Just in case, I should ask a question, to make sure that I’m not jumping to conclusions and not giving myself away.

“Uhh, I’m sorry. Could you explain what you mean?”

She gives a light sigh before continuing.

“Come on, you’re smart enough to know what I mean. Especially, with all the things you did to keep those young masters from having their way with me, as they were chasing me. This much should tell you I was able to see everything.”

How could I miss this? I made sure to check for perceptions, lines of sight, and even spiritual sense in a very vague way.

Oh no.

I didn’t think to check for special abilities. If she has something similar to what that discerning young master had, then it’s possible that she may have caught everything I had done.

Maybe I should explain more, so that way there're no misunderstandings.

…

…

… No.

Even if she knows this much, that doesn’t mean she knows everything. I know I have a habit that when I get flustered by something, to freak out and just try to explain everything.

This is a great chance to practice how to not do that.

I have to do some counter intel. even if this is going to suck immensely later today, when I need it most.

With this in mind, I activate my scan again. This time, I focus in on a specific aspect what abilities she might have, based on her history.

I immediately find that she’s always been considered the smart one of the family. To be more specific the discerning one.

In line with the current investigation, it appears there was an incident when she was younger. A thief with a talisman that allowed them to take on the appearance of someone else perfectly, even to the point of recreating their scent, had broken into their facilities.

Mei Lin had happened to be traveling through the facility with her parents and had seen the original person before. She immediately stopped the person and asked why they were copying that person.

While they weren’t originally suspicious of them, the lack of organizational knowledge by the thief became quickly apparent. This event was quickly hushed up, but became spread around for thieves to not hit their facilities.

While I could have gotten more information, almost immediately I could feel dizzy from over stretching my scan. I cut off the flow of any more information coming to me to make sure that the damage doesn’t get any worse.

Since this was a bit of an open secret, I only took a bit of a hit from my scan. Not as bad as it could have been, but still pretty bad.

I can feel myself waver in my seat, as the dizziness is soon accompanied by pain. Very sharp and distracting pain. I grab my head while holding onto the side of the carriage.

I notice at that point that Mei Lin’s hand is on my shoulder, holding me in place.

Mei Lin’s had automatically reached a hand out to support me, just as I began to sway.

“Hey… are you okay?”

Her voice comes out soft and worried, as her eyes scrunch up in concern. My eyes look up to meet hers before she suddenly turns to look off to the side.

As I manage to steady myself, I can hear her say almost subconsciously, “What am I doing?”

She takes a deep breath before bowing low in her seat while continuing to speak.

“Sir, I deeply apologize for repaying your favor with injustice. Please forget my rude question. I was wrongly suspicious about why you were helping me. I now realize how great and magnanimous you are. You paid such a price to…”

“Please… just give me a moment.”

I cut her off at that point, not wanting to hear all of this. The pain is quite significant and thrums harder than any migraine I’ve ever experienced. Even listening to her takes energy away from trying to deal with this pain. My hand rubs my temples, trying to assuage the pain in any way that I can.

Dammit. I’ve made a mistake. I’ve really been abusing this ability, and it’s definitely costs me this time.

I might need to actually shut this down for a bit, to bring it back to normal levels.

Almost subconsciously, I bring the scan down to nothing. This helps bring the migraine down a bit.

However, this also means that the only thing allowing me to keep ahold of my surroundings is my awareness ability.

Even that is faltering because of the intensity of the migraine.

Mei Lin, for her part, falls silent.

My anxiety rises as I feel practically naked from my missing scan. I manage to barely extend my awareness just that much more, to compensate.

As we sit here quietly, I can feel the carriage spring to life, as it begins moving while following the others.

The creak of the wheels and the bumps of the road become a monotonous drone that I learn to ignore, as I focus only on my awareness. I can feel time pass by, all until the last vestiges of pain pass from my brain 30 minutes later. I wait even longer than that to make sure that I am truly feeling better. Knowing that I’m not out of the woods just yet.

For the first 10 minutes, Mei Lin had sat worriedly with her head down. After that, she seemed to realize that I was focusing on something and began to relax a bit.

Her eyes drift away from me to look out the window.

At some point, the silence between us became somewhat comfortable.

We still need to talk about this, despite the current air going on.

If I truly want to attempt to recover from overusing my scan, then I need to not use it for at least a few hours during this carriage trip.

After that point, I should be okay enough to use it at regular levels and then some.

I can sense that there are still people listening in, albeit less than before. Even the cultivator’s spiritual sense washes over all the groups every once in a while. This feels like more of a protective measure than an investigative one. Though, it still does have that probing aspect to it.

Of course, there are also spies that jump around in the distance, following along with the carriage. Since I’m only using my awareness, I can only barely catch their presence.

In a sense, taking away my scan is a bit of a benefit to me. It’s forcing me to only use my awareness, and attempt to reach the limits of that ability. The difference between the two is that the awareness seems to use all my senses to form a mental map of sorts.

It’s mostly short distance and nowhere near as easy to use as my scan. It takes a long amount of time, as well as some deep thinking to determine whether what I’m seeing might be something I can identify or not. After using the scan and the awareness together for so long, though, it was much easier than I’d thought it would be to mentally come up with a mental map, though, I’m basically manually generating it.

If I didn’t have a significant amount of time, I wouldn’t be able to tell that the spies were following along.

What I find most interesting, though, is that the cultivator would clearly know that they're following along, but does nothing about it.

Probably an agreement of sorts…

Directing my attention back to the conversation between Mei Lin and I, since we had ended the writing early, there should still be plenty of time to talk using it.

Tapping the board that lays between us a few times, I get her attention.

Her head moves smoothly over to me, with her locking eyes onto mine.

She’s clearly waiting for me to speak.

“Let’s talk about the relationship between you and I.”

Her face immediately sours and falls into despair.