Klaudia can't possibly know the thoughts going through his head as she makes her case. Reading people has never been her strongest suit. Even if she's improved a bit in that area, she still doesn't know what it means when he straightens himself like that or when that determination comes across his expression, whether that resolve bodes well or ill for her. She can only soldier on in spite of those mysteries.
But the praise... That lifts her, sends all of her thoughts soaring upwards. His concern that he doesn't have anything good to teach (an obvious untruth) does temper her spirits, but not by much. Not in the face of his hand over hers and the nod he gives; and only by that grace does she release him from her clutches, watching him with budding hope and anticipation.
The promise has tears welling up in her eyes. She's so elated and so relieved... He doesn't even get a chance to lower his hand before she's surging forward to hug him tight around the middle again--this time out of joy. It's not the most disciple-like behavior, and she remembers herself after a moment, pulling back to rub the dampness from her eyes. She brings her arms forward, touching her hands together to give him a proper bow... but the attempt at decorum can't compete with the unrestrained happiness in her grin.
"A ghost has already been a very good teacher, so I know he still has plenty of good things to teach. You've agreed to it now, so I won't let you say otherwise."
This time he's a little more prepared for a surprise hug attack and manages to reciprocate before she escapes again, lagging with only a little bewilderment at how all this can have happened when he was just minding his business. Now there's bowing, too?? How is she like this, isn't it too much? Tears for a silly ghost. He would be concerned if she didn't seem so overjoyed.
"A ghost has already taught you too much if you're this tricky! But I did agree, so I'm caught. But you're still a teacher too, Klaudia-laoshi, I still expect to write essays and learn important lessons," he reminds, grinning through this mild admonishment as he hurries to shake up this hierarchy before it's had time to gel. "Lan Zhan benefits from the instruction as well, especially if it's in a text. I won't let you forget this duty even if you're my most illustrious disciple."
"I won't forget!" Klaudia chimes, cheerfully obedient. Her tail swishes back and forth behind her, jubilant but not rushed, a testament to her barely contained energy. If not for this conversation, she'd already be out the door, skipping and dancing over the pathways about the house.
"Isn't a disciple supposed to ask good questions anyway? If I do, then neither of you should run out of essays to write. You'll still have your very important work to do, don't worry." Everything will be just like before... just better for the knowledge that it was chosen by them. A promise set in stone.
"And Lan Wangji said that I had to be clever about it, so you can't blame me! I was only doing my best to show a ghost how clever I could be." She says, as if being tricky and clever is a merit that she needs to showcase. And it is, of course. A clever ghost deserves only the most clever of disciples, doesn't he?
Klaudia's energy is contagious, and he can only brighten more to reflect it. It's still hard for it to sink in, that this matters so much to her, but who is a ghost to argue? His own qualms can stand to take a back seat to a sand cultivator so happy with this newly granted discipleship. He can handle teaching.
And that Hanguang-jun! So unexpectedly devious in encouraging this. Perhaps that is the effect of the sand cultivator's teachings. But perhaps not, though surely no one would ever believe him that Lan Zhan has always had the ability to be sly and people just aren't quick enough to pick up on it.
He puts on a proud air, though there's something of humor running through it as well, even though he's been asked to be serious. Consider this his own non-bribe. "Well, he was right, clearly. I never took on disciples of my own, but you wouldn't have known it to hear some people make claims. You're the only one who could say that and be telling the truth, which is why I say 'illustrious.' Obviously, even getting to ask took considerable cleverness if nobody ever managed it." She probably even can say such a thing safely, here, he thinks with a rueful rub at his nose, deflating just a little. That's definitely for the best, because she might. At least she won't be dressing up for it.
The time for seriousness might as well be behind them at this point. Klaudia already has her answer, so she won't begrudge a ghost his lapse back into silliness. He's already blurring the lines between student and teacher again, so if she'd been planning to chastise him, she would have done so already.
But the knowledge that others had tried to be his disciple is something new and surprising, sweeping some of her excitement off into the realm of curiosity and intrigue. While the emphasis that he puts on her being illustrious is mildly embarrassing in a way she can't describe. Now it's her turn to feel like that's too much. She'd thought it was only because no one had asked before--though in a way, that's apparently true.
"Why didn't anyone else manage to ask?" She thought the cleverness was in the ghost trap and the words she had used, not in the act of asking at all. Which it sounds like they hadn't even bothered--or hadn't gotten the chance? "Did you make it hard for them? Were there riddles involved, like a sphinx?" That sounds a little silly for a ghost, but the alternative is that there were people claiming to be his disciples in a place where everyone hated him... and who would honestly do that? The riddles sound much more logical.
The riddles are a fine idea and not silly at all, actually. If disciples were something he had been in the market for in the first place, that could certainly have been a compelling component of a multi-phase trial of some kind. Fun, for him at least, unless any of them were to somehow pass. Definitely more so than the reality, though.
"No one could ask because there were ghosts in the way. And I wouldn't have wanted those disciples in the first place, I was very busy and they weren't any good." He presses his lips into something the precursor of exasperation, though he still fails to keep humor wholly at bay; the awareness is strong that he brought this on himself, quite deliberately, and must make his peace with it. Probably very quickly. There won't be any way to go about this without being more forthright than he has been, not when he's already committed to doing things right. "Clearly I didn't need to be part of the process anyway, just my name, which wasn't so black quite yet. What's a sphinx?"
Ghosts in the way? That's all? A furrow creases Klaudia's brow, and she presses her lips to one side in a small amount of disdain for those people. What were they, cowards? Apparently, if that's all it took to discourage them from meeting Wei Wuxian face to face. 'Not very good' is an understatement. Too bad for them; she would have walked through a hundred ghosts just to meet this one.
Is it any surprise that it sends a prickle of anger through her thoughts to hear that they only needed his name to attach to theirs? If that was the case, then they didn't deserve to even have it on their lips. It feels like too great a disservice to overlook, even if he's rolling through his explanation with humor still attached. At least some of her indignation does get jostled aside when he questions her about sphinxes, leaving her fumbling for an explanation.
"Um, they're magical creatures. Immortals with feline bodies and feathery wings on their backs, but very large and noble-looking. The gods tasked them to instruct mortals on the importance of truth, which they did--but the sphinxes also wanted people to think for themselves, so they did it using riddles."
That should be sufficient, right? That's all she really knows about them in the first place. She's never been to the lands east of the Shining Sea, just a few enchanting stories picked up here and there in ports. Stories that can't quite capture all of her attention right now when there's still a storm brewing in her heart.
"Can people just do that, like you said? Just... take someone's name and use it like that, if you never agreed to anything? I think the ghosts should have gone after them, if they wanted to be associated with them so badly. I'm not even a ghost, and I would have gone after them myself."
The good news is Klaudia doesn't have to walk through any ghosts of any level of meatiness just to talk to one Wei Wuxian, which is exactly as he prefers it. It's also probably for the best that ghosts weren't particularly invested in protecting his name. Nor is that something Klaudia needs to handle herself, even if she's apparently invested enough in the idea that she doesn't even want to talk about sphinxes. A shame, really, since they sound like a lot of fun. Noble and magical but opinionated about how people should work, unlike ghosts, which are generally sort of caught up in their own business of getting revenge or closure or whatever. Good for the sphinxes, anyway.
Her question comes with a level of...something, a kind of vindictive idealism, and in his name no less, that he isn't sure how to receive gracefully. He considers it with a bit of hesitation, some embarrassment even as he reflects, scuffing a foot on the floor. This is why he has doubts about his own fitness in all this! "It was funny at the time? I wasn't going to go after them, though I'm a little surprised they weren't more worried about that. Maybe I was supposed to be too busy building armies and cursing livestock, on top of all the ghost cultivation and kidnapping." Look, it was a little funny, and in terms of things that he could get offended over, it just didn't make the list, which he mostly ignored anyway. "It probably wouldn't have fooled real cultivators from established sects, but people can just fool other people easy enough, sure, dressing up and making a speech and throwing some talismans around. Maybe some did stir up ghosts and regret it though, who knows. Probably nothing as bad as having their doors taken, or any other sand cultivator specialties."
Funny at the time...? Klaudia blinks at him like she doesn't comprehend what could be so funny. Isn't it awful to have people running about and using his name? Especially people who are Not Very Good by his account. She only looks more perplexed when he mentions all the other things that people thought he was getting up to. Armies and curses and ghosts and kidnapping? Well, maybe the ghosts might be right, but the rest... She can't understand why that doesn't bother him. It would bother her. Does bother her with how similar that sounds...
"If they do show up here, I'm going to do worse than take their doors." Maybe their windows too. They can sit in complete darkness and think about what they've done. This sand cultivator can be more creative than that. But she's not quite matching his energy on this, and that still leaves her feeling a little off-center, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Is she not supposed to be angry about this? Is she supposed to think it's funny, too? That much might be a little beyond her right now.
"...Why didn't that stuff bother you? I wouldn't be able to stand it. Even if they were only fooling normal people, then... Wouldn't those normal people think that you were associated? What if they did something bad and people thought that you told them to do it?" It doesn't seem like that wild of a thought, if people were already accusing him of other things.
Maybe she had to be there, is the conclusion he comes to, internally only. It was funny because of all those things? Because of how little it actually mattered overall? For how typical it was? But now she's pulling at threads that would unravel things he hasn't explained to anyone and never can, not to mention things that are just very heavy for a new disciple to take in, perhaps. Again he hesitates, picks through the safe verbal routes carefully before gaining speed, looks for something both true and, with any luck, satisfactory. Somehow in reaching for a kind of camaraderie he failed to factor in Klaudia's sense of justice. That might be a frustration, if he weren't busier fretting at the edges of how to reveal things the most gradually and with the least chance of being upsetting. He still has to re-orient periodically with the knowledge that as distant as it seems, Klaudia won't feel the same way and has the right to ask questions and receive answers, in her new role even more than her standard one.
Still, a little exasperation comes through, not at her but just people as a whole, perhaps. Doesn't she know? Hadn't she said nearly the same? "By that point, it seemed pretty much out of my hands, what people believe or say. The pretenders seemed harmless enough, and wouldn't staking any kind of claim just draw more attention? If someone had done something truly harmful, that would be different," he says with full assurance and deliberate refusal to think about the possibility of that occurring in the time he was 'away.' That does not violate his new and still very nebulous disciple honesty policy, he's pretty sure. But..."Having a reputation was in my favor, sometimes. There were people who depended on it, on me. Can't the same water that carries a boat sink it?"
Despite the number of times she's heard about it, it's still difficult for Klaudia to imagine that Wei Wuxian's reputation could be such an uphill battle, when his elevation in her respect has been so effortless. She knows he's a good person and trusts him implicitly; and it still confounds her that anyone could think otherwise simply because of a few ghosts. Even knowing what the world is like, what people are like... If someone as kind and charming as him couldn't weather that storm, what chance did anyone else have?
But if he says the fake disciples were virtually harmless and even funny for him, then she has to believe that it's true. It still doesn't sit right with her, but it's difficult to argue that he should feel the way she does about something that happened to him and not her. And maybe he's right... Maybe trying to argue with them would have just made the whole thing worse. Maybe the harmless pretenders would have been less harmless if provoked... It still won't stop her from putting ants in their food if she meets them, but maybe she'll at least be quieter about it.
The boat analogy makes a grudging amount of sense as an abstract concept, but the mention of people depending on a reputation like that... Klaudia blinks at that, her mouth parting a little as she processes that nugget into the whole of the Wei Wuxian that she knows. Has he ever mentioned that before? He's said a lot of things in a halfway manner, and it's only now that she's realizing that she doesn't know a whole lot about the life he was leading before this. What sort of people were depending on him? Or specifically on his bad reputation? How could anyone have a need for that?
"Which people?" she asks after a few beats of silence. Obviously he doesn't mean disciples, since he said he never had any. But also, he had said that he had no clan either, so how else should she categorize this new information?
True to form, she asks exactly the question that is hardest to answer, which is hardly a talent he can begrudge her. Though he can feel a little...wistful, maybe? Over her whole sort of grudging incomprehension, at the idea of a reputation for ill-gotten strength as a kind of shield. That he'll have to earn the logic of it, rather than it just being the way of the world she knows. But how could she be expected to do any more than intuit human nature, with how little context she's been given? He doesn't regret his commitment to honesty, but he's a little impressed at how difficult it already is.
He stands straighter again, with his hands behind his back, unconsciously like he's the disciple and means to recite. The bridge is always narrow, and no less so for currently being one sand cultivator's high opinion. Undeservedly high, but it doesn't need to be undeservedly low, either. Whether the test is if he can make this make sense or if he can make honesty work at all, he means to pass.
Besides, however much it was ultimately fruitless, it's one aspect of his reputation and downfall that deserves some exoneration, if not for his sake then for the Wens. Not the broad path but not an unclear one at any point, for him, but not even that much choice implied, for them. "Laoshi, you have to understand how it was at the time. There was a war, and some people were mistreated for their clan's involvement. People I knew and owed, and their relatives. Not cultivators, mostly. Taking those people out of the way was only possible if I could make the main clans afraid to follow."
Even for such a small essay, there's a lot for Klaudia to take in. Too much for the levity of having their roles reserved to fully breach, but she'll allow his complicated social wreaths if it means understanding his perspective better. And what he tells her is certainly eye-opening.
Klaudia herself has never been in a war, never seen the effects that it can have on people or society. But that's not to say that she hasn't seen strife, or that she doesn't understand how easily people can find reason to mistreat others. Disproportionately at times... The larger the number of people, the smaller the reason needed. Was that why he had been so vehemently opposed to mobs those months ago? And also why he had been so adamant that he wouldn't take their words to heart? And to think at the time, she had thought it was because he was criminally-inclined. She couldn't have been more wrong.
"...I think I understand." The acknowledgement is quiet, lacking the surety that Klaudia-laoshi should have; but hopefully he'll understand as well. "You let everyone think you were scarier than you are... So that you could protect those people? Because they weren't cultivators, like you said. They were just normal people, so they couldn't protect themselves. So if pretenders came along and made others think you were up to something bad, or if everyone looked on ghosts and necromancy poorly, then that worked the way you wanted it to. Because it kept those normal people safe?"
Klaudia understands and yet she doesn't, though the groundwork is certainly there. There isn't anything wrong about her assessment, hesitant as it is. The only points he wants to pick at are real linchpins, though. Wei Wuxian frets in place, resists the urge to break away from this fraught little pocket of truthful conversation to pace, but poorly, tilting his head back and forth like he has to calculate Klaudia's understanding to either approve or correct it. It's frustrating, how hard it is to deliver any kind of context to someone so outside it from any kind of starting point that will allow the rest time to come into focus.
"I can't decide if you're giving me too much credit or not enough. My cultivation helped win a war against one clan--why not against another one? How could I convince anyone otherwise without giving it up? Or even if I did, would it be believable? It worked the way it worked regardless of me. Even protecting those non-cultivators, I don't know how I would have done that without the Burial Mounds to take them to. But that wouldn't have been possible without my cultivation, either. My reputation could only get worse, so why shouldn't it at least be useful?"
Klaudia thought she had it. Everything was starting to seem straight-forward, until it wasn't. Her recitation is met with more clarification, and that furrow in her brow grows deeper as she tries to listen harder. Some of the things he says don't quite make sense. She doesn't know which clans exactly he means, and she can't help how she mouths "Burial--" silently upon hearing another unfamiliar name. But those things aren't the crux of the matter, and of all things and all people, she doesn't want to misunderstand this that he's trying to explain to her with such intricate care.
But she has difficulty seeing what he sees. It feels to her like there's a whole realm of possibility being left unspoken, and she can't tell if that's purposeful or not. He says if his reputation can't be good, then it should be useful--but who's to say that it had to change at all? Or that it had to change in that manner? He talks of convincing others that his power shouldn't be used, or convincing them that it was gone--but what if he just hadn't convinced them at all? He says that it worked that way regardless of him, but she can't help but think that there's a million other ways it might have worked if he was anyone else but him.
"...Am I not supposed to give you credit?" Klaudia asks, unsure and a little sullen for it. "You make it sound like you're really powerful. But that I'm supposed to think that how everything turned out was inevitable... Right?" She pauses, like she's looking for confirmation--though she presses on quickly, too eager to get to her next point before he has to clarify more.
"But you didn't have to do all that, did you? I mean, you didn't have to convince them of anything. You could have gone along with whatever they wanted to do. You didn't have to protect anyone. Maybe whatever reputation you had with them would have been better. Maybe they would have liked you. But... You didn't. You protected the people that had the least reputation to offer you. I think the number of people who could manage that is really, really small. Don't you?"
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But the praise... That lifts her, sends all of her thoughts soaring upwards. His concern that he doesn't have anything good to teach (an obvious untruth) does temper her spirits, but not by much. Not in the face of his hand over hers and the nod he gives; and only by that grace does she release him from her clutches, watching him with budding hope and anticipation.
The promise has tears welling up in her eyes. She's so elated and so relieved... He doesn't even get a chance to lower his hand before she's surging forward to hug him tight around the middle again--this time out of joy. It's not the most disciple-like behavior, and she remembers herself after a moment, pulling back to rub the dampness from her eyes. She brings her arms forward, touching her hands together to give him a proper bow... but the attempt at decorum can't compete with the unrestrained happiness in her grin.
"A ghost has already been a very good teacher, so I know he still has plenty of good things to teach. You've agreed to it now, so I won't let you say otherwise."
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"A ghost has already taught you too much if you're this tricky! But I did agree, so I'm caught. But you're still a teacher too, Klaudia-laoshi, I still expect to write essays and learn important lessons," he reminds, grinning through this mild admonishment as he hurries to shake up this hierarchy before it's had time to gel. "Lan Zhan benefits from the instruction as well, especially if it's in a text. I won't let you forget this duty even if you're my most illustrious disciple."
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"Isn't a disciple supposed to ask good questions anyway? If I do, then neither of you should run out of essays to write. You'll still have your very important work to do, don't worry." Everything will be just like before... just better for the knowledge that it was chosen by them. A promise set in stone.
"And Lan Wangji said that I had to be clever about it, so you can't blame me! I was only doing my best to show a ghost how clever I could be." She says, as if being tricky and clever is a merit that she needs to showcase. And it is, of course. A clever ghost deserves only the most clever of disciples, doesn't he?
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And that Hanguang-jun! So unexpectedly devious in encouraging this. Perhaps that is the effect of the sand cultivator's teachings. But perhaps not, though surely no one would ever believe him that Lan Zhan has always had the ability to be sly and people just aren't quick enough to pick up on it.
He puts on a proud air, though there's something of humor running through it as well, even though he's been asked to be serious. Consider this his own non-bribe. "Well, he was right, clearly. I never took on disciples of my own, but you wouldn't have known it to hear some people make claims. You're the only one who could say that and be telling the truth, which is why I say 'illustrious.' Obviously, even getting to ask took considerable cleverness if nobody ever managed it." She probably even can say such a thing safely, here, he thinks with a rueful rub at his nose, deflating just a little. That's definitely for the best, because she might. At least she won't be dressing up for it.
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But the knowledge that others had tried to be his disciple is something new and surprising, sweeping some of her excitement off into the realm of curiosity and intrigue. While the emphasis that he puts on her being illustrious is mildly embarrassing in a way she can't describe. Now it's her turn to feel like that's too much. She'd thought it was only because no one had asked before--though in a way, that's apparently true.
"Why didn't anyone else manage to ask?" She thought the cleverness was in the ghost trap and the words she had used, not in the act of asking at all. Which it sounds like they hadn't even bothered--or hadn't gotten the chance? "Did you make it hard for them? Were there riddles involved, like a sphinx?" That sounds a little silly for a ghost, but the alternative is that there were people claiming to be his disciples in a place where everyone hated him... and who would honestly do that? The riddles sound much more logical.
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"No one could ask because there were ghosts in the way. And I wouldn't have wanted those disciples in the first place, I was very busy and they weren't any good." He presses his lips into something the precursor of exasperation, though he still fails to keep humor wholly at bay; the awareness is strong that he brought this on himself, quite deliberately, and must make his peace with it. Probably very quickly. There won't be any way to go about this without being more forthright than he has been, not when he's already committed to doing things right. "Clearly I didn't need to be part of the process anyway, just my name, which wasn't so black quite yet. What's a sphinx?"
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Is it any surprise that it sends a prickle of anger through her thoughts to hear that they only needed his name to attach to theirs? If that was the case, then they didn't deserve to even have it on their lips. It feels like too great a disservice to overlook, even if he's rolling through his explanation with humor still attached. At least some of her indignation does get jostled aside when he questions her about sphinxes, leaving her fumbling for an explanation.
"Um, they're magical creatures. Immortals with feline bodies and feathery wings on their backs, but very large and noble-looking. The gods tasked them to instruct mortals on the importance of truth, which they did--but the sphinxes also wanted people to think for themselves, so they did it using riddles."
That should be sufficient, right? That's all she really knows about them in the first place. She's never been to the lands east of the Shining Sea, just a few enchanting stories picked up here and there in ports. Stories that can't quite capture all of her attention right now when there's still a storm brewing in her heart.
"Can people just do that, like you said? Just... take someone's name and use it like that, if you never agreed to anything? I think the ghosts should have gone after them, if they wanted to be associated with them so badly. I'm not even a ghost, and I would have gone after them myself."
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Her question comes with a level of...something, a kind of vindictive idealism, and in his name no less, that he isn't sure how to receive gracefully. He considers it with a bit of hesitation, some embarrassment even as he reflects, scuffing a foot on the floor. This is why he has doubts about his own fitness in all this! "It was funny at the time? I wasn't going to go after them, though I'm a little surprised they weren't more worried about that. Maybe I was supposed to be too busy building armies and cursing livestock, on top of all the ghost cultivation and kidnapping." Look, it was a little funny, and in terms of things that he could get offended over, it just didn't make the list, which he mostly ignored anyway. "It probably wouldn't have fooled real cultivators from established sects, but people can just fool other people easy enough, sure, dressing up and making a speech and throwing some talismans around. Maybe some did stir up ghosts and regret it though, who knows. Probably nothing as bad as having their doors taken, or any other sand cultivator specialties."
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"If they do show up here, I'm going to do worse than take their doors." Maybe their windows too. They can sit in complete darkness and think about what they've done. This sand cultivator can be more creative than that. But she's not quite matching his energy on this, and that still leaves her feeling a little off-center, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Is she not supposed to be angry about this? Is she supposed to think it's funny, too? That much might be a little beyond her right now.
"...Why didn't that stuff bother you? I wouldn't be able to stand it. Even if they were only fooling normal people, then... Wouldn't those normal people think that you were associated? What if they did something bad and people thought that you told them to do it?" It doesn't seem like that wild of a thought, if people were already accusing him of other things.
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Still, a little exasperation comes through, not at her but just people as a whole, perhaps. Doesn't she know? Hadn't she said nearly the same? "By that point, it seemed pretty much out of my hands, what people believe or say. The pretenders seemed harmless enough, and wouldn't staking any kind of claim just draw more attention? If someone had done something truly harmful, that would be different," he says with full assurance and deliberate refusal to think about the possibility of that occurring in the time he was 'away.' That does not violate his new and still very nebulous disciple honesty policy, he's pretty sure. But..."Having a reputation was in my favor, sometimes. There were people who depended on it, on me. Can't the same water that carries a boat sink it?"
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But if he says the fake disciples were virtually harmless and even funny for him, then she has to believe that it's true. It still doesn't sit right with her, but it's difficult to argue that he should feel the way she does about something that happened to him and not her. And maybe he's right... Maybe trying to argue with them would have just made the whole thing worse. Maybe the harmless pretenders would have been less harmless if provoked... It still won't stop her from putting ants in their food if she meets them, but maybe she'll at least be quieter about it.
The boat analogy makes a grudging amount of sense as an abstract concept, but the mention of people depending on a reputation like that... Klaudia blinks at that, her mouth parting a little as she processes that nugget into the whole of the Wei Wuxian that she knows. Has he ever mentioned that before? He's said a lot of things in a halfway manner, and it's only now that she's realizing that she doesn't know a whole lot about the life he was leading before this. What sort of people were depending on him? Or specifically on his bad reputation? How could anyone have a need for that?
"Which people?" she asks after a few beats of silence. Obviously he doesn't mean disciples, since he said he never had any. But also, he had said that he had no clan either, so how else should she categorize this new information?
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He stands straighter again, with his hands behind his back, unconsciously like he's the disciple and means to recite. The bridge is always narrow, and no less so for currently being one sand cultivator's high opinion. Undeservedly high, but it doesn't need to be undeservedly low, either. Whether the test is if he can make this make sense or if he can make honesty work at all, he means to pass.
Besides, however much it was ultimately fruitless, it's one aspect of his reputation and downfall that deserves some exoneration, if not for his sake then for the Wens. Not the broad path but not an unclear one at any point, for him, but not even that much choice implied, for them. "Laoshi, you have to understand how it was at the time. There was a war, and some people were mistreated for their clan's involvement. People I knew and owed, and their relatives. Not cultivators, mostly. Taking those people out of the way was only possible if I could make the main clans afraid to follow."
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Klaudia herself has never been in a war, never seen the effects that it can have on people or society. But that's not to say that she hasn't seen strife, or that she doesn't understand how easily people can find reason to mistreat others. Disproportionately at times... The larger the number of people, the smaller the reason needed. Was that why he had been so vehemently opposed to mobs those months ago? And also why he had been so adamant that he wouldn't take their words to heart? And to think at the time, she had thought it was because he was criminally-inclined. She couldn't have been more wrong.
"...I think I understand." The acknowledgement is quiet, lacking the surety that Klaudia-laoshi should have; but hopefully he'll understand as well. "You let everyone think you were scarier than you are... So that you could protect those people? Because they weren't cultivators, like you said. They were just normal people, so they couldn't protect themselves. So if pretenders came along and made others think you were up to something bad, or if everyone looked on ghosts and necromancy poorly, then that worked the way you wanted it to. Because it kept those normal people safe?"
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"I can't decide if you're giving me too much credit or not enough. My cultivation helped win a war against one clan--why not against another one? How could I convince anyone otherwise without giving it up? Or even if I did, would it be believable? It worked the way it worked regardless of me. Even protecting those non-cultivators, I don't know how I would have done that without the Burial Mounds to take them to. But that wouldn't have been possible without my cultivation, either. My reputation could only get worse, so why shouldn't it at least be useful?"
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But she has difficulty seeing what he sees. It feels to her like there's a whole realm of possibility being left unspoken, and she can't tell if that's purposeful or not. He says if his reputation can't be good, then it should be useful--but who's to say that it had to change at all? Or that it had to change in that manner? He talks of convincing others that his power shouldn't be used, or convincing them that it was gone--but what if he just hadn't convinced them at all? He says that it worked that way regardless of him, but she can't help but think that there's a million other ways it might have worked if he was anyone else but him.
"...Am I not supposed to give you credit?" Klaudia asks, unsure and a little sullen for it. "You make it sound like you're really powerful. But that I'm supposed to think that how everything turned out was inevitable... Right?" She pauses, like she's looking for confirmation--though she presses on quickly, too eager to get to her next point before he has to clarify more.
"But you didn't have to do all that, did you? I mean, you didn't have to convince them of anything. You could have gone along with whatever they wanted to do. You didn't have to protect anyone. Maybe whatever reputation you had with them would have been better. Maybe they would have liked you. But... You didn't. You protected the people that had the least reputation to offer you. I think the number of people who could manage that is really, really small. Don't you?"