After the family split up, my stepmother and scumbag father begged me to come home.

Ding Xiaohu was walking behind her, and he had been looking down at the road. When he heard this, he suddenly looked up, and the light in his eyes was brighter than the light coming down from above.

"Sister Qianqian, didn't you never go to school? How do you know so much?"

These words, like a small pebble, landed squarely in Lin Qianqian's heart.

She froze for a moment.

She didn't stop walking, but she could clearly hear the "thump" in her mind.

She forgot.

The original owner was illiterate.

This was a secret she had carefully kept hidden since she transmigrated—she had inherited most of the original owner's memories, but sometimes she would forget the fact that "Lin Qianqian was an uneducated country girl." It wasn't that she intentionally forgot; it was that her body's reactions were still stuck in another time and space. In that time and space, she had gone to school, read books, and visited the dense forests of Xishuangbanna, knowing that dampness was due to insufficient sunlight and transpiration.

But Lin Qianqian shouldn't know these things.

Her mind raced. She thought of Lin Guoan, the younger uncle of the Lin family, the one who went to school in town. The original owner didn't have a deep impression of this uncle, but she knew that such a person existed, knew that he was studying, and knew that her family members spoke of him with a complex sense of envy.

"I heard it from my uncle before," Lin Qianqian said.

Her voice was steady, and her expression remained unchanged. She didn't even turn around to look at Ding Xiaohu; she simply continued to push aside the branches in front of her and keep walking forward, as if the matter wasn't worth discussing further.

Ding Xiaohu said "Oh," and that "Oh" was drawn out a bit, completing the transition from doubt to sudden realization in that one word.

"That's right, scholars know more," he said, his tone carrying a sense of natural relief, and he even nodded, as if giving himself an explanation.

Lin Qianqian did not respond.

She heard Ding Xiaohu's footsteps behind her resume their usual rhythm, crunching on the decaying leaves, just like before. Lin Yulong walked in the middle, oblivious to everything, still looking down at the path, occasionally brushing aside branches that blocked his way.

It seems they managed to fool them.

Lin Qianqian breathed a sigh of relief, but only half of it was gone; the other half was still hanging in the balance.

She thought of the adults in the village. Ding Xiaohu was easy to coax; children are straightforward, and he believed whatever you said. But what about Uncle Zhou? What about Li Laosan? Those adults smoking at the village entrance, squinting at people—they weren't as easy to please as Ding Xiaohu.

A single wrong word, a single uncoordinated movement, a slip of the tongue revealing something one shouldn't know—that's a hole. Once one hole is exposed, the others can't be hidden anymore.

When people ask, "Lin Qianqian, how come you suddenly know so much?"

What should she say? Should she say, "I heard it from my uncle"? Her uncle went to school in town, he didn't grow up in the mountains. How could he know how to collect wild honey? How could he know that red mushrooms grow under pine trees? How could he know the relationship between light and humidity?

One lie requires ten more to cover it up.

The more lies you tell, the bigger the flaws will be.

Lin Qianqian slowed her pace for a moment, then resumed her original speed.

She needs to be more careful.

Not every statement can be dismissed with "I heard it from my uncle." She needs to learn to keep quiet and to think before asking questions—"Should Lin Qianqian know this?"

If you don't know what to say, just shake your head and say you don't know.

It's safer than making up lies.

"Sister Qianqian?" Ding Xiaohu's voice came from behind.

"Um."

Why aren't you saying anything?

"I'm thinking about what else I've gained today," Lin Qianqian said.

This time, she was telling the truth.