Lin Feng asked the question with such righteous confidence that Father Lin was left dumbfounded.
They stared at each other from across the room for several breaths.
Lin Feng neither avoided nor yielded to his gaze, and thus watched Father Lin's expression pass from grief to confusion, suspicion, and finally wavering. She did not feel particularly sad that he had failed to recognize her. Families in the northern lands were not bound by as many tedious formalities as those in the central region. Their womenfolk were relatively free and uninhibited, but Lin Feng had been only a child back then, too young to be free and uninhibited, and she had still needed to avoid too much contact with the male relatives in her family.
She did not have many memories of seeing her father.
The father and daughter had always met in public places, with a crowd of maids and old matrons present. Lin Feng would not act spoiled toward him, and he was not like her mother, who had doted on and cherished her daughter. They had merely been the most ordinary father and daughter.
Even those few encounters had been more than a decade ago.
Her rhetorical question had been more playful teasing than resentment.
Father Lin, however, did not know that.
He examined Lin Feng's bearing and expression again and again, uncertain, before calling tentatively, "Asu? If you're Asu, why are you disguised as your elder brother? And when did you arrive here?"
"...Is there any chance you have more than two sons?"
Father Lin could not possibly have imagined Lin Feng. He flushed purple with indignation and said, "You're slandering my good name!"
Aside from their mother's contribution, Father Lin also deserved considerable credit for having children as strikingly beautiful as Lin Chun, Lin Su, and