After Shen Tang finished speaking, the room fell silent once more.
For the first time, the usually confident and candid Shen Tang felt inexplicably uneasy.
Reason told her that she and Qi Shan had known and understood each other for more than ten years; there was no way they lacked even this little trust in each other. But at the same time, she knew all too well how unusual Qi Shan's Way of the Scholar was. Anyone who awakened such a Way of the Scholar was bound to be profoundly lacking in trust.
Trust was like a mirror.
Once broken, it was hard to put back together.
Once trust developed a crack, endless suspicion and worry would follow. In the more than five years since the great battle at Chaoli Pass ended, Qi Shan had never doubted her—not even a thought along those lines had crossed his mind. This unexpected incident had undoubtedly smashed their seemingly unbreakable trust to pieces. Even if she explained afterward that it had all been a misunderstanding, it had still revealed that Shen Tang had a way to escape the shackles of the [Master-Slaying] Way of the Scholar. If the restraint could be severed unilaterally at any moment, what kind of foundation for trust could it provide?
The longer Shen Tang waited, the more stifling the air felt.
She was vaguely afraid of Qi Shan's answer.
As clever as Qi Shan was, and as deftly as he had navigated the Assembly of Gods for years, he naturally knew how to answer without leaving a single opening. But that was precisely the kind of answer Shen Tang didn't want to hear. As the former leader of a ragtag group, and now the Sovereign of Kang Country, she had heard far too much flattery over the years