Yang Shu's body stiffened, and his crying abruptly stopped.
He slowly turned to look at Yang Lingqing, his eyes filled with disbelief.
He had always lived like this since childhood. No one had ever noticed anything amiss—not even Immortal Master Linghu or Ancestor Yu. Why...
"Hmph. Wondering why I could see through you?"
With a single sentence, Yang Lingqing pierced through the child's thoughts, and her gaze sharpened.
From the very first moment she saw Yang Shu, she had sensed that something was off.
It was an intense sense of discord, as though he were twisting himself against his own nature.
Others could not see it, but as someone of the same kind, Yang Lingqing could sense it with incomparable clarity.
Like her younger self, Yang Shu had matured early. It was merely that the environment he grew up in had led him to choose another way of coping.
Panic immediately rose in Yang Shu's heart. Every disguise and thought he had was seen through at a glance by Yang Lingqing, giving him a level of nervousness he had never felt before. For a moment, he did not know what to do with himself.
"Ah! That hurts!"
Yang Lingqing grabbed Yang Shu by the ear and hauled him over to a meditation cushion.
"Are you going to behave now?"
"I'll behave! I'll behave! Please, Patriarch, let go already! My ear is about to fall off!"
Yang Shu hurriedly begged for mercy, and Yang Lingqing promptly released him.
As the two sat facing each other, Yang Shu's gaze kept wandering, and he did not quite dare meet Yang Lingqing's eyes.
"I ask, you answer. Don't try any tricks."
"I understand..." Yang Shu said with his head lowered.
"Why did you pretend to be an idiot?"
"Being an idiot is easy. Being