"No more than you have. Actually, early on I barely managed to survive when the Lu Family's mortal branch patriarch suddenly attacked during a session of our alliance's meeting. Not many were as lucky. The Li and Lao Families together were mostly able to beat back the Lu Family's members there…except the patriarch, Lu Bao's father. I don't know where he got the kind of power he displayed from, or if he'd just been hiding it for decades, but it took everything the other two patriarch AND several other high ups in the families had just to halt his attack.
I fought off more than my share of the Lu Family, when I was suddenly attacked by a pair of goons wearing uniforms of the Earth Ascension Palace in cat masks. They weren't ordinary disciples by the place's standards, either."
"Yeah," I said, "they were probably under orders of Lu Bao to add to the chaos. You didn't see Shokoya with them or anywhere around, did you?"
"Shokoya? What's he got to do with it?"
