musicians of old

Chapter 954 Suggestions on "Loosening the Restriction"
As Fan Ning took a step, his figure continued to flicker, moving from one hillside to another.

He indeed saw the ubiquitous "gears and rails" signs and flags, or the company names in capital letters hanging directly in front of each construction site.

Moreover, I saw Lou Adair, the deputy director in charge of "channel network construction, standardization assessment and government relations", the son of the Teolain Railway Company, and the former timpani player of the old symphony orchestra.

At this moment, Lu's expensive suit was badly ruined, and he looked somewhat "dusty," but his spirited demeanor was even more impressive than before. He pointed to the construction site in front of him, including the high slope where Fanning and Mr. F were standing, emphasizing something. Two impeccably beautiful female secretaries squatted in front of him, displaying blueprints, while more than ten gentlemen in suits were rapidly taking notes on his criticisms behind him.

"It doesn't seem very original," Mr. F commented with a smile. "Look at the grid-like road layout, the standard city hall and train station design, and even the opera house framework that has already started construction... It seems they intend to roughly replicate the neighborhoods of Santa Rambla or Uvrancel and move them here, maybe that will be faster."

Fanning walked slowly down the slope.

He arrived at an area that should have been designated as an "urban green space" or "scenic belt".

The surrounding area features flowerbeds, walkways, and pre-reserved pools with a sense of spatial variation. Some of the tropical plants and flowers that are vying for attention have already been transplanted, and a layer of water droplets is glistening on the cloth coverings around their roots.

Fanning paced back and forth for a while until he found a place to stop.

Countless tropical snails from the south lingered on the plant stems, leaving behind streaks of grayish-white secretions. A few snails, however, exhibited a more energetic speed and a more defined crawling direction, with their eyestalks protruding and swollen, their colorful contents wriggling within.

Fan Ning stared at him for a long time.

“The meaning of something conventional is also conventional. If you want to pursue a ‘transcendent’ meaning, you may have to go to a ‘transcendent’ realm to understand it. But that’s just a possibility,” Mr. F said during this time.

Fanning remained standing there in silence.

As the sun set and the temperature plummeted, the vast starry sky cast a chilling light, and the twinkling stars shifted their positions several times as the clouds moved.

The mechanical roar around me never stopped throughout the process.

He stood like that for a whole day and night.

Mr. F also stood by like a ghost.

Until dawn, the snails were still active in the vegetation of this tourist area. The normal snails remained normal snails, and a few infected snails were pecked and eaten by birds that were foraging for food. The birds left droppings, and a few new snails came into contact with the droppings. However, no symptoms appeared, and nothing changed much because of the approach of dangerous elements.

“The resource crisis seems to have eased,” Fan Ning said, his gaze returning to the open-pit mine being mined to his side and the vast plains in the distance that had been designated as plantations.

“For now.” Mr. F said calmly. The long day of standing and the repetitive nature of the conversation did not seem strange to him. “The new land has provided new minerals, arable land and space, and has diluted the conflicts between several continents, but the conflicts have not disappeared. The salt that flows from the rivers into the sea is still salt.”

“The undercurrents of vying for dominance in new territories, the redistribution of benefits brought about by new trade routes. More importantly—” He pointed with his cane to the busy, insect-like steam-powered machines at the edge of the tent, “all of this, while frantically consuming the Old World’s production capacity and capital, is also imprinting the Old World’s rules, order, social structures, and even aesthetic tastes onto these new lands at an astonishing speed.”

“You could call it the ‘spores of civilization,’ or you could say it’s ‘order,’ the will of order.” “The order of the earth?” Fanning said.

“The order of the land.” Mr. F nodded. “The new land is a magnifying glass and testing ground for the old land. All the trends of the past continents will be presented here in a faster, purer, and less burdened by history.”

The man slowly lit a thin cigarette.

“If you don’t intervene further.” He concluded with this last sentence, a conditional clause, which he uttered only after finishing his cigarette.

Fanning's chilling gaze immediately met his.

“Let’s loosen the reins on the legacy of order left by dictators, Master Fanning.” Mr. F exhaled a puff of smoke, his voice low, almost a whisper, yet it drowned out the noise of the construction site. “It’s just ‘mediation and loosening,’ not abandonment or subversion. It’s for my comfort and for your own peace of mind.”

“Your plan is very clever,” Fanning laughed, “but there’s nothing I can’t let go of.”

“If a dictator lifts up the ‘path’ before he dies, then as a partner, I will also lift up the legacy he left behind. So the order must be—you die first under this ‘legacy of order’ that you control, and then I will sweep this ‘legacy of order’ into the trash heap.”

"Oh, you can interpret it as 'the rabbit is killed and the dog is cooked, the bird is gone and the bow is put away,' however you want. As long as you always remember that knife before that, dangerous elements should remember the knife. If you forget anything, I will remind you immediately."

“You mentioned ‘the Way,’ which is good. Finally, you’re talking about the most important things.” Mr. F nodded in deep agreement after Fan Ning finished speaking. “Actually, talking about ‘untying’ for you or me is just empty talk. In the end, it’s all for the sake of ‘the Way’ being able to continue.”

“Dictators, the legacy of order you leave behind is like steel plates inserted during major surgery. They are significant and irreplaceable, but if you don’t consider removing them one day, the patient will never leave the ward.”

“There’s no conflict,” Fan Ning finally said.

His gaze shifted from the bustling construction zone to the distant, undeveloped, and tranquil pristine coastline.

“You are certainly wise,” Mr. F nodded. “I look forward to hearing some ‘news’ from you in San Porto, something that might lead to some ‘final decision’ or something like that.”

Fan Ning's figure had already vanished like morning mist into the dust rising from the construction site.

Mr. F remained standing in the same spot, smoking slowly and deliberately, inhaling each puff until it turned to dust, as if he were carefully feeling the vibrations of the mechanically compacted earth beneath his feet.

The new world is growing greedily, carrying with it all its hopes and its deep-seated problems.

With a loud bang, steel nails were driven into the soil one by one.

Only when the cane finally tapped the ground with a crisp sound did the figure of the nostalgic gentleman fade away from the bustling coast of the southern continent.