Thump!

Cailan knelt down and kowtowed heavily with a resounding sound.

Ji Muqing stepped back, looking on coldly. “What are you doing?”

Cailan raised her head, crying and sobbing. “If Miss hadn’t picked me up and brought me back to the manor years ago, this slave would have starved to death long ago. But this slave was ungrateful and heartless, not knowing how to repay kindness. I truly deserve death. Miss, this slave knows she was wrong.”

“Ha!”

“Please forgive this slave.”

“Past life’s cause, present life’s effect. That I’ve become like this has nothing to do with you. Leave. I don’t want to see you.”

“Miss…”

“Leave!”

Cailan refused to give up, desperately clutching her thin clothing, tears streaming down. “This slave truly knows she was wrong. Miss, please forgive me. I know I can’t turn back now, but I only ask that before I die, I can receive Miss’s forgiveness.”

“Die?”

Cailan collapsed on the ground, her tear-filled eyes cast downward, saying, “The Secondary Princess Consort… had a miscarriage.”

“What does that have to do with you?”

“This slave… added musk grass to the winter melon soup.”

Eh? Hearing this, Ji Muqing froze.

Cailan continued, “The Secondary Princess Consort harmed Miss so terribly. This slave couldn’t just watch and do nothing, so…”

Ji Muqing looked at the swaying leaves outside the window, a smile appearing on her pale lips.

Yet it was utterly desolate.

She lowered her eyes to look at the person at her feet who was as good as dead, placed the tree branch in her hand on the windowsill, bent down, and cupped Cailan’s face.

She asked, “Why?”

Cailan choked up. “As long as it could help Miss, this slave was willing to do anything.”

“Help?” Ji Muqing laughed self-mockingly. “What can you help me with? Even if Chen Xiang’s child is gone, Prince Yi won’t look at me properly. I’m now just a puppet, a walking corpse. Tell me, what can you help me with?”

“Miss…”

“Silly girl, why sacrifice your own life to seek my forgiveness?” A bottomless, eerie strangeness showed in her eyes, dark and sinister.

Cailan’s whole body trembled. She clearly felt the hands cupping her face pressing harder and harder, those ten slender fingernails seemingly digging into her skin, about to tear off her face layer by layer.

Eh!

She widened her eyes, instinctively leaning back.

But Ji Muqing wouldn’t let go.

Suddenly—

Manor guards rushed in.

Pointing directly at Cailan, “Arrest her.”

The guards came forward and seized her.

Cailan desperately clutched Ji Muqing’s clothing, shouting with eyes full of terror, “Miss, Miss…”

But she acted as if she heard nothing, her expression indifferent, her gaze scattered, allowing the maid to be dragged away alive.

After a while, she picked up the tree branch from the windowsill and continued pulling off the leaves.

“One, two, one, two…”

In her ears, she seemed to still hear Cailan’s miserable screams.

Before long, it was said that the maid who poisoned the young heir was beaten to death with clubs and torn apart by five horses, her remains thrown into the wilderness to feed dogs and wolves.

It was said Chen Xiang had only half her life left.

It was said Jing Yi had all the attending maids dragged off and killed.

It was said…

Ji Muqing heard many such reports. She smiled, finally finished plucking all the leaves from the branch in her hand, and in great spirits, had someone from the kitchen prepare a steaming hot bowl of bird’s nest porridge.

She ate it with relish!

Outside the city.

The sky darkened extremely quickly. Wen Shisan wore a conical hat and fisherman’s attire, with two small mustaches on his mouth. He carried a lantern in his hand, illuminating the muddy mountain path ahead.

It had been two hours since leaving the capital. Walk a bit further, and he would be safe.

Beneath a locust tree stood a tea stall for travelers to rest.

He surveyed his surroundings—it seemed safe enough—so he stopped here and ordered a bowl of water.

The tea vendor said, “Won’t you order some food, guest? Looks like you still have a long way to go.”

“No need. Just give me a bowl of water.”

“Right away.”

The tea vendor brought him water, saying, “Guest, be careful traveling at night.”

“Thank you for the reminder.”

He was truly parched. Just as he lifted the bowl to drink, he suddenly became alert and took out a silver needle to test the bowl.

The silver needle actually turned black!

He quietly glanced at the tea vendor, and when the man wasn’t paying attention, poured out the water from the bowl, left a few copper coins, and walked away carrying his lantern.

But after just a few steps, his head felt heavy and his legs weak.

Looking at his palm, it had already turned black.

Only then did he realize he had been poisoned.

It turned out the poison wasn’t just in the bowl—it had also been applied around the rim.

“Eh! Puh!”

Wen Shisan spat out a mouthful of black blood. The lantern in his hand crashed to the ground and in a flash burned to nothing.

He desperately clutched his throat in a death struggle, finally collapsing to the ground. After convulsing for a long while, he finally fell still.

Only his eyes remained wide open like copper gongs.

A moment later, the tea vendor walked over with a sinister smile on his face. With one hand he grabbed Wen Shisan’s foot and dragged him inside the tea stall. Then he took out a bottle of liquor, drank a mouthful, and poured the rest all over Wen Shisan’s corpse.

“Even if you turned to ash I would recognize you. The white bone case in Liusu County—to draw out the killer, you caused my wife and children to die. Now it’s time for you to pay with this life of yours.”

The man ground his teeth!

He brought over a candle and viciously threw it down.

The corpse along with the tea stall blazed with raging fire.

The orange-red firelight illuminated this patch of mountain forest with unusual clarity.

As the saying goes, karmic retribution—it’s not that there’s no retribution, but that the time has not yet come…

Prince Rong’s Manor.

Jingrong ordered a banquet and invited Minister Yu, Qin Shiyu, Jing Zhaoyin, as well as Muruo and Tang Si.

Everyone took their seats one by one.

Only the banquet host Jingrong and Qin Shiyu were nowhere to be seen.

Ji Yunshu had no choice but to act as host, raising her cup. “I’ll substitute tea for wine and toast everyone.”

Tang Si was completely unceremonious. “A’Ji, you really should toast me properly with this cup. If I hadn’t unearthed the secrets of Zhang Family Village, the case wouldn’t have been solved so easily.”

“Indeed, I should properly toast you with this cup.”

Substituting tea for wine, they drank it down.

Muruo said, “Even if we found more evidence, what of it? Without Master Ji connecting it all together, it would just be ordinary objects.”

Look at that!

This person spoke properly.

However, Jing Zhaoyin had been puzzled all along. “Young people dying every year in Zhang Family Village is a fact. Could there really be something strange going on?”

Minister Yu said, “Tales of ghosts and spirits are not to be believed!”

Muruo across from him smiled. “What strangeness? What ghosts and spirits? All ridiculous nonsense. Today, I examined a young person who fell ill in Zhang Family Village. The illness is a spleen ailment caused by breathing—entering through the nose into the throat, from throat into the heart and spleen. It’s a cold wind syndrome caused by long-term inhalation of poisonous southern bamboo incense. Only young people between fifteen and twenty-eight are susceptible. It’s not some stubborn disease at all—just one bowl of water with a spoonful of sugar can cure it. It’s just that the illness is so obscure that ordinary physicians don’t recognize it and simply call it common cold, then prescribe some medicine and consider it done.”

“Southern bamboo incense—what is that thing?”