Bao Yi had been walking through the rain.
From a drizzle, to light rain, all the way into a downpour.
So it was in many things: the farther you walked, the less Heaven's will went as your heart desired.
He had grown accustomed to such a damp life.
In his youth, he had once claimed the title of "Piao Yao," standing alongside Chongxuan Mingtu of the Chongxuan Family, that peerless military talent.
Yet unlike Chongxuan Mingtu, whose path had been smooth sailing all the way until the campaign against Xia, Bao Yi's rise had been exceedingly rugged. As a child, he had been deemed talentless. He fought desperately to prove himself, only to be condemned again for his temperament. Along the way, he had lost nearly everything that should have been lost and everything that should not have been lost.
He had not been loved by his father. Indeed, because of his overly fierce temperament in his youth, father and son had come to loathe one another. Only after his eldest brother and second brother both died, after his eldest brother's legitimate son also passed away, and after his father met with misfortune before accomplishing the goal of "having another child," had it become his turn to inherit the title—
He had not killed them.
Of every difficult moment in his life, this was the most tortuous part.
After the death of his eldest son, Bao Bozhao, Bao Yi actually had to stress this one sentence.
He had to insist that the Bao Clan did not carry the bloodline of kin-slayers, had to wash away the filthy name that could never truly be scrubbed clean.
One sentence—"Like father, like son"—could leave him sleepless through the night, hating fiercely enough to draw his blade at the third watch.
He had plainly