I watched the children who crawled back, only to be shoved out by the women again. I shook my head and refuted, “No. They are not paying tribute. When the Ghost Eclipsers ran past here earlier, they were clearly protecting their children. Now… Now…” I glanced at Xing Chuan. An overwhelming emotion surged from the bottom of my heart as I continued, “They know to protect their children! They wouldn’t use them to pay tribute. Rather, they must have seen me killing the Ghost Eclipsers, so they could tell that I have the strength to protect their children. So, they want to give me their children and have me take them away! They don’t want their children to be eaten!”

Xing Chuan was instantly stunned, staring at the children who were being repeatedly shoved out. His eyes were trembling.

He could see through anyone’s malicious motives, yet he couldn’t see the purest humanity. We often ended up over-complicating the simplest things.

The sudden surge of my emotions brought on a throbbing pain in my throat. Tears welled up in my eyes and I turned towards the pound. I repeated myself, “They are humans. They are humans!”

The men and women were looking at the children, firmly pushing out the children who crawled back into the pound because they knew that only human pigs lived in the pound and their eventual fate was to be eaten. They understood that they could only live like humans if they left the pound.

So, they determinedly pushed their children out of the pound. They had seen our battle earlier. They had witnessed me killing the Ghost Eclipsers. They could tell that we were different from the Ghost Eclipsers. That was why they wanted to hand their children to me, for me to bring them away from the pound.

I bent down and picked up a baby. His big, bright eyes were intelligent and alert. 

“When they were born… they were humans… 

Cough cough…

” Xing Chuan bent down and carried a baby too before continuing, “But due to their environment, they grew up to become human pigs… This is how our minds assimilate and evolve. It is irreversible… 

Cough, cough

… But Bing, you are right. They are humans… They are handing their children over to us, for us to rescue them… I was wrong… I was…” he said, smiling at the baby who cried at having left his mother’s embrace.

Once one baby cried, all the other children started to wail in tears too. They didn’t understand why their mothers had shoved them out. They only wanted to return to their mother’s arms.

But their mothers pushed them out again and again. Because their mothers wanted them to live on. Only when they were pushed out of the pound, would they be able to leave the human pig life behind.

“Bring them back to our capital!” I ordered. “Get Professor Raffles to do a body check for them. Even if they are untreatable, we will treat them nicely. From today onwards, there will no longer be human pigs. We are all humans!”

“Yes!” My troop’s reply reverberated across the sky. Everyone’s eyes were glistening.

The human mind was a magical existence.

There was once a psychology professor who’d performed a bold experiment. He had let his child grow up together with an equally young gorilla. In the end, the gorilla started behaving more and more like a human, while his child too behaved more and more like a gorilla. Once he realized what was happening, he immediately stopped the experiment.

Even if the human pigs could not recover, their children still had hope. They could still grow up in a decent environment and become healthy humans.

But first, all of us had to stop treating them like human pigs. Otherwise, how could we teach the children who would grow up under our care to respect their parents who were human pigs?

Hence, from now on, we had to treat them like any other human. In the coming future, we were all going to live together and they would slowly learn how to be a human again.

I believed that the people in Queen Town would not treat them like human pigs either, because everyone had family and tribe members who had been captured to become human pigs. Sharing a similar experience would help us to empathize, love and care for one another.

I hoped that everyone could live up to what they’d said earlier, and bring these people back home to take care of them like family.

Oneechan clown and Angelina walked out the crowd simultaneously. Then, they gently picked up the babies from the ground. Vanish, Earl, Pelos and the others too came out one by one to carry the babies gently. Softly they coaxed the babies to stop crying.

Just then, the women in the pound smiled. Those smiles were sufficient to prove that they were truly humans and they had souls.

In the light of the sunset, their smiles were the most beautiful sight …

Gehenna, Napoleon and the other guys gathered in the meeting room on Ice Dragon. I frowned, not talking.

No one else spoke either.

We had taken down Nubis’ livable zone but now we realized we had a problem, which was… we didn’t have enough people!

In short, we didn’t have enough manpower to fully take over Nubis’ livable zone.

As a nation, having a sufficiently large human population was a must. We couldn’t just have a dozen people scattered across large stretches of land - that would be disadvantageous for the defence and protection of the citizens. In terms of battle strategy, it no doubt dispersed our strength. 

The main crux of our problem right now was that we had massive lands and very few humans.

Resting my head on my left hand, I tapped the meeting table with my right again. I looked at the map of Nubis’ livable zone, asking, “What do you think? It is such a large territory…”

Napoleon, who had initially clamored to get a share, had evidently lost his interest. He slowly took off his hat and clicked his tongue. “I realize that I am incapable of running the land even if I take it…”

“Exactly… 

Tsk

,” Gehenna agreed, seemingly stressed out. He added, “We were busy fighting for a share of the land but how will we even use the land if we take it now? We don’t have enough resources. With so many more cities coming under your rule, how will you support them? 

Huh?

 How do you support them!?” Gehenna questioned Napoleon, slamming the table.

Napoleon ran his fingers through his long greasy hair that looked like it had not been washed for very long. “Now that you mention it, I’m getting a worse headache. Can you stop?” Napoleon narrowed his eyes, forcing a smile.

Gehenna rolled his eyes, teasing, “Who told you to fight for a share back then? I’m telling you. We are no longer Ghost Eclipsers. First, we can’t rob. Second, we can’t kill humans. Third, we have to practice human… human what?” Gehenna asked, glancing at us.

“Humanitarianism,” He Lei reminded, crossing his arms.

“Yeah!” Gehenna slammed the table again. “Humanitarianism! That’s why we now have to rescue them and support them. We can’t leave them behind or kick them out of the livable zone.”

“

Ah…

” Napoleon held his head in distress, visibly exhausted at the thought that hundreds of people were going to be relying on him alone for every little thing.