Le Luoluo froze for a moment, seemingly unable to digest the outcome-or perhaps still harboring some other hope. He asked uncertainly, "Ku ji da-"
Old Chief interrupted his son. "Speak Han."
This was a habit Le Luoluo had developed in his youth. To improve his Han speech, his father had always conversed with him in that language whenever they were alone. But now Le Luoluo's emotions churned, bewilderment and anxiety consuming him, and the Barbarian Language had slipped out. At his father's correction, he immediately switched back to Han:
"You couldn't bluff the truth out of him? So... so what you mean is..."
Old Chief's eyelids twitched. He seemed to want to roll his eyes, but could barely lift one lid halfway. His cloudy eye slid upward briefly, then dropped back into place. He said with some irritation:
"I mean I can't tell whether it's true or false either. Before, I thought the Han Court's military action was seventy percent false and thirty percent true. But after speaking with him, I'm even less certain. Perhaps sixty percent false and forty percent true-or forty percent false and sixty percent true? Thirty percent false and seventy percent true? Who knows? That lad has a few tricks up his sleeve..."
Old Chief closed his eyes, recalling the scene again. Earlier, without any warning, he had suddenly seized Wang Yang's wrist and driven straight to the heart of the matter, throwing out the crucial question to catch Wang Yang off guard and expose a flaw. Someone with a guilty conscience would often rush to explain himself, while someone confident in his rightness might immediately refute the accusation-but neither reaction applied to Wang Yang.
Wang Yang was calculating and kept his cards close to his chest. As an envoy, if he truly had solid backing,