To be honest, Ariel was quite skilled at testing the waters, and his acting was pretty good, too.
Sure enough, the best actors were the ones who could control their emotions!
Too bad I'd read The Actor's Self-Cultivation cover to cover.
Fu Qian put away his "compassion" and snorted.
Language was inherently inefficient at conveying information. Even without deliberate deception, all kinds of interference could creep in: emotions, limitations in understanding, misleading information from others, and so on.
In Fu Qian's view, automatically analyzing and dissecting every sentence one heard, filtering out valuable information and judging its credibility, was a basic skill for anyone on a mission.
So even without knowing Ariel's background, he would never have believed that whole performance just now.
There was more than one possible reason this man might act that way.
And Fu Qian knew quite a bit about Ariel's background. He understood that everything Ariel did served a "purpose."
For someone like him, Fu Qian simply couldn't imagine a reason to work undercover.
Even if, against all odds, Ariel really was on the Night Watchers' side and intended to deal with him, he would certainly attack outright rather than waste time talking.
Ariel had no psychological needs to satisfy. It was safe to assume that anything he said was meant to be heard.
He wanted Fu Qian to believe he was facing certain death, so he could draw out Fu Qian's true attitude toward the plan and gauge how much of a threat he posed.
Unfortunately, the idea of feeling guilty because he had something to hide had never made it into Fu Qian's dictionary.
So Fu Qian had decided to play along.
And as it turned out, no matter what Ariel said, he clearly didn't want to cause too much of a