"How, how did you do that?" Lu"er felt that her mistress is so omnipotent, she could even control animals as scary as snakes. No wonder she"s the head of the Murong House.

"Back when I lost my appet.i.te for three days after seeing a snack, I started researching on how to summon them."

Lu"er suddenly recalled when her mistress was 10 year old, she"d bring a stack of strange books with her to the bamboo forest everyday and knocked and banged on things. She even spent a sizable amount of money to have someone build her an ancient zither that wouldn"t produce any sound. Master Murong was so angry when he found out he almost fired the person who got this done, luckily mistress spoke in his favor....

Suddenly it all clicked, "That ancient zither.... earring.... it"s just like the ancient zither that couldn"t make any sound...." and it"s all coming back to her, what mistress said back then wasn"t that the zither "can"t make any sound, it"s just that dad can"t hear the sound that it makes." So that was what she meant -- humans couldn"t hear it, but snakes could!

Lu"er was getting more and more frightened, how... how could miss have turned something so deadly into earrings and wore them everyday...

"You are getting smarter," Murong Yun Shu was very happy that she didn"t need to spent time and effort in explaining any further. Actually when she was researching for the method to tame the snakes she merely wanted to show off in front of the snakes, to avenge for "not being able to eat for three days." Later on she had someone make her this pair of earrings for self-defense purposes -- she didn"t want to be bullied by snakes again. She didn"t think it"d end up saving her like they did yesterday. Frankly speaking, if it wasn"t the last resort, she would not have done it. Even with her eyes closed, just visualizing the scene with many snakes slivering at the same time was enough to make her loose her appet.i.te in days to come.

"Then how did you know Feng Ling was in her room?" Nie Qing was going to ask about the snakes first, but once Lu"er brought up earrings, ancient zither, and it all made sense after looking at the earrings. His look turned into fear. From now on, no matter what happened, never offend the Murong woman...

Murong Yun Shu turned around, just in time to see Nie Qing shuddered. Baffled, she asked, "Master Nie is cold?"

Nie Qing gritted his teeth, "A little."

Murong Yun Shu"s eyes flickered, pretending she had accepted Nie Qing"s explanation. She continued, "If I was the intended target of Jiang Zhou Four Odds, they wouldn"t be so stupid to kidnap Feng Ling ahead of time to alarm us....1" She noticed Nie Qing had shuddered again and realized why his look was so peculiar. She carried on, "Besides, one side of Feng Ling"s room was connected to the cliff and the other side to the hallway. The kidnappers couldn"t have escaped through the window, nor could they carry her out the front door, so she must be still inside the room."

"They have nothing to gain, why did they bother?"

"As I have said, to alert us......." and she saw Nie Qing shuddered again, finally she couldn"t contain herself anymore, "If I"m not scare, why should a man like you be afraid of snake...."

And Nie Qing shuddered again.

Murong Yun Shu patiently cast him a very subtle supercilious look and continued on with what she was saying, "They purposefully kidnapped Feng Ling and took away my baggage, just to alert..... 2 us that we are in danger."

"So what you were saying was, these individuals are on our side?"

Murong Yun Shu seemingly mindlessly glanced over at a particular table in the inn and said, "Hard to say."

While they were chatting, Feng Ling had finished her breakfast and skipped outside with a bright smile, "Okay, I"m ready to go!"

Everybody piled into the carriage and slowly headed toward their next stop, the town of Qing Yuan.

Back in the inn, the table in the middle sat three

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1. Took me a while to figure this one out. But the Chinese idiom "beat the gra.s.s and startle the snakes" means "accidentally alarming someone by some rash actions". In the story Nie Qing shuddered every time he heard the word "snake." :D
2. This time Murong Yun Shu purposefully omit the word "snake" in her conversation. ^__^

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Next scheduled update: Tuesday, Oct 9 - Ch 22.3 - Secret of the Earrings

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