"Me, persuade them?" In the camp beneath the autumn sun, Lu Song, who had arrived ahead of the others as requested, could not help pointing at himself as he faced Liu Cheng, guarded by only a few armored guards.
"I'm not asking you to persuade them. I'm asking you to contact them and tell them you can persuade me," Liu Cheng said with a smile. "My standing is far above theirs now. I should only make decisions and demand results. If I take the initiative to reason with them, they'll look down on me instead, and the outcome might not be good anyway... You contact them and reason with them. First, you can build your own authority through it; second, it will look as though they're the ones begging me, with you acting on their behalf. That will actually make it easier to get things done."
"True, your standing is different now. It wouldn't be appropriate for you to speak to them." Lu Song nodded, but for some reason, his words seemed to carry none of the sourness one might have expected from his old temperament. He seemed merely to be stating a fact. "The stakes here are perfectly clear, too. Anyone could explain them properly. I think there's only one crucial point: once things really get underway, you need to be confident enough that you can keep Master Du Ming's connections in check..."
"Whether I can keep Master Du Ming's connections in check actually depends entirely on whether these Northern Migrants Daoists directly responsible for the manors and the Daoist Congregation cooperate. So long as they move quickly and can ensure the congregation beneath them causes no trouble, I can keep Master Du Ming in check," Liu Cheng briefly explained. "Conversely, if they can't control the congregation beneath them,