Zixuan's accusation of cowardice may have no effect on his pursuer, but the mysterious man's comment about harpies does earn a swelling of smugness from Zixuan. Seems like one of them is more easily swayed than the other, as stoic as he likes to pretend he is.
The tone shift into something masquerading as casual conversation would shake any lesser man, but Jin Zixuan was raised in the high society of Lanling, embedded in political intricacies from a young age, playing mediator between his warring parents to prevent scandal from erupting in Carp Tower even more than it already was wont to do. Between his philandering father and his controlling mother, and the all too nosey busybodies that fawned over the wealthy and prominent Jin Sect, Zixuan learned from an early age how to navigate the choppy waters of polite social interaction used to cover up more sinister motives.
"Not long. I will admit, I was as ignorant of the Circle's existence as you are, until very recently. But Alder and his fellows have been gracious enough to accept me into their fold, and I have been greedily making up for lost time."
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The tone shift into something masquerading as casual conversation would shake any lesser man, but Jin Zixuan was raised in the high society of Lanling, embedded in political intricacies from a young age, playing mediator between his warring parents to prevent scandal from erupting in Carp Tower even more than it already was wont to do. Between his philandering father and his controlling mother, and the all too nosey busybodies that fawned over the wealthy and prominent Jin Sect, Zixuan learned from an early age how to navigate the choppy waters of polite social interaction used to cover up more sinister motives.
"Not long. I will admit, I was as ignorant of the Circle's existence as you are, until very recently. But Alder and his fellows have been gracious enough to accept me into their fold, and I have been greedily making up for lost time."