The man’s dark eyes looked at Ji Yunshu, and for a long time he said nothing.

Ji Yunshu tilted her head slightly, “Well… alright, if you won’t speak, then forget it. I don’t want to force you either. Just pretend I never said those things earlier, and you never heard them. Now, if you still want to die, you’d better be quick about it. Though I won’t stop you, you need to act fast. Otherwise, once the people outside come in, you’ll probably have your acupoints sealed again. At that time, if something itches somewhere and you can’t scratch it, that feeling would be worse than being stabbed.”

Yes, she had tried that feeling!

It was absolutely torturous.

The man’s brow furrowed, and his cold, hard gaze carried a hint of surprise.

He thought, this person’s manner of speaking is truly strange.

Logically, shouldn’t they be holding a knife to his throat to interrogate him? Shouldn’t they be trying every means to prevent him from committing suicide, then torturing him until death would be preferable? Or perhaps, keeping him alive to wait for his companions to come rescue him and walk into a trap? But how was it that this person asked a whole bunch of questions, said a whole lot, went round and round in circles, and then finally said “pretend I never said anything” and “you never heard it,” and even, strangely enough, encouraged him to commit suicide? And told him to do it quickly!

A strange person indeed!

To show that her words were absolutely sincere, Ji Yunshu actually turned her back.

“I’ll watch the door for you. Move quickly, but… please don’t let the blood splash on my clothes. I’m a poor scholar, and I only have one or two decent outfits. If they get dirty and the stains won’t wash out, I’ll have to buy new ones. As you know, someone from a humble background like me naturally doesn’t have much money. Every day it’s just pickled vegetables and radish for a meal. Besides, I…”

She was planning to continue this lengthy discourse!

But was interrupted by the person behind her.

“It was under orders!”

The air suddenly became quiet. In that moment, Ji Yunshu also fell silent, and gradually, a smile emerged at the corners of her crimson lips.

A satisfied smile.

The tactic of “feigning indifference to arouse interest” had unexpectedly worked perfectly.

Turning around to look at the person on the bed, she put away her previous indifferent expression and became serious.

“Under orders to kill a prince?”

Heh!

The man laughed once, his pale face contorting fiercely, his sinister eyeballs revealing overwhelming murderous intent and ferocity.

“That prince deserves to die.”

“Why does he deserve to die?”

“He deserves to die because he deserves to die. I advise you not to get too close to him.”

“Why not?”

“Lest in the future…”

“What about the future?”

This string of追questions left the man momentarily speechless. He suddenly realized he seemed to have been trapped and had said some things he shouldn’t have said, so he immediately changed his tune, “Anyway, you’ve already captured me. Either way, I’m dead. Whatever you want to know, go investigate yourselves.”

Ji Yunshu couldn’t help but laugh and sigh: “You’re really quite stubborn.”

“For someone who doesn’t even fear death, the word ‘stubborn’ means nothing at all.”

“That’s true enough.”

The man said nothing.

Ji Yunshu suddenly thought of something, “Hey, if you really want to die, why not help me test a medicine?”

Hm?

She pulled out a small vial, spun it around in her hand, then tossed it onto the blood-stained bedding, “This is a poison I concocted. I don’t know if it’s effective or not. Since you want to die anyway, why not do me a favor before you die and help me test whether this medicine works? If it works, you’ll die with purpose, and next year, I’ll definitely burn paper money for you. But if it doesn’t work, you can find another method to die.”

Death, when spoken from her mouth, was like playing house.

Light and easy!

The man: “Poison?”

“Don’t dare?”

“I dare!” The man took the vial in his hand, looked at Ji Yunshu, laughed once, then immediately twisted open the stopper and drank all the poison inside in one gulp!

Not a drop left.

The medicine took effect quickly, working within just a few seconds. The man spat out a mouthful of blood, and the already blood-stained bedding now looked even more horrific. He clutched his chest and fell to the side, weakly raising his eyes to look at Ji Yunshu standing by the bed.

“To die by your hand, I have no regrets and die without remorse!”

After speaking, his eyes rolled back, and he couldn’t catch his breath.

He was dead!

His body tilted and rolled to the floor.

Bang!

Hearing the loud noise inside, Jingrong immediately rushed in.

When he saw the scene before him, his eyes narrowed slightly. He stepped forward to check the man’s breathing. The man was indeed dead.

“What happened?”

“He sought death, so I granted it.” Her tone carried a sense of kind-hearted goodwill.

Jingrong was at a loss for words.

Muruo came in right after, saw the person lying on the ground with a mouth full of blood, stepped forward to check his pulse, and after confirming the person was truly dead, how regretful he was!

His brows furrowed together.

“Wasted a whole night saving a person, finally managed to preserve his life, and then he dies just like this.” He gritted his teeth and said fiercely, “From now on, I absolutely won’t save people randomly. My reputation as a divine physician is about to be ruined.”

With a fierce sweep of his wide sleeves, he strode out the door.

Jingrong called over two guards and ordered, “Throw him at the mass grave and let the wild dogs eat him.”

After the person was dragged away, Ji Yunshu finally dropped that leisurely demeanor.

Her expression grave, she turned to ask Jingrong, “That wasn’t really poison, was it?”

Jingrong curved his lips in a smile, “Though the medicines Muruo concocts are always strange, when he says it’s not poisonous, then it’s definitely not poison.”

“What’s the next step in the investigation?”

“Wait. Wait for that fellow to come back to life at the mass grave.”

…

Deep into the night.

At the western side of the Prefectural County seat, beneath a mountain slope, muddy winding roads overgrown with weeds, cold winds blowing through the ravines, making the surrounding tree branches and wild grass rustle. That sound extended all the way to a depression behind the mountain slope—a massive pit that had been dug out by people. From a distance, it didn’t seem unusual, but upon closer inspection, it was hair-raising.

In that depression, rotting corpses were piled haphazardly one after another.

Some had already decomposed into piles of white bones!

Some were still bloody and fresh!

Some were already crawling with maggots!

Some…

As if they had been put in a giant blender and mixed, utterly revolting.

Most of these corpses were common people who had starved to death and unnamed individuals with no one to claim them. Because there was no money to bury them, or because people were too lazy to dig and erect tombstones, they were simply thrown into this mass grave.

The man Jingrong had ordered thrown at the mass grave was awakened by a wave of putrid stench from rotting flesh.

Even before he opened his eyes, his throat first erupted in a fit of coughing, spitting out all the poison he had drunk earlier, his pale face flushing red.

When he saw clearly where he was, his eyes were full of shock. Looking down, he saw a female corpse with a rotted face and gouged-out eyes pressed beneath him.

“Ugh!”

Though he had faced countless killings and deaths, he was still frightened by the scene before him.