At this moment, Cao Weining spoke up, “I heard that a while ago, Hero Gao personally escorted Hero Shen’s remains back to Shuzhong. Afterwards...did something happen then?”

Gao Xiaolian reached up to wipe her eyes clean of tears and lowered her gaze, her expression settling--while this girl had been sensible since they first met her, she was, after all, a young lady from a wealthy family. Even when she left the house, she had her shixiongs to protect her, and she carried a hint of inexperienced naivete. Yet, in the short span of a few months, she had gone through too much and seemed to have become another person entirely. Her voice still quivered, but her emotions were already reined in.

She spoke softly, “Back then, Daddy said he wanted to send Uncle Shen off on a last journey with the other heroes. At first, he agreed to take Deng-shixiong and I along, but he suddenly changed his mind the day before we set off, and made me stay behind. I...at that point in time, I thought he was going back on his word, and had a fight with him, but Daddy was adamant about not bringing me along. He even said...even said a lot of things that didn’t sound nice, things like how the current situation was tense, that we might run into much trouble on the way, that the Ghosts from the Valley are still lurking about outside, and I would slow down their journey…”

A teardrop slid down her cheek. Zhou Zishu said gently, “Your father must have been concerned about something that was inconvenient for him to voice, and made you stay behind out of consideration for your safety.”

Gao Xiaolian nodded. “But I…”

Zhou Zishu said, “As long as you are safe and sound, you are preserving his bloodline on this earth, and have not let your father’s efforts go to waste.”

Gao Xiaolian bit her lip. A long while later, she continued, “I was unwilling to accept it, and planned to follow them sneakily after they left. But who knew that Daddy...Daddy sent people to keep me under surveillance, and left with shixiong. I sulked for half a month, before the shixiongs and shidis guarding me released me, and said that this was also an arrangement Daddy had made. They wanted to escort me to a place to meet up with them. At that time...I felt that something was amiss.”

The few of them could not care about eating as they listened to her. Only Wen Kexing’s expression was still rather placid; he did not interrupt, but ate slowly and with a rarely-seen genteel elegance. Occasionally, he placed small portions in Zhou Zishu’s bowl with his chopsticks.