While
Nevill's arguments have some merit, they also seem to reek of melodrama, as
Tigranes pointed out. I think that
Kipeci has the right of it: if A results in a loss, we'll lose by getting disqualified from the fight rather than through some freak accident that results in Fu's death. Fu is not going to die in our arms with Jing screaming "WHHHYYYYY?!?!?!?", ffs. Keep in mind that while we did kill a bandit by accident, we are actually rather accustomed to fighting against an opponent with extremely high END:
You go over to inspect the men that you had beaten. The first one has his nose entirely squashed, and from the way the entire front of his face is slightly caved in, even if he is not dead now he will not be waking in the next few days. The other man is not moving at all, blood trickling from his eyes, ears, nose and mouth. His eyes are blank and staring, and he doesn’t seem to be breathing.
“Well… it was an accident,” you say. You had spent a lot of time attacking the Southern Maniac with all of your strength, only for him to laugh it off. Evidently the bandits are not in the same league of durability as your master.
treave, do we have an idea of how resilient Fu is compared to our Master? Of course Zhang is way more experienced and has his own
neigong, but Fu's natural sturdyness seems to be in the same neighbourhood as Zhang, which means that he's very, very tough to take out. He's not gonna die on us here.
And of course B will result in the crowd hating us because we look like a pussy. There's no doubt about that. I think Nevill missed my point with the boxing comparison: if I see a fighter getting his opponent disqualified when I know that he can continue, my first instinct isn't "Oh, what a clever fighter!" when I see that, it's "what a cowardly, dishonorable asshole".
Nevill, you're not arguing in good faith on this point. We'll look like a pussy with B because then we're the guy who only cares about rules insofar as he can take advantage of them. That's not clever, it's douchey. There are benefits to B, but don't try and make it into us looking cool because we've deprived the crowd of an exciting fight, that's completly fucking ridiculous.
On the "how could this affect Guo Fu?" front, remember: we don't have to kill Guo Fu for A to go very badly for us. Say we just break a limb, similarly to what he did to us. That's fine, he'll understand and still congratulate us on our victory, but on the MiBs' next attack, maybe he can't protect his wife. Then things unfold as the masters predicted: farm boy goes berserk, MiBs foment outrage against "Zhang Jue's disciple," etc.
Good point, but we do have ways of mitigating this. If we're disqualified for hurting Guo Fu, we could just say that we meant to hurt him because we don't want
anyone claiming that they're Zhang Jue's disciple but us. It's hard for the WiBs to paint Fu as Zhang's disciple if he's been beaten by some goof with a pig mask in the quarter-finals. Just doesn't seem believable, you know? Even if his arm is broken, it still takes a lot of the heat off him - they can't use him as a scapegoat if he doesn't look like the terrifying killer that everyone expects the Southern Maniac's apprentice to be.