Wu Cai said awkwardly, “Keep your voice down. I… my head was only scrambled because of all your talking just now. Stop making noise and let me think.”
Hearing Wu Cai blame him after leading them the wrong way immediately made Mu Xueshi angry. He raised a small fist threateningly. “Who are you calling noisy, huh?”
Wu Cai frowned without answering, thoroughly irritated. He had only intended to create some misunderstanding between Mu Xueshi and the Third Prince. Instead, he had somehow become the butt of Mu Xueshi’s joke.
Mu Xueshi found the chance to strike back extremely satisfying. It might be kicking someone while he was down, but Wu Cai deserved to be taught a lesson after always acting so arrogant. In the end, he was nothing more than a man with no sense of direction.
A thought suddenly occurred to Mu Xueshi. “Can you at least tell left from right?”
Wu Cai’s face turned bright red. Biting his lip, he said, “Mu Xueshi, don’t go too far. If I couldn’t even tell left from right, I would truly be hopeless.”
Mu Xueshi put on an enlightened expression and circled Wu Cai several times with a smug little laugh. Then he suddenly jumped in front of him with his back turned, extended his left hand, and asked, “Is this my left hand or my right?”
Wu Cai held up his own hand to compare. “Left.”
Mu Xueshi spun around to face him and extended the same left hand. “What about now? Left or right?”
Wu Cai looked at his own hand again. “Right.”
“Hahahaha…” Mu Xueshi doubled over laughing until he could barely breathe. Everyone on the street stared at him as though he had gone mad.
Realizing he had answered incorrectly, Wu Cai stormed forward. “I was momentarily confused. It’s the left hand. If you keep deliberately playing tricks on me, I’ll leave you here and go by myself.”
With that, Wu Cai turned away and strode quickly forward.
“Hey! Go ahead. You’ll probably come walking back here again in a minute! Hahaha…” Mu Xueshi shouted after him, clutching his stomach as he laughed.
Wu Cai walked several steps, paused briefly after hearing that, then continued. Fury filled his stomach, yet he had nowhere to vent it. They were on a public street, and he dared not ruin his image, so he could only suppress his anger and plan to mention today’s events to the Third Prince in a carefully twisted way later, so the prince would properly punish this arrogant man.
“Stop!”
Mu Xueshi suddenly shouted. Startled, Wu Cai stopped almost involuntarily.
Mu Xueshi’s expression abruptly changed. His cheeks were still flushed from laughing, but his face had become unmistakably serious. Before Wu Cai could turn around, Mu Xueshi dragged him into a narrow alley off the street.
“Why did you pretend to be my mother?” Mu Xueshi asked solemnly.
Wu Cai stiffened in shock. His face changed, and his lips trembled so badly he could barely speak.
“I… I… don’t know… what you’re… talking about…”
“Forget it.” Mu Xueshi clasped his hands behind his back, puffed out his small chest, and spoke with complete certainty. “Blame your terrible sense of direction. I’ve been paying attention these past few days. My mother wears her hairpin on the left. But the shadow I saw that night was actually wearing it on the right; from where I stood, it only looked like the left. Who else would make that kind of mistake besides you? Don’t tell me everyone in the manor has no sense of direction.”
Wu Cai was rendered completely speechless. He had never expected someone who looked so foolish to make such a sharp deduction. Not only had taking Mu Xueshi out resulted in him being laughed at, Wu Cai had also managed to expose his own earlier trick.
The anger drained from Wu Cai’s face. Looking somewhat defeated, he admitted, “Yes. I pretended to be your mother to interfere with your judgment. I wasn’t trying to frame her. I’m simply tired of how she always targets me and complains about me to Master, trying to keep me beneath her.”
“I am not nearly as promiscuous as she claims. I simply like making friends and have never crossed the line. Most of those rumors about me came from Madam herself. She is your mother, so you are free not to believe me, and you may report what I did to the Third Prince. But everything I am saying today comes from the bottom of my heart. If Young Master doubts me, investigate it yourself.”
After speaking, Wu Cai actually knelt before Mu Xueshi. His usual arrogance disappeared, replaced by sincerity. Mu Xueshi had been about to accuse him of hypocrisy, because not long ago he had seen Wu Cai with another man in the grass.
But Wu Cai’s words, “Most of those rumors came from Madam herself,” made Mu Xueshi truly begin to think. There had been the sounds from the grass, then the bird capable of mimicking human voices, the fact that it flew into Madam Mu’s room and did not come out, and the way Wu Cai appeared later as though nothing had happened…
And Madam Mu had said something else.
“Xue’er, didn’t you used to dislike noisy, chattering things like this? How did one of my birds manage to catch your attention so completely that you chased it all the way here from the rear mountain?”
*How did she know I had been to the rear mountain?*
At the time, Mu Xueshi had focused only on the first half because he was busy concealing the truth about his identity and had overlooked the rest. Seen this way, the scene that morning might very well have been staged by Madam Mu. She could have had the parrot imitate Wu Cai’s voice where Mu Xueshi would hear it, making him believe Wu Cai truly was secretly involved with someone else.
If so, Madam Mu’s attempt to frame Wu Cai was no different from Wu Cai impersonating Madam Mu. Both were trying to retaliate against the other and ideally shift suspicion for the Grand Tutor’s death onto their rival. Everything Mu Xueshi had noticed over the past few days might have been nothing more than the private struggle between wife and favorite, completely unrelated to Grand Tutor Mu’s murder.
The smug look on Mu Xueshi’s face collapsed instantly. Even his straight posture sagged, and he dejectedly found a stone block and sat down.
He had been planning to tell the Third Prince about his new discovery, but now he could not even bring himself to mention it. All the work of the past few days had amounted to nothing. He had run around and racked his brain only to figure out the tense relationship between Madam Mu and Wu Cai. As for the actual murderer, he still had no clue.
Still, that bird really was talented, Mu Xueshi had to admit. When it imitated his own voice earlier, even he had failed to recognize the difference. It could apparently mimic those other sounds too, making it practically an ancient voice recorder and voice actor in one. The thought of a bird like that landing outside his own window sent a chill down his back.