Observing Wanfa from the martial arts school servants

Chapter 125 The Art of Insight

"Last time, Xiaoxiao sneaked off to the forbidden area in the back mountain, but Yanniang caught her."

She placed the sweet potato on her lap and gestured with her hands.

"Xiaoxiao heard that there is a kind of flower at the top of the waterfall with transparent petals that turn into silver when the moonlight shines on it."

Xiaoxiao wanted to pick one and turn it into money to buy candied hawthorns.

"So I secretly climbed halfway up the mountain and wandered around in the forest for a long time. My face was covered in dust and my knees were scraped."

"When she came back, Xiaoxiao went to the bottom of the waterfall to wash her shoes clean and picked off the leaves from her skirt one by one."

She stopped and took a bite of sweet potato, and as she chewed, she suddenly became excited.

"As a result, when Yan Niang returned the next day, she stood in the courtyard for a while and then hit Xiao Xiao with a ruler."

"And punish Xiaoxiao by making her copy 'The Great Learning' ten times."

Xiaoxiao was unconvinced.

""

"As a result, Yan Niang picked up a small clump of moss from the crack in the blue brick."

"Then she looked at Xiaoxiao's shoes. The soles were clearly clean, but she said there were marks from volcanic rocks on the uppers of the shoes."

She sniffed the air again, saying that she smelled the resin of the old trees from the forbidden area in the back mountain.

"Then look at Xiaoxiao's knees, and look at the cuffs of Xiaoxiao's sleeves. There is moss powder on the cuffs, just like the clump in the cracks between the bricks."

She took a big bite of the sweet potato, looking very aggrieved.

Lin Mu couldn't resist pulling her into his arms.

Xiaoxiao was lying on Lin Mu's shoulder, still clutching the sweet potato in her hand, and she had already fallen asleep.

Lin Mu returned to the inn, gently placed her on the bamboo bed, and covered her with a clean outer garment.

The image of Yan Niang, fierce and suffocating, came to mind.

At dusk, a woman walked along the bamboo path.

She wore a moon-white ruqun (a type of traditional Chinese dress), her long hair was loosely tied into a bun with a bamboo hairpin, and she carried a small wicker book box in her hand.

Her footsteps were light, making only a soft rustling sound on the fallen leaves, as if she were measuring the breath of every inch of the land with her footsteps.

She arrived at the inn and faced Lin Mu.

"Who are you?"

"Yan Niang".

Her voice was soft and gentle.

Lin Mu's gaze lingered on her for a moment.

The woman in front of me was completely different from the Yan Niang that Xiao Xiao had described.

There was no ruler, no sharp gaze, no admonitions of "sit properly and stand properly," she was like a gentle lady from a respectable family.

Yan Niang squatted down and looked at Xiao Xiao, who was sleeping soundly.

A drop of drool still clung to the corner of Xiaoxiao's mouth, her two short legs curled up on her belly, sleeping like a kitten that had sunbathed too much.

She reached out and gently wiped away the drool from Xiaoxiao's mouth with her thumb, then picked Xiaoxiao up from the bed, let her head rest on her shoulder, and gently patted her back.

Her movements were meticulous and gentle, as if she were coaxing a precious yet fragile piece of porcelain, while she hummed an unknown tune.

Xiaoxiao rubbed her face against her shoulder, mumbled something indistinctly, "I want to go to the Tang Dynasty," and then fell into a deep sleep again.

"You are Lin Mu."

Seeing that Xiaoxiao was fast asleep, Yanniang raised her eyes and spoke with certainty.

Lin Mu's eyes narrowed.

How did you know?

"Haoran wrote to me, saying that you once studied literature."

"You possess the aura of literature and the Way," Yan Niang sniffed, "The Purifying Heart Technique? The Righteous Qi?"

She paused, shifted Xiaoxiao into a more comfortable position, and added, "You've also practiced martial arts."

"You are the only one in the Xian Sect who is proficient in both literature and martial arts."

"And you went to the Zou family's house last night."

Lin Mu's eyes narrowed, and his fingers tightened around the Shattered Mountains and Rivers.

The cocoon of energy in the dantian accelerates its rotation at the same instant, and the cocoon chain spreads all the way from the dantian to the soles of the feet. Two dewdrop cocoons are activated at the Yongquan acupoint at the same time.

The Golden Wing Skill could launch him several meters away in an instant, the explosive path of the Mountain-Crushing Fist had already reached the tip of his fist, and the Righteous Qi was stirring deep within his dantian.

He was considering whether he could kill the person to silence them, and whether he could leave safely afterward.

Yan Niang lowered her head and gently brushed the stray hairs damp with sweat from Xiao Xiao's forehead behind her ear. Her movements were still gentle, as if she was completely unaware of the murderous intent of the person in front of her.

"Do not be nervous."

"Let me introduce myself. My surname is Wen, and I am Wen Yanniang, Wen Haoran's aunt."

"Haoran wrote to say that you saved him, so I won't harm you."

She finally raised her eyes, looking calmly at Lin Mu, a faint smile appearing on her lips.

"However, judging from your actions, you were indeed involved in what happened at the back of the Zou family's mountain last night."

That smile was gentle and charming, yet it made the hairs on the back of Lin Mu stand on end.

How did you figure that out?

Yan Niang lifted Xiao Xiao up a little, letting the little head rest more comfortably in the crook of her shoulder, then raised her eyes and her gaze lingered on Lin Mu for a moment.

"There's a piece of leaf stuck to your trouser leg."

Lin Mu lowered his head.

There was indeed a small piece of fine, dry twig stuck to the outside of the right trouser leg. The edges were charred and curled. It wasn't the slender bamboo leaf from the Xianzong Bamboo Forest, but a thicker, harder, and coarser fragment of a broad leaf.

"The dense forest behind the Zou family's house has tree canopies that block out the sun, and the ground is always dark. The fallen leaves are piled up several feet thick, and walking on them feels like walking on cotton."

"The mud embedded in the tread of your shoes," she said, her gaze shifting half an inch downwards, "is the soil unique to the back mountain, black, with a musty smell."

"This kind of soil can't be found anywhere else."

"And this too."

She took a step forward, extended two fingers, and gently plucked an inconspicuous spider silk from the outside of Lin Mu's left sleeve.

The spider silk shimmered with a faint silver light in the afterglow of dusk. It was not the grayish-white spider web found under ordinary eaves, but a kind of silk that was stickier, tougher, and denser.

"The silverback spiders on the back mountain of the Zou family are only found in that one old forest in the entire Qingzhou Prefecture."

"Spider silk will stick to clothing for three days without breaking, and it cannot be washed off with water; the only way to remove it is to burn it off with fire."

She loosened her fingers, and the spider silk drifted down in the wind.

This meticulous deduction left Lin Mu with no room for argument.

"I am a retainer of the Quan family."

"Go help Quan Feng."

Lin Mu tried to steer the other party's thinking in that direction.

Yan Niang smiled and said, "The Xuanmen Qingzhou Prefecture only has so many people and so few tricks up their sleeves."

"The fact that you don't have any residual traces of these techniques on you means you haven't fought them before."

She lifted Xiaoxiao up a little, letting her little head rest back on her shoulder.

Yan Niang's laughter sent chills down Lin Mu's spine.

Is this the insight technique that even Xiaoxiao fears?

Is it because they know a lot, or is there an element of literary and artistic knowledge involved?

Lin Mu, wearing the Broken Mountains and Rivers headband, felt that this person had to be killed.

"take it easy."

"Being nervous won't help."

"With your current level of martial arts, you have no chance of killing me."

"Although I am not skilled in writing poems about mountains and rivers, I am more than capable of defeating you."

7

As she spoke, she pulled a soft silk handkerchief from her sleeve, wiped the drool from the corner of Xiaoxiao's mouth, folded the handkerchief and put it back in her sleeve, then looked up and smiled slightly at Lin Mu.

That smile was as gentle as a spring breeze in March brushing across a lake, but Lin Mu only felt a chill run down his spine.