Lin Mu's words were of course were shocking to Ku Waowen, but at the same time, her common sense spoke to her that Lin Mu was simply trying to throw her off and was lying.
"Brat, do you really think I was born yesterday? Such simply bluffs aren't something you can use on me." Ku Waowen countered.
"Huh, you really think I'm lying? What if I told you we have our own spies in the Northern Tribes?" Lin Mu stated, throwing Ku Waowen off.
But this time, he didn't give her the time to respond and continued to speak.
"We know all about you. About how Gu Yao has supposedly taken control of the Zither Wind alliance, how you all called another invader through some trader from a different world, and even how many people you have." Lin Mu stated.
Now Ku Waowen couldn't help but think that her conjecture might have been wrong. Knowing not to rush into a trap, she decided to probe a bit more.
"If you really know about our people, then you must know our power, right? Why don't you tell me that and I might just believe you." Ku Waowen said in a taunting tone, though her nervousness was leaking a little bit.
"Sure." Lin Mu said very casually.
"The Northern Tribes have Eleven Dao Treading Realm cultivators and Three Immortal Ascension realm cultivators. As for their locations, most of them are concentrated around your grand capital including two of the Immortal Ascension realm cultivators, while one of the Immortal Ascension realm cultivators is situated to the south of the Grand capital near the Pear's belt in some mountains." Lin Mu revealed.
"Wh-what…" Upon hearing Lin Mu's detailed answer, Ku Waowen was absolutely stunned.
She was expecting there to be some guesses, even including the fact that Lin Mu might bluff and saw they had Immortal Ascension realm cultivators. But the exact locations of them were not something she had expected for him to know as well.
"Hahaha! Seems like you all aren't that well prepared either." Lin Mu teased. "You didn't even know we had spies in your ranks and neither did you know we got out of Gu Yao's control. You all don't even know how deep you are into the ocean."
Ku Waowen did not reply and continued to think to herself. This was a great shock to her. Since she was allowed to come here on such an important mission, she certainly knew some of the high ranked secrets of the Northern Tribes.
They were secrets that, other than her, only a handful of people knew. Thus, for them to get leaked, they would need to have someone in those handfuls of people working as spies.
The moment, this thought came to her, a cracking sound was heard.
~Crack~
She had unknowingly clenched her fist hard enough that one of her ornamental rings had cracked.
"Tell me who are the spies and you will have a chance to live." Ku Waowen decisively spoke.
"Oh? Changing your mind so quickly?" Lin Mu raised his brow.
"Your life is in my hands. Even if you don't speak, our ancestors have methods to extract memories from unwilling people. You don't need to be fully alive for that either." Ku Waowen said, her voice dripping with venom.
"Coming to threats now, are we? Well sure, I'll throw you a bone. Two of the spies are in your Dao Treading realm cultivators. haha!" Lin Mu chuckled.
Ku Waowen's mind immediately got to working on who could be behind it. She didn't even question the fact if Lin Mu was lying, since he had stated far too much information for him to even bother doing something like this.
To Ku Waowen, the most important thing right now, even more important than Lin Mu, was to send word to the Northern Tribes. But that was an immensely difficult task as of now.
While they did have ways to quickly transmit information to the Northern Tribes, that information was sent by relaying it to multiple people. But with the information Lin Mu had just revealed, she couldn't trust that relay set up they had either.
To her, it meant that it would just end up alerting Lin Mu's allies and telling them that he was in danger and had been found out. After all, she couldn't guess on the fact if they didn't have spies in the people that had already entered the Great Zhou Empire either.
'Will ancestors even respond to my call? It will be a great disrespect to use that, but this is now a grave emergency.' Ku Waowen decided.
She looked at Lin Mu, that was still standing and smugly looking at him, and gritted her teeth.
"I swear I'll rip out your lungs, once I'm done with this…" She muttered to herself.
While Ku Waowen was doing this, Lin Mu was doing something else. His mind was split in two and was doing different tasks. On one hand he was keeping an eye on the Old Woman's every move and on the other hand, it was trying to find some other solution.
Lin Mu had to maintain a staunch attitude as the more he did that, the more Ku Waowen got nervous and the better chances for her to make mistakes.
'She finally moves,' Lin Mu thought to himself and saw Ku Waowen turn around.
She started to walk towards the formation array in the center and work on something.
'Time to test it…' Lin Mu thought to himself and pretended to contact someone using a Jade slip.
Seeing that she had not noticed him or had looked at him, Lin Mu decided to be a bit more daring. He directly took out a pile of peak grade spirit stones and looked at Ku Waowen.
'Huh… so she really can't sense anything inside either… PERFECT!' Lin Mu smiled upon discovering this.
"Seems like not only is my spirit sense restricted by this cage, the same applies to hers as well. This will work in our favor." Lin Mu muttered to himself and enacted his new plan.
