Chapter 44

The second round of the search began. Although Xue Jin'an did not go in person, his left eye's vision followed the Imperial Guards.

After stepping out of the Hall of Qianyuan, the Imperial Guards split into two groups, each accompanied by two imperial physicians, led respectively by Li Hechun and Commander Wei.

This Commander Wei was the one who had distinguished himself during the assassination case at the Imperial Study. The Emperor had personally selected him from the Bureau of Imperial Vestments to be groomed as the Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Guards. He was smoothly promoted after that day, dropping the "deputy" prefix from his title, and now he was responsible for the security of the entire imperial palace.

Having previously scanned the faces of all the Imperial Guards during the incident at the Imperial Study, Xue Jin'an recognized this Commander Wei instantly. When Xue Jin'an was digging up the Fourth Prince's battery in the abandoned palace earlier, it was Commander Wei who had been drawn there by the Fourth Prince's cries for help.

Xue Jin'an's left-eye view immediately split into two halves along with the division of the Imperial Guards, broadcasting the situations of both sides simultaneously like a pair of surveillance screens.

As for his right eye, it remained fixed on the interrogation scene, missing not a single detail of the suspects.

Upon hearing the Emperor's order to search the palace, the two heavily scrutinized women did not show much fear in their expressions.

Consort Zhen remained as calm as usual. Kneeling there with a straight spine, her gaze lowered and eyes veiled with a merciful expression, she lacked her jade prayer beads. Instead, she wrapped her left hand around her right wrist, her thumb gently stroking the red agate prayer beads wound around her arm. The red agate contrasted against her coldly pale skin, vivid as fresh blood.

Consort Rong's calmness, however, felt more like unmitigated audacity; it was clear she was not afraid of a palace search.

Facts proved that she truly had nothing to fear. The entire Minghua Palace was exceptionally spotless. Even after being turned upside down, nothing useful was found, leaving only the impression that Consort Rong was somewhat excessively extravagant and self-indulgent.

Consort Rong possessed an entire chest of gold and silver jewelry. On her vanity table, countless boxes of rouge and face powder worth several taels of silver each were piled high, alongside numerous jars and bottles. The two imperial physicians opened and sniffed them one by one; half were perfumes, and the other half were floral waters.

After their thorough examination, the mingled scents hung heavily in the air, choking the two physicians into sudden sneezes.

One of them sighed, "These items are all sealed tightly. They must be quite careful during regular use." Otherwise, the consequence of mingling scents would have been just like this.

Li Hechun had not retrieved anything tricky, so his mood was fairly good. He instructed his men to search more thoroughly and chuckled at the physician's remark, chatting casually, "His Majesty has a sensitive nose and dislikes overly strong scents. Naturally, the people in the Bureau of Construction put more effort into this aspect."

At this point, Li Hechun paused involuntarily, his gaze drifting thoughtfully toward the table full of scented jars and bottles.

That was right. His Majesty did not care for overly intense fragrances, which was why most people in the palace stuffed their sachet bags with dried flowers and tried to avoid mixing scents. This was also why the flowers from the Imperial Garden were always in such high demand every year... The reason Consort Rong could win His Majesty's favor was precisely because she understood His Majesty's preferences, usually wrapping herself in a natural floral fragrance.

Since half of these jars and bottles had heavy scents that would undoubtedly be detected by His Majesty if used, and given Consort Rong's habit of sending soup to His Majesty every day—while Li Hechun had never heard His Majesty mention anything of the sort—it could be basically ascertained that Consort Rong had never used them, or to speak more rigorously, had never worn them on her person.

If Consort Rong collected so many spices and floral waters without using them, just to stare at them, it could hardly be due to an overwhelming fondness that made her lose control, could it? After turning it over in his mind, Li Hechun still ordered his men to bag up all these jars and bottles and send them to the Hall of Qianyuan.

When Consort Rong laid eyes on these items, her expression showed a flicker of unnaturalness, but she quickly recovered, explaining, "This humble concubine was born in Yulin and has loved collecting these spices and perfumes since childhood."

Yulin was the capital of spices and a place where perfumers abounded. Such an explanation sounded reasonable enough.

The Emperor retracted his gaze noncommittally.

Consort Rong knew the Emperor harbored doubts, but these items were, after all, merely spices, and even ordinary perfumers could not fathom their hidden secrets. Once the items in Consort Zhen's ancestral hall were discovered, surely no one would pay attention to her side anymore. Consort Rong remained utterly unfazed.

Believing she had already cleared this hurdle, her tense nerves relaxed slightly, and her inadvertent glance toward Consort Zhen carried the pity of someone in a superior position.

Yet Xue Jin'an, watching through the surveillance feeds, knew that the Imperial Guards had already secured decisive evidence.

Minghua Palace was pristine, but that did not mean the Fifth Prince's Hanxiang Courtyard was the same. Indeed, the cunning Emperor had claimed he would start the search from Yihe Palace and Minghua Palace, splitting the Imperial Guards into two routes—one to investigate the consorts of the six chambers, and the other heading straight for the Imperial Princes' Quarters.

The inhabitants of Hanxiang Courtyard were caught completely off guard. Anyone who revealed even a hint of panic was pulled aside by Commander Wei for a thorough interrogation, successfully extracting the Fifth Prince's recent schedule without a hitch.

This included the day of the assassination at the Imperial Study: the Fifth Prince's illness had actually improved significantly by then, and he had been able to vanish and reappear unpredictably. When he brought the Seventh Prince along, it had truly given them quite a scare.

"Wait, the Fifth Prince often wanders off by himself?" Commander Wei seized upon the crucial point.

The eunuchs dared not speak ill of their masters, nor did they dare conceal anything, so they answered tactfully, "The little master dislikes having people follow him and would deliberately dodge us, but Eunuch Dong could always find him. Ever since Eunuch Dong was... after losing the little master, we can only wait for the little master to show himself whenever we need to find him."

"By Eunuch Dong, do you mean Little Dongzi?" But wasn't Little Dongzi put to death by Consort Rong precisely because he concealed the fact that the Fifth Prince refused to take his medicine? Faintly feeling he had grasped the key, Commander Wei pressed his interrogation, "When did Little Dongzi lose the Fifth Highness? Where did the Fifth Highness go?"

"We truly do not know where he went, but shortly after that, the little master and the Seventh Highness became close." The eunuchs stated a timeframe as they spoke.

Commander Wei immediately realized that this was precisely the day the Fourth Prince was assassinated, and that very evening, Little Dongzi was rewarded with a thirty-foot crimson staff execution.

Upon learning that the person who subsequently replaced Little Dongzi as the manager of Hanxiang Courtyard was Red Ling, the head maid by Consort Rong's side, Commander Wei ordered his men to search her room meticulously. Even the floor tiles were pried open. Ultimately, a sharp-eyed young guard extracted a roll of paper from the crack between two bricks. Unfolding it, he discovered it was actually a portrait of the Sixth Prince.

"Good lad, you managed to spot even this. Your eyesight is not bad," Commander Wei praised.

The young guard scratched the back of his head with an embarrassed chuckle, "It was just subordinate's good luck. A brazier had been placed on these bricks previously, leaving quite a bit of ash. I was merely testing the area, never expecting it to be hidden right inside."

"Not bad, I'll log a merit for you." Commander Wei patted his shoulder and stepped outside.

When Red Ling saw the portrait in his hand, her expression turned bewildered and shocked, and she immediately prepared to offer a defense, but Commander Wei directly ordered someone to gag her. "Save your words for the Ministry of Punishments. Take her away!"

As the group finished searching Hanxiang Courtyard and prepared to leave, one of the imperial physicians gazed at the budding plum tree in the courtyard for a long time, then stepped forward, pinched a bit of the soil, and sniffed it. "There seems to be the scent of astragalus here..."

The other physician also came over to sniff and taste it. "There's also danshen, wolfberry..."

These were all medicinal herbs used to nourish heart conditions! The concentration of medicinal decoction contained in this soil was far beyond simply pouring out leftover herbal dregs on ordinary days!

The two physicians exchanged glances and had a handful of soil dug up and sent to the Imperial Hospital for Senior Physician Hu and Imperial Physician Liu to verify. The former was the most senior and experienced doctor in the Imperial Hospital, while the latter was the best physician in the palace for treating heart conditions and the one who routinely took the Fifth Prince's pulse to ensure his wellbeing.

In doing this, they were merely sharing the responsibility, though in their hearts, they were already almost certain that there was something amiss with the Fifth Prince's heart ailment.

After searching Hanxiang Courtyard, Commander Wei and his men proceeded to search the neighboring Suohui Courtyard. The Fourth Prince had not moved back in long, so there were few things in his room; the search concluded quickly with no discoveries.

They then shifted their efforts to search the Third Prince's Mingde Courtyard. Still, nothing turned up, though the eunuchs and palace maids of Mingde Courtyard were trembling and extremely obedient, answering whatever they were asked. They quickly betrayed the young maid responsible for preparing the Third Prince's clothing. The pale-faced maid knelt on the ground trembling like a sieve, offering not the slightest resistance when taken away.

Just as the group reached the main thoroughfare, the Mingde Courtyard's sole disobedient resident returned.

"Third Brother has woken up," Xue Jin'an muttered with a trace of surprise, not expecting that while they were deep in discussion just moments ago, the Third Prince—who had been unconscious and hovering between life and death—would wake up so soon.

Xue Jin'an considered his volume low enough that, aside from internal energy masters with sharp hearing like Lu Bingzhu or the Fifth Prince, no one else should have heard any sound leakage.
Yet Consort Xian possessed remarkably keen ears at this moment, instantly turning her head. "My son has woken up? Who? Who said that?"

Xue Jin'an's deadpan expression was imposing enough as he stared straight at her, making Consort Xian lose her confidence and fall into self-doubt. "Could it be that I misheard?"

Xue Jin'an turned off the host's microphone so that even if he shouted at the top of his lungs, no one would hear him.

In just this brief span, the surveillance feed from the princes' quarters already transmitted the Third Prince's lusty, robust voice. Xue Jin'an thought to himself: The Third Prince sounds remarkably full of life and bouncing around, but is leaving the courtyard the moment he wakes up really alright?

Events proved that only the Third Prince himself thought it was alright.

From the perspective of the Imperial Guards, far in the distance came four eunuchs sweating profusely as they carried a couch. Lying on the couch was a figure with limbs tightly wrapped in cloth strips, clutching a saber in his arms while gesticulating wildly and shouting at the top of his lungs, "Did you not eat, walking this slowly? Hurry up! If you ruin this prince's important business, I won't spare you!"

The eunuchs could only grit their teeth and quicken their pace.

An imperial physician beside him exhorted with a worried expression, "Third Highness, you have only just regained consciousness, and your high fever has not completely subsided. If you catch the wind like this, I fear your condition will relapse! Moreover, your injuries are not suited for moving about!"

"How could I catch any wind when my clothes are tied up properly? Stop fearmongering! If I don't go settle accounts with the Seventh brat right now, that little bastard will slip away!" Saying this, the Third Prince imperiously ordered them to turn toward the northern path.

"The important business you speak of... turns out to be going after the Seventh Highness?" Just how deep was this enmity? Even when sick enough to be near death, he was still plotting against him! The physician was startled and quickly urged, "You won't find the Seventh Highness in Qifeng Courtyard right now anyway! Ever since the day you were injured and fell unconscious, the young princes have been taken to the Hall of Qianyuan and locked up. They're being interrogated today—look at the Imperial Guards over there, they should have just come out of your courtyard."

News in the palace always traveled fast; in the short time it took the Imperial Guards to search the palace, quite a few rumors of dubious authenticity had already spread.

"What? Investigating me for what? I've been lying right here; could I possibly have harmed myself?" The Third Prince ordered his men to lower him along with the couch, and before he was even settled properly, he sat up with great fortitude, propping up one leg. "And how come I had no idea they were locked up?"

The physician and eunuchs lowered their heads one after another, thinking to themselves: You woke up shouting and bustling to rush outside—you have to give us a chance to speak first!