Chapter 77: Just A Weird Girl!
"Who is it?" she asked.
"I have no idea," I shrugged. "But your enemies would be stupid not to put at least one spy in your team."
In this case, I was putting myself in the shoes of whoever Song Song was against. If there was one thing someone could trust Song Song to be, it was unpredictable. So it would make sense to have someone keep an eye on our dear psycho girl here so she didn't do something like... just decide to lead this team toward one of the rival camps and slaughter them.
"If your enemies did not put a spy in your team, there is nothing to worry about. You will win this, or you would have already won by now," I stated the obvious.
Of course, her enemies were not dumb; we both knew that. One of her enemies was surely her other cousin, the kid who was the Sect Leader's son. Given how the Sect Leader himself had come into power, I doubted he raised a naive son.
Song Song calmed down and sighed. With her sigh, it seemed like everyone else on the team also breathed an internal sigh of relief.
"It seems like the only people I can trust here are you and your cousins," Song Song shook her head.
"Do not trust my cousins," I quickly refuted her. "While they might work for you, they ultimately have the clan's best interests in mind. If betraying you benefits the Liu Clan, then you can be sure they will stab you in the back."
"Oh? Is that so?" Song Song asked rhetorically as an eerie feeling ran up my spine and a strange chill spread through my body. "Then, what about you? Should I trust you? If your cousins have their clan's intentions at heart, what about you?"
Well, I had stumbled into very dangerous waters here. I would have to answer carefully, or I would not take a step further before my head would be rolling at my feet. But at the end of the day, anything other than the truth would be a lie. But I had to be careful how I came off.
"If I were in your place, I would not trust me either, just to be sure," I shrugged. "But there is one thing that you can trust."
"And what is that?" she asked.
"You can trust my lack of strength. I am only a Body Tempering Cultivator, and if I decide to betray you or stab you in the back, you can rip my head off before I can even bring the knife down, I answered with the facts that she could easily prove.
Almost immediately, Song Song put a hand on my shoulder, and I felt a soft Qi run through my body in a split second and leave before it did any harm. She had gotten better at imbuing Qi in someone else's body compared to the last time we did this.
"You truly are a Body Tempering Cultivator and don't have Qi spread through your body like any Qi Gathering Cultivator would," she stated her findings and let go of my shoulder before stating. "I have decided to trust you on this. You haven't lied or led me wrong until now."
"Well, if I were to lie about the traitor, the only benefit a spy would get was making you appear paranoid or crazy" I carefully thought of my following words and contemplated if I wanted to say such things to her face. Ah, screw it. "But we both know you don't need much help since they already see you like that."
"True," she agreed without any of the anger.
Huh, she was more self-aware about her problems than I expected.
While Song Song looked at everyone in her team like a hawk searching for her prey, I kept my eyes on the one person I knew for a fact would betray Song Song if she ever got the chance, and that was Ye An.
"You can put the array down and return to the others. I need some time to think," Song Song said, waving me away.
"Call me if you need anything," I said before dismissing the silencing array around us with a single thought and returning to the rest of the team.
Unlike before, it seemed like they no longer seemed angry or even thinking of me. Everyone was looking at the ground, not daring to raise their heads to meet Song Song's gaze.
I stayed back with my cousins, who spoke very little the whole way, only occasionally staring at some of the people in the crowd. To be more precise, Liu Bo talked a ton and acted as friendly as always. But the other two were stone-faced and impossible to read.
Slowly, the sky turned dark as we continued on the road. Song Song had not stopped or told anyone after what I had told her. Perhaps telling her was not the best decision, but she needed to know. Because if anything were going to happen to her, this was the perfect time for someone to pull off an assassination and blame it on the monstrous beasts.
Was she even paying attention to her surroundings?
"Oh! Cool! Do you think I can work with this fire..." she scratched her head and uncomfortably smiled. "Despite Song Song telling me to go around doing menial work or something, I brought nothing to start a fire with or anything like that."
"Did you bring cooking tools?" I inquired.
"Of course!" Song Sia smiled brightly and showed me the bronze ring on her finger. A dozen pans and pots popped out in front of her. "Tada! Look at this!"
She had enough space to carry so many pots and pans but brought nothing to start a fire with?
Perhaps Song Song was right; her cousin seemed to lack foresight. She had turned out quite peculiar in her own way for someone who grew up with Song Song.
"Did you bring any meat or other foodstuff?" I asked.
"Yep!" She then took off her strange ring and handed it to me. "You can check it all and take anything you need from in there!"
I raised a questioning brow and examined the storage ring in my hand. It felt and looked like a typical ring; there wasn't even a speck of Qi around it.
How were these things made?
Despite my curiosity, I turned toward Song Sia and clarified, "I can't use Qi to open a storage ring."
"Oh! Sorry about that!" Song Sia hurriedly took back her storage ring and began listing the contents she had brought.
Was she actually this slow, or was it all an act? It made little sense for someone who grew up with Song Song as a friend to be so naive.
Though some people were just born less astute, and no amount of life experience could change that.
If she was acting, then she was an exceptional actress. Also, she would have had to act around Song Song all the time, too, and my psycho friend had an instinct about these things.
Even as Song Sia put everything up and began making some meat stew, she kept up a one-sided conversation with me, unaware of my lingering gaze.
There were no inconsistencies in her acting, not an ounce of suspicion. She hadn't even noticed me looking at her.
From an outside perspective, if someone were a spy, Song Sia fit the description perfectly. She had been with Song Song for a long time and could have kept an eye on her. But at the same time, she did not come from the part of her family connected to the Sect Leader.
"So, how did you and Song Song meet each other?" Sia asked, trying to make some small talk.
"It kind of just happened," I answered vaguely.
She didn't seem to mind the answer and continued talking about food and some recipes she came up with when she was younger.
"By the way, Song Song seems quite happier with you around," Sia remarked. "She seemed more at ease, too."
I raised a questioning brow and looked at Song Song, who was leaning against a tree and staring at the group like a hawk. Then I turned back toward Sia and asked, "Does this look like someone happy?"
Sia chuckled, her voice soft and friendly, nothing like her cousin's. "Yes, Song Song is usually much worse."
After that, she picked up the pot and walked away with a happy leap in her step, calling out to anyone hungry.
What a strange girl...
