“Your Highness… Your Highness…”
Imperial Doctor Hu closed the door of the side hall and gave a few pushes to Consort De, who lay on the bed like a lifeless corpse. Seeing no response, he mysteriously took out a porcelain bottle from his sleeve and waved it under Consort De's nose.
A pair of bloodshot eyes suddenly opened. Consort De instinctively reached for her stabbed abdomen, biting her teeth as she took the powder from Imperial Doctor Hu’s hand and swallowed it hastily.
“Your Highness, this move was too risky. You almost lost your life. What if… what if something had gone wrong? How would we have managed?”
The pain from the wound caused Consort De to close her eyes, but she didn’t utter a single sound of pain. After taking the specially prepared hemostatic medicine, the bleeding stopped, but the pain intensified.
Such resilience impressed even Imperial Doctor Hu, who couldn’t help but admire her determination.
“Has Jiang Xinyue… left?”
The nausea still accompanied her, and the pain made her convulse, but she endured it and asked, “Is Mute Slave dead?”
Imperial Doctor Hu bowed and replied, “The Emperor took Imperial Noble Consort Jiang away, saying she would stay in Chengqian Palace for a few days. The poison on Mute Slave was prepared by Your Highness personally, so naturally, it did not go wrong. They didn’t extract any information from him.”
That’s good.
Consort De tried to sit up, but the pain in her wound was too intense, forcing her to lower her neck.
Imperial Doctor Hu sighed, “Your Highness, you mustn’t do this again. It’s too dangerous.”
“If I don’t do this, how will the Emperor believe me?”
With Imperial Doctor Hu’s support, she stood up, “That wretch Luyin knew too much about me. I merely tested her, and she revealed all my secrets. But in a way, she helped me. It gave me the opportunity to cover up my past and use her and Mute Slave as scapegoats.”
Imperial Doctor Hu was even more impressed by Consort De’s tactics, “Your Highness is truly brilliant. How could Imperial Noble Consort Jiang, who is so young and has been in the palace for such a short time, possibly be a match for you?”
“You’re wrong to think that.”
Consort De took a deep breath to ease the pain and said slowly, “I harmed myself to kill Luyin and frame Mute Slave. The reason I hinted at Xiao Ronghua so early was never to protect myself from being exposed. I did it to set a trap for Jiang Xinyue. If the Emperor discovers this, I can still gain sympathy through the Third Prince. But if Jiang Xinyue exposes me, I will be utterly defeated.”
If she feared the Emperor finding out, she wouldn’t have committed so many wrongs in the first place.
What she feared was Jiang Xinyue.
Just like how the Empress, Consort Li, Consort Shu, and Consort Liang all underestimated Jiang Xinyue at first, thinking she was merely a novelty that the Emperor indulged in.
But she was different.
When Jiang Xinyue regained the Emperor’s favor, Consort De saw her and immediately recognized that she was no longer the same naive woman from before.
That’s why she repeatedly plotted against Jiang Xinyue’s life and incited the others to act against her, though none of her schemes succeeded.
Others might attribute Jiang Xinyue’s survival to luck, but Consort De never believed her escapes were due to mere fortune.
Once or twice could be luck, but three, four, or even five or six times, with no successful attempts, it couldn’t be explained by luck alone.
Jiang Xinyue’s intelligence and strategy were on par with her own. Therefore, every step she took, she first guarded against her nemesis, the Imperial Noble Consort Jiang, whom Imperial Doctor Hu looked down upon.
Yanqing Palace was eerily quiet. The Emperor had surrounded the palace with guards, and the remaining maids and eunuchs dared not leave their rooms. The maids and eunuchs who knew the truth had disappeared, leaving the others trembling in fear.
“Your Majesty!”
Tang Shiliang, covering his mouth, rushed out from the lotus garden, vomiting violently as he ran, his back to the Emperor.
Wang Dequan stood with the Emperor outside the lotus garden, already anticipating that something unusual had been discovered inside.
“Fifteen bodies, men and women, consorts, and maids and eunuchs. The man-eating fish in the lotus pond had not been fed for a long time, surviving on human flesh, which had mutated it to weigh fifty catties. The Investigative Bureau has taken it to the dungeon to use as an interrogation tool.”
“In Mute Slave’s room, we found corpse-dissolving powder and a woman’s embroidered shoe, which the maids identified as Luyin’s. This vile pervert collected many of Luyin’s shoes and clothes. This time, killing Luyin might not only be because she caught him murdering but also due to unrequited love.”
“It’s terrifying. The lotus flowers in the pond never withered because the water was filled with medicinal powder. The flowers had turned to stone, absorbing human blood to maintain their color. The servants pulled out all the lotus flowers and found that the pond water was entirely red with human blood.”
Without the medicinal water to clean the pond and mask the smell of decaying bodies, the stench was so overwhelming that even Tang Shiliang was overwhelmed and vomited.
Jiang Xinyue didn’t believe that Mute Slave was responsible for all these deaths. She hadn’t been idle these past few days. She sent Xiao Xiangzi, who had come from the Cold Palace, back there to investigate Mute Slave’s background. She also had Jiang Chuan leave the palace to visit the Jiang family and investigate Luyin thoroughly, especially looking into her family’s relationships.
Luyin was Consort De’s personal maid, raised in the Mansion of the Duke of Cheng since childhood. Her family would have been long-term servants, making them easy to trace.
Her intuition told her that Mute Slave didn’t collect Luyin’s belongings out of perversion; there was more to the story.
If…
If Consort De had pretended to visit the artificial hill, Luyin, as her personal maid, would have undoubtedly followed.
Jiang Xinyue now stood on the artificial hill, taking off one of her earrings and said to Shuang Jiang, “I dropped my earring. Help me find it.”
Shuang Jiang’s first reaction was to approach the edge of the hill, using the higher ground to get a better view and quickly locate her mistress’s earring.
Suddenly, a powerful force pushed her from behind, and Shuang Jiang let out a piercing scream as her fear reached its peak.
Two guards quickly grabbed her arms and pulled her back from the edge. Shuang Jiang, still shaken, fell to the ground, her face pale with fear.
Shortly after, Consort Wen ran out from Hexi Palace, “Your Highness, I heard the scream from the gate, but the maids inside the palace couldn’t hear it.”
“So… Luyin wasn’t killed by the artificial hill. She was killed by Consort De and hidden in a cave in the hill. Then Consort De lured Mute Slave there. Seeing Luyin’s body, Mute Slave, overwhelmed with grief, lost his mind and tried to kill Consort De.”
The maids around Consort De also said that Mute Slave had rushed at Consort De and pulled out a dagger from his sleeve. But who could guarantee that the dagger was really taken out by Mute Slave, or that Consort De had stabbed herself and then placed the dagger in Mute Slave’s hand during the struggle?
No one saw it, did they?
All they saw was Mute Slave rushing over, and then Consort De was injured, fleeing into Hexi Palace with the help of her maids.
That day, because they had to inform the Emperor about Xiao Ronghua hiding in Hexi Palace, they all stood near the hall entrance.
If Luyin had been pushed off the artificial hill without any warning, she would have screamed in terror, just like Shuang Jiang.
But the fact was, no one heard anything.
