"I suppose that would have been too easy," Shen Yuan says wryly. "Very well, then. Please understand that Luo Binghe is the strongest and most talented dreamwalker his world -- I daresay any world -- has ever seen. And he was my student, though not in dream magic. That particular skill he learned from someone else."
Ugh, there was only so much on the fly editing he could do without undercutting his own sincerity. Ditto for trying to cover his face; the whole fan thing just didn't work outside of a xianxia setting, and he really hated that right now. Hopefully his discomfort would be taken at face value -- he really did hate making himself vulnerable, much less talking about himself -- and not an attempt at deceit.
"I should probably mention," he said, still struggling to make eye contact as he went, "that the world where I knew Luo Binghe -- the one where I was an educator, as I mentioned before -- wasn't my native universe. I lived a thoroughly unremarkable life in the world where I was born, and died at a young age of a sudden illness --" He is not going to mention the food poisoning, this is already humiliating enough. "-- but my... my consciousness, my soul if you will, was seized by...A god, I suppose. Or a being with god-like powers, at any rate, which called itself the System. And this entity was obsessed with Luo Binghe."
He folded his hands in his lap, fingertips tapping against each other in a meditative pose. "I don't mention this in order to absolve myself of all responsibility for what happened, but to provide context for it. Perhaps if I'd been a more clever or persuasive man, I could have made the System change its mind about what it believed had to happen -- it believed Luo Binghe had a destiny you see, that he was fated to conquer the world in its entirety and rule it as emperor. And who better to shape an emperor-to-be than his boyhood mentor? But of course Binghe himself has no idea that I was acting under duress, because one of the very first orders the System gave me was to carefully conceal every sign of its existence. I couldn't even hint at the power it exerted over my actions. And so from Binghe's perspective, one day when he was on the cusp of manhood his beloved mentor betrayed him, wounded him, and banished him to a part of the world so dangerous that it would have certainly killed anyone less than skilled than him. From his perspective, I personally gave him a death sentence."
Shen Yuan laughed bitterly, rubbing his face. "So you see, if he is here, somewhere in this world, and has likewise learned of my arrival, then it's only natural he'd want to avenge himself on me, and as painfully as possible. It's only what I'd deserve -- if I had hurt him of my own free will. Do you agree?"
no subject
Ugh, there was only so much on the fly editing he could do without undercutting his own sincerity. Ditto for trying to cover his face; the whole fan thing just didn't work outside of a xianxia setting, and he really hated that right now. Hopefully his discomfort would be taken at face value -- he really did hate making himself vulnerable, much less talking about himself -- and not an attempt at deceit.
"I should probably mention," he said, still struggling to make eye contact as he went, "that the world where I knew Luo Binghe -- the one where I was an educator, as I mentioned before -- wasn't my native universe. I lived a thoroughly unremarkable life in the world where I was born, and died at a young age of a sudden illness --" He is not going to mention the food poisoning, this is already humiliating enough. "-- but my... my consciousness, my soul if you will, was seized by...A god, I suppose. Or a being with god-like powers, at any rate, which called itself the System. And this entity was obsessed with Luo Binghe."
He folded his hands in his lap, fingertips tapping against each other in a meditative pose. "I don't mention this in order to absolve myself of all responsibility for what happened, but to provide context for it. Perhaps if I'd been a more clever or persuasive man, I could have made the System change its mind about what it believed had to happen -- it believed Luo Binghe had a destiny you see, that he was fated to conquer the world in its entirety and rule it as emperor. And who better to shape an emperor-to-be than his boyhood mentor? But of course Binghe himself has no idea that I was acting under duress, because one of the very first orders the System gave me was to carefully conceal every sign of its existence. I couldn't even hint at the power it exerted over my actions. And so from Binghe's perspective, one day when he was on the cusp of manhood his beloved mentor betrayed him, wounded him, and banished him to a part of the world so dangerous that it would have certainly killed anyone less than skilled than him. From his perspective, I personally gave him a death sentence."
Shen Yuan laughed bitterly, rubbing his face. "So you see, if he is here, somewhere in this world, and has likewise learned of my arrival, then it's only natural he'd want to avenge himself on me, and as painfully as possible. It's only what I'd deserve -- if I had hurt him of my own free will. Do you agree?"