"Sister Mu, what's wrong? Are you feeling unwell?" Zhong Ling hurriedly asked with concern.
Mu Wanqing pushed the bowl of porridge in front of her far away, as though it were some deadly poison.
She turned her head aside, not daring to look at the porridge again. Her voice trembled slightly as she said coldly, "It's nothing. I just don't have much of an appetite. You two eat."
With that, she grabbed the longsword resting beside the table and sprang to her feet as if fleeing a fire. "I'm going to practice my swordsmanship in the courtyard. Don't mind me."
Watching Mu Wanqing's retreating figure hurry away once again, Zhong Ling bit her chopsticks, suspicion flickering in her bright, watery eyes.
"Something's wrong. Very wrong."
Zhong Ling turned her head. Her usually innocent, airheaded little mind seemed to have suddenly become enlightened, inspiration striking her out of nowhere.
She stared intently at Lin Xuan, who was calmly sipping his porridge at an unhurried pace, and asked in a low voice:
"Brother Xuan, Sister Mu has been really strange today. She ran away the moment she saw you this morning, and now she feels like throwing up at the sight of porridge... That reaction—it kind of feels like..."
She suddenly leaned close to Lin Xuan, lowering her voice. With a mysterious expression tinged with scrutiny, she asked, "Does this have something to do with you? Don't tell me you did something... bad to Sister Mu?"
Lin Xuan had been drinking porridge when he heard that. He looked at Zhong Ling in surprise.
This little girl is usually so muddleheaded, but her instincts are frighteningly accurate at times like this. Her intelligence really shoots through the roof at critical moments. That's rare.
Yet nothing showed on his face. Neither admitting nor denying