Having traversed countless realms, can you possibly be as clever as me?

For Yuki Tanaka, happiness is a distant story that ended abruptly in his childhood.

He was born in Shiga Prefecture, where his father ran a small construction contracting company. While not wealthy, it was enough to provide a decent life for his wife and children. His mother was a housewife, gentle and taciturn, who poured all her energy into her two sons and youngest daughter. Yuuki and his older brother were six years apart; the older brother excelled academically and had a calm and composed personality.

He was a top student praised by everyone in the neighborhood. Yuuki was a bit mischievous, but whenever he got into trouble, his older brother would always stand up for him.

But that was in the early 1990s, and what happened next is self-evident.

My father died in 1994.

It was an ordinary traffic accident. The other party ran a red light, and the father, exhausted from his journey, didn't notice. His car was hit from the side, and he was already dead when he arrived at the hospital. The mother sat in the morgue holding the father's hand all night. Yushu stood at the door and saw his mother's back shrunken into a small ball under the pale light.

He was too young then to know what death meant. He only remembered that his mother became quiet and withdrawn after that.

Then, my mother began to frequently attend gatherings of a religious group called the 'Panxing Cult'.

It started with an invitation from a distant relative, who said that the prayers there could soothe the spirits of the dead and bring them peace. My mother didn't believe in such things, but the pain of losing her husband was too profound, and she needed an outlet.

The religious group's facilities were impressive; the white buildings gleamed in the sunlight, and the female believers, dressed in elegant long dresses, smiled warmly. The religious leader stood on a high platform, his gentle voice like a spring breeze.

“Offer your heart, your soul, your everything,” the patriarch said, “and the Lord of Heaven will grant you salvation.”

After experiencing just one instance, the mother returned and enthusiastically told them that she had truly seen the father's soul. Completely believing in the Panxing Cult, the mother began selling off the father's inheritance at any cost.

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The first things they sold were the watches and seals that their father had collected before his death, then a piece of land in the countryside, then shares in their father's company, and then the house they had lived in for more than ten years in Hikone City.

She gave every penny to the church as an offering. The people of the Panxing Church told her that only through offerings could she dispel the evil spirits of her ancestors and allow Lord Tianyuan to protect her husband's soul so that it could peacefully ascend to heaven.

My brother was nineteen years old that year and had just been admitted to the Keio University School of Medicine. That same year, my mother, who was already obsessed with it, actually chose to pay for my brother's tuition as well.

The older brother remained silent. He folded the acceptance letter and put it in his pocket, then went to work on the factory assembly line the next day.

Twelve hours of repetitive labor every day left calluses layered on his hands, and his white work clothes were never truly clean. One night, Yuuki woke up in the middle of the night and saw his brother sitting on the apartment balcony smoking, the red glow of the cigarette butt against the darkness.

It flickered in the darkness, like a star about to go out.

He went over and sat down next to his brother. His brother didn't say anything, but simply reached out and gently patted his head, as if petting a kitten.

That was the last time Yuuki was patted on the head by his older brother.

In 1999, my brother was diagnosed with depression. But my mother could no longer take care of him. Every day before dawn, she would go to the Panxing Sect's meeting place to do volunteer work and would not return until late at night. When she returned, she was exhausted but her eyes were shining, and she kept muttering the name of the so-called Lord Tianyuan.

The brother's medical expenses, Yuuki's tuition fees, and the family's food rations—all of these were barely sustained by the brother's meager salary at the factory and the money Yuuki earned from odd jobs.

Yuuki was only thirteen years old at the time, working as a porter at a nearby supermarket. He worked from four to ten o'clock after school, earning 600 yen per hour. His palms were blistered and his shoulders ached from the weight of the heavy loads, but he dared not stop. Because stopping meant he wouldn't have money for food the next day.

Two years later, the older brother jumped off the overpass, leaving only one sentence in his suicide note.

"I have no strength left."

Yuuki stood beneath the overpass, staring at the human silhouette drawn in white lines on the ground, watching the police take photos one by one, and observing the whispers of the onlookers. He didn't cry. He stood there, as if all his internal organs had been ripped out, leaving only an empty shell swaying in the autumn wind.

His mother didn't come; she attended a church prayer meeting that day and supposedly "received a revelation from Lord Tengen," weeping uncontrollably in front of everyone. Later, Yuuki found her and told her about his brother's death. She was stunned for a long time, then said something that Yuuki would remember for the rest of his life.

“These are all trials. The Patriarch said that this is our family’s karma, and my brother’s sacrifice will cleanse our family’s sins.”

Yushu looked at her and suddenly realized that his own reflection was no longer in his mother's eyes. Those two eyes were like two black holes, containing the Pope's smile, the words of scripture, and the dome of that white auditorium—but not her son.

He didn't know who to hate. Should he hate the smooth-talking cult leader, or the woman who gave everything to lies, or himself for not noticing the despair in his brother's eyes sooner?

Yuuki dropped out of high school and started working full-time. He moved between Shiga and Nara, working as a sorter in a logistics warehouse, a night shift clerk in a convenience store, and a laborer on a construction site. He worked himself to exhaustion, because only when he was so tired that he could fall asleep as soon as he closed his eyes would he stop thinking about his brother sitting on the balcony smoking in the middle of the night.

Then he made a decision: he enlisted in the Maritime Self-Defense Force. Not out of patriotism, but because the Self-Defense Force offered a stable income and the opportunity to legally receive firearms training. He chose the subjects where he had the best shooting performance, consistently ranking at the top in target practice. His instructors said he was a natural-born shooter.

He sneered inwardly. This man didn't know that every time he pulled the trigger, he was thinking of a figure in a white robe.

After retiring, he returned to Nara.

My mother is still at the church. More than a decade has passed, and she has become older, thinner, and more fervent. She shares a dilapidated apartment with several fellow church members and goes to the church meeting place every day to do voluntary labor—sweeping, washing clothes, cooking—all for free, because this is to accumulate blessings for the next life.

His younger sister was already married, but her life wasn't particularly happy, but Yuuki chose not to bother her.

It is worth mentioning that during the time Yushu was away from his hometown, the Panxing Cult seemed to have undergone a power change. The original leader became a man named Xia Youjie, but after about six or seven years, he suddenly disappeared.

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But this does not mean that the Panxing Sect disappeared. On the contrary, it was almost immediately and seamlessly taken back by the original leader.

At this moment, Yuuki lives in another apartment not far from his mother, with a monthly rent of over 30,000 yen. He found a job at a metal processing factory, working during the day and locking himself in his room at night, searching online for everything about that person.

That person's name is Kamo Kenji, the president of the Panxing Cult. He spent five years researching that person's information.

This is his real name; he actually uses a completely different name in public. Yushu only discovered his real name by chance, and he also has some kind of close connection with the political and business circles.

But it doesn't matter who he is or what his name is.

Yuuki only has one thing to do.

Nara City, near Yamato Saidaiji Station. The weather was beautiful, the sun was dazzling, and there wasn't a single cloud. An outdoor lecture by the Pansei sect was being held in the plaza in front of the station, with about three hundred followers dressed in white shirts, sitting neatly on folding chairs.

Kamo Kenji stood on the makeshift stage, with a backdrop bearing the church's logo behind him. Yuuki, wearing a dark blue T-shirt and carrying a shoulder bag, mingled in the crowd.

Inside the bag was a homemade gun. It was double-barreled, with a four-round capacity and an effective range of fifty meters. He had bought the steel pipes and gunpowder piecemeal online, placing the order in more than twenty separate transactions to avoid arousing suspicion. The stock was roughly whittled from a block of wood, but it felt good in the grip. He had carved one character on it—his brother's name.

Enough talk, let's get started!

"That guy is right there..."

Yuuki stood in the crowd, his gaze passing over the shoulders of the believers in the front row, fixed on the person on the stage. Kamo Kenji was speaking, his voice spreading throughout the square through the speakers, gentle and composed, carrying an undeniable certainty.

Now he had no other desires. He had very little money left; most of it had been sent to his sister before he left, and the rest was kept in a drawer in his apartment, wrapped in an envelope with his mother's name on it. Although he hated her, she was, after all, his mother, one of his last two blood relatives in this world.

He only hoped that this would bring his mother to her senses.

"He must pay the price." Yuuki reached into his shoulder bag and grasped the rough gun. The wooden grip instantly filled his palm, the cold touch like an electric current, briefly suppressing the churning emotions within him: more than twenty years of hatred, more than twenty years of pain, the crooked handwriting on his brother's suicide note, and the vanished reflection in his mother's empty eyes.

He walked steadily forward; the opportunity was right in front of him. But just as he was less than ten meters from the podium, a man in a black suit appeared out of nowhere and blocked his path.

The church's security guard's gaze inadvertently swept over Yuuki's shoulder bag, and his brows furrowed slightly. Yuuki's heart skipped a beat, but he had no way out!

His right hand shot out, pulling the homemade gun from the bag. Sunlight shone on the barrel, reflecting a blinding white light. A scream rang out from the crowd.

He raised the gun, aimed it at the person on the podium, and without hesitation, pulled the trigger.

"boom--!"

A piercing gunshot rang out in the square, but Yuuki's eyes narrowed instantly because the bullet had not hit its target. He had aimed so accurately, yet the bullet had strangely grazed Kamo Kenji's shoulder and struck the blue backdrop behind him, blasting an ugly hole in it.

Then fire another shot!!!

But at that moment—

"Yuuki!! What are you doing?!"

A shrill, distorted scream tore through the air in the square like a thunderclap. The voice was so familiar that it made Yuuki's blood freeze instantly.

He turned sharply, and just a few meters behind him, he saw his mother. She was wearing a white church uniform, her hair was gray and disheveled, and the wrinkles on her face looked like dried-up riverbeds in the sunlight. Her expression wasn't one of worry or heartache, but rather a near-mad anger and fear—a fear not for her son, but for the man standing on the pulpit.

"You can't shoot the Pope!" The mother's scream was heart-wrenching, as if she were using all her strength to fight against some unforgivable sin. "How dare you! How dare you hurt the Pope!"

The security personnel pounced like sharks smelling blood. A thick arm slammed into Yuuki's wrist, the wrist holding the gun, sending a sharp pain through him as if his bones were about to shatter. The gun was knocked off course.

But Yuuki's resolve would not waver so easily. Before he was stopped, he had already pulled the trigger, and the second bullet was heading straight for its intended target!

"Grab him! Grab him now!"

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Alarms blared, and security personnel swarmed in, countless hands clamping down on Yuuki's arms, neck, and hair like iron clamps. He was roughly pushed to the ground, the scorching asphalt scraping his cheeks and tearing off a layer of skin. Someone plopped down on his back, the immense weight almost breaking his spine, the air in his lungs being...

He was squeezed out forcefully, like a fish out of water, opening his mouth wide in vain but unable to breathe in any oxygen, as fists and feet rained down on him.

Someone kicked him in the ribs; a dull thud followed, and excruciating pain spread from his chest throughout his body. His lip was cut by the impact with the ground, blood flowing into his mouth, the metallic taste of rust filling his mouth. His glasses had flown off somewhere; the world blurred into a distorted mass of color in his hazy vision, and the crowd continued to shout and curse.

"Kill him! That devil!" "Teach him a lesson!"

Insults, curses, and prayers mingled together, like a pot of boiling poison being poured over him, but he didn't care; instead, he watched the stage with almost excited eyes.

He must be dead! He must have killed himself!

But the next moment, Yuki froze. He looked at the uneven iron ball in Kamo Kenji's hand. There was no doubt that this was the bullet that had been fired from the muzzle of his makeshift gun.

Kamo Kenji looked at him as if he were a lump of trash blocking the road that needed to be cleared. He smiled contemptuously, and then, in front of Yuuki, fed the bullet that held all his hopes to some unseen 'thing' in the air.

“Foolish monkey,” he said dismissively.

How is this possible? How could this guy really possess such supernatural power?!

Yuuki was gripped by self-doubt and despair, and just then, a voice delivered the final blow.

"Yushu! You beast!"

His mother rushed over and threw herself in front of him. Her face was covered in tears, but those tears were not from heartache, but from anger—a hysterical anger at being betrayed by the person closest to her. She raised her hand and slapped him hard across the face.

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581. The Demon of the Gun - Descends

"How could you do this! You almost killed the Pope!"

The mother's expression was extremely ferocious, and she hysterically slapped Yuuki hard across the face.

"I raised you! I gave everything to Lord Tianyuan! Is this how you repay me?"

Another slap.

His mother's fingernails scratched his cheekbone, and blood streamed down his face. She kept hitting him, hitting him so hard, each blow using all her strength, as if she were hitting an irreconcilable enemy, not her own son.

"You unfilial son! You devil! You lackey of the devil!"

Yuuki lay on the scorching pavement, his face and mouth covered in blood, his ears ringing. Looking at his mother's contorted face, he suddenly remembered a small incident from long ago.

When he was seven years old, he went to the amusement park and played until very late. He fell asleep on his own and when he woke up, his mother had already carried him home. After seeing that he was awake, she gently asked him if he was hungry and if he wanted to eat a hamburger before going home. At that moment, there was a light in her eyes, a light that was warm, soft, and belonged only to him.

Now, those eyes are empty.

There was no heartache, no guilt, not a shred of pity for the son who had been knocked to the ground.

Only hatred remains.

That hatred contained no maternal love, nor any trace of kinship; it was simply the unreserved, hysterical hatred of a believer for the one who destroyed her faith.

That last glance, like the final straw that broke the camel's back, completely crushed the last bit of "humanity" that remained in Yuuki's heart.

Why? On what grounds?

He was beaten black and blue on the ground, while those people—those who swindled him out of his family fortune, those who took his mother away, those who made his brother jump off the overpass—stood there, impeccably dressed, smiling, basking in the sunlight and praise.