In the brief dead silence, everyone fell quiet.
Ji Jue smiled. Old Bao drank water. Yu Shu was dumbfounded.
He had no idea why the two of them were not speaking. Something felt off, yet he could not put his finger on it. For some reason, it felt like a dance for three was terribly hard to dance.
Leaving aside what Bao Dacai was pondering, Ji Jue's feelings were especially complicated at that moment—two people sitting together, yet somehow managing to make three pairs of fellow practitioners... It was bloody absurd.
There was no need to mention the unspoken understanding between Artisans. With the other man's ability, it was impossible that he had never studied or explored Deepdark and Stagnant Rot. After all, among an Artisan's Unique Skills, the ones that could be shown in daylight were the minority.
As for Nirvana...
Damn it, this was the one kind of fellow practitioner he least wanted!
There was no helping it. Everyone said Artisans were evil, that Embers had terribly low moral bottom lines, but there were different kinds of low! No matter what, the Taiyi Ring was still a positive organization acknowledged by all sides. The Artisan Association might defect to Deepdark at the drop of a hat, but men still had their pride.
But those Nirvana brothers were genuinely deranged.
They did anti-social, anti-Present World things. Their targets were indiscriminate slaughter against the Empires and Federations. Every morning, the first thing they did upon opening their eyes was tie their heads to their belts and go commit terrorist attacks.
To say nothing else, in the year or so since Ji Jue became a Chosen One, he had gotten one Red Federation king, one Imperial prince, one Federation minister, and two generals killed, then sent the Empire's emperor into an