"This... this!"
"On the contrary, Senior Malfur, I wonder if you still remember the explosion case of Mr. Diesel Winter? When that explosion occurred on Flower Language Street, do you remember who the two Student Council members sitting across from you were?"
The youth below the stage was suddenly silenced. An anonymous chill crawled up his spine, and countless suspicious gazes were cast from his surroundings. In this moment, it felt as if the world around him was spinning, and beads of cold sweat slid down from his forehead.
He was absolutely certain that the other party knew many details about that explosion case from back then. Once she revealed everything, his end would surely be incredibly miserable.
The news said the explosion of Diesel Winter was carried out by the Ascetic Sect, but in truth, this matter was inextricably linked to members of the Student Council and the Starry Gallery.
Yes, there were members of the Ascetic Sect within the Student Council, and more than one. Only a very few people knew their identities, including the elders of the Starry Gallery, Vice President Gawain of the Student Council, and himself.
Back then, he was only the acting head of the execution planning department of the Student Council. In order to naturally become the head and pave the way for his future political career in the Starry Forest, he had connected with two members of the Ascetic Sect to fix the execution list. If Lancelot hadn't insisted on coming along that time, everything should have been seamless...
Diesel Winter had thirsted to change the orphanage system, contacting various forces and putting in much effort for that cause.
Just as he intended to contact the Fixer Association's investigators privately to hand over the gathered evidence, that explosion occurred.
This was a political assassination planned entirely by Belvedere. That investigator had also been permanently trapped in a spatial rift not long ago due to the "loss of control" of the Heart's Desire train, their fate still unknown.
Even that golden lion had likewise paid the price for his justice, remaining on that island along with the evidence he had organized. Such was the cruelty of struggle.
As a link in this massive execution chain, he knew deep down how filthy and wretched politics were. Politicians of two different factions distrusted and guarded against each other, plotting to put their opponents to death. It was like a giant dark forest; once someone was exposed to their vision, those old poisonous snakes would not hesitate to destroy them.
If this matter were exposed, Belvedere had a hundred ways to make him disappear to cover up the deeper truth.
Malfur met the gaze of that old vampire on the judging panel and lowered his head gloomily, disappearing into the crowd before the girl could speak the truth.
Tang Xin took a deep breath and continued, "The people at the heights of this city are too dazzling, like ever-shining stars. The brilliance of those great artists reaches across the universe, making people from all over the world notice this prosperous and beautiful city."
"But ordinary people are the majority. Ordinary lives are like wild grass. Some grow in a well and cannot see the real sky throughout their entire lives, let alone glimpse the backs of those sages and great men."
"I presume everyone here knows very well what an insurmountable abyss the word 'talent' is in the field of artistic creation."
"In places people haven't seen, even if ordinary people rub their hands until they bleed, ruin their voices, or break their toes, they will still die like wild grass rotting in the mud. Oppressed, stripped of color, and deprived of the right to choose, many people leave behind many unanswered questions throughout their lives, opening their eyes in confusion and dying in doubt."
"Why?" Tang Xin directed her question to everyone. "Is this truly the price of being ordinary, the destiny of the common man?"
She thought of her past self in this city, huddled in a small rental room, playing the guitar, trapped in loneliness and aimlessness, becoming just one of the many figures in the shadows.
And many people, like her, saw a reflection of themselves in the girl's words.
Yes, why?
On what grounds?
On the tram, a girl holding a guitar pulled and snapped the tough strings one by one with blood-stained fingertips. Listening to the snapping sounds of the strings of the expensive instrument she had bought with a loan, the strings within her heart were also snapping, yet her exhausted body felt a sense of relief at this moment.
They knew deep down that their talent was poor. No matter how they moved forward on this path, they would eventually hit a wall so high the top couldn't be seen. But they had no choice; if they didn't go with the flow, they would be abandoned by the current, treated as social outcasts, and become lonely monsters.
Why do the ordinary cry?
Why do they walk?
And why do they close their eyes?
With no right to choose, where exactly should they go?
At this moment, a low voice sliced through the silence, echoing over the Grand Theater.
"Because there is no necessity for these people to exist at all." Belvedere slowly stood up, the gaze in his sunken eye sockets devoid of any ripples.
"Art is inherently so noble and great. Low-quality creation is but a stain on the drawing board, air breathed in by the foul. Their existence only defiles this sacred hall and hinders the progress of the Star of Art."
"Only when these bedbugs who construct the bottom of society are filtered out and die will the city streets be clean and this hall be pure and sacred."
"Without those stains, the Star of Art will only become more beautiful."
The Grand Theater was pin-drop silent. Clearly, most people sitting here shared the same thoughts as Belvedere. They were highly educated elites who saw only ugly traits like laziness, stupidity, and greed in those at the bottom; no one would empathize with them.
"Survival of the fittest is the law of nature. Inferior people are nature's choice. Only then will civilization progress and art welcome its golden age."
The gaze Belvedere directed at Tang Xin was filled with deep mockery, aimed not just at the girl's naivety but also her overestimation of her own strength.
"Those people have no value in existing."
The people on the tram fell into silence.
Looking at the man frozen into an ice sculpture left far behind at the station, and thinking of those foul-smelling vagrants in the Keyboard District, the people's gazes lost focus.
Yes, what did the people who were filtered out have to do with them?
They were the ones who triggered The Artist, fading into the depleted and endangering public security. Even if it was their relatives, classmates, teachers, colleagues, or even friends who were filtered out, so what.
The ones being filtered out weren't them; it was their own fault.
Perhaps if all such people disappeared, The Artist would also vanish, and those annoying the depleted would no longer endanger the city's public security.
Tang Xin looked around. For the first time, she deeply felt how absurd this city was. An emotion surged within her—a flame called anger. She felt angry for the people she desired to save, grieving for their misfortune and enraged by their lack of struggle and their numbness.
But none of that mattered.
Long before she stepped onto the stage, she had already prepared to burn herself out, even if she could only melt a negligible bit of ice from this frozen land. This was what she was capable of, what she most desired to do.
"You are wrong." Tang Xin opened her eyes and looked directly at Belvedere on the judging panel. "Their lives are indeed ordinary, and nature will indeed make its selection, but you should not deny the meaning of their existence."
Tang Xin recalled the scene she saw in the garden. Beside the beautiful flowers surrounded by children, in a corner people couldn't see, the wild grass pinned down by stones was growing tenaciously.
"Regarding the future of man, some birds cannot fly throughout their entire lives. People always see the birds flying in the sky but ignore the small birds that fall and die on the ground. Can one say that all birds should be able to fly?"
"In a forest, some trees grow under the shade of others their entire lives, unable to absorb sunlight, and their growth rate is relatively slow. Can one say they haven't worked hard for the sunlight or that they wasted the nutrients in the soil?"
"The wild grass in the garden grows in strange shapes. Out of a pursuit of beauty, the gardener prunes them again and again. Tourists step over their bodies, sighing at the beauty of the flowers. Ordinary wild grass cannot control whether it is pruned or trampled. The gardener is annoyed by them, so why were they spread in the garden in the first place?"
"To contrast the beauty of the flowers," someone murmured.
"To turn into nutrients after silent decay," someone said with a bitter smile.
"The roots aren't deep, the flowers aren't beautiful; yet they drink the dew and the water, absorbing the blood and flesh of the dead, each one snatching away the survival of others."
"Even the most ordinary wild grass has a meaning for its existence; it can contrast the beauty of art. So why did you say before that mediocre people have no value in existing?"
Tang Xin once again directed her question to everyone.
People fell into thought once more.
Someone suddenly woke up.
If the wild grass was destined to be pruned and burned batch after batch, who could guarantee they wouldn't be in the next batch of wild grass?
What was the problem they were currently facing?
People's thoughts, like new seedlings, welcomed an enlightenment, giving birth to a question never mentioned in textbooks.
Since art would bring them pain from the very beginning, why did they choose to walk this path?
Textbooks only taught them how they should create art, spoke of the nobility and greatness of art, and said that not creating art was wrong, but they never taught them why they should create art, nor why not doing so was wrong.
Who was it that kidnapped them onto the path of art?
Or rather,
Who,
Kidnapped art?
"Returning to the original topic, why was art born?"
"From people's pursuit of beauty?"
"Since even the most ordinary people have the right to pursue beauty, art itself should not have been placed above them from the beginning. It should not cause resistance on the path of people pursuing it, and even less should it bring people so much pain and scarring."
"Whether it is a great artist or people as mediocre as wild grass, all have the right to think. Art is the spiritual fruit born from their lives."
"It is you who exaggerated art, imposing all nobility onto this concept, while ignoring its nature of being born ordinary and originating from life!"
"Art originates from life and transcends it."
"But it is absolutely never higher than life itself!"
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