He had needed to secure a protective talisman of sorts before he could return to Yuan.

The mirror asked curiously, “Huh? Since you don’t want to lay everything out completely, why did you still confront him head-on this morning?”

“There’s no way to explain away everything I experienced during the year I was gone. No excuse could dispel his suspicions.” He Lingchuan’s experience had grown rapidly, and he now understood He Chunhua far more thoroughly than he had half a year earlier. “Our relationship as father and son can never return to what it was. At best, we can maintain harmony on the surface while remaining divided at heart.” Not that our relationship has ever been particularly good. “Since that’s the case, I might as well expose the rift and draw a clear boundary. Otherwise, he’ll still try to use the authority of a father to treat me as a chess pi...