Zhao Yuming’s death was so sudden that Yu Lingxi couldn’t react immediately.

Seeing that the maid’s expression didn’t appear to be joking, she slowly frowned and asked, “How did she die?”

Hutao said, “According to the Zhao household, she died suddenly from a severe illness.”

“How is that possible?” Yu Lingxi had known Zhao Yuming for two lifetimes and had never heard of her having any serious illness.

“Indeed, this servant also finds it strange. The Zhao household is short-staffed and wants to borrow some servants from our manor to help with the funeral arrangements. This servant took the opportunity to inquire and learned that this morning, a eunuch from the Eastern Palace came to escort the young miss into the palace. When the maid went to wake her for grooming, they discovered she was already gone.”

Hutao patted her chest anxiously and continued, “According to those in the know at their household, the young miss was found collapsed beneath her bed, with purplish-red lips. She didn’t look like she died from sudden illness, but rather like she had poisoned herself.”

Poison?

Zhao Yuming was the type of person who, in her previous life, even when witnessing her entire family being slaughtered, still dared to clutch at Ning Yin’s robes and beg for mercy. She loved her own life above all else—how could she easily take her own life?

And especially right before she was to enter the palace to serve the Crown Prince.

Moreover, when she visited the Yu manor yesterday, she had outwardly shown weakness while making veiled threats, not at all like someone who would take their own life.

There were too many suspicious points. Yu Lingxi instinctively glanced at Ning Yin beside her.

Ning Yin was leaning in the shadows, expressionless, only pulling at the corner of his mouth when Yu Lingxi looked over.

His smile was exceptionally cold.

Yu Lingxi sensed he was unhappy, and though her lips parted slightly, she didn’t know how to ask about it.

Instead, she pursed her lips, set aside her thoughts, and turned to Hutao: “Prepare a carriage. I need to visit the Zhao residence.”

Hutao blinked her eyes and hurriedly advised, “Young miss, your health is poor. You shouldn’t go to such a place.”

Zhao Yuming’s death was too suspicious, and Yu Lingxi feared Ning Yin might get caught up in it.

She made up her mind and instructed, “Go prepare incense, candles, and paper money.”

Walking out of the water pavilion, she looked back. Ning Yin was still leaning inside, half his face covered in shadow, his emotions unreadable.

Yu Lingxi took a deep breath, walked back, took one of the candies Ning Yin had given her, and finally looking into his dark, inscrutable eyes, said, “Wait for me to return, Wei Qi.”

Ning Yin watched her leave. After a long while, he put the candy from his hand into his mouth, crunching it loudly like he was gnawing on bones.

“Pah, tastes awful.”

……

Zhao residence.

This mansion had not yet been expanded and lacked the grandeur of her previous life. The beast-head door knockers were peeling paint, and the faded “blessing” character was missing a corner, revealing a somewhat shabby and desolate appearance.

After two lifetimes of life and death, stepping into the Zhao residence again, Yu Lingxi didn’t feel the indignation she had imagined.

The thin wooden coffin in the hall and the white silk draped everywhere seemed to mock Zhao Yuming’s self-entrapment.

In just half a month, the Zhao family had first lost their adopted son who died in fear of punishment, and now their daughter. Madam Zhao had already fainted from crying. Uncle Zhao was colder, despising how his adopted son and daughter had brought shame, not even showing his face, only wanting to seal the coffin and bury it quickly.

The mourning hall was deserted. Yu Lingxi took the incense basket from Hutao and scattered a handful of paper money into the charcoal basin.

But what she never expected was that before the coffin could be sealed, as she straightened up, she saw Zhao Yuming lying in the coffin.

First came shock, and then her breathing stopped.

Her pupils contracted, unable to believe what she was seeing!

Those deliberately forgotten memories surged like a tide, ruthlessly swallowing her composure.

The pale face, crimson lips, and black bloodstains around the nostrils and lips that hadn’t been wiped clean…

The face before her blurred and merged, finally becoming herself, lying on the ice coffin in the secret chamber.

And now she felt like the wandering soul she had been then, floating in midair, examining her tragic corpse.

A chill crawled up her spine.

“Young miss? Young miss!”

Hutao noticed her frozen state and quickly reached out to cover her eyes, saying with concern, “I told you not to come. How frightening!”

With her vision blocked and the warmth of the palm calling back her senses, Yu Lingxi realized this wasn’t the secret chamber from her previous life, and the person in the coffin wasn’t her.

She was still alive and would continue to live well with her family and the pride of the Yu household.

Yu Lingxi closed her eyes, took several deep breaths, and then firmly pulled down Hutao’s hand that was shielding her eyes, though her hand trembled.

Now was not the time to be afraid. She had to confirm whether Zhao Yuming had died from the same hidden poison as herself.

If so, what was this poison? Who administered it?

Yu Lingxi felt her fingertips trembling, but her thoughts had never been clearer.

When she opened her eyes again, she had regained her composure.

Standing before the flying paper ashes, she pondered briefly, then turned and said, “Hutao, I need you to do something for me…”

A quarter of an hour later, Hutao slipped a few taels of silver to the maid she had questioned at the Zhao residence, then walked toward the carriage where Yu Lingxi was waiting.

“Young miss, I’ve found out everything.”

Hutao got into the carriage, fanning herself while catching her breath, “After the young miss returned home yesterday at the hour of Shen, she seemed rather uneasy and stayed alone in her room lost in thought for a long time.”

“The hour of shen?”

Yu Lingxi thought back briefly. Yesterday when Zhao Yuming visited her at the manor, she had left by the hour of si at the latest. How could she have returned home only at the hour of shen?

Could she have gone somewhere else during those three hours?

“It was indeed shen when she returned. This servant confirmed it several times.”

Hutao continued, “By nightfall, at the hour of xu, the young miss complained of abdominal pain and weakness. She drank some stomach-soothing soup before going to bed. At the hour of hai, the maid extinguished the lamps and heard no further sounds from the room. In the morning, at the hour of mao, a eunuch from the palace arrived with an imperial decree to escort her into the palace. When the maid entered to wake her for grooming, she discovered she… she was already gone.”

Yu Lingxi’s heart sank. She asked, “Did she vomit blood?”

“Yes, yes, yes!”

Hutao nodded hurriedly, “They say she vomited a large pool of black blood. It splattered on her clothes and the bed curtains. The first maids and servants who rushed in all saw it! Some people said she died from poisoning, but when the imperial physicians came, they strangely couldn’t determine what poison it was.”

“What about the blood-stained clothes?”

“The master of the Zhao household thought them inauspicious and ordered all the clothes and bed curtains to be burned.”

Yu Lingxi’s heart grew colder as she listened. All the symptoms were so similar to her previous life.

Since even the imperial physicians couldn’t identify the poison, it was certainly not something an ordinary person could possess. Yu Lingxi became increasingly convinced that Zhao Yuming hadn’t committed suicide—if she had possessed such an effective poison, she would have used it on Yu Lingxi first.

Perhaps the person who killed Zhao Yuming was the same one who had killed her in her previous life.

But what was the motive for the murder?

Yu Lingxi felt as if she were standing before a great fog, just one step away from the truth.

Calming herself, she remembered a key question: “After Zhao Yuming left the Yu manor, did she go to see anyone else?”

Hutao shook her head: “I asked as you instructed, but at that time, the young miss only had Hongzhu with her.”

“Where is Hongzhu?”

“After what happened to the young miss, Hongzhu has been acting strangely, as if she’s lost her mind. Others questioned her for a long time, but she kept repeating ‘I don’t know.’ Later, perhaps from being pushed too hard, she slammed her head against the wall…”

At this point, Hutao put her palms together and murmured “Amitabha,” then continued, “She didn’t die, but she might as well have. She has a bloody hole in her head and is still unconscious in the woodshed.”

Regardless, Hongzhu was the only person who could be of use, and she couldn’t be allowed to die.

They needed to find a way to revive Hongzhu and question her thoroughly. And about that poison that even the imperial physicians couldn’t identify…

Yu Lingxi’s eyes brightened as she thought of someone.

Back when she needed “Nine Netherworld Incense” as a medicine ingredient and couldn’t find it anywhere in the capital, only the scarred medicine peddler in Yujie Xiandu’s black market had this herb.

Although Yujie Xiandu was gone, perhaps the medicine peddler was still around.

With this thought, she lifted the curtain and called for a guard to search for this person.

When the guard heard she wanted to find a criminal slave from Yujie Xiandu, he immediately found it difficult and eventually saluted with cupped hands: “Young miss may not know, but at the time of the great fire at Yujie Xiandu, those who weren’t burned to death either escaped or were sent to the frontier. There’s simply no trace to follow.”

The light in Yu Lingxi’s eyes dimmed again.

Hutao didn’t understand why her mistress was so concerned about Zhao Yuming’s death and hesitantly said, “Perhaps, young miss could find someone else?”

Someone else? Who else would know about the medicine peddler from Yujie Xiandu…

A flash of inspiration struck, and Yu Lingxi sighed resignedly: “Let’s return to the manor.”

Half an hour later.

Yu Lingxi dismissed her servants and entered the isolation room carrying a lacquered food box.

In the back garden, the towering magnolia tree had finished blooming, with only a few scattered white remnants adorning the branches.

Ning Yin was sitting on a stone bench in the courtyard, holding a sage stem in one hand to tease a sleek, well-fed flower cat, and in the other hand, a celadon wine cup that he wasn’t drinking from, just idly toying with.

Yu Lingxi approached quietly, but he acted as if he hadn’t seen her, not even lifting his eyes as he said, “Now that the young miss has seen the scene, are you coming to interrogate me?”

His tone was remarkably cold, piercing like an ice blade.

Yu Lingxi felt inexplicably guilty. She gently placed the food box on the table, sat across from him, and asked, “Why would I interrogate you?”

“Doesn’t the young miss suspect that I killed that Zhao woman? That look in your eyes before you left, hmph.”

Ning Yin sneered, his lips curved coldly as he said, “I’m the villain. All the evil deeds under heaven are my handiwork. Is the young miss satisfied now?”

His biting tone made Yu Lingxi realize this matter had nothing to do with him.

When Ning Yin did bad things, he was openly bad. If he had done it, he would be very calm and cold, not speaking in his current tone.

Besides, he wouldn’t use the poison that had killed her in her previous life to poison Zhao Yuming.

“Earlier… I was a bit suspicious, but that’s because you had confronted her yesterday, and you’re always talking about ‘killing people.’ You can’t blame me for that.”

Yu Lingxi softened her voice, patiently explaining to him, “But now that you’ve said this, I’m relieved.”

Ning Yin smiled, looking extremely handsome: “Relieved about what? Maybe I did kill her.”

Yu Lingxi rested her chin on the handle of the food box, looking up at him with a smile: “Even if you did kill her, it must have been to protect me.”

A withered magnolia flower fell, landing on the table with a soft thud, frightening away the timid flower cat.

Ning Yin played with the wine cup, looked at her sidelong for a long time, then sneered: “No matter how beautiful the young miss’s eyes are, they can’t serve as a mouth. If you have something to say, just say it directly.”

Indeed, nothing could be hidden from him.

Yu Lingxi decided to be straightforward, opening the food box and saying, “Today I encountered a difficult problem, one that only Yujie Xiandu can solve.”

Ning Yin’s hand paused momentarily, then placed the wine cup upside down on the stone table.

He remained silent, so Yu Lingxi took out the ice-cold lychees from the food box and said eagerly, “Have some lychees. They’re very sweet.”

Ning Yin didn’t even look at the lychee flesh, continuing to bend his fingers, pushing the celadon cup over, setting it upright, then pushing it over again.

He seemed endlessly amused by this.

The little madman could certainly hold a grudge.

Yu Lingxi had no choice but to peel a lychee herself. Her delicate white fingertips gradually removed the deep red lychee shell, then pinched the translucent, cooling lychee flesh and brought it to Ning Yin’s mouth.

She held the lychee for a long time before Ning Yin reluctantly turned his dark eyes, tilted his head, leaned forward, and opened his mouth to take the lychee flesh from her fingertip.

His slightly cool lips brushed directly against her fingertip as he took a bite, leaving only a bit of the lychee shell still in her hand.

With one press and roll, the juice flowed freely, moistening his pale, thin lips.

Yu Lingxi was stunned. She had intended for him to take it with his hand, not expecting him to bite it directly from her fingers.

Well, as long as he helped, it didn’t matter if he bit it.

Just as she was thinking this, Ning Yin shook his head and said flatly, “This one isn’t sweet.”

After speaking, his gaze fell on the remaining lychees in the food box, and the corners of his eyes lifted.

“…”

Yu Lingxi lowered her eyes and pursed her lips, patiently peeling another one and bringing it to Ning Yin’s mouth. “Is this one sweet, Wei Qi?”