Lin Su said calmly, "Do you find that question very hard to answer? You want to say that you are a good man, but unfortunately, you cannot cross that hurdle in your heart. You watched with your own eyes as the people under your rule groaned beneath the alien races' crotches, yet you did nothing. Your conscience cannot uphold your title of a good man!"
He Paiyun cast his gaze beyond the heavens. Sunlight streamed in, revealing that his hair had already turned wholly gray.
Lin Su said, "You probably want to say that you are a good official! Because you believe you have been swallowing humiliation and bearing heavy burdens, doing your utmost to preserve peace in one region, maintaining a fragile balance, and denying the alien races any excuse to wipe out counties, prefectures, or states. Is that it?"
He Paiyun drew back his gaze and fixed it on Lin Su's face. "Is that not so?"
Lin Su smiled faintly. "Swallowing humiliation and bearing heavy burdens—how many people use those words to comfort themselves? Yet, Lord He, do you know that those words themselves are a joke?!"
"A joke?"
"Yes. Xihe Prefecture is human territory, under the Eastern Domain Immortal Dynasty. Why must proper humans, sheltered by the Immortal Dynasty and standing upon human soil, still swallow humiliation? Why should it not be the alien races who swallow humiliation?"
He Paiyun said, "This concerns the Immortal Dynasty's greater picture. Lord Lin is a Third-Rank Official; you should understand what it means to take the greater picture into account."
Lin Su said, "The greater picture? What is great?"
He Paiyun fell silent once more. Every question Lin Su asked seemed to open a different path, striking where he least expected.
The greater picture? What was great?
Naturally, it was