The room was quiet. Taiyi stared blankly into the air, his chest tight with frustration. The other guy was showing off, and so was he, but why hadn't things followed the usual script? Damn it, there had been a scheme behind it after all.
Thinking back over the whole exchange, Taiyi realized these damn city folk were far too cunning. The other man had been steering him with his words all along. At first, it had felt great; everything he said struck a chord. Then he had suddenly turned around and hit Taiyi where it hurt, leaving him utterly wrecked. The bastard.
When they talked about Nezha, Taiyi had even thought Qin Fen was a kindred spirit. Like hell he was! He was a complete animal. He had clearly been digging a pit, and Taiyi had stupidly jumped right into it.
If the other man really saw things clearly and cut straight to the heart of the matter, didn't that make Taiyi an idiot who couldn't even teach his disciple? Just look at what he had spent his whole life cultivating-that was all he had to show for it. Then look at the other man: a little casual guidance had produced forty or fifty Heavenly Immortals, and three had even become Buddhas. Two of those had been called Eternal Bodhisattvas; even Tathagata could do nothing for them. They had supposedly had no hope of becoming Buddhas in this lifetime.
But once they met Qin Fen, hey, they could become Buddhas after all. How could anyone argue with that?
Taiyi wanted to argue, but the damn facts were right in front of him. When it came to teaching, that bastard Dongwang Gong really was in a class of his own in the Celestial Realm. Nobody could stand beside him; the guy