surrounded by a group of delinquents.

Emiya and Shinji rescued him from the delinquents.

But the boy didn't appreciate it and instead started cursing.

If Emiya hadn't intervened, Shinji, given his personality, would have already quietly taken action against the boy.

However, Emiya could never forget his pale face.

It was as if Emiya and the others were not rescuing him, but pushing him into an abyss.

Several days later, Emiya saw the boy from under the bridge, covered in wounds and almost unable to breathe.

If Emiya hadn't passed by, the consequences would have been unimaginable. He never imagined that these scoundrels would do something so heinous.

This is murder.

Just as Emiya was about to look up those flawed theories, the boy lying on the hospital bed grabbed his hand and kept shaking his head at him.

Only then did Emiya realize that he and Shinji hadn't done anything right that day.

It was impossible for him and Shinji to stay by this young man's side 24 hours a day.

These delinquents had no way to deal with Emiya and Shinji, so they could only take their anger out on the boy.

At most, he would get beaten up and have to hand over all his money in the face of these scoundrels.

However, due to the appearance of Emiya and Shinji, he was seriously injured and hospitalized, suffering irreversible damage.

Emiya couldn't solve the problem at its root, which is why things turned out this way.

If he had used absolute power to suppress those bad elements and prevent them from having the courage to bully others, perhaps such a horrific tragedy would not have occurred.

Emiya could only clench his fists tightly.

Did he really beat those civilians up?

Those people were also victims within the empire; they simply transferred their suffering onto others, becoming new perpetrators.

Emiya doesn't belong to the Empire, so dealing with him isn't the same as dealing with those bad guys.

Perhaps it was just this one action of Emiya's that led to the demise of several families.

He could also see that these people all had whip marks on their bodies.

Perhaps it was for work, or perhaps it was because she was being bullied by another perpetrator.

No one knows whether these people are the pillars of some families.

Emiya could neither stay in the Empire indefinitely nor keep the child with him.

What good would it do to have him by my side? He had no place to put him.

Emiya is now in dire straits, unsure if he can even survive in such a place, let alone help the child.

Helping him might just have made him end his life sooner.

This kind of thing happens everywhere in this empire.

The best way to save them is to change the empire from beginning to end.

Only by addressing the corruption within the empire can these people be truly transformed.

The entire empire is now rotten to the core. The people are oppressed, and instead of resisting, they choose to oppress those who are weaker than themselves.

Emiya felt sorrow for the country and also felt powerless.

They are nothing more than a distorted product of a sick empire.

Welcome to Little La Bookstore!

Inside the shop, a man with green hair and wearing goggles that looked like those of a pilot sat and greeted the customers in a listless voice.

Emiya was drawn by the sound and stopped in his tracks.

Being in a foreign land and knowing nothing about the Empire, he figured it was better to go out and find intelligence about the Empire himself than to ask Riva and the others about it.

Because of what happened last night, Riva did not restrict Emiya's movements within the Empire during the day, but he had to go with them to complete Esdeath's mission at night.

Emiya was extremely reluctant to go with them, as he always felt that Riva was hiding something from them about their true purpose.

However, the best place to learn about the history of an empire is a bookstore.

It's at least more reliable than what Liva and the others said.

With that thought in mind, Emiya walked into the bookstore.

"Sir, what do you need?"

Upon seeing Emiya enter, a young man with green hair, roughly the same age as Emiya, walked in with a fawning expression, perfectly embodying the role of a merchant.

"Um, I was wondering if you have any books about the history of the empire here?"

Emiya asked the bookstore owner in front of him very politely.

"A book about the history of the empire? It's over here."

He thought for a moment, then turned around and started rummaging through the bookshelf.

"You're not a native of the Empire?"

“I come from a place far away from the empire.”

Emiya answered his question very honestly.

"Then why did you want to come to the Empire?"

"The Ming Empire is clearly not a good place,"

He flipped through the books while making small talk with Shirou Emiya.

"Maybe they're thinking of making a change; it's better than doing nothing."

Perhaps Emiya doesn't have the ability to change the status quo of the Empire, but he can't stand by and watch those people be bullied like this, and he doesn't want to.

Even though this wasn't his own country, he wanted to do something for the people here.

"Oh, I found it, it's this one. Nobody's read this book in a long time."

He pulled out a very thick book from deep within the bookshelf, blew the dust off the cover, patted it, and then placed it on the table in front of him.

“Even the natives of the Empire are not interested in the history of the Empire, so why would you want to learn about the history of the Empire?”

He looked with interest at the red-haired peer in front of him.

Chapter Sixty-Eight: Unexpected Situations

"It's nothing, I'm just not very familiar with this place, so I wanted to look at the history first."

Emiya scratched his head awkwardly and took a heavy bag of gold coins from his pocket, placing it on the counter.

"What does it mean!"

The young man suddenly stepped back, looking at Wei Gong with a suspicious gaze, sizing him up and down, then put his hands behind his back and started twirling his fingers up and down as if they were connected to something.

Emiya suddenly pulled out a large sum of money and placed it in front of him, which almost triggered the green-haired boy's PTSD.

He thought that his intelligence-gathering outpost had been discovered by the Empire, so he quickly searched the surrounding area to see if there were any unusual people surrounding it.

The young man, named Lubbock, was a member of the Night Raid organization. He usually spent his time in this bookstore gathering information, maintaining contact with his comrades, and sometimes covering their actions.

As assassins, when they go to accept a mission, most employers, like Emiya, will take out a large bag of gold coins and hand it over to them.

So when Lubbock saw Emiya quietly produce such a huge sum of money, he assumed that his bookstore had been discovered by the Empire.

Because this isn't a place for him to interact with the public, it's impossible for any employer, except for members of the Night Raid organization, to know that the bookstore owner is a member of the Night Raid organization.

So Lubbock immediately checked the threads he had laid out next to the bookstore to see if there was anything unusual in the surroundings.

"Boss, your hand?"

Emiya pointed with some confusion at Lubbock's hands behind his back and asked a question.

He could clearly see one silk thread after another connecting to his back.