Dominating.
It wasn't a particularly large banquet, yet it was a vivid cross-section of high society in Shangjing.
There were even some guests who wielded divinity, so in theory, the distance between them was short enough that they could easily hear what was being discussed over here.
And yet Yuan Shan remained utterly unapologetic, her tone calm but domineering: unless I go looking for someone first, no one will disturb my peace for no reason.
Now that was what it meant to be hidden in plain sight.
It wasn't about staying out of sight. It was about making sure that until I announced I'd seen you, you had to act as if you hadn't seen me.
I had to admit, I could genuinely feel the sincerity behind this invitation to dinner.
To be honest, though, in Fu Qian's eyes, Yuan Shan's attitude was the more reasonable one.
In the end, power was what mattered, and the current order was maintained by force.
I'd commented on this long ago: under such a fundamental rule, the society before me was practically an anomaly. It was a system that had no business existing in a normal world.
Power was one thing. The only thing maintaining this peace, at its core, was the Night Watchers' abnormal motivation: willingly tying their own hands and forcibly suppressing the world for millennia.
That wasn't to say Fu Qian didn't believe that some of them might genuinely wish to protect the common people.
It was simply that, from a sociological perspective, the system before him was clearly not an equilibrium reached through sufficient negotiation.
In other words, if the Night Watchers' motives changed, or they no longer had enough power, the current order would instantly lose its support and rapidly slide into a far more brutal state.
In