Ding Songyan did not press her with questions, for he knew his master would continue on her own.
Wearing a crude iron crown, Tao Wenshu walked out from behind the desk and said thoughtfully:
"There was indeed a Liu Family in Yuejiang Prefecture, Chu Province-the family to which Liu Yuzao, Qi Xiaoxiang's assumed identity, belonged. You should have heard of them.
"From what we know now, the entire Liu Family consisted of Sage-Slaying Path disciples. They moved to Yuejiang Prefecture twenty or thirty years ago, put down roots in its streets and lanes, and befriended their neighbors far and wide. They had businesses, farmland, and the prosperity and decline of a lineage. Whether the Imperial Court or the sects and great families, anyone who didn't trace the Liu Family back to its beginnings would believe it was a perfectly respectable merchant family with considerable assets. Had the affair at the Zhen Estate not exposed them, we would have struggled to find anything wrong with them.
"The strongest members of their family were only in the Dayan Realm. Some showed no obvious physical abnormalities; others practiced different cultivation methods. Their years of work served two purposes: first, to supply the Sage-Slaying Path with wealth and resources, and second, to provide genuine, credible, unblemished identities whenever the Sage-Slaying Path needed them. Qin Nuangsheng relied on this Liu Family background to pass scrutiny and marry into the Zhen Estate. The Nine-Evil Witch and the others likewise used it to deceive both the authorities and the Zhen Estate.
"To that end, they even lived in Yuejiang Prefecture for a month, claiming that a daughter married out of a minor branch of the family had returned to visit her relatives. They let the neighbors grow familiar with them and learn the story they had woven,