Great details to pull the reader into the story. Enjoy the redemption message. The circle is completed.

Loved this beautiful tale of Ren turning over a new leaf!  Your clever inclusion of Liu's 'power' tattoo worked perfectly on two levels.  To the deceased street fighter, it likely symbolized his strength and superiority against his opponents.   But through your story, the tattoo could also be taken as a sign to Ren that he had the power to change his life, to redeem his soul despite past transgressions. 

The respect that you had Ren show his former enemy, to struggle through carrying Yuan's corpse back after vowing to care for his family, was a perfect way to show his resolve in keeping to his resolutions.

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Loved the way he came to realise he was more like his enemy than he thought and that he would need to change unless he was to end up like him. The carrying of the corpse home is very symbolic

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To continue this name trend with @amirani being an existential spirituality, @felt.buzz an existential nightmare, @wakeupkitty on perverted faith, then yers is on reconciliation. But this isn’t the contemporary notion of such, indeed yer showing very much the heroic/classical age of Japanese cultures and how they shared with the rest of the World the tribes and gens lifestyle. Consider nowadays how Mr Renshi Ren would probably reimburse and gift his rival’s family instead of acquisitionong his rival’s gen into his gen. Meanwhile respecting the gen his rival’s wife came and not subordinating her to abandon the gen despite being housed outside her gen. (Suggesting a still pro-Matriachal culture despite a Partriach on top and eventually replacing the Matriachal culture.) But these are all cultural expectations he has to live out despite being honorable in doing so in his culture’s expectation. In the end, he does more than the expectations to live out the reconciliation that shamed him of his pride and anger. A truly kindred spirit... like to see yer comments under my ending~<br>
<center>Upvot’d-n-resteem’d!~
![77351798-7CC3-4DCF-AA5F-DCAA9C7D4FF6.gif](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmVWQB8GDfF2tynvLj5fT9b66n3TJAkAJ8FJutNLHemKxP/77351798-7CC3-4DCF-AA5F-DCAA9C7D4FF6.gif)</center>

You make this exercise look easy. Good through the very end. :-)

Life- hind  sight always brings our flaws to the fore. No man is perfect, he can only aim to be. There are always people and relationships which we tend to over- simplify, to not think about them or box them up. This does not change reality, it only skews our image of the world. And some lessons in life may be more costly than others. In Mr. Renhe's case irreversible.

You perfectly capture that feeling of a story, told by village elders. The ending, carrying the body of the man who was once his enemy home is just so perfect, and carries such a wealth of metaphor, it caps the tone so very well. You weave in more than one moral here, which really adds to that.

The realism of street crime brings a far more relatable touch to this, and dropping in that Mr Renhe Ren, a man who strives for the noble sentiments of a superior man, and in a way, as the aspiring crime boss, was just a beautiful touch in how people see themselves. Then the tattoo, in a way representative of what his enemy had that he strives to gain ties into that, being the first thing he notices about the corpse adds to the feeling he had been blinkered by his desire for power.

Then seeing his enemy dead, with the hate in his eyes, the snarl upon his lips, and the impact that has. The life he chases has the same fate, and the hate has already claimed his heart. There is so much in just that about the decimation hate carried and nurtured has. The realisation of the bond between them, and the similarities, creates a perfect hitting point, and musing of ways to try and gain forgiveness build this burden of responsibility, he doesn't know if he can, or how he can, but he is determined to try. And then the ending, just wonderful! Like a true fable, this has a message to be taken on a surface read, or half hearted listen to elders, but equally had a lot that can be gained on reflection <3

This is an edifying story of an apparent victory, which precedes a substantial victory, ie that which leads to an improvement of oneself. I also read the ending of @stever82 with the same dynamic, that is Mr. Renhe Ren that takes the place of his deceased enemy to "repay the debt" (I did not check which of the two posted first and I'm not here to allude anything I like them both). This trope somehow brings to mind some customs of the Native American tribes, in which the killer had to take the place left vacant by his victim in society. it is a very interesting theme, a "penalty" that can also be seen as a reward.

You got straight into the story, which I think has a very interesting start. 

I had wondered curiously whether you would distract me from the river to another area, but you stayed there and told the story straight out. I really liked that, especially because it didn't serve my expectation, which was already trying to anticipate all sorts of scenarios in my mind. 

As you know me, I'm raptured about the finale of your story. In fact, the universe reliably delivers the dead mortal enemy. The law of attraction works here in a very immediate way. Here, too, the inclined reader might have assumed that the long time of meditation and waiting would of course be interrupted by everyday things and that an action could now be derived from it. But again No. 

Once the enemy lies dead and eaten away in front of you, the purpose of this connection is solved, as once lovers who liked to argue from the heart and whose end of relationship makes the mourning for the eternal quarrel also a loss of a habit. It is a lesson to Renhe that enlightenment comes and he imagines that it could have been different. 

I had to smile about the duck and the flower in the two pictures and the glow in the lower one. Little cheeky things.

This is the first story I read where Mr Ren gets exactly what he was waiting for, what he went to the river for, and I love it! I think it is also great how this slowly transforms into what he actually needs, how by tasting the fruits of his desires accomplished he learns of the true meaning (and toll) of being victorius against one's "enemies". 

Thanks for a great tale of atonement!

Seems to me that the new ruler of the crime syndicate is a nice guy! Where do I sign up?

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I loved the wish for redemption and the final contrast between material heaviness and spiritual lightness. It was a pleasurable and meaningful tale. Congrats!