Dan Chixia looked as though his spine had been pulled out. His entire body lay limp on the ground, all the spirit drained from the Imperial Academy student. His face was as pale as a corpse freshly dug out of a grave.
Le Yu promptly helped him up and said, "Although saying this makes me sound insincere—I wasn't targeting you, Mr. Dan Chixia."
"You have no need to blame yourself, because you weren't the only victim. In Dongyang, the Silver Blood Society used methods like mine to exploit the Means of Production to threaten, entice, test, seduce, praise, and brainwash millions of people into becoming slaves who schemed against one another, hated one another, fought for power and profit, and rotted in indulgence."
"Their methods were just like mine: testing your limits step by step, pretending to support and praise your abilities, until you were willing to do anything for points—in Dongyang, for money."
"For many things, once you took the first step, it became difficult to turn back. Not only because people found it hard to admit their mistakes, but also because it was difficult to abandon sunk costs—sunk costs were the price you had already paid. Once people had done so many things that compromised their dignity, if the other party made an even more humiliating demand, they would often break through their own limits yet again."
"They weren't stupid, and neither were you, Dan Chixia. Precisely because you weren't stupid, you had no choice but to cloak your actions in a grand and respectable justification—the cadres of the Silver Blood Society said that without the Silver Blood Society, there would be no people of Dongyang, while you said that you were only doing it to save face for me."
"I'll reiterate this one more time, Mr. Dan