You know, since the incident with Yao I have reevaluated my approach of "mission comes first, personal matters later". I thought that the probability of the old man getting himself in trouble right when Zhang kicked us off the island was negligible. Well, I was wrong.
If we don't help her, or at least hear her, now, some paths might become permanently closed to us. Currently she holds power over us, might be useful to us later due to her connections, is somewhat friendly towards us for the time bring, and is said to be connected to us by fate, which implies we will meet her later. She isn't someone we can just ignore.
Yes, and if we
do help her, some paths will be permanently closed to us. The question is, which is the better path. I am of the opinion that attempting to make friends with orthodox sects while staying with a well-known unorthodox poisoner is a recipe for disaster: it's only a matter of time until these two worlds end up converging. Look how many times we were nearly spotted today! We simply cannot have that many people knowing our face while trying to weave together an intricate web of lies like that, it's only a matter of time until we're discovered.
If there is a chance we are not already late to the party, and might actually help her resolve her inner conflict and end up on her good side, I'll take it.
We are on her good side and resolving her inner conflict is not our problem. Our problem is accomplishing Zhang's challenge. You are losing sight of the bigger picture.
Ok, so then isn't it in your interest to tell her that you do not intend to win the competition? So that she didn't view you as a possible threat?
...
We are always knee-deep in shit we need to take care of. I voted to ignore Yao in favor of Shun's mission, and am I glad that my vote didn't win. We should not ignore people, we have too few friends and are about to make much more enemies.
The mission with Yao was a success, but there are tradeoffs there too. We've been ignoring Shun's mission for years - just because something bad hasn't happened to him
yet, doesn't mean that there won't be negative consequences to ignoring Shun's mission.
You can only watch the Imperial Palace from afar in Chang’an. You wonder if Shun is there. You have heard troubling rumours when you reached the capital; apparently the army has been sent out to pacify the northwest border.
Doesn't this seem like something we should have known about as well using our lead from Yuhua Hall? We don't know the nature of the conflict, whether this was a plot by the people that the Woman-in-Black was with to draw the Prince out, why there are problems despite our successful diplomacy with the Ashina, etc. Yes, I'm glad things worked out with Yao, but there are other factors here too, and you are simplifying things too much.
Yes, sometimes the details are important, and making friends can go a long way to achieving the larger goal that we want to achieve. But there are times that, y'know... you might want to get on trying to accomplish that large goal at some fucking point. We are trying to make inroads into the orthodox world. We have been successful in making some contacts in the unorthodox world and we are already the apprentice of a Great Pugilist - this is not an area that we need further investment in. We need to find out what our enemies are doing.
Bottom line: being seen living and socializing with the daughter of the Wudu Sect leader will make interacting with the orthodox participants more difficult. This counteracts the whole purpose of going undercover.
Absolutely. You cannot reconcile 1A, where we introduce ourselves to a bunch of Shaolin disciples - meaning, more people in this city who know our face - with 2B, which involves living across a well-connected Wudu Cult member. ffs sake dude, how can you not see this blowing up in our face,
Nevill?
We live separately from her.
And this is the reason why I want to keep our merchant identity separate from the White Wolf at the tournament.
We're going to be staying at the same inn that she's at. I suppose by "separately" you might mean "not sleeping in the same bed" though?