Yun Da had to admit one thing.
When Shen Tang said those words with Jimò Qiu's face, he wavered for a moment—but only for a moment. To admit that Shen Tang was right would be tantamount to admitting that his two hundred years of life had been meaningless, and that everything he had clung to was meaningless too.
Meaninglessness was harder for him to accept than being wrong.
Yun Da murmured, "Willing to be a guide... willing to be a guide..."
The eyes that had held so little emotion came alive.
He burst into laughter. "What a fine guide!"
Seeing Yun Da act so out of character, the three of them took up battle stances, wary that he might suddenly attack without warning.
But Yun Da made no move to strike, nor did he pay any mind to their posture. Instead, he said regretfully, "If only Sovereign Shen had appeared earlier—just a hundred years earlier, to live in the same era as the late Lord. I can't imagine how wonderful that would have been."
Back then, the Wu State swept across more than half the continent with the force of a landslide, its iron hooves crushing all who refused to submit. No ruler of that age could compare to the late Lord. Everything had gone too smoothly—so smoothly that the young country had lost its steadiness and forgotten that besides the wars raging in plain sight, there were schemes and plots lurking in the shadows. That, in turn, had given petty men room to exploit the situation.
A thousand-mile dike could collapse because of an ant hole.
The fall of the Wu State, too, had been inseparable from the actions of tiny ants.
If there had been a formidable rival like Shen Tang back then, perhaps the Wu State's ruler