Iron Snow Clouds

Chapter 7338 (Seven Thousand Three Hundred and Thirty-Eight) - Smaller

The brown-handed man laughed and said, "If I said I understood it as you not engaging in 'implicit' coercion just now, you would wonder if I thought you had engaged in 'explicit' coercion. Well, think what you want."

"Whatever I say? Aren't you going to defend yourself? Are you just agreeing with what I said, or did you really think I had 'overtly' coerced you?" the gray-handed man asked.

The brown-handed man said, “I don’t believe you have put 'overt' pressure on me.”

"What about the 'hidden' ones?" the gray-handed man asked.

"Alright, let's put it this way: if what you did to me just now was 'implicit' coercion, then I also 'implicitly' coerced you before," the brown-handed man laughed.

"You're talking about me, but you're bringing it up yourself again," the gray-handed man laughed.

“Same to you,” the brown-handed man said with a smile.

The gray-handed man said, "You wouldn't be refusing to acknowledge that I 'implicitly' coerced you just to prevent yourself from believing that you also 'implicitly' coerced me, would you?"

The brown-handed man chuckled, "In my opinion, even if that's the case, it's nothing serious. At worst, it just means we've been 'implicitly' coerced each other. Of course, if you especially don't want to be described that way, I won't say it."

The gray-handed man asked, "There's no need to hold back from speaking out of consideration for me. Although I also think that narrowing down the scope of what can be considered 'implicit' coercion would be beneficial for both of us."

"What you've said is all advantageous, even if we're divided into smaller groups, neither of us will be considered to have 'implicitly' coerced the other?" the brown-handed man asked.

“Yes,” the gray-handed man laughed.

"What kind of benefit is this?" the brown-handed man asked. "It's that neither of us has to admit to having 'implicitly' coerced the other, isn't that enough?" the gray-handed man laughed. "What else do you want?"

The brown-handed man said, “The situation is special for people like us. Even if you and I haven’t ‘implicitly’ coerced each other, we have ‘implicitly’ coerced others. Even if we narrow down the scope of what can be considered ‘implicit’ coercion, can our past behavior really escape that scope?”

The gray-handed man laughed and said, "Of course not. We've even 'openly' coerced others before, using the tasks the Lord gave me, which we couldn't refuse to do back then."

“This time you didn’t just talk about yourself, and I’m quite willing to listen,” the Brown-Handed Man asked.

“This time, you didn’t just talk about yourself. You asked, ‘Even if we narrow down the scope of what can be considered ‘implicit’ coercion, can our past behavior really escape that scope?’ You asked ‘us,’ so naturally I will answer ‘us,’” the Gray-Handed Man laughed.

“What if I had said ‘I’ instead of ‘we’ when I asked?” the Brown-Handed Man asked.

“Then I can choose not to answer this question,” the gray-handed man laughed.

"When I asked the question this time, I used the word 'we.' How did you feel when you heard that?" the brown-handed man asked.

"How it feels? Pretty good," the gray-handed man chuckled. "It's perfectly normal to bring me into this kind of question, after all, we used to work together for the User. When you asked that question earlier, you already knew the answer, didn't you?"

The brown-handed man asked, "Are you referring to whether I already had the answer when I asked, 'Could our past actions really have escaped this range?'"

The gray-handed man laughed and said, "Yes, if you want to be more accurate, you can fill in the preceding part."