The Master (before battle)
…….
It was you? You're big sister Yuanchun's final exam?
If you were going to kill me anyway, why didn't you just... take me out from the get-go instead of wasting all that time teaching me, pretending to be my master?
I would hardly deem the hours spent in joy as wastes. Would you?
Well, I'm not even surprised. Daguanyuan's full of backstabbers anyway.
"Do not ever trust anyone who approaches you first". It is a saying that has saved a lot of lives in Hongyuan - and the City.
Normally, those type of people wait until my guard is down to strike.
You had plenty of opportunities to kill me during those classes. I gotta say, I forgot a bit of my edge when I was swinging those sticks.
Heh heh, the one who hired me handed me, along with my payment, a silken bag of dried wolfsbane powder.
... So you were hired to poison me. Why didn't you?
Hah! Why would I use that to claim my pupil's life, when I could use it to pay off my tab and buy me a few bottles of quality wine at a local kezhan, which I did? They're precious enough to sustain three generations of family, eh?
What...?
My life... has thus far been one of rivers and footpaths, drifting hither and thither as the currents took me. A meaningless life of having gained nor left behind nothing.
And wouldn't you know it, this kid who'd just become the next Hierarch...
... for the first time in the history of Family Hierarchs I'd seen... refused the true master of Hongyuan.
…….
Those with vision for the future of Hongyuan would grip the land as though it belonged to them...
... and Hongyuan, trapped in the grasp of a series of intrepid individuals... grew dark and suffocating.
The other pupil, who initially seemed to have been included in the lessons as nothing more than an extra, may as well have forced the lessons out of me.
And after a while of frolicking with the bumbling Hierarch and a particularly nasty pupil...
... it seems that I shared all that I know with the both of you.
… Hey…
Despite the present circumstance...
... my lessons have all been without a speck of falsehood.
Come, then. Never once have I taught a pupil who would fall at such a place.
And if you do... I don't suppose you were a pupil of mine anyway.