"A-Yao, I told you—you underestimated him."
"Shut up!"
"I was once just like you, thinking I had prepared everything perfectly. Yet every time we met again, he always brought all manner of unforeseen transformations."
"Shut your yapping!"
"Ask your heart again, A-Yao. If your opponent were Sheng Xin, would you still be this arrogant? But why does Xu Xiaoshou always seem so harmless? Is it because he was not built as powerfully as Shen Yi, or because the only one who could ever reach the pinnacle of Sword Dao was Ba Zunan?"
"When did it become your turn to point fingers at me?!"
"Using the lesser self to deceive others, A-Yao—isn't that your customary method? Why can't you calm down now, why can't you listen to even half a word of advice?"
"You!"
"It is guidance, A-Yao—the guidance of intent..."
When Bei Huai's voice stopped echoing in his mind, the Medicine Ancestor had finished his heart-rending, frenzied roar. Instead, his mind calmed completely.
Loyal advice grated on the ear.
It was indeed difficult to swallow, but was this not precisely the logic Bei Huai had laid out?
Looking back, from bringing Xu Xiaoshou into Hometown of Flower Fragrance only to be toyed with, to arriving through Zeroing yet simultaneously suffering Sui Yin's possession, the Dao Ancestor's memories crushing down, and Bei Huai's parasitic incarnation; from wanting to devour the Life Medicine Pool's energy only to find it had long been emptied, to the Life-Wheel Fruit now proving utterly ineffective as Xu Xiaoshou pressed him down and beat him head-on.
Which clash had not, in truth, ended in his failure? Yet from the surface, every time, it had seemed as though he had won.
In Hometown of Flower Fragrance, he had held the Name Ancestor in his grasp...
In the great