So, from what I am looking at, it seems that there is a real reason we want to win this challenges @PrimalShadow. You mentioned earlier that this was only 20YSS, and it is, but it should be just the tipping point to getting 8GSS next turn if the math on income is right. @DeAnno ?
That does tempt me to go for the 'safe' choice, as 20YSS next turn is more important than staying at that rank for long. Mmmh.
That is not Shen Hu's reasons for leaving, though:
This wasn't "I am doing this because going to the King is more dangerous", but "I am doing this because it fits what I want to do better".
Now, there is a legit argument for "In the presence of a Not!White, Ling Qi panicked and believed that Shen Hu was in danger of being straight up murdered by a Cyan". This specific fear didn't come to me in the text (maybe I missed it?), and I think at the time it would have been really strange to think this could happen.... but even if it did, wasn't that the exact kind of fear Meizhen has when Ling Qi meet with Zeqing, or got to a moon party? Or when Xiulan goes to one of her tribulation?
I mean, Shen Hu's reasoning, before going into the moon dream, was this:
It is pretty clear to me that he was ready to risk his life, and Ling Qi knew it. That Ling Qi's fear is reasonable doesn't change that she is doing the exact thing she doesn't want people to do to herself.
A) Shen Hu explicitly backed out because he didn't want to involve himself in high level stuff:
She glanced at Shen Hu, who shrugged. "You know where I'm going then. "Guys like me don't have any business with this high up stuff."
B) Ling Qi explicitly feared for her life? It was kinda part of the vote which mentioned it being dangerous to ask the King to spare Shen Hu as a boon (despite the fact the he was going to reward her), and the King itself mentioned that Ling Qi might break from the simple fact of being on the side of his hunt (which implies worse things to those on the receiving side of it).
EDIT: further proof of Ling Qi's fear
Ling Qi swallowed, considering his offer, surrounded as she was by the embodiment of a forests rage, the hand of an incalculably more powerful cultivator on her shoulder. Her thoughts raced. He had offered her a boon, but only for two things…. But could she afford to press her luck and try for a better outcome?
And no, this is still not the same thing. You keep equivocating doing a tribulation and being killed for some reason. Shen Hu had no chance against the King and Ling Qi knew it, she also thought that dying in the dream ment dying for real. Like, there is the repeated assumption that Ling Qi totally knew that this was a 'test' that could be won* with no permanent damage suffered that isn't sustained by the text at all.
* Which is wrong on two counts, it wasn't a test and Ling Qi didn't think it was.
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