When Wu Ling considered the consequences if Xiong Dahuo betrayed him, his mouth went dry and his heart raced in his chest. It took several moments before he could calm himself and consider the question of whether or not the crimson-haired saber wielder would actually complete the task he'd given him.
"Xiong Dahuo is aggressive, maybe even brutal," Wu Ling considered. "But nothing about him felt devious. He didn't like the task I gave him, but he didn't say he wouldn't do it." In fact, when he considered the thick layer of ochre resolve he'd seen in the other man's aura at the end of the night, it felt like the other man had succeeded in summoning the courage to do as Wu Ling had asked.
On the other hand, Wu Ling thought, what did he gain if the gambit was successful? The most important thing was time for his half-sister to resist indoctrination. If she knew that she had family that loved and cared for her, that she didn't have to kill him to appease the Sanguine Saber Sect, even if he didn't rescue her before she awakened, she might be able to avoid being molded into an unfeeling murderer by her sect. That alone was worth something. Letting her mother know that he was out here, that he'd awakened, and that he cared about them. That was probably worth something too.
But were these things indispensable? And had he really secured them?
Wu Ling's mind spun as he tried to imagine the possibilities. Slowly, he sank into his inner world as he envisioned each person involved in the banquet as a piece on the chess board. If he looked at the events of that night alone, he'd played a masterful game that won him everything he wanted. But what if he looked past the board?
Winning each chess match of the evening required understanding the player he opposed. He'd defeated Xiong Dahuo because he was young, brash, easy to read, and easier to manipulate. But what if Xiong Dahuo wasn't a chess player? What if he thought of him as a chess piece instead?
"Who is the player behind Xiong Dahuo?" Wu Ling murmured. "Mother slaughtered many of the Sanguine Saber Sect branch's Elders, Wardens and Deacons. There are leadership gaps that the branch is eager to fill and Xiong Dahuo is hoping to be one to step up. You don't have the level of surety he did without having a patron but who? His parents? A master?" Wu Ling tried to understand how a chess piece called Xiong Dahuo would move and realized that he had no clue. He didn't know who the opposing player was!
"This is what Hall Master wants me to understand," he realized. He'd been playing his own game, feeling like he was in control of his actions and perhaps he was at the moment. What he didn't know, however, was the identity of the opponents behind the pieces he had encountered so far. He didn't understand them, how they'd move, how they'd react to what happened to their pieces because of Wu Ling's actions.
"There's more to this that Hall Master Bian wanted me to learn though," he said, sinking deeper into his introspection. The verbal tongue-lashing he'd gotten from Bian Xing taught him many things but it hadn't been the only lesson she'd been trying to hammer home. "I'm weak," he said, returning to his first thoughts after he finally managed to stand. "But it's more than that…"
Over and over again, Wu Ling recalled the feeling of pain the hall master had subjected him to. He knew that his mother suffered from her wounds and that the pain could become excruciating. He'd been paying alchemists extraordinary fees all these years to produce medicines that would numb her limbs so she wasn't tortured by the agony of what the Sanguine Saber Sect had done to her. By inflicting the same pain on Wu Ling, he developed a much better understanding of how cruel the Sanguine Saber Sect had been to his mother, but was that really the only lesson that Bian Xing wanted him to learn?
Gazing at the chess game in his inner world, Wu Ling's eyes suddenly widened in understanding as he examined the side played by his 'feminine self.' "The pain is only part of the lesson! Moreover, the pain is a distraction from the real lesson," he realized. "The real lesson is in the helplessness." Not just the helplessness either. The obedience. Despite all the pain, the Hall Master told him to serve tea and he served tea. She gave him the option to leave but that was only the illusion of choice. They both knew that he wouldn't retreat. What kind of chess player could only make one move? The answer wasn't one that he wanted to acknowledge but it was the one he needed to confront.
"I'm not ready to be a player on the large board yet," he admitted. "Right now, on the large board, I'm not a player and if I pretend that I am, I'm going to be played by anyone with the strength to treat me like the chess piece that I am." It was a bitter realization but also an important one. A chess player couldn't be blind to their own circumstances. Before he could play on the larger board, he needed to understand the players behind the pieces in front of him. He needed to learn how to pierce the hearts and minds of people who he'd never met to develop an understanding of them or he'd forever be forced into their traps. Bian Xing had done him a kindness by showing him how far he still had to go before he could play on the big board and even more, she'd helped him realize some of the next steps he needed to take.
As he processed those realizations, pale energy began to swirl around his meditating body in the Hall Master's private garden. The energy rapidly split into white and black before forming into flat disks like the stones of a chessboard. Slowly, as Wu Ling organized his thoughts, the pieces fell into place. There weren't many of them and the game wasn't complicated but it was one he understood well. It was early in the game yet, there was plenty of time to recover from early mistakes!