There had been a fake Xue Fang, back when the Zhang family had been silenced. Was Lao Meng the impersonator? Starting from that point on, had Lao Meng been colluding with that Zhao guy?

Noticing that her brows were still furrowed, Cao Weining attempted to ease her worries. “Truthfully… I understood a bit of what Brother Zhou and the rest had said yesterday.”

Blinking her big, apricot pit-like eyes, she looked up at him. Once glanced at like that by her, he practically emanated a heroic aura, like he could do anything, and suddenly felt himself to truly be a purely manly man.

A purely manly man who, for the sake of cajoling his lady when she was upset, would suffer her blows whenever she was angry, and stand up to give her a thorough analysis whenever she didn’t understand something.

“I heard them say ‘Lapis Armor’ and ‘key’,” he said. “They evidently want to get what’s in the Armor. Finding the five pieces of it alone isn’t enough, as it still requires a key, which is in the hands of that limping villain Xiao Zhang had spoken of. At the start, this villain and Zhao Jing were in the same group, so they set out together to do evil and steal the other pieces. Zhao Jing murdered Patriarch Shen, framed Hero Gao for it, then obtained all of them; now, one has the Armor, while one has the key, thus dividing the loot unequally, and making them start to fight.”

Gu Xiang pondered this, then nodded. “That seems to be so… who the one wanting to kill Zhang Chengling, then?”

“Think about it. Xiao Zhang saw the crook that’s been hiding all this time. Even if he had forgotten it for a time, that crook still feared that he would remember, then unveil his identity, so he hired people to hunt him down… ah, yes, Zhao Jing must have known about this, else he wouldn’t have allowed Brother Zhou and them to bring Xiao Zhang away amidst such a mess. Once he was brought away, he then wouldn’t be able to set about killing him so easily — but why is that Ghost Valley crook afraid of having his identity exposed? It took me half a night of thinking before I understood; he’s likely scared of the Valley’s internals discovering that he’s a traitor, then killing him.”

She looked at him in adoration, thinking to herself that his theory was like a blind cat bumping into a dead mouse.

Upon seeing her expression, he felt even more like he was walking on air, waving his hand in false humility. “I’m just randomly guessing, that’s all. Ahem. Let’s not worry over stuff like fools; we’ll go expose Zhao Jing’s plot, look for Hero Ye, then go back to live a good life, just you and me.”