Chapter 1004: What Can You Do?

Chapter 1004: Chapter 1004: What Can You Do?

Han Jing’s words instantly left Guan Shining speechless; he opened his mouth, wanting to argue, but had no idea what he could say.

He could only turn his face away and fall silent.

Han Jing didn’t speak to him again. After a long time, he finally asked, "So you think you really have the ability to shoulder Guan Mountain Island’s responsibilities? Do you know what those tens of thousands of people on Guan Mountain Island live on? Do you know what kind of inside dealings there are behind this so‑called ranking conference? Do you know what those so‑called regular meetings your father attends every time are about, and what the spiritual ore that has to be handed in every three years is all about?"

"I..." He didn’t know.

Guan Shining lowered his head and stayed quiet.

"You don’t know anything, yet you’re thinking about helping your father share his burdens. Maybe you’re not sharing them but adding to his trouble, you ever think of that? A person has to first do well in what’s his own to do before he can take on more. If you don’t even know what you yourself should be doing yet already want to do things, then tell me, what do you think you can actually do?" In Han Jing’s eyes, Guan Shining at this moment was just a spoiled child who suddenly wanted to help the adults, thinking he could do everything, when in fact he couldn’t do anything. His nature was still kind and simple, perhaps because he had encountered too little darkness, or maybe had never encountered it at all, so he thought everything was easy and believed there was nothing he couldn’t do.

But once you truly come to understand this world, you’ll realize just how many shortcomings you have.

So only when you yourself are prepared, when you first become yourself, do you have the qualification and ability to take on more.

Otherwise, everything is just empty talk.

What Han Jing said made Guan Shining realize for the first time that he was actually someone who didn’t understand anything and couldn’t do anything. In the past, he had only ever thought that, as the Island young Master of Guan Mountain Island, with his strength ranked first, everyone ought to listen to him, and that was enough.

He had never considered a single one of the questions Han Jing mentioned.

He shouted about wanting to help, but in reality there wasn’t a single thing he could actually help with. Even if it was just pure sparring, there would be plenty of people stronger than him; he had never thought about any consequences at all.

Guan Shining felt a bit depressed. From childhood to now, no one had ever talked any sense into him. His father had always given him whatever he wanted, and when he walked on the streets, no one ever dared provoke him. The tutor who taught him only concerned himself with teaching characters, without ever explaining the meaning of the texts. His father had never hired a martial teacher for him either; it was Guan Shining who had secretly found someone to learn from and then started cultivating on his own, even sneaking family manuals to practice. In the end, his father, having no other choice and afraid he’d suffer qi deviation, finally found someone to guide him, but even then it was only guidance, nothing more.

So all the things Han Jing talked about were truly things no one had ever told him.

Having grown this big, it was the first time Guan Shining felt he needed to think, and that there were many things he needed to think about.

Guan Shining had always been a studious child, so after that brief heart‑to‑heart with Han Jing, he suddenly felt there was a lot he needed to learn. In the days that followed, he practically spent every day pestering this person and then that person, asking all sorts of messy questions. Whatever he could think of, he went and asked one by one.

Lan Ling was also childlike at heart, and the two of them quickly played together like they’d known each other forever, becoming good brothers who walked with their arms slung over each other’s shoulders, roaming all over Guan Mountain City every day.