Patience and the Art of Elimination
There might not be an absolute solution, but having a solution was no guarantee either.
Fu Qian had never been naive enough to think reality was like playing house, where every predicament had a loophole that could be easily exploited once found.
Even before setting out, he had remarked that this would be a clash where both sides would hold back.
Both sides had their own designs and were probing each other, hoping to reveal as little as possible while learning as much as they could about their opponent.
His assessment hadn't changed. It was just that, given the stakes, "holding back" could mean something rather extreme.
For example, the other side had played a trump card without a word.
With a Second Order charging at the front and another Second Order watching from the sidelines, the situation was theoretically all but hopeless.
Killing them would be simple, of course. He could even kill them both.
But he shouldn't forget that this sudden appearance of a Second Order almost proved that everything might be the worst-case scenario he'd mentioned to Chief Yuan: there was more than one conservative faction member behind the incident.
If he dealt with them brutally, he might not care, but Chief Yuan, who had just taken on the heavy responsibility of rooting out the traitors, would most likely never get the chance to place Kelin's head before the council.
Given the current situation, if he wanted to follow the original plan—that is, conceal as much as possible that he was Gorimshaw—then taking a risky gamble was almost unavoidable.
And the defining feature of a risky gamble was that it couldn't guarantee success, no matter how high the odds.
He'd already had some suspicions about how the Time Cage worked.