"I choose the fourth!"
Before Yan Moyou could finish stating the last option, Qing Chen's voice rang out.
The smoothness on his face and his attempts to cultivate a connection vanished without a trace at that moment.
His gaze was like a blade, meeting Yan Moyou's directly, neither wavering nor retreating, with a cold, unyielding edge.
He had taken this man's measure and deliberately adopted a harder attitude.
So swift was his change of expression, so decisive his shift in demeanor, that even Yan Moyou paused.
He carefully studied the Qiongzhou Governor before him, who suddenly seemed like a different person, nodded once, and uttered a few words:
"Now that's more like it."
The strong ought to carry themselves like the strong.
"Fourth," Yan Moyou resumed where he had been interrupted, "join the Primordial Magnetism Branch of my Origin-Initial Devil Sect as a named disciple."
He sounded as though he were stating an established fact. "Since you have already chosen, from this moment onward, you belong to our Primordial Magnetism Branch."
Qing Chen was somewhat bewildered. A named disciple?
"The Origin-Initial Devil Sect has a simple hierarchy."
Yan Moyou seemed to find Qing Chen's present attitude reasonably agreeable, and his talent acceptable as well, so he was willing, for once, to say a little more. "Aside from the sect master and deputy sect masters, there are the Demonic Sect elders and the branch masters and their deputies. Below them are the Core Disciples and named disciples of the various branches."
"The foundational inheritance of our Primordial Magnetism Branch has deep ties to the [Yuanji Daoist Grounds], to which Venerable Xuan of Dust Departure belongs. That is also why the branch master specifically ordered me to come."
"The Origin-Initial Devil Sect has very few members," Yan Moyou continued, "but everyone admitted