Chapter 960: , Heaven and Blood Sea!

Five years ago, when I was still a patrol officer at Nakane Police Station, there was a case that had always weighed on my mind like a thorn. It was an indiscriminate random stabbing incident. The perpetrator was Hamachu Tadami, who at the time was unemployed and a long-term drug user. That day, after taking an excessive amount of synthetic drugs, he developed severe persecution delusions, grabbed a knife, and went on a stabbing spree. He stabbed seven people, one of whom died from serious injuries. She was my childhood friend's younger sister. That girl was only nineteen that year, had just been accepted into university, and that day she had simply gone out to buy stationery.

Kai Toru leaned against the wall and bitterly recounted the events.

"Hmm, I know about this case. At the time, the perpetrator was wielding a santoku knife and stabbing anyone he saw on the street." Uesugi Muneyuki thought for a moment: "But because the police apprehended the suspect immediately, no one asked me to get involved."

"Ah, so it wasn't a Zwilling knife, then?" Ikeda Erena said instinctively, but she quickly realized this wasn't the time to mention that, so she fell silent.

Kai Toru's voice continued to spread through the room, like a string stretched to its limit: "That thug was deemed mentally unsound due to his evaluation, and his cognitive abilities were impaired from drug use, so he was judged to lack criminal responsibility. In the end, he was merely sent to a rehabilitation center, where he underwent over a year of compulsory treatment. After coming out, he bore no responsibility whatsoever."

"To bear no responsibility at all—how laughable! Utterly laughable!" Kai Toru gritted his teeth: "I witnessed everything with my own eyes. My childhood friend's family couldn't emerge from their pain for over a year, and my childhood friend himself sank into depression because of this. But I could do nothing! The law is the law! I am still a police officer!"

"I once believed the law would give them justice! But there was none!" Kai Toru's fingers tightened slightly: "When I heard that decision, I was sitting in the antechamber of Investigation Division 1, holding a photocopy of the case file. That night, I went alone to where Hamachu Tadami lived. I cornered him in an alley and punched him about a dozen times until he curled up on the ground, unable to move. I had originally intended to kill him. But at that moment, I thought of you."

"You feared I would intervene." Uesugi Muneyuki showed no surprise: "You feared someone would ask me to come and see."

There is a reason he has been called the Japanese Police's Final Weapon these past years.

Every daredevil who dares to kill thinks of one thing before acting.

After I kill someone, will Uesugi Muneyuki intervene?

If I leave a corpse, will Uesugi Muneyuki detect any clues?

Do I have the ability to escape from Uesugi Muneyuki's grasp?

This is why many killers ultimately abandon their plans, because Uesugi Muneyuki's very existence is an ultimate deterrent.

Metropolitan Police Department warning: Our side shall not first employ Uesugi Muneyuki!

"Yes... at that time I had already heard of you, although you hadn't yet been transferred to the Special Mission Unit. I was thinking, if I killed him, he would become a corpse, and then a forensic pathologist would come to examine the body. Would that forensic pathologist be you? If it were you, you would surely uncover me. So I stopped, and did not kill him. But afterward, I found I felt no regret—on the contrary, I felt exhilarated. I beat him up, he lay in the hospital for over a month, and then he was judged to have committed intentional violent assault, with an additional three months added to his sentence. He served those three months in prison, not in the rehabilitation center. After that, I began to think: if the law cannot accomplish something, and someone is willing to do it, then can that person continue doing it indefinitely?" Kai Toru's response amounted to an admission of all this.

He lifted his head, his gaze falling on Uesugi Muneyuki's face: "The blows I landed on him left no possible traces. I wore gloves, leaving no fingerprints. That alley had no surveillance, and no one passed by. At the time, the police did not investigate seriously, because Hamachu Tadami was already registered as a drug user with the police, so they assumed it was just another thug seeking revenge, gave him a beating, symbolically checked the surveillance, and left." Uesugi Muneyuki heard this and was not surprised, helpless: Yakuzas plus drug users—truly no rights, and the Japanese police are the same in this regard: "I recall it was also a rather major news story at the time."

"Yes, at the time many women's weekly magazines said this was the iron hammer of justice, divine punishment, vigilante action, the people's empathy, proof that our nation's martial spirit had not been completely erased! The whole society was full of praise, and even in Otaku Police Station, when those officers discussed this case, their voices were unanimous in approval." Erena spoke earnestly.

"Yes, that was when I began to feel I could do more. Later I transferred to the Special Mission Division and started handling more cases. Some cases, we clearly knew who did them, but due to insufficient evidence, procedural issues, or witnesses recanting, they ultimately came to nothing. Those people continued living normal lives, with no one pursuing them further. Meanwhile, the victims and their families still await an answer that will never come. I always feel that if I saw that answer but did not reach out to take it, I would be no different from those sitting behind their desks signing off on case closures." Kai Toru spoke softly. As he said this, his voice dropped, he fell silent for a moment, and then his voice gained a thin, cracked quality: "After each of my operations ends, I feel a period of calm. But that calm does not last long, like steam on a mirror that soon recondenses. I cannot control it, Mr. Uesugi. I can only control where that strike lands, not the impulse to strike."

Uesugi Muneyuki crouched down, bringing his eyes level with Kai Toru's: "How many incidents have you carried out in these two years?"

Kai Toru did not evade: "Many. I can't recall exactly. Some were just cornering people and beating them, others were threats... I never kept systematic records. The four incidents reported by the media, I definitely carried out. The others not reported—some caused no serious harm, some because the other party dared not report to police, some because they were people the police would not pay attention to. But I don't want to make excuses for myself."

Uesugi Muneyuki fell silent for a long time: "Do you know what you are doing? Do you know what your actions mean?"

Kai Toru did not answer, he lowered his head, like a tree branch that has been under pressure for so long it no longer needs external force to maintain its bent shape.

"The famous German poet Xu Zhimo's《Self-Dissection Collection·Tour of Russia Part Three》's《European Travel Notes》section, in the chapter 'Thirteen Blood—One One—Visiting Lenin's Remains in Reflection,' contains this line: They believed heaven exists and can be realized, but between the present world and that heaven lies a sea, a sea of blood and filth; humanity must swim across this blood sea before reaching the other shore, and they decided to first realize that blood sea." Uesugi Muneyuki spoke. ……… Kai Toru obviously had never heard this saying, he remained silent, while Erena blinked, her eyes clear and pure, without a trace of impurity.

Pure and unblemished, without a trace of impurity.

"This blood sea theory is now nearly a century old, and its power to shock and awaken stems from the fact that it detects an extremely dangerous political logic: when a person, organization, or movement believes they have grasped the end of history, they often begin to justify real-world violence."

"And once violence is 'sanctified,' it becomes easily accepted: if the future heaven is lofty enough, then today's cruelty can all be forgiven."

"Kai, when you were beating people, you must have felt great, right?" Uesugi Muneyuki asked: "Inflicting violence on others and feeling pleasure is human nature, and self-justifying on moral grounds is winning twice—I'm not wrong, am I?"

……" Kai Toru lowered his head and said nothing, while beside him Erena also showed a look of shame, the tall beauty, female police master, in her heart

also faintly realized that, for a female police officer, being able to use violence legally is itself part of what attracted her to this profession.

"During the French Revolution, Robespierre was once a hero of the people, the man who led the French to overthrow royal tyranny, the revolutionary who drove the execution of Louis XVI, and under universal acclaim, he took the seat of power—but only one day later, this great man became the executioner, firmly believing he represented the French people, so anyone opposing him became non-national, and he began to implement a bloody reign of terror, completely simplifying all judicial procedures, sending a total of 30,000 to 50,000 to the guillotine, and if indirect deaths at his hand are considered, over 100,000, and facing the series of problems in France at the time, Robespierre's thought was: What to do? Only kill!"

"As a result, the French Revolution went in a big circle, and in the end it was Napoleon who came out to clean up the mess and put a stop to the bloody reign of terror." Uesugi Muneyuki said coldly: "This is heaven and blood sea—if you believe you are the only true god capable of cleansing all filth and building heaven on earth, then every action can be justified and sanctified, and thus the blood sea is realized; as for heaven, it is something invisible and intangible on the horizon—who cares?"

"However, even so, having lofty heavenly ideals can still be called a virtue, even if that virtue is filled with blood, but as someone has said, revolution is not a dinner party, and there is no change without bloodshed—but have you ever considered, what if someone's initial goal was not heaven?" Uesugi Muneyuki said: "What if someone's initial goal was precisely to rush toward the blood sea? What if everyone's thought was simply to find a reasonable outlet to vent violence and release emotions? Take an example: the medieval witch hunts, the Church actually kept issuing orders to ban and strictly demanded no hunting of witches, yet everyone still did it enthusiastically, because doing so feels great!"

"It's regrettable that those with heavenly goals are few, while those desiring blood sea are many; for many, the blood sea is the goal itself." "Kai, you have your heaven and blood sea, but like Kanzuka Makoto, he set out from the start for the blood sea." Uesugi Muneyuki sighed: "So, you understand why the Dark Knight, that is, Batman, must insist on not killing?"

"Because if Batman killed someone, he would be no different from the Joker..." Kai Toru dejectedly nodded.

"Strip away those halos, Batman is merely a person with slightly better athletic ability than an ordinary person, and this comic actually leans left quite heavily, some parts so left as to be nauseating, because Bruce Wayne embodies absolute justice, absolute correctness, absolute nobility, but even so, the writers still have to—or feel they must not—uphold a bottom line, namely that Batman does not kill, at least in the main canon and orthodox timeline." Uesugi Muneyuki sighed: "As you said, if Batman killed someone, he would be no different from the Joker, indeed he would be even more terrifying, because the Joker knows he is doing evil, while Batman always believes he is on the right path, Napoleon knew killing the Duke of Enghien was wrong, but Robespierre to his death believed everyone around him was a traitor, only himself truly thinking of France's future."

"You can refrain from killing partly because of my existence, and partly because you yourself understand you have no right to deprive others of life, but if you continue like this, cross that line, it's only a matter of time." Uesugi Muneyuki's voice carried a rare complexity—not anger, but something between sorrow and helplessness, a calm that has already lost its warmth: "Now, how should I deal with you, Kai?" "You are my subordinate, someone I personally brought up—how will I explain this to the division? How to your father? How to everyone in the Special Mission Division?"

Days past, truly days past…… Kai Toru thought of these two and a half years in the Special Mission Division, and his eyes welled with hot tears: "Uesugi Chief, I am sorry to you!"

"I could hand you over to the Metropolitan Police Department, Chief Supervision Officer Okochi Haruki would immediately deal with you…… and try to keep it from the outside world, you would be sentenced, possibly released in three to five years…… but you are about to become a father, I am also about to become a father, and if your actions are exposed, how will you face your child later? When the child grows up and asks, 'Dad, were you once a police officer?' how will you answer? Say I am a police officer, but I also rely on an iron rod to break into people's homes at night and beat them up, feeling great?"

Kai Toru did not lift his head.

He made no sound, merely maintaining that posture, like a figure pressed low, already unable to rise again.

"You…… you, you……" Uesugi Muneyuki pondered long, finally closed his eyes: "You, you may go."

"Uesugi Chief?!""Muneyuki???" Kai Toru and Erena, no matter how, never expected Uesugi Muneyuki to give such an answer!

"I will pretend tonight never happened. Tomorrow you will claim you fell off your motorcycle and injured your ribs, request three months of sick leave, and rest well at home. I will not tell anyone else about this." Uesugi Muneyuki looked at him: "As for Erena Shīshō, she is my person, also sympathizes with you, and naturally will not speak of it. As for your punishment, you beat that group of people, I and Erena also beat you, until you vomited blood and fractured ribs—this barely counts as evening the score."

"But remember this is your only chance. If after three months you do the same thing again, I will not help you again." Kai Toru sat on the floor, his body slightly loosening at the words that carried no extra command, like a rope pulled long and finally released back to the ground.

He lowered his head, as if pardoned, his voice already carrying a sob: "Thank you. I will not disappoint you again."

Uesugi Muneyuki turned and walked two steps toward the door, paused, did not look back: "Go home. I will call your father and say you were injured accidentally during an investigation, need time to rest. Three months later, you return to work. Treat this as if it never happened. Today is the last time—remember, do not make it a habit, remember, do not let heaven and vengeance cloud your eyes, in this world, the chain of hatred is endless."

"I know. I promise you." Kai Toru spoke with difficulty, unaware that he was already drenched in sweat.

Uesugi Muneyuki nodded, indicating you may roll away.

Kai Toru slowly, slowly rose, he last glanced at Uesugi Muneyuki, deeply bowed, and slowly stepped into the rain curtain. Rain still fell, the water seeping in from the eaves and window frames spread through the quiet residential area as a low, continuous sound, like something that will never stop.