Volume Two: The Youth of a Thousand Faces—Truth in Guise Qingming

April 5th, 3223, the Day of Clear Brightness.

At the time of Clear Brightness, drizzling rain falls unceasingly, and travelers on the road are lost in sorrow.

Hoyeh carried a bottle of wine into a cemetery. Near the cemetery gates, shops selling wreaths and other offerings for the dead lined the street, but Hoyeh bought nothing—he had no need for them.

This was the Martyrs’ Cemetery, reserved solely for the Calamity Hunting Corps.

On the battlefield, blades and swords have no eyes; though calamities may not wield blades, war is merciless, and some people leave as suddenly as a passing breeze.

Hoyeh was one of the few among humankind capable of accelerated regeneration, but most human bodies were fragile.

He poured the wine before a grave. The name on the headstone was Jin Yeager.

Yeager was his mother Vivian’s maiden name; Jin Yeager was Hoyeh’s eldest cousin.

“Cousin, I’m here.” Hoyeh sat beside the tombstone, as if keeping company with his cousin, gazing out over the endless cemetery and the souls of a million fallen heroes.

“I’ve always wanted to visit you all, but I’ve been too busy. I couldn’t even come on your death anniversaries. Today is Clear Brightness, at least I finally have time,” Hoyeh said to the grave. “You always complained to me about being single, and accused me of betraying the organization. Congratulations—I’m single now, too. Though it’s a bit more miserable, since you’re gone.”

Hoyeh confided in his cousin, for it seemed only in the presence of the dead could he truly open his heart. They would sleep forever, and even if they heard his ramblings, surely they would not care, nor worry for him.

“A year ago, there was a battle in District C11. She died. That day, I don’t even know how I did what I did—all I knew was a grief so deep it tore me apart. I went mad, slaughtering every calamity I saw. I can’t recall the details; I only remember I wiped out the entire advance force of the calamities. Later, my father archived the incident in secret. Hardly anyone knows about it.”

“As for you, I told you not to go, but look at you now, lying here.”

Hoyeh paused, then closed his eyes and raised his head, memories of his cousin’s valor playing vividly before him.

Back then—

“A suicide squad is for those who know death awaits yet do not fear it. If someone must die, it should be someone as useless as me. All suicide squad members, follow me—let’s take them down!”

“Idiot!” Hoyeh struck the gravestone, the dull thud echoing in his heart. “You think you’re so great, lying here? You’ve outdone yourself, you know that?”

He moved to two side-by-side graves. “Boss, Old Smoker, I’ve come,” he said.

He sat between the two graves, as before. “Don’t blame me for seeing my cousin first—just let him go ahead this time.”

“One piece of good news, and one bad. The good news: I found out the name of that calamity—it’s Hill.”

“The bad news: he’s now under the protection of the Tenth Calamity. He’s grown to a full Calamity-class. With my current strength, I can’t kill him. Honestly, he’s more likely to kill me. Still, don’t worry: I will avenge you with my own hands. I keep my word.”

Back then, Hoyeh set out to train, expecting only to face minor calamities, nothing dangerous. Only the Boss and Old Smoker accompanied him.

The Boss was a young woman just past twenty, named Nozomi Kazama. She had just graduated from Bancroft, in the prime of her life, and yet ended up here.

Old Smoker was a stubborn veteran in his forties, who couldn’t shake his addiction even in the barracks. As an esper, this was his prime.

No one could have foreseen that an A-level peak calamity had been hiding there, evolving. By the time they discovered it, it had already become an S-level ultimate form. To cover Hoyeh’s escape, the Boss and Old Smoker sacrificed their lives. Hoyeh couldn’t even bring their bodies back—what lay in these graves were nothing but empty urns.

Calamities devour humans. Among the tens of thousands of graves in this cemetery, these two empty urns were far from unique.

“I’m only eighteen—how have I crossed paths with death so much? Other families’ children don’t go through this, do they?” Hoyeh grumbled. “Everyone envies my family, but I wish they could shoulder my burdens for a day. Then they’d stop talking as if it were so easy.”

“But, no matter what, I can’t just throw in the towel. Whatever I must do, I won’t even frown.”

“By the way, Boss, I’ve started university. My father made me enroll in a slum university first, but I’ll transfer to Bancroft next year. Then I’ll be your junior. Didn’t you say you have a younger sister about my age? I checked—she’s at Bancroft now. If she ever needs my help, just send me a dream.”

Hoyeh left the cemetery. At the gate, he turned to the endless forest of tombstones and bowed deeply, not straightening for a long time. Softly, he spoke: “To you, heroes, my respect.”

A general’s glory is built on countless bones. Eddie Halls was strong—everyone knew it.

But who remembers the soldiers who fought alongside him, the many who gave their lives for humanity?

Death is not the end of life, but a kind of transcendence. Some die, yet continue to live on.

Though the body perishes, the spirit endures.

To you, to all martyrs—heroes, I salute you!

(To all readers on the day of this chapter’s update and in the future: This chapter was updated on April 4th, 2020, the Day of Clear Brightness. It is both to enrich the story and, in my own way, to pay tribute to the martyrs who fell in the war against the epidemic. May there be no plague in heaven—farewell, and rest in peace!)