Chapter 116: Reading faces
Song Zhen's mother, Tao Qing, was a woman whose true age was impossible to tell. She certainly did not possess the beauty of Tang Wu's mother, Mu Xuan. In fact, very few women past middle age could retain natural beauty like Mu Xuan's. Yet the first impression Tao Qing gave was one of elegance and distinction.
It was a distinction that never brought vulgar ostentation to mind. The composed way she drank her tea naturally commanded attention. Even Su Can, with his soul spanning two lifetimes, could feel the room's center of gravity suddenly shift to her.
Tao Qing was perfectly at ease, showing neither the strain of travel nor the slightest fatigue.
Yet her occasionally penetrating gaze made it clear that she was by no means as mild-tempered and unruffled as she appeared.
After hearing Song Zhen introduce them, Tao Qing gave her daughter a curious look. In her memory, Song Zhen rarely brought a man into a meeting between mother and daughter like this. She smiled at Su Can. "Oh, Su, have a seat."
It was a short, casually delivered sentence, yet it conveyed an authority that enveloped people without needing to assert itself. Clearly, despite Song Zhen's introduction, Tao Qing did not seem to regard meeting Su Can as anything particularly significant.
Su Can signaled with his eyes, asking Song Zhen what she was playing at. A trace of mischief flickered in her eyes, but she ignored him and sat down, linking her arm through Tao Qing's. Her straight, waterfall-black hair fell like drifting clouds over Tao Qing's shoulder and their fair wrists pressed together, its ends curling slightly. With effortless ease, she turned the room, lit by the late-autumn sunlight filtering through the window, into a painted scene. "Things are going quite