Yin City fell into complete chaos. The devil bore down on them from the outside, the internal strife that had been bumbling for millennia had finally erupted, and a man with limits they couldn’t see walked across their skies, his goal the very city lord mansion which housed their leader.

However, the atmosphere was still odd. Despite knowing the situation on the outside, despite knowing that Law’s actions would only put them in more danger, and despite knowing that this may very well be the day Yin City ceased to exist, the commoners of Yin City simply looked up and into the sky with fires lit in their eyes as though supporting Law from afar.

Law himself saw these scenes well, causing an even more complex feeling to bloom in his heart.

If this city was made of real people instead of puppets, would this be the scene he saw? The answer was of course not.

Real humans were selfish, hypocritical, self-interested, and completely unable to see the bigger picture. Most of all, they were cowards. Even when they had strongly held beliefs of their own, very few dared to speak them aloud and even fewer dared to fight for them.

Compared to ‘real’ humans, these puppets were much more to Law’s liking. They were like him. They didn’t bend to their principles, they didn’t hold hypocritical thoughts, and even in the face of death, they remained steadfast in their beliefs.

Yet, these were the same people he had treated like trash and sacrificed at the altar of his goals.

If this was a city of real humans, how many of them would be cursing at him from the ground below? How many of them would downplay the deaths of his wife and father-in-law? How many of them would tell him that he had no right to fight against the oppression of the city lord and should just obediently hand his head over?

Law was still young, and so was Dyon, especially in comparison to what the immortal plane might consider experienced. However, what was undeniably true was that he had still experienced much more than a mortal would have. He had seen hypocritical people like this. He had fought against and hated them his whole life.

Was it because of this that he subconsciously began to treat the lives of these people as meaningless?

It seemed like a nice and tidy answer to wrap everything up, but Law didn’t believe it. Such an answer would let himself off too easily. He wasn’t a child, he knew that the world wasn’t painted in broad strokes of black and white. Even if many humans were hypocrites, that didn’t mean they all were.

The truth was that he didn’t care about their lives because he was the same as those he hated. He claimed that he liked these puppets because they were just like him, not carrying hypocritical thoughts and moving forward with a clear mind, but was he?

He was the exact same as them. He selfishly acted to preserve what he loved and what he cared about and disregarded everything else. If it wasn’t for the existence of Saru and Lilith, he might have really sacrificed the billions who lived on the Dark Flame bubble world just for the sake of destroying the Nightwell Clan to their roots and save himself future troubles.

He cared about no one but himself and his own family. And the sad part was that even to this point, he still couldn’t find anything wrong with this. It made him feel extremely uncomfortable, he even felt that he shouldn’t have these thoughts, but for the life of him, he still couldn’t find a reason why.

He wanted to grasp onto it. He wanted to find the logical reason why he should care about the lives of those not related to him? What did their lives have to do with him? Why wasn’t he allowed to completely disregard them? He was an Emperor that stood above …

When Law’s thoughts reached this point, his steps froze in the skies. He was only a few more away from the city lord mansion, but he felt a tearing pain coming from his chest as though something was trying to claw its way out.

That uncomfortable feeling was clawing its way out again.

Why was it that he always had such thoughts? This wasn’t the first time. What was he? A corny anime villain? The original him would never say something like he was an emperor that stood above all. But not only had he thought this, he had said far worse in the recent past. Ever since his vajra body awakened, he had been constantly saying things that someone who grew up in a mortal world like him would never say… He even remembered telling the sprites that the air he breathed was owned by him. What the hell was wrong with him?

Another resounding crack caused Law’s ears to bleed. It was so severe this time that it resonated from his main body, almost causing this clone to collapse entirely.

In that moment, Dyon’s main body was in chaos. The breakthrough into the fourth facet just a few years ago had calm like a gentle tide, but this one was so violent that he felt his body might split apart entirely.

One side of his body had erupted into a blazing black flame and the other was a gentle white. The two battled it out.

In the past, they had coexisted peacefully. But it seemed that today, they refused to allow the other to share its place.