Chapter 54

Xue Jin'an looked at the fifth prince, who was wearing a black cloak, covered in dirt, and wearing a gloomy expression, and said with absolute certainty, "You crawled in through the dog hole."

"Pfft—" Fulu failed to hold back his schadenfreude and burst out laughing.

Even the fifth prince's usual sinister glare failed to scare him off.

Fulu could hardly be blamed for taking pleasure in his misfortune, as there was a valid reason behind it.

He had arranged with an informant to trade crystal cakes at this exact hour, so he had been squatting in front of the dog hole since early morning. Upon hearing the prearranged signal of three long knocks followed by two short ones, he immediately replied in kind. Then, pressing his face to the ground, he peered through the dog hole to the outside. He clearly saw the informant toss the wrapped crystal cakes not far from the opening. However, when he stretched out his neck and reached his arm as far as it could go, he simply couldn't touch them.

Left with no choice, Fulu had to awkwardly adjust his posture, thrusting his head out of the hole to locate the fallen treats.

To his utter astonishment, while he did find the crystal cakes, he simultaneously discovered the fifth prince hanging upside down from a tree branch.

Fulu was so startled by the fifth prince's horrifying entrance that he accidentally jammed himself tightly in the hole. His shoulders scraped painfully against the masonry, rendering him completely unable to pull his head back in.

Meanwhile, the culprit, the fifth prince, was sitting on a tree branch, eating the very crystal cakes meant for his master while watching Fulu flail about like an overturned turtle. To make matters worse, this fellow even had the audacity to complain that the crystal cakes tasted terrible!

How could his master's favorite crystal cakes possibly taste bad? What a completely tasteless fifth prince! Fulu grumbled inwardly, yet on the surface, he knew how to bend with the wind. He forced a flattering smile and asked, "Your Highness, would you be so kind as to lend a hand?"

"You asked for it." The fifth prince raised an eyebrow, flashed an unsettling smile, and jumped straight down from the tree. Then, with a casual sweep of his leg, he kicked Fulu just like a kickball.

Truth be told, that kick actually sent Fulu flying back through the hole, though the spot where he was struck ached fiercely.

However, retribution caught up with the fifth prince very quickly. Upon hearing that he wanted to enter to see his master, Fulu almost laughed out loud on the spot. "Your Highness, if there were any other way out here, this humble servant wouldn't be desperate enough to crawl through a dog hole."

"Perhaps... aren't you skilled in martial arts? You could simply scale the wall, just make sure the Imperial Guards don't discover you," Fulu deliberately provoked.

Under normal circumstances, scaling a wall wouldn't be a big deal; if one moved fast enough, no one would notice. But things were different now—ever since the assassination incident in the palace, the Imperial Guards' night patrol routes were no longer confined to the ground. Some guards were specifically assigned to squat on the rooftops precisely to intercept anyone attempting to use martial arts.

More importantly, the fifth prince's lightness skills were not yet mastered. To leap over such a high palace wall from flat ground would inevitably make a commotion and alert the guards.

With Fulu safely on the inside, the fifth prince couldn't hit him even if he were angry. Feeling entirely secure, Fulu cleared his throat and feigned indifference. "Your Highness, the Imperial Guards will be patrolling this area very soon, and you don't have much time left. Perhaps you should come back tomorrow and announce yourself properly at the main gate. If my master is willing, you can at least exchange a few words at the threshold."

Fulu wasn't just talking nonsense. Xue Jin'an's confinement was a double restriction: he was forbidden from leaving, and outsiders were forbidden from visiting him. However, with the Grand Empress Dowager's backing, the Imperial Guards were inclined to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to certain things.

Otherwise, messages wouldn't have passed so smoothly through Fulu's end. Fortunately, Fulu understood the rules and kept himself inside without letting anyone get too close.

If someone truly insisted on exchanging a few words with the seventh prince, the Imperial Guards would simply pretend not to see, stopping short of letting visitors inside while allowing conversations at the doorway.

If the fifth prince's business could be discussed openly in front of others, he wouldn't have chosen to sneak around late at night, wrapped in a black cloak, to frighten people.

"So you crawled through a dog hole, and you'll have to crawl back through it later," Xue Jin'an concluded. "You're even more impressive than a real dog."

Little Xiuzi, the actual dog of Zhaoyang Palace—an adult eunuch who hadn't practiced bone-shrinking techniques since childhood—could never have squeezed through such a tiny opening. Fitting even a head through would have been a tight squeeze. It was thanks to the fifth prince's young age, his lifelong martial arts training which kept his bones flexible, and his ruthlessness toward himself that he managed it: to pass through more quickly and easily, he had dislocated his own shoulder, only to pop it back into place once he was inside.

That popping sound had been exceptionally chilling in the dead of night. Fulu had stared at him in utter speechlessness, and Fuling, on night watch, couldn't help rubbing her own shoulders upon witnessing the sight.

Unaware of the presence of Fuling and Lingzhi, and ignorant of the fact that he had been targeted the moment he set foot in Zhaoyang Palace, the fifth prince's intuition nevertheless warned him that acting too presumptuously here would spell trouble.

Consequently, the fifth prince had obediently allowed Fulu to lead the way to Xue Jin'an, only to be mocked for it.

Eager to evade the reality that he would have to crawl back out through the dog hole, the fifth prince cut straight to the point. "Xiao Shu is dead."

"......?" Didn't Noble Consort Rong die long ago? Fulu and Shouquan exchanged glances, pricking up their ears.

Xue Jin'an was unsurprised. Back then, even across the palace wall, he could tell Xiao Shu only had a breath left in her, and she could only have lasted two or three days at most. The emperor undoubtedly intended to squeeze intelligence about the mastermind out of her.

However, looking at the black screen of the Qianyuan Palace live stream, Xue Jin'an guessed that no earth-shattering information had been extracted; otherwise, given the emperor's temperament, he certainly wouldn't have been able to sleep.

"You went to see her in the Cold Palace." Xue Jin'an caught a faint scent of dampness and chill clinging to the fifth prince.

The fifth prince nodded. "She had already been interrogated and was completely worthless. They threw her into the Cold Palace, at her last gasp. Realizing she was dying, I went to take a look."

Unlike Xue Jin'an, the fifth prince's belief that Xiao Shu wasn't dead yet was purely intuitive. That very night, he had deliberately lingered until the end, standing beside his devastated fourth brother to make himself look pitiful as well. As expected, his imperial father had kept him overnight in the side hall of Qianyuan Palace.

The fifth prince had secretly observed Li Hechun's movements, knowing that such important matters must pass through Li Hechun's hands. Given the emperor's emphasis on the case, Li Hechun would certainly execute certain tasks personally. Although Li Hechun was Lu Bingzhu's disciple, his martial arts foundation was virtually nonexistent, making careful observation unlikely to be detected by Li Hechun himself.

Sure enough, the fifth prince discovered that Xiao Shu was not dead. Alternatively, she hadn't stayed long in the Cold Palace before being dragged back to the Ministry of Punishments. However, the Ministry of Punishments was heavily guarded, making it impossible for him to sneak in.

He could only wait—wait for an opportunity. That opportunity arose when Chu Wenwan's body was being disposed of. Since Chu Wenwan's remains were kept in the Ministry of Punishments and had to be removed in front of witnesses, the gates of the Ministry of Punishments naturally stood wide open. Taking advantage of the chaos, he sneaked in and successfully located Xiao Shu.

At the time, Xiao Shu was strung up on a wooden frame, drenched in blood, her muscles twitching involuntarily. Three days and nights of interrogation had rendered her unrecognizable. The fifth prince had originally expected to feel deeply gratified. After all, through every day and night when Gu worms devoured his heart and viscera with unbearable pain, he had fiercely chewed his mother's name between his teeth, engraving a hatred deep into his bones and marrow that was impossible to erase.

Yet, upon truly witnessing Xiao Shu in such a state, the fifth prince's emotions spun out of control. He still hated her, but alongside that hatred emerged a complex mix of indescribable feelings.

When he turned to leave the Ministry of Punishments, he thought he had let go and found peace. Yet upon discovering that the officials from the Ministry of Punishments had tossed her into the Cold Palace to fend for herself, he suddenly decided to visit her one last time and ask one final question.

Perhaps experiencing a brief return of lucidity before death, Xiao Shu—who had been on the verge of expiring before being dragged away—appeared somewhat relieved this time. She even lunged forward to grab his hand and uttered his name.

Then Xiao Shu said, "Jue'er, Zhuo'er is still young. He is your younger brother. In the future, you must help him more, yield to him more, he..."

"......The Cold Palace is truly cold." Even though he had worn plenty of layers and channeled his internal energy to dispel the chill, the moment he stepped past the threshold, the cold seeped up his spine inch by inch, filling his entire body, piercing into his marrow with a heart-wrenching screech, and making his teeth chatter.

At this point, the fifth prince pulled his cloak tighter around himself, blew a warm breath into his palms, and rubbed his hands together before letting out a sudden, bitter laugh. "I refused her."

Not only did he refuse, but the fifth prince also flashed a rare, bright, and cheerful smile. Leaning right against Xiao Shu's ear, he spoke in the softest possible tone, "Imperial Mother, have you forgotten? Have you forgotten that I am your shame? Have you forgotten that the sight of me makes you want to strangle me? —These were all words from your own mouth. Have you forgotten them?"

The fifth prince had said many other things as well, though he could no longer remember them all. Yet judging by the memory of Xiao Shu's twisted expression, his words certainly hadn't been kind.

"In the end, Xiao Shu was angered to death by me, dying with her eyes open in lingering resentment." The fifth prince pinched his own fingers, his gaze losing focus for a moment. His tone sounded as though he were merely recounting an event, yet also cross-examining himself. "Isn't it laughable? I clearly intended to make Xiao Shu experience the taste of being tortured by Gu worms myself. For that very purpose, I even used silver needles daily to pierce my acupoints, collecting and purifying the remaining, uncleared Gu poison in my body..."

Yet in the end, that silver needle never pierced Xiao Shu's heart. The fifth prince didn't know what he was thinking either. The sense of cathartic release he had expected, upon seeing Xiao Shu driven to a furious death with her eyes wide open in resentment, had instead settled ever more heavily in the depths of his heart.

Slowly, the fifth prince recounted the aftermath of Xiao Shu's death. "She had long been a dead woman anyway, beaten to death with random staves outside the gates of Qianyuan Palace. No one will collect her bones, there will be no funeral, and no one will mourn her. The people of the Ningguo Estate will only hate her. In the end, she will likely be wrapped in a straw mat and tossed into some unknown mass grave."

"Are you satisfied with this?" The fifth prince looked at Xue Jin'an.

Xue Jin'an remained noncommittal. All he wanted was for Xiao Shu and Chu Wenwan to pay with their lives; he had no interest in how they died or what state of mind they were in before perishing.

"Living Buddha." Seeing right through the thoughts behind his expressionless facade, the fifth prince let out a soft, mocking chuckle, then abruptly shifted the topic to their initial encounter. "When I first took the initiative to approach you, I simply thought you were a genuinely interesting person—someone who could turn black into white and kill without hesitation... Later on, when I sought you out again, it was because she warned me against it. But I was born rebellious; the more someone tells me not to do something, the more I insist on doing it."

"I never imagined that the one who would one day help me break free from that state of control would be you." The fifth prince changed the subject entirely and declared, "Xue Jin'an, do you want the connections within the Imperial Physician's Office? I can give them to you."

The fifth prince's people had gone to the Imperial Physician's Office to fetch medicine and had several times spotted Fulu or Shouquan loitering outside the entrance, striking up conversations with physicians or medicine boys. At the time, everyone assumed that because no one was willing to treat the seventh prince, these two little eunuchs had no choice but to try and get on the good side of the imperial physicians, hoping that even if they still couldn't persuade anyone to treat His Highness the Seventh Prince, they might at least glean some medical knowledge from them.