I'm Ornn, and I'm about to be beaten to my knees by the Man-eating Horse Girl!

"But now it seems... there's no need to discuss it anymore."

Listening to the man in front of him, Ornn nodded noncommittally.

Nantian Longsan smiled helplessly. He didn't say anything more, but simply led the way.

The two pushed open the door and entered the room. Nogishi Soichiro was sitting in a grand chair beside the hospital bed. Judging from the old man's complexion, he was in much better spirits than when he was in bed.

Ornn's hammer cannot cure diseases, but it can stimulate the body's natural defenses. After that first blow, Souichirou was able to get out of bed on his own.

The moment he saw Orn enter the room, Nogishi Souichirou forced himself to stand up, seemingly wanting to bow to Orn.

"No need, you're not thanking me, and you're too old for me to accept such a gift."

Orn sidestepped, then gently pushed the old man back into the chair.

Nogishiki Souichirou didn't press the matter further. He nodded to Minamida Ryuzo, who was standing to the side, and said, "Ryuzo, there are many guests this time, so you should go and greet them as well."

"I'll have a good chat with this young man. It's alright, go on with your work."

"Dean..."

Nantian Longsan hesitated for a moment, but ultimately turned and walked out of the room.

His family fortune was gone, and he was plagued by illness; in the end, it was all for naught.

He didn't want his old friend, who had struggled his whole life, to end up like this.

But are there any other possible endings besides these?

Inside the room, Nogishi Soichiro chuckled self-deprecatingly, "Young man, you must have learned about the current state of the ranch since you returned this time, right?"

"The current situation is perhaps because I was too impulsive back then. Many large ranches approached us wanting to buy them, but I refused them all,"

"Retaliation was inevitable, but I didn't expect it to come so quickly, so fiercely, and affect so many people so widely."

"If I had agreed back then, at least... I could have protected the children from being harassed. If I hadn't been so wishful thinking, believing I could defeat them, perhaps the tragedy that followed wouldn't have happened."

The old man lowered his head, his voice broken and intermittent, each word accompanied by the rumbling of a worn-out bellows deep in his throat.

"My greatest hope is that these children can live healthy lives now,"

“But as long as this ranch exists, as long as we old folks are still here, peace will probably never come to them,”

"Just as I said, this ranch should be disbanded."

"Young man, if possible, I would like to ask you to at least keep an eye on Xiaoyu and not let her know about my affairs."

Orn sat on a stool to the side. He didn't immediately agree. Instead, he took out the notebook from his backpack, then pulled out a photograph: "Dean Soichiro, I want to confirm something."

Do you remember... her?

As if he had seen something terrifying, Nogishi Soichiro's pupils contracted sharply the moment he saw the photograph, and his lips began to tremble.

"This is!! How did you get her things? Could they be her parents...?"

Orn nodded and said, "Yes, it was given to me by that lady."

Nogishiki Souichirou quickly asked, "What...what...did her mother say?"

Instead of answering Soichiro's question, Orn demanded sharply, "Why didn't anyone from Nojin Ranch visit her when she was seriously ill?"

"Didn't you say you would pay attention to every student who graduates from your program? Then why isn't she getting your attention? Or was that just a lie you used to deceive people?!"

Soichiro began to tremble all over. He clenched his fists and growled, "How could it be a lie?! Of course I remember the face of every student who graduated from here! How could I not remember her?!"

"But I can't see her! I'm afraid to see her!! I don't deserve to see her!!!"

"She and her mother trusted me so much back then, and because of the ranch I started, she had to retire from professional gaming so quickly! In the end, she even lost her title!!! How am I supposed to face her and her parents now!!"

The nearly sixty-year-old man finally couldn't hold back his tears. Guilt, fear, self-blame—a mixture of emotions—ultimately erupted.

He choked up as he said, "Of course I know about her situation, but aside from secretly helping her with her medical expenses, I don't dare to show my face in front of her and her parents!"

"It's not just her! Every child who graduated from my program has faced difficulties to some extent, all because of me! Because I acted unilaterally back then! Because I defied their rules! They can't get revenge on me, so they take it out on those children!!"

"I'm a fucking self-centered bastard! What's the point of this ranch?! We might as well destroy it all!"

Nogishi Souichirou took a long breath, looked up at Orn, and said in a low voice, "Now I have only one request. I am to blame for the tragedy that has caused so many people, but the children still on the ranch are innocent."

"I implore you, please take them away from this ranch, and don't let them get involved in the affairs of us old folks anymore,"

"Finally, Xiaoyu... Xiaoyu... she... please..."

"Hide the truth from her and don't let her know?"

Orn interrupted the old man, saying, "Just like before when you didn't dare to appear before her, are you going to protect them on your own again this time?"

Nogishiki Souichirou stared blankly at the ground: "What else can I do? After causing such a tragedy, I don't dare to see her anymore, I..."

“She never hated you, Dean Soichiro,”

Orn handed over the notebook in his hand: "Until the last moment of her life, she never hated you, nor did she hate Wild Brocade Ranch."

“It’s not just her. I went to find many of your former students, and they don’t hate you. Even her mother doesn’t hate you, doesn’t hate the things you did that were so one-sided.”

"Even now, they still stand on the side of the ranch, and that has never changed."

"Take a good look. If you still want to give up the ranch after reading this, then I won't try to persuade you anymore."

Having said that, Ornn stood up first and walked out.

The door was gently closed. At this moment, only Nogishi Soichiro and she were in the room.

The old man held the notebook in both hands, staring at it blankly, then reached out to open the cover.

But the cover seemed to have a tremendous weight on it. He flipped up the bottom of the cover countless times, only to close the cover again and again.

In the end, the old woman opened the book, and with it, she opened the book of her life.

He saw it; he saw what the girl had said to him five years ago.

Chapter 222 Story

Ornn carefully closed the door behind him. He glanced at the messy footprints in the ruins beside him and sighed softly.

"You heard everything? Not just today, you heard it the first time I came here, didn't you?"

"Tamamo Cross, want to come out and have a chat?"

The ruins were still the same ruins; apart from Ornn's seemingly self-answered dialogue, only the chirping of cicadas provided any response.

Orn rolled his eyes, looking at the two white ears peeking out of the second-floor window, and scoffed, "I mean, if you're going to hide, at least do it properly. These ears are still sticking out, what kind of nonsense is this?"

"Uncle Nantian's eyesight isn't good enough to see this, but this trick can't fool me. If you don't come out soon, I'll come up here to find you!"

Upon hearing this, the pair of ears retracted from the second floor, and the girl with the asparagus hair jumped down from the building.

She glanced at the door behind Orn, seemingly wanting to push it open, but after taking only one step forward, the girl stopped in her tracks, then suddenly turned and walked towards the playground.

“If you leave now, even Wild Brocade Ranch will be beyond saving.”

Ornn watched Tamamo Cross's frozen back and continued, "With your current form, you probably won't even get third or fourth place in the tournaments in September and October."

"Without sufficient merit and reputation, what qualifications do you have to save the ranch..."

"Enough with the chit-chat! Of course we know all that!"

Tamamo Cross lowered her head, turned to look at Orn, and asked with a complicated expression, "You... in the end, why do you meddle in our affairs?"

"We should be competitors, right? Shouldn't competitors poison each other, murder each other, and spread rumors to attack each other? Why are you helping us like this?! Do you have some ulterior motive?!"

Orn was startled by the small man's intense tone. Fortunately, they were some distance from Nogishiki Souichirou's hospital room; otherwise, such a loud voice would have alerted the old man long ago.

He scratched his head and sighed, "Hey, it's pretty aggressive."

"Huh!? Who are you saying is more aggressive!"

Orn waved his hand, gesturing for silence, and then held up one finger, saying, "What you just said actually contained a mistake. In the beginning, I genuinely didn't intend to help you."

"The reason I understand the past of this ranch is because of coincidence."

Tamamo frowned and said, "A coincidence?"

"Yes, it was a coincidence. It was because that day, March and I happened to run into Yoshinoda, the guy who grows watermelons next door. Following the principle of helping people to the end, I investigated and discovered the story about the ranch."

Orn raised his second finger and continued, "Secondly, it's because your trainer privately asked me to help. He said you haven't been doing well lately and hoped I could organize a few training sessions to improve your mood."

"Komiyama said that your condition was so bad that even the little girls on the ranch noticed it, didn't you know?"

Tamamo pressed her lips together tightly, her hands clenched so tightly that her nails dug deep into her palms.

This time, she didn't argue or say much; she just stared at the ground with a look of self-reproach.

"As for the third reason, it's still because of Oguri,"

"As Xiaoli's roommate, you should know that she can be a bit rough around the edges sometimes,"

Orn smiled wryly and said, "Should I call her thick-skinned? In everyday life, she's actually quite inflexible and prefers to tough things out."

"If there's a boulder blocking the way on the mountain path, Fujimasa March might dig a path through it, Shining Radiance would come down the mountain to gather people to move the boulder, and Megumi Aldan might use his financial power to hire a few planes to move the boulder,"

"As for Oguri Hat, she would imagine the stones as bread, eat the stones, and then continue moving forward. You must have felt that way during the time you were roommates with Oguri Hat, right?"

Tamamo Cross recalled the nights when the two of them were still in the Central Tereson dormitory, those nights that gave him high blood pressure, and a wry smile, the same one Orn had given him, involuntarily appeared on his face.

"But you've also run alongside her on the track. Do you think Xiaoli doesn't know how to adapt when she's on the track?"

Before Tamamo could answer, Orn continued, "No, contrary to her usual performance, on the field, her keen intuition for seizing opportunities is outstanding, even in the center of Treson."

"I'm not saying this to brag, I'm just saying that no matter how adaptable Oguri Hat is on the field, there's one thing she won't change,"

"She wanted to fight her rival in his prime, in his perfect period, in his peak,"

Orn pointed at the girl in front of him and said, "But she didn't want to fight an opponent whose strength has greatly declined. She didn't want to, I didn't want to, and neither did the fans and the audience."

Tamamo Cross reached out and slapped Ornn's hand away, then sneered, "So you mean we're weak right now?"

"I don't know if you're weak or not, but I know that if you keep going like this, you'll definitely lose,"

“A battle with no suspense won’t make Oguri stronger, and I don’t want her to win in this way.”

Orn looked at the gloomy-faced Lu Mao and pointed to the steps beside him.

"Calm down now? Can you talk to me now?"

Each horse girl has corresponding soothing techniques. For some horse girls, due to their personality issues, reverse psychology can be surprisingly effective.

Although Orn wasn't entirely sure why the little guy always seemed to harbor a subtle hostility towards him, he could roughly deduce that Tamamo Cross was someone who responded better to force than gentle persuasion.

Once she awakened the fighting spirit within her, she would no longer run away from that inexplicable psychological conflict.

If only we could solve things directly like Miyazaki did, but it turns out that not only is the old man stubborn, but the child is stubborn too, and even the woman who left the notes is stubborn.

Ugh, this is so troublesome.

"Do you... find us troublesome?"

Orn raised an eyebrow, then nodded and said, "Hmm... I do feel that way a little, since my team hasn't had this much trouble yet."

"You... are you saying these things on purpose to provoke us?!"

"Forget it, we won't argue with you."

Tamamo Cross squatted at the edge of the ruins, looking at the house where the dean was not far away, and slowly said, "I don't really think the principal and the others did anything wrong. If I were the principal, I probably wouldn't have let the students know about these things either."

"But... even though the truth is hard to grasp, I'm still a little sad,"

“We’ve lived here for five years, and we don’t want to lose this place, to lose our home.”

A rustling sound rose from the ruins; it was the sound of a gentle breeze blowing through the abandoned buildings.

Although these houses have been abandoned for many years, their structures remain intact, and they could even be used normally if electricity were connected now.

Tamamo Cross raised her head and peered out through the gaps between the houses.

Across from the playground, the afternoon sun shone on the tiles of the teaching building, then pierced through the vintage stained glass, refracting blue and red light in the sunlight.

The gentle breeze not only played a symphony of sounds from the ruins, but also made the trees around the playground sway.

Squatting on the ruins of the lobby, feeling the familiar yet strange sensations unfolding before me, a nostalgic feeling, a sense of the past, rose within me.

She paused, then said, "After we left here, we were also bullied when we were in elementary school."

"However, once we got serious, those guys ran away like stray dogs. What really troubled us was what happened after we entered Central Teresen,"

"There were also bullies there. Back then, we naively thought that as long as we beat them all down like before, everything would be solved."