After leaving the Hall of Returning to Impermanence and crossing the covered corridor, Baozhu still felt unsettled. She deliberately stopped to let the people ahead get farther away, then beckoned Wei Xun over.
Wei Xun stopped three paces away and asked, "What is it?"
Baozhu kept beckoning for him to come closer, but he stayed where he was. Frowning, she said, "Do you know what 'whispering conspiracies into someone's ear' means?"
Wei Xun blinked. "There's no need to get that close. My hearing is excellent. Just say whatever you have to say."
Baozhu's expression changed at once. These past few days, who knew what had gotten into him? He talked and laughed with her as easily as ever, yet kept deliberately avoiding her for no apparent reason. Just now, outside the temple gates, when her legs had gone numb, he had only helped her down before letting go. Was he avoiding impropriety? Holding something back? Repulsed by her?
Watching Baozhu's expression shift from bewilderment to embarrassed anger, then approach outright fury, Wei Xun realized he had gone a little too far. He hurriedly invented an excuse. "I smell. I look after that donkey and the ox every day, and livestock stink. However long it's been since you last bathed, it's been just as long for me."
Baozhu froze. Remembering the stench in the Hall of Returning to Impermanence, she dubiously raised her sleeve and sniffed herself. On second thought, keeping a proper distance from each other really was better.
She cleared her throat and lowered her voice. "Did you see the mural of the beautiful woman in the newly dead phase inside the hall?"
"Uh..."
Wei Xun hesitated, recalling that the woman in the painting seemed to be naked. He did not know whether the question concealed a trap, but