"Ning Chen, the truth is that from the moment we learned you were Younger Brother Tao's successor, we have been waiting for you to come."

Gu Su said it with a serious face.

Ning Chen looked at him. "Why?"

Gu Su said, "Younger Brother Tao was the same kind of man as you, and yet not the same."

"How do you mean?"

Gu Su sighed and said, "He was born with a pitying heart and no power to save anybody... He was an assassin himself, and yet he could not bear the sight of all the world's suffering."

"The seat of sect master of the Ghost-Shadow Sect should have been Younger Brother Tao's, but he hated being an assassin, and he left the Ghost-Shadow Sect without looking back."

"He said he would sooner be a knight of the road who rights wrongs and puts down the cruel to save the innocent than an assassin who takes life for money — that silver earned that way has blood on it and cannot be spent with an easy mind."

"Younger Brother Tao saw further than the rest of us. He used to say that the Ghost-Shadow Sect took life for money, had killed too many and offended too many, and that our own fellows of the jianghu could not tolerate it, the court could not tolerate it, and the living world could not tolerate it."

"When he left the Ghost-Shadow Sect he said that sooner or later he would find a man of outstanding ability, unmatched in honor and upright in conduct, to shelter the Ghost-Shadow Sect."

The corner of Ning Chen's mouth twitched slightly. "And you think I am the man he meant?"

Gu Su nodded, and said it with certainty. "Bonebreaker and the Thirteen Ghost-Shadow Blades are never passed outside the school. That Younger Brother Tao taught you both is enough to say everything."

"First, what you have done is known to every soul in the Great Xuan. It fits those twelve words exactly — outstanding in ability, unmatched in honor, upright in conduct."

"Second, your ability and your standing…