Chapter 157: Black Tide! My Discussion on Black Tide

First, let me say that after reading this chapter—"The Black Tide Revealed"—I felt very dissatisfied and confused. As I watched Banana's consistently subtle words slowly form images in my mind, while enjoying the experience, a single, agitated voice echoed frantically in my mind, heart, and veins, shouting at me: "Fake! Your eyes have deceived you! Everything you see is fake! None of this is real!" My intuition, pitted against what my eyes saw, left me increasingly bewildered.

I couldn't understand why, so I went back, not just one or two chapters, but started reading from the very beginning again. After one read-through, I gained nothing. Halfway through my second read, as I reached the end of the chapter "The Beginning," I saw a line from Ning Yi: "You people, you've gone too far... you won't even let a live-in son-in-law live in peace..." Reading that line, a chill suddenly ran down my spine, my scalp tingled, as if I had glimpsed something profound. With that thought in mind, I slowly finished the last few chapters. I wanted to write something, but in the end, all I could do was let out a long sigh. I had nothing to say; I could only admit that I had been deceived, tricked by the outward appearance of the characters Banana had created. Yes, my eyes had misled me.

I was deceived. What about you? Were you deceived too? If we were all deceived, why don't we recall together how exactly we were deceived? Let's reflect slowly, from the beginning.

First, who is Ning Yi? Ning Yi is a transmigrator from modern times, specifically from a poor, backward rural town. He harbored dreams and started from scratch, struggling in the city's business world. Step by step, he went from destitution to glory, from the bottom to the top. To swiftly reach the apex, what propped him up, layer by layer, were not steps, but corpses—corpses he personally created: corpses of companies, individuals, enemies, and more. Each corpse was like a step, supporting him as he ascended, step by step, towards the throne at the peak of a mountain of bodies. Looking down, one could see the expressions on the corpses' faces: resentment, ferocity, hatred, despair, remorse, or sorrow. Yet, in his previous life, Ning Yi merely trod upon these bodies, stepping on their faces and bodies with an appalling composure, without a single pause, relentlessly ascending and calmly creating more and more corpses, until he reached the clouds, until he stood at the very pinnacle.

This is Ning Yi, a self-made man, a success who, within a decade or so, rose from obscurity to become someone capable of great manipulation. What kind of person would such a man be? Everyone might have a different answer to this question, impossible to unify, but I'll share my own. In my imagination, such a person would appear elegant, composed, calm, steady, kind to others, and well-behaved. But these are mere facades. Hidden beneath them would be pride, coldness, deviousness, ruthlessness, bloodthirstiness, cruelty, cunning, greed, strategic planning, insatiable ambition, a drive to eliminate all threats, and a refusal to leave future troubles. Only such a person could navigate the business world, as dark as a dye vat, trampling through a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, to rise from the bottom to the top in a short period. Such a person must possess the cunning and forbearance of a viper, the cruelty and viciousness of a leopard, and the bloodlust and greed of a shark. They must have astonishing judgment and responsiveness, terrifying self-control and planning ability, unbelievably vast appetites and goals, and simultaneously, the capacity to achieve these goals. However, Ning Yi was still a little short of being a true "success." He was nostalgic and valued relationships (family, friendship, love), which is why he ultimately fell, collapsing on the final step.

This is the Ning Yi I imagine, the Ning Yi of his previous life. What about you? Do you think so too?

His previous life was like a fleeting cloud, and Ning Yi transmigrated to this current life. Though he transmigrated, Ning Yi did not change; he remained himself—a composite of a viper, a leopard, a shark, a lion, a hyena, a wolf pack, and a whale. He was merely tired; he was simply indulging, immersed in the warmth and tenderness he had never experienced in his previous life. Because he lacked it before, he treasured and protected it exceptionally. Those chapters describing his "heart like a fierce tiger" were likely just a glimpse of his true nature.

But now, someone wants to take away the warmth and tenderness he cherishes and protects. They aim to utterly demolish the cherished environment he guards (an 'atmosphere' rather than specific 'people,' as I feel his attachment hasn't quite extended to individuals in that way yet). Thus, he softly sighed, saying, "You people, you've gone too far... you won't even let a live-in son-in-law live in peace..."

We were deceived, my friends, it started right here. We were deceived. This was by no means a negligible or dismissible sigh, nor was it mere grumbling or complaint. It was a roar, a shout, a furious declaration of war! Through empathy, I could even feel the anger in Ning Yi's heart—an explosive rage, a fire capable of burning everything down, the savagery of his desecrated pride. Oh, hateful Banana, hiding and concealing things like this, you've gone too far!

What was Ning Yi thinking, holding that faded yellow cloth in his hand? No one knows except the author, but I can offer my personal analysis: After that declaration of war, and before Xiao Chan and the others entered, in those brief few minutes, perhaps ten at most, Ning Yi had already meticulously laid out a plan in his mind. Leveraging his traits of "coldness, deviousness, ruthlessness, bloodthirstiness, cruelty, cunning, greed, strategic planning, insatiable ambition, eliminating all threats, and leaving no future troubles," he orchestrated a grand scheme. Everything that followed was merely a part of this scheme.

Under such fury, with such a character, and in a situation where someone dared to snatch away what he cherished, the scheme Ning Yi devised in his extreme anger would surely have an immense scope. I absolutely refuse to believe it would be satisfied merely by "feeding pigs to a few tigers," rooting out a few internal and external spies, seizing imperial merchant status, or suppressing the Wu and Xue families. I won't be fooled again. Absolutely not!

When this will all be revealed, I cannot guess, nor do I know how Ning Yi's rage will manifest. But I will wait, I will wait for Banana, with an evil grin, to light the last beacon and unveil the most magnificent scene before me.

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