Chapter 66

"The old couple took out the baby girl from the bamboo and named her "Kaguya-hime". Kaguya-hime among the tender bamboos, she became the daughter of the old couple." The woman with gorgeous makeup read to the girls lying on her knees in a gentle voice.

The innocence of children always brings up too many questions. Their little hands, as big as lotus roots, stretch out and ask their own questions.

"Sister, sister, why did Princess Kaguya come out of the bamboo?"

"How did Kaguya suddenly grow up from being so small?"

"How beautiful is Princess Kaguya? Is she as beautiful as her sister?"

The courtesan patiently answered all these chattering questions one by one.

"Because Princess Kaguya is a fairy from heaven, she can walk out of a bamboo and grow with the wind, growing faster than ordinary people like us. Because she is a fairy, of course there is no one on earth more beautiful than her."

After answering the girl's little question, the story of the oiran continued.

But the story in the thin booklet was quickly told, and the warm time passed quickly. The courtesan had his job, and the bald man had his job. Before the dove mother came to urge them to leave, the girl could only leave here reluctantly.

There is another thing that I can’t forget. It was snowing heavily outside, but in the corner of the eaves, there was a “little snowman” squatting.

It was a pure white child, with white hair and eyelashes, and pupils as blue as broken ice. She seemed not to be afraid of the cold wind at all. The thick snow had already fallen on her body, but the "little snowman" still held her chin with both hands and listened carefully to the following story.

The story below had ended, but she still kept her eyes open, wanting to hear something more.

"It's time for you to leave. Today's story is over." At some point, another person appeared next to the small figure. He was holding a bamboo umbrella, keeping out the wind and snow.

A very beautiful man.

The child didn't seem surprised by his appearance, but she didn't want to leave just like that. She clung to the eaves with her little hands and tried to stick her head out, trying to see the scene inside the house.

The man had no choice but to reach out and take the person off.

The child was blocked, but he was not angry. He looked straight at the man with his ice-blue eyes. Suddenly, he thought of the story he had heard. He tilted his head and called out, "Father?"

"I'm not your father, Edo."

The newly born Edo could perhaps be considered Princess Kaguya, but Kyoto, which also had a sense of city, could never be that human Takeo.

Two figures, one big and one small, walked in the snow. The older man patiently pointed out the differences between the two: "Humans are different from us. Edo, stay away from humans in the future."

"But the snacks are delicious, the dancing is beautiful, and the singing and bird calls are different." The little girl enumerated what she thought were the advantages of human beings.

Jingdong told her: "Tonghua knows all these. I can ask her to make snacks for you, dance and sing."

Edo, who was born not long ago, was just as stubborn as a human child: "But, only human hands are warm when you hold them."

Without Kyoto knowing, Edo still ran and approached the human.

I don’t know how many years it took to accept the mission.

He opened his eyes from chaos countless times, and the tung tree demon that was enlightened thousands of years ago came to report to him that a new city was born.

"Let Yokohama go. I don't want to see anyone now."

Curled up in the darkness, Kyoto covered his head again. Letting the adult city teach the newly born city, in addition to ensuring safety, is more to make the new city also agree with the ideas of the ancestors, so that they are also willing to die without hesitation for the survival of their own kind when necessary.

The tree demon knocking on the door paused. The previous Edo had perished for the purification of Kyoto, and Kyoto had not recovered yet. But this was related to the new urban consciousness, and the new one...

"Yokohama-sama also died not long ago, and the new city that was born this time is Edo."

Just as he finished speaking, there was a sound in the originally silent room. After a rustling sound of fabric, the door of the room finally opened.

"I'm going to Edo to take good care of the house."

Edo is not small. Kyoto has experienced the entire city of prosperity and decline, and finally found a new urban consciousness in the sea reed pond outside the flower street.

The small city consciousness crawled out from the withered and corrupt swamp, but it was a clean and pure snow girl.

Unlike the quiet snow girl in people's imagination, this girl is too noisy, as if she is curious about everything in the city.

"I know a lot of Edos, and you're the most unique one among them." In the middle of a teaching session that went wrong, Kyoto tried to divert her attention from the candy apples that always fell on the human child.

The Snow Woman blinked her eyes and said, "But sir, I will eventually grow up to be the same Edo as I was before."

"The Edo of the past and you of today are not the same person." Kyoto stared into those ice-blue eyes and told her seriously.

"I have all the memories of the former Edo, and I exist in the same land. I will assist Kyoto just like any other Edo before me." The Snow Woman told her mentor earnestly, "I will become an Edo like them."

The new Edo is as stubborn as any other Edo.

As a city consciousness, Jingdong wants to understand everything about the city. He takes Edo to wander the streets and mingle with the emerging nobles, trying to tell her the rules of the human game.

But perhaps because it was born out of the prayers of the prostitute, she ran to the roof of the red-light district without paying attention.

At some point, she began to like listening to stories told by an oiran.

Between sunset and moon rise, Flower Street is actually the quietest.

After listening to the story again, the Snow Woman asked her mentor: "Can't we save her?"

Having always played the role of teacher, friend, and family member, she seemed to have forgotten that Kyoto didn't like humans very much.

"cannot."

The courtesan named Shirayuki is the most beautiful woman in the red-light district.

At least that's what Edo's urban consciousness thought. When it crawled out of the sea reed pond, it saw her at first sight.

Being young and beautiful is the original sin of a weak woman. The Snow Girl saw her crying and shouting, and was finally knocked unconscious by the men who covered her mouth and nose and took her away.

"If there is a god, please save me!"

The woman's prayers were received by the city consciousness, but the city consciousness could not save her.

The teacher stated the facts in a very calm manner: "Her parents died, and the man she married was a samurai. After he owed gambling debts, he sold her to the red-light district."

"Can we save her?" She didn't understand good and evil, but just wanted to respond to the city consciousness of her followers. She pinched her fingers and looked up eagerly, "She doesn't seem to want to go to the red-light district."

Kyoto's big hand covered her head, causing her sight to fall on another cursed spirit born from the woman's hatred: "Just like she can't see that kind of thing, humans can't see or touch us unless under special circumstances."

Her nascent urban consciousness could not understand how sad this was until she learned more about the city and met Bai Xue again.

Now Bai Xue is already the most popular courtesan on the red-light district.

She was so gentle that she would tell stories to bald men and give candies to little beggars passing by.

She stopped crying and stayed with different men every day with the same smile on her face.

"But she still wants to get out. Can't we rescue her?"

“No.” Although there is something in this world that allows city consciousness to become physical and come into contact with humans, there is no need to let Edo know.

The rejected Edo squatted on the eaves day after day and listened to the story that never changed.

The growth cycle of urban consciousness is very long. After being taken to another city in Kyoto for a period of time on the pretext of training, Edo found that the oiran of the flower street had been replaced by a new person after returning, and the oiran Shirayuki had become a thing of the past.

It didn't take Edo long to find the woman, in the most lonely and least crowded place in the flower street. Unlike the street that was illuminated by lights even at night, this place was full of poverty, hunger and lingering cold.

When Edo found her, the most beautiful and elegant things in the red-light district were like the dirtiest mud. The city consciousness almost thought it had recognized the wrong person. She had changed, becoming thin and old.

"Those people say she is the most beautiful woman in Edo." The young urban consciousness could not understand.

"Human beings are fickle, and their hearts are even more fickle." The elder pointed to the courtesan who used to tell stories to children but now quarreled with others for petty gains. "Now there is no one guarding her, but she can never leave again."

Edo didn't understand, this Shirayuki was so different from the one she remembered.

"You can stay here and find the answers you want."

So Edo remained. Humans could not touch the urban consciousness, and Edo just squatted on the eaves as before.

Just by watching, Edo seemed to have really got an answer.

Snow White gave birth to a child on the day she was away.

A child who is said to look like an evil spirit. Edo has seen real evil spirits and thinks that those who spread the rumors are so hateful. The child is prettier than the evil spirit and will look at other mothers longingly when they hug their children.

Only once, when Edo saw it, the child cursed Taro in an unlovable way, and even went to complain to his parents after being beaten.

"Get out. Don't come over here while I'm working, and don't hang around the house."

Well, even though she didn't want to admit it, Bai Xue really didn't seem to like her own children.

During this period, she became thinner and thinner, and her belly became bigger and bigger.

She was sick and pregnant again.

Bai Xue has now become the type of person that urban consciousness hated the most in the past, vicious and mercenary, just like the other low-level people in Youguo.

But just like ordinary people raising cats, even if the cat is old, ugly, or has a bad temper, the cat owner will still stroke his cat.

Edo thought that Shirayuki was not her cat. She had never fed her, let alone saved her. She could only watch her wither and rot.

Snow White gave birth to a child who was truly like snow, with white hair and deep blue eyes. She looked nothing like her mother, but instead resembled the urban consciousness of this city.

Edo didn't know what she was feeling, she just knew that when the newborn baby was left on the floor without a care, she wanted to go over and pick up the child, or catch Shirayuki's tears.

However, that drop of transparent tear finally failed to fall into her palm.

She remembered that one day she heard Snow White say to her child on the eaves: "My favorite flower? Of course it's the plum blossom. Only plum blossoms and snow will not be stained by dust."

Now, in the dilapidated thatched hut, the skinny woman said, "Let's name this child Mei, because she has the same dirty disease that killed her mother."

Snow White eventually died in Merry.

When she died, her two children were not around, and the snow girl's grief summoned heavy snow that covered the body and the dirt.

The two city consciousnesses stood aside, and now it was impossible to tell which one was bigger or smaller just by their size.

"I already understand humans very well, so I should be able to become a master now." The Snow Girl's body had no temperature and she couldn't shed hot tears.

Edo knew that he was taking his anger out on others. They had clearly taken away the faith of mankind, so why couldn't they do anything for her? What right did they have to be a city?

Kyoto walked away without a word, but Edo continued to follow the two children, seeing more than just the two of them.

In the chaos of Yoshiwara, no one can live a good life.

Just when the brother and sister thought they could live a good life, everything was ruined by another stranger.

Then, the evil ghost who liked to eat human flesh became their "savior".

The "gods" who were supposed to help them could do nothing.

When the legend of evil spirits hurting people gradually became popular in Edo Castle, it appeared again in Kyoto.

It was also at this time that Edo truly discovered the role of cities.

The evil thoughts in people's hearts are enough to produce evil spirits. This darkness first erodes the city's consciousness, and only a small amount of it that leaks out will generate cursed spirits.

"You are now riddled with holes because of your obsession with the evil spirits. How many people did you allow them to eat?"

The wet city consciousness that was fished out of the river showed a pale smile. Now she really looked like a snow girl.

"Indulge? You're talking as if I can stop them from eating people. Besides, Yoshiwara is a place where people are eaten."

Kyoto shook his head: "Several members of the Demon Slayer Corps survived because of you."

Edo pursed his lips and didn't want to say anything.

"We are the closest to the city yet the farthest away from it. If you want to touch this world, come to me."

Cities have inherited memories, so Edo thought he knew everything.

But if passing on memory can pass on everything, then there would be no need for a Kyoto that always exists.

Cities will perish. When urban consciousness can no longer withstand the erosion of darkness, urban consciousness will perish.

Edo looked at her own hands. She was about to die. Even though she was still young, there were too many people in Edo, and too much darkness. So much that the accumulated darkness was about to bury the city itself.

So how did Kyoto survive?

Edo wanted to know the answer, maybe if she knew this, she would be able to touch humans.

So the Snow Girl left her city and never came back.

The eternal existence of a city means that it will perish with another city consciousness, taking away all the filth.

"Have you thought it through? The Demon Slayer Corps is here. With our protection, they will win. You don't have to perish."

"And then we just watch them risk their lives? We are probably the most cowardly gods."

For the first time, the elder said in a teachable manner: “I can’t refute this.”

"You'll do what you promised me, right? I want to touch them even just once."

"In the future observed by Mihua, there is this scene. I will leave your fragments in your city, but your successor will be in trouble because he cannot inherit all the memories and powers. It will probably take longer."

It was just a useless thing, but Edo didn't care: "It doesn't matter. If he has no memory, just let him be himself."

"One last question. In the future, everyone's wishes will come true, right?" Edo closed his eyes and welcomed the final moment.

"...Yes, our wish will come true."

The light of sacrifice is fleeting, and the demise of one city is exchanged for the rebirth of another.

The light is already very dim, but the night is still very long.

The newly reborn urban consciousness lies on the altar again in the same posture.

Sacrifice yourself in exchange for the mercy of another dimension and a higher god.

Begging for mercy from the Most High God, even if there is only a slim hope, only one in ten million in the foreseeable future.

But this crazy gamble put all of his weight on the line.

(End of this chapter)