Remembering that the winner had also worn a bamboo hat, everyone understood. So this girl was that person's companion. No wonder she would say such things.
"Please enlighten me," Xiang Wanshu said. "What was hypocritical about what I said?"
His expression was calm, without anger, yet it carried a pressure of its own.
He was mild-tempered and unwilling to stir up trouble, but when someone insulted his sect, how could he remain silent?
The gathering immediately fell quiet, the atmosphere growing somewhat tense.
The girl standing by the cliff was, of course, Zhao Layue.
She looked at Xiang Wanshu and said indifferently, "You said that if you played like that, your senior brother would beat you. Doesn't that mean he deserves a beating for playing like that?"
This argument seemed somewhat strained, but if one thought more deeply about Xiang Wanshu's earlier remark, that was indeed what it meant.
Xiang Wanshu raised his eyebrows slightly. "What exactly do you mean by hypocritical?"
"You think he played badly, but you won't say it outright," Zhao Layue said. "You even want to beat him, but you don't dare. That's hypocrisy."
Xiang Wanshu shook his head. "That's not hypocrisy. I wanted to leave your companion some dignity."
"You think you're qualified to judge him?" Zhao Layue said.
A slight stir ran through the crowd. How absurd. Someone who received only a three-stone handicap against Tong Yan was naturally qualified to judge her companion.
Xiang Wanshu raised his eyebrows slightly. "Yes. I wanted to tell him that playing Go isn't so simple."
"Believe me," Zhao Layue said, "to him, playing Go is the simplest thing in the world."
As she said this, she thought that if he had seen the porcelain plate beside that bamboo reclining chair, and the grains of sand in it,