Huang Rong from The Return of the Condor Heroes: Brother Jing, let's get a divorce.

The mud house of Wang Laosan was separated by a thin layer of rammed earth wall, with several cracks in it.

Yang Guo blew out the oil lamp, and the room went dark.

The bed frame was made of several pieces of rough wood, and the mortise and tenon joints were loose, so it creaked when you turned over.

Lu Wushuang lay on the inside, fully clothed, huddled under the covers, too afraid to move.

"Move over a bit, I have nowhere to lie down." Yang Guo took off his outer clothes, lifted the quilt, and crawled inside.

Lu Wushuang gritted her teeth and retorted, "This bed is only so big. If I move any further in, I'll be pressed against the wall! Don't squeeze me."

Yang Guo stretched out his hand and directly wrapped his arm around Lu Wushuang's slender waist, pulling her into his embrace.

The two were pressed together, the dry straw rustling under their weight.

"What are you doing!"

Lu Wushuang turned over and pulled the blanket under her chin.

"Practice martial arts." Yang Guo said confidently, his right hand already sliding under the hem of his clothes, his palm flat against Lu Wushuang's lower abdomen.

As the Qiankun Technique was activated, the Laogong acupoint felt warm, and a trace of innate primordial energy seeped out.

This true energy travels along the Ren meridian, entering the body through the Guanyuan acupoint, then flowing down the Chong meridian, splitting into two streams that enter the three Yang meridians of the feet.

Yang Guo controlled the flow of his true energy, neither too fast nor too slow, pausing for a couple of breaths at the Dubi and Yanglingquan acupoints near Lu Wushuang's knees.

These two acupoints are old injuries left over from her previous leg injury. Although the meridians have been unblocked, the meridian walls are thinner than in other areas and require long-term warming and nourishing to return to normal levels.

The warm air spread from the lower abdomen to the limbs.

Lu Wushuang's body went limp, her hands, which had been pushing away, lost their strength and instead grabbed Yang Guo's collar.

"No... there are people next door." Lu Wushuang's voice was weak.

"What are you afraid of? It's a 'man'." Yang Guo deliberately emphasized the word "man" and slowly moved his fingers up along the waistline.

Lu Wushuang pinched him lightly, leaving a shallow mark on his ribs with her fingernails.

Yang Guo didn't dodge, nor did he stop his hands; instead, he changed the subject of his words.

"Did you notice anything from what happened at the threshing ground today?"

Lu Wushuang didn't respond. She buried her face in Yang Guo's chest and remained silent for a long time before finally speaking.

She looked at my legs at least five times.

"You counted very clearly."

"Nonsense, don't you know who's staring at your legs?" Lu Wushuang's voice was low and sullen.

"When I used to have a limp, I felt like I could kill anyone who looked at me. Now that my leg is healed, she still looks at me."

Yang Guo withdrew his inner energy and placed his right hand on her waist without moving.

"So what are you really thinking?"

Lu Wushuang remained silent.

A gust of wind rose again in the bamboo grove outside the house.

The bamboo poles were bent by the wind, and the leaves brushed against the window paper, making a rustling sound.

There was no movement from the next room; the scholar named Chen Ping'an was very quiet.

"I can't quite put my finger on it," Lu Wushuang said softly. "I just felt that the way she looked at me was off. It wasn't like she was sizing me up; it was like she was looking for something."

Yang Guo did not respond.

He believed this intuition.

Those who have been through thick and thin in the world are extremely sensitive to the intentions in the eyes of others.

Lu Wushuang began wandering alone at the age of five, and the instincts she developed were more reliable than any martial arts.

She said that the person was "looking for something," and nine times out of ten, he was looking for something.

Yang Guo mentally reviewed the details of the day.

The scholar looked at Lu Wushuang's legs twice.

The first time was at the teahouse, when I saw Lu Wushuang standing with her weight slightly to the right.

The second time was when Lu Wushuang bent down to serve porridge, and her skirt slipped past her knees.

Neither of the two observations pertained to walking posture, but rather to subtle deviations in a fixed standing posture.

People who can see this discrepancy either have a deep understanding of physical disabilities or have spent a long time with someone who has a leg problem.

In addition, that person's swordsmanship style was based on the Southern Sword School, characterized by rapid, quick thrusts and agile footwork. The martial artists of Guanzhong did not follow this style.

And those ear piercings.

Yang Guo tapped Lu Wushuang's waist twice with his fingers, as if knocking on a door.

"Do you have the jade pendant that Huang Rong gave you on you?"

Lu Wushuang's hand unconsciously reached for her chest.

That jade pendant was always worn close to her body, threaded with a red cord and tied around her neck, hidden inside her collar during the day. Huang Rong had said that it was a keepsake from her cousin, Cheng Ying.

"Take it with you."

"Find an opportunity tomorrow to show off the jade pendant. Don't deliberately try to pull it out; just tie it loosely so it will naturally slip out of your collar when you bend over."

Why?

Yang Guo turned over and faced Lu Wushuang.

Moonlight streamed through the holes in the window paper, falling on Lu Wushuang's profile and casting a small shadow on her eyelashes.

"fishing."

Lu Wushuang wrinkled her nose but didn't ask any further questions.

She had gotten used to Yang Guo's habit of only saying half of what he meant.

If you ask too many questions, he'll either steer the conversation in a wrong direction or use words to shut you up.

But this time, something was stirring within her, making her uneasy.

Huang Rong said that the jade pendant was a keepsake from her cousin Cheng Ying.

The scholar kept looking at her legs.

When these two things were put together, a thought flashed through Lu Wushuang's mind, but it was too vague for her to grasp.

"Master, what does my cousin look like?"

"I don't know, I've never seen it before."

"Has Sister Rong mentioned it to you?"

Yang Guo thought for a moment.

Huang Rong did mention it a few times. She said that Cheng Ying was about the same age as Lu Wushuang, and they learned martial arts on Peach Blossom Island from a young age. Later, for some unknown reason, they left the island and wandered the martial world alone.

She has delicate features and a quiet personality, the complete opposite of Lu Wushuang.

Huang Rong's original words were, "That Cheng Ying is a quiet child, keeping all her thoughts to herself."

"Chief Huang said she was pretty but had a quiet personality."

Lu Wushuang remained silent.

The room fell silent.

A few barks came from afar, probably from a dog at the east end of the village that had been startled by the wind.

After a while, Lu Wushuang spoke with her eyes closed, her tone turning colder.

"Where did your hand go when you helped that scholar in the threshing ground today?"

Yang Guo had been waiting for this moment. He sighed inwardly, but his tone remained calm on the surface.

"The waist. If you're helping someone up, where do you support them if not their waist?"

"Can't I just put my arm around your shoulder?"

"She's almost half a head shorter than me, isn't it tiring for me to stretch my arms that high?"

Lu Wushuang gripped the corner of the blanket tightly. The dry straw rustled under the blanket.

"You pinched it again."

"I didn't pinch it."

"I saw it. Your thumb moved."

Yang Guo grinned in the darkness.

This girl's observational skills, if used for serious matters, could make her a top-notch spy; using them on him is purely a waste of her time.

With so many people gathered around the threshing ground, she actually noticed even the slightest movement of his thumb.

"That's called acupoint probing. There's a Zhangmen acupoint on the waist, which is the intersection of the Foot Jueyin and Foot Shaoyang meridians. By pressing it with your thumb, you can determine what kind of internal energy cultivation the person is practicing from the amplitude of the pulse. This is a basic technique for pulse diagnosis, you don't understand."

This statement is presented with great detail and conviction, and the wording is refined.

If it were a girl who didn't know martial arts, she might have been fooled by him.

Lu Wushuang had been with him for more than half a year, practicing the Yi Jin Duan Gu Pian (a traditional Chinese medicine manual) to this day, and had memorized the acupoint diagrams no less than three times.

"The Zhangmen acupoint is located at the eleventh rib, below your waist. That place is called the Daimai acupoint, not the Zhangmen acupoint."

Yang Guo was stunned for a moment.

He underestimated the girl.

Lu Wushuang turned over so her back was to him, her voice muffled from under the covers.

"Don't try to fool me with your martial arts common sense. What have you figured out after all that probing?"

"You have a very slim waist."

A pillow came flying at me.

Yang Guo reached out and caught it, then casually tucked it under his head.

The straw pillow collapsed on one side when his head pressed down on it.

"Give me back my pillow!"

"Come and get it."

Lu Wushuang didn't move.

She lay face down on the bed, her face buried in the crook of her arms, her shoulder blades rising and falling with her breath.

After a few breaths, she snuggled closer to Yang Guo and reached for the pillow.

The moment his fingers touched the corner of the pillow, Yang Guo pulled him in, scooping him and the pillow into his arms.

"you!"

Shh. The guy next door has good hearing.

Lu Wushuang's face was pressed against Yang Guo's chest, her heart pounding so hard it made her ribs itch.

He had a faint medicinal fragrance about him, the scent emanating from the pores of someone who regularly practiced the Qiankun Technique; smelling it for too long could make one feel drowsy.

Yang Guo placed his right hand on her lower back, his palm resting against her waist.

He didn't rush to take action.

First, regulate your breathing, allowing the innate vital energy in your body to rise from the dantian. When it passes through the Tanzhong acupoint, it splits into yin and yang paths, circulating once each along the Hand Shaoyin Heart Meridian and the Hand Taiyang Small Intestine Meridian, finally converging at the Laogong acupoint on your right palm.

After this process, the true energy emanating from my palms was denser and gentler than before.

The vital energy seeped in from the waist, traveled half a circle along the belt meridian, and then turned into the three Yang meridians of the feet.

As Yang Guo's true energy passed his knee, it slowed down near the Dubi acupoint, gradually seeping into the meridian wall.

This vein wall is an old injury.

When Lu Wushuang was five years old, her left leg was crushed. Although the bone grew back, the meridians were damaged by the pressure of the broken bone. Even after she cultivated the Yi Jin Duan Gu Pian (a traditional Chinese medicine text) to cleanse her marrow and bones, the elasticity of this section of the meridians was not as good as other parts.

When the temperature drops at night, the flow of vital energy through this area slows down, causing the knees to feel sore and stiff.

Yang Guo would give her a feeding every three to five days, and he had done it at least twenty times in total.

The progress was slower than he had expected; it would probably take another three or four months for this section of the pulse wall to fully recover.

The warm air flowed over my knees, and the soreness gradually subsided.

Lu Wushuang's body went limp.

My shoulders relaxed, my fingers relaxed, even my clenched teeth relaxed.

"Does it still hurt?"

"It doesn't hurt anymore." Lu Wushuang's voice was muffled and indistinct in his arms.

Yang Guo did not retract his hand.

Lu Wushuang's breathing changed.

"Where are you... touching...?"

"I'll help you clear your meridians. There's a Huantiao acupoint on the outer thigh. If you don't press it, the vital energy will get stuck on the meridian wall when it reaches here, and it's easy to stagnate over time."

"The Huantiao acupoint is on your buttock! Do you think I haven't studied acupoint charts?"

"That's perfect, that's exactly where I'm headed."

Lu Wushuang bit his collarbone.

Yang Guo grunted, but didn't stop what he was doing.

A very faint sound came from the next room.

The wooden bed creaked once, then fell silent again.

Yang Guo's hearing was several times better than that of an ordinary person.

He could hear the scholar turn over, but his breathing rhythm was off.

When a sleeping person turns over, their breathing is even. After this person turned over, their breathing became shallower, with a brief pause in between.

I couldn't fall asleep.

Yang Guo lowered his voice to a level that only Lu Wushuang could hear.

"Bite gently, it'll be hard to explain if it leaves a mark tomorrow."

"Explain what? And to whom?"

Explain it to your cousin.