Chapter 842

The meeting room in the detention center had one more window than the interrogation room. The window was small, set high in the wall, and the shadow of the iron bars fell like prison stripes on the gray floor.

Late November sunlight squeezed through there, thin and cold, like a piece of ice about to melt.

Mai Xuejie sat on one side of the glass partition, Night Come Hui on the other.

To undo the bell, one must find the bell-ringer.

Mai Xuejie learned from Uesugi Muneyuki that Night Come Hui wanted to see her, and still decided to come.

Night Come Hui sat on the other side of the glass, wearing gray activewear, no makeup, her hair dry and brittle, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes like dried riverbeds.

If you placed her current face beside the one she had on the lecture platform, no one would recognize them as the same person. But her eyes—those eyes that had suddenly lit up like they were ignited the moment Bai Chuan Mai entered the meeting room—locked onto her unblinkingly.

This is my idol!

"You came! You really came! Mai-sama!" Night Come Hui exclaimed excitedly toward Mai Xuejie: "I just knew this was a case handled by Uesugi Muneyuki—you would definitely come!"

Bai Chuan Mai did not take up that thread.

She sat down, brought the microphone closer, and looked into Night Come Hui's eyes.

Indeed, she felt the power of the inner world in Night Come Hui—that inner-world aura. She had already awakened her own inner-world ability, possibly when she was still a hostess, or possibly after becoming a female mentor. But she lacked a good inner-world mentor, so she did not know how to use her power.

She had absorbed a great deal of fervent and chaotic emotion; this inner-world energy both strengthened her ability, making her easy to incite and persuade others, and made her accept those women's resentment and moral oppression. And the way she chose to release it was to swing her blade at those happy housewives—

Mai Xuejie's expression was very subtle, thinking if that were the case, then it was still better than Junior Student, who couldn't control himself and kept looking for women to justify things a bit more.

Night Come Hui seemed not to notice the subtlety of that expression.

She pressed her palms against the glass, fingers spread, nails trimmed short, no polish, fingertips whitening from pressure. Her whole body leaned forward, as if she wanted to pierce through that layer of glass, through that layer of air, through every barrier between her and her, to get closer to Bai Chuan Mai.

"Do you know how much I admire you?" Night Come Hui's voice grew urgent, her speech rapid like a machine gun: "You don't need anyone—you relied on yourself to reach the pinnacle of this nation."

"You have no marriage, no children, no man can dictate your life. You are a truly,

complete, independent woman. You are the woman of my dreams!"

"You did not choose to marry into the noble Uesugi family, you did not choose to return to the family, you showed us how women should live! How to resist Japanese society's discipline and bullying!"

"Ten years ago, you were like me; ten years later, I am like you!"

Bai Chuan Mai did not interrupt her.

She listened quietly, her expression unchanged. She had seen too many such gazes, too many such tones, too many such "you are my dream."

In these years of her art, countless people had used the same gaze, the same tone, the same words to tell her you are my dream. Some said it and then went on with their lives; some said it and then tried to become her; some said it and then hated her because she was not the version they imagined.

Bai Chuan Mai did not know which type Night Come Hui belonged to, but given her understanding of this woman, she might be a hybrid of all three, the most malignant kind.

Triple Power!!!

Night Come Hui's voice suddenly dropped, low enough to seem afraid of being heard by something behind the glass: "Why are you satisfied with just being a star? You have such great influence, so many people pay attention to you, listen to you—why don't you do something bigger? You could become the leader of Japanese women's liberation, you could lead us to change this society, you could—"

"I have no interest."

Bai Chuan Mai finally spoke. Three words, voice not loud, but like a knife cutting into Night Come Hui's rapid speech, severing that accelerating, nearly out-of-control sentence in the middle.

Night Come Hui's mouth still open, tongue paused at the pronunciation of "yi," eyes wide open wider than before, but the light inside shifted from "adoration" to "confusion."

Bai Chuan Mai switched the microphone to her other hand, her radiant face showing only seriousness: "You say I only settle for being a star"—you think being a star is a lowly thing, not as high as being a female leader. You say I have such great influence, I should use it to change society. You think an excellent woman has an obligation to devote her excellence to women's liberation"; otherwise, it's waste."

"Have you noticed? You and those you oppose use the same logic. Those conservatives say you are a woman, so you should marry and bear children"; you say you are an excellent woman, so you should engage in women's liberation". Same sentence structure, same logic, same 'you should'. Only they swapped 'marry and bear children' for 'women's liberation', and replaced the conservatives' cap with the feminists' banner."

Night Come Hui's lips trembled. She wanted to rebut, but her mouth opened and closed again, like a fish pulled ashore.

Bai Chuan Mai gave her no chance to catch her breath, continuing. Her voice remained calm, no aggression, no anger, not even any aggressive tone.

But that calm, that scalpel-like calm, had more penetrative power than any anger.

"You say you want to 'liberate' women. What does liberation mean? Who defines liberation? You?" Bai Chuan Mai looked into Night Come Hui's eyes, her gaze unwavering: "If liberation is defined by a single person as what is the correct way of life", what is the wrong choice", then this is not liberation—it is religion."

"You are the cult leader, your followers are believers, you define doctrine, they enforce canon. Those who do not believe you, who do not live by your way—those who choose marriage and childbirth, those who choose to be housewives, those who choose not to change society"—in your eyes they are heretics, the 'unawakened', the 'enslaved by men' pitiful worms. Have you ever asked them if they want to be liberated by you? Have you ever asked them if they need you to define their lives?"

The light on Night Come Hui's face faded bit by bit.

"Until why, nowadays, progressivism and the traditional left, or being replaced by the white left LGBT niche, or simply getting kicked out of mainstream politics—is it because everyone is fighting over the 'interpretation rights' of progressivism, everyone wants to be a prophet, a cult leader, a messiah?"

"Everyone wants to sacrifice others' interests, gather all resources to become distributors, everyone wants to be a moral saint, enjoying the pleasure of standing on the moral high ground, attacking others to display their own gratification."

"I have not—" Night Come Hui's voice dropped further, almost inaudible: "I am not that— I just feel— you have the ability to do more— you clearly can—"

"I can be an actor, I can also not be, but I like being one, so I am; similarly, I can marry, I can also not marry, I can bear children, I can also not bear—these are all my choices. I choose to do what I like, rather than sigh at, or even strike down, those happy housewives who did not choose as I wished, did not live as I hoped." Mai Xuejie said coldly: "When you think a woman is excellent enough that she must engage in women's liberation, you also become that annoying conservative who binds others' freedom—this behavior is no different from those who force people to marry and bear children."

"Freedom means having the right to choose, including the right not to do certain things. Respecting oneself presupposes respecting others; liberation presupposes not defining others' liberation. Your problem has never been ability, nor gender, but that you use one set of shackles to replace another, then call it liberation."

"Admit it—you are merely a devil, a devil from Barto Hell, stop draping yourself in this skin—precisely because everyone all day long parades around with this label, just like in South Korea, those young men instead prefer Confucianism, the Cheng-Zhu school, and the Three Bonds and Five Constants, the Three Obediences and Four Virtues." Mai Xuejie stood up and left.

Night Come Hui watched her retreating back, opened her mouth, and finally her head slowly drooped.

The day after this meeting, she submitted written confession materials to the detention center.

This news spread throughout Japan's major media that very evening.

"Night Come Hui confesses" topped the headlines of all news websites; the comment section had some applauding, some expressing shock, some beginning to reflect, some beginning justice-cutting.

Sacred Separator!

The act of "cutting" played out in the public sphere more spectacularly than any stage performance by Namita Erika.

The first to speak up were those who had once been "core disciples" in Night Come Hui's inner circle—they posted on social media, saying they "were also victims," saying they "were brainwashed by Night Come Hui," saying they "once felt deep guilt for participating in those activities."

Their accounts, after posting this content, never updated again; their avatars turned gray, like a row of lights unplugged.

Then came those who had once been guests on Night Come Hui's lectures—the "female leaders"—

They spoke on television with tears and sobs, saying "I and Night Come Hui are merely nodding acquaintances," saying "I actually completely disagree with her values," saying "this incident reminds us the women's movement should take the right path."

"We are not the same"!

Ueno Chizuko spoke out on the second day after the incident erupted.

She published an article titled "Reflections on 'On Liberation'" in the Asahi Shimbun column.

The article is very long, so I won't post it here—water word count.

The core meaning of the entire article is that feminism is not about teaching women to deceive men out of money, nor is it about inciting murder.

What Night Come Hui did is not feminism, it is fraud, it is crime!

Ueno Chizuko's article on social media sparked a new round of discussion.

Some people cheered for her, saying, "This is what true feminism is."

Some people mocked her, saying, "What were you doing back then? When Night Come Hui first became famous, why didn't you speak up?" and it received many likes.

Some people sneered, saying, "This is the cunning of intellectuals—when the wind shifts, they immediately cut ties. When Night Come Hui was at her peak, why didn't she publicly criticize?"

But regardless, this serial mass murder case has finally come to an end.

With Night Come Hui's formal guilty plea, the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office has formally prepared to indict her. Given the extremely恶劣 impact, 极其残忍 circumstances, and极其严重 consequences, under multiple charges and penalties, Night Come Hui may be sentenced to death.

However, given her situation and that she is a woman, it is highly unlikely she will be executed; she will spend many, many years in prison—until her hair turns white, until she knows nothing of the world's changes, until she cannot sleep without the lights on, until Warhammer 40K, after enduring multiple editions, finally collapses under the weight of its own pile of excrement, prompting GW to end the series with the final moment, the original Maternal Universe utterly destroyed in the final war, the Imperial Regent Guilliman seizing the last seed of hope left by the Emperor's fall, and inaugurating a new era of Warhammer: The Age of Guilliman.

There's no way around it—no matter what, she is ultimately a woman, and in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, the progressive wave sweeping the globe has etched gender liberation and women's rights into the DNA of most modern governments and legal systems.

But Night Come Hui is fortunate—her soul has already been claimed by the Village Flower Palace, so she likely won't have to wait that long.

Congratulations, congratulations!