"Elder Feng, you call this a peerless secret manual?!"
Jiang Xiaobai raised his head and looked at Feng Jitong, his face full of helplessness.
Indeed, sitting right on top inside the wooden box were several packets of embroidery needles.
A yellowed book lay beneath them at the bottom.
Yet the large words on its cover clearly read "Hundred-Pattern Embroidery Manual"!!
No matter how he looked at that title, it had nothing to do with a peerless secret manual.
"Huh? That's not right!"
Feng Jitong was dumbfounded too. Scratching his head, he said, "If these are just embroidery needles and a book on embroidering clothes!"
"Why... would the ancestor hide them so carefully?!"
Had Jiang Xiaobai not figured out the trick, they might not have found them even after searching for another several decades.
Their sect's ancestor had gone to all that trouble just to hide a sewing kit?!
"Exactly!"
Beside them, Cheng Yanqiu spoke up. "Could the title be deliberately misleading, while the contents... actually conceal some other secret?"
"Oh, that makes sense!"
At those words, Jiang Xiaobai's eyes lit up, and anticipation stirred in his heart once more.
He immediately picked up the book and eagerly opened it.
But after examining it briefly, a wry smile returned to his face.
The first part explained how to choose needles and thread.
The later sections introduced running stitches, backstitches, chain stitches, overlapping stitches...
Refusing to give up, Jiang Xiaobai flipped through another dozen or so pages.
Yet the more he turned, the more colorful his expression became.
The later pages were filled entirely with embroidery patterns.
There were flowers, birds, insects, fish, landscapes, and cloud patterns, with the stitching sequence marked beside each design.
By every indication, this was an embroidery manual as genuine as they came!
"Ahem!"
Feng Jitong could