Chapter 346: Top Four
Kang Lin was so anxious that she didn’t sleep more than an hour the night before her next tournament round—not that she needed much more than that but she’d tried and ended up tossing and turning for hours—and the reason had nothing to do with her opponent. In fact, she hadn’t even bothered to check who she’d be fighting.
It simply didn’t matter.
For one thing, making top eight already exceeded her expectations. She should have lost to Yang Ru and was positive that, no matter who her opponent was in the next round, she’d be outmatched.
More importantly, though, she couldn’t get her inescapable fate out of her mind. As soon as the tournament was over, the sect leader would announce the end of her discipleship. Everyone would know her shame, that her behavior was so reprehensible that she was being forcibly removed from her position as a disciple.
Her reputation would take an unrecoverable hit. No matter how many hundreds of years she lived or how high her cultivation reached, the stigma of her failure would stick with her. Absolutely no one would ever again take a chance on putting her in an elevated position. She’d only ever be able to take in the lowest of low as students to learn from her.
She would be ruined.
And all because … why? It was hard for her to put into words, though it had made so much sense at the time. Yang Ru had been on track to become a legend until her dreadful actions had endangered his chances. Who was she to attach herself to such a rising star?
Her talent was midrange, after all. She would benefit from their marriage. He wouldn’t. Thus, it seemed obvious to her that separating from him was the right thing to do.
From one perspective, anyway.
The match would benefit her family and her sect. She’d been taught practically from birth about her responsibility to those two entities. Advancing either or both of those should have been primary in her considerations. Instead, she worried about him. She put him ahead of her family and her sect.
Why?
Because she’d come to care about him.