Noble Consort Chen silently mourned for her father and brothers, despairing calmly.
She did not have a breakdown, did not roar, and did not even cry.
The current her already had no more tears to shed.
She sat numbly on the bed, her mind completely blank,
The intense stimulation made her unable to recall what had happened at the execution ground that day,
Nor could she remember her father and brothers' severed heads falling to the ground before her.
Liu Yue persuaded her for a long time, but she only felt a constant buzzing in her ears. Other than the sound of her own heartbeat, she could not hear anything else.
Until the room door was opened again, Kang Yubin bowed to Noble Consort Chen with clasped hands,
"Paying respects to Noble Consort. His Majesty knows about the affairs in your residence and is very concerned about you, so he immediately let us come back to accompany you. He also sent people back to the Qinling Mountains to check on the Old Madam. As for the Lord and Young Master's funeral arrangements... His Majesty has also permitted an honorable burial."
Noble Consort Chen regained her senses from her numbness, got out of bed,
"Where are the people? This consort wants to go!"
She rushed out emotionally, Liu Yue desperately held on to her, sobbing and persuading,
"Noble Mother, don't go! When you were unconscious... they had already been buried..."
Noble Consort Chen was stunned for a good while by the door before grief and indignation flooded her,
"Where is An Vice General? Go and bring him to this consort! This consort wants to ask him why he and his guards were late in catching up at the execution ground that day. If they had caught up, Father and Brother might not have... "
Kang Yubin scratched his scalp and said, "When this slave passed by Tianyunge Pavilion just now, I heard a commotion upstairs. Looking up, it was An Vice General drinking merrily with Prince Rui..."
"He is with Prince Rui?" Noble Consort Chen was alert in an instant, murmuring, "That's right... Prince Rui used to serve in Suzhou, he must know An Vice General..."
She paced back and forth on the spot, before suddenly thinking of something else, urging Liu Yue,
"Go and bring this consort the Map of Mountains and Rivers, hurry!"
"What does Noble Mother want that thing for? Your fever has not yet subsided, you should be resting..."
"When this consort tells you to go, just go!"
Seeing that Noble Consort Chen was angry, Liu Yue did not dare to irritate her further. She searched all over the residence before finding a wrinkled and brittle Map of Mountains and Rivers.
Noble Consort Chen spread it out on the table and took brush and ink to draw on it continuously.
With Suzhou as the starting point and the capital as the endpoint,
she marked all the relay stations she had passed through on this journey on the Map of Mountains and Rivers, finally connecting them into a line.
But she saw that this line was winding and twisting, only the 100 odd li after leaving Suzhou was a straight line,
the subsequent journey was winding around as much as possible, almost drawing circles in situ.
Noble Consort Chen drew the direct distance between Suzhou and capital,
She estimated roughly that if she had travelled in a straight line, galloping day and night from Suzhou back urgently, it would have taken her two days at most.
"Why? It clearly only takes two days, but he took me on a three day detour!"
Noble Consort Chen was increasingly agitated, as if mad, sweeping everything off the table, almost roaring hoarsely,
"Why! Why take me on a detour? I could have made it in time to save Father and Brothers! Why!!!"
There were tears in her eyes, but her gaze was fierce enough to frighten people.
In that instant, the fog clouding her heart was peeled away layer by layer.
She recalled Xiao Jingheng telling her that all the evidence against the Ning family this time was gathered by Prince Rui,
And she remembered that Prince Rui had always resented her for causing the death of his birth mother, so he had always been biting into the Ning family,
Then there was the obviously impossible letter of treason that could not have been written by her father,
As well as An Vice General who had deliberately taken her on a detour and was now drinking merrily with Prince Rui...
The more Noble Consort Chen thought about it, the more furious she became, feeling that her five organs were about to explode inside her body.
She clenched her ten fingers tightly, the just healed wounds on the fingernails that were broken during the long arduous journey split open and bled again.
“It’s him! That bastard Xiao Jinglian!
