That Man’s World of Has-Beens

People of the time don’t understand the joy in my heart, and think I’m just idling like a carefree youth. The jianghu has no standard of good and evil. His standards are the standards. The jianghu has no rules. Whatever he says is the rule. But then, all word of him suddenly vanished from the jianghu. Everyone, disciples, family, enemies, benefactors, and strangers alike, celebrated as if a great burden had been lifted. At last, the jianghu had returned to the way it was.

From then on, the jianghu was still the same jianghu, except that it had changed from one man’s jianghu into the jianghu of all under heaven, a jianghu where everyone lived in fear.

And yet no one wanted to go back to the past.