"Straightened up?" I smiled. It did seem like a bit of an overreaction. It seemed that her elder brother, Shenkong, might truly still be alive. Faced with a son who had suddenly appeared, he would certainly have been shocked.
"That's right. He was so startled that he muttered my elder brother's name, then hurried off with the other disciples to search for him. What else did you think?" Xue Qingcheng said.
I furrowed my brows and thought for a moment before asking, "And how did you react at the time?"
"Of course I looked very surprised, but I knew someone must have been deliberately creating a false trail. Since he had never entered Sky City, how could my elder brother have suddenly appeared? How was that possible?" Xue Qingcheng wore an utterly confident expression.
I shook my head and said, "You're so clever and perceptive. How did your father still manage to deceive you?"
"What are you talking about? How was I deceived?" Xue Qingcheng asked in surprise.
"Think about it. Even you know how Sky City's defensive formation operates, and you know that no immortal cultivator can fly in without an invitation. Moreover, even your elder brother's remains were found. How could he have entered with a token or something else proving his identity? You understand all that—would your father not know it?" I gave a speechless laugh. His overreaction meant that he was certain of something in his heart. What he had shown might not have been the truth of his feelings, but merely something he wanted his daughter to see.
Only by making himself nervous could he prove how deeply concerned he was about Shenkong. I had anticipated precisely that, which was why I had employed this scheme.
If I looked at it from another angle, there