Search the Weiyang Palace……Consort Ning’s mind went blank for a moment. She snapped her gaze to the attendant who had gone to relay the order. Bizhu stayed close to her side under the pretense of offering comfort. There were other eyes left behind at the Weiyang Palace. Word of what had happened in the Imperial Garden would have reached them by now, and the sharper ones would know what to do. As long as they understood, they would know to erase the traces……

But before she could collect herself, a young male voice cut through from nearby.

Several men of the Embroidered Guard stood in formation. The one at the front had cold, sharp features, and the people around him had instinctively drawn back.

“When I retrieved the incense for examination,” Qi Hanzhou reported, “I had the palace guards seal the Weiyang Palace.”

Bizhu’s face went rigid. Consort Ning stared at the python-embroidered robes and froze. Why was the Embroidered Guard here?

Everything that had happened today had come without warning, and no one had been prepared for it, least of all Consort Ning. This involved a suspected poisoning within the palace. Without needing the Emperor to say a word, a thorough investigation was inevitable. The calming incense had come back clean, which meant the poison, if any, had likely come from somewhere else. Consort Ning had sworn so insistently that someone was trying to harm her that she could not possibly open her mouth now to stop the search; and the ones conducting it were the Embroidered Guard. duskblossoms | translated by adeline

Qi Hanzhou did not look at Consort Ning. His gaze stayed entirely on Ying Fusheng. The boy had already changed out of his wet clothes and sat wrapped in thick robes, watching Consort Ning with a worried expression, looking every bit like someone genuinely concerned for her wellbeing. If not for the palace attendants keeping him back, he would probably have gone to her side by now.

Ying Fusheng seemed to notice the scrutiny and turned his head.

Everyone else had been caught off guard by the Embroidered Guard’s arrival. Ying Fusheng alone looked as though he had known they would come.

Qi Hanzhou’s brow furrowed slightly.

This person had likely laid out the whole board already and was simply waiting for everyone to walk into the trap.

He had pushed the Ministry of Rites into the eye of the storm, and now his own maternal family was in crisis. What was his next move? What was in the Weiyang Palace?

The Embroidered Guard worked fast, and with the Emperor’s special authority behind them, a report came back in under half an hour.

“This subordinate reports to Your Majesty: we conducted a full search of the Weiyang Palace and found two palace attendants attempting to flee.” The Embroidered Guard had the two attendants brought forward, then directed others to lay out everything recovered from the search. “Furthermore, no obvious poison was found in Consort Ning’s quarters, but several unusual items were discovered. The physician who went with the Embroidered Guard conducted a preliminary examination and was unable to identify their medicinal properties. A court physician’s assessment is required.”

The Embroidered Guard presented the recovered substances. The Emperor glanced at Physician Chu. “Take a look.”

Physician Chu stepped forward at once.

The Embroidered Guard lifted the brocade cloth covering the tray. Bizhu’s face drained of color the moment she saw what lay on it.

The tray held several ground-up medicinal substances that looked much like licorice root. The onlookers murmured among themselves. At a glance, it appeared to be ordinary medicine. Why call it unusual?

“These were found in a hidden compartment in the medicine room,” the Embroidered Guard said.

Consort Ning had been taking medicine frequently of late, which made the small medicine room in the Weiyang Palace a priority in the search. Her prescribed medicines had raised no concerns, but the Embroidered Guard left no stone unturned, and they had found a hidden compartment in the medicine room.

The compartment held nothing else, only medicinal substances wrapped in mulberry paper. They looked and smelled like any number of common herbs, yet the fact that they had been hidden gave cause for suspicion. The area around the compartment showed no dust accumulation, and the edges of the opening had been worn smooth, a clear sign it had been opened and closed many times.

Ying Fusheng glanced toward Qi Hanzhou. An ordinary palace search might never have turned this up. But Qi Hanzhou was different. His instincts were sharper than most people’s. With the Ministry of Rites making such noise at court lately, and the rainy night at the Huguo Temple before that, Qi Hanzhou would not have failed to notice. He would not only have noticed, he would have dug into everything connected to it.

From the moment Qi Hanzhou appeared here today, Ying Fusheng had known the outcome was certain.

Over on the other side, the Embroidered Guard had finished laying out the details. The Emperor looked at Consort Ning. “Do you recognize this?”

Consort Ning’s forced composure cracked into open panic. She shook her head repeatedly, denying any knowledge of it.

Inside, she was reeling. That compartment was so well hidden. How had the Embroidered Guard found it?

The Emperor’s expression darkened. Physician Chu’s brow creased deeply, and he immediately sent someone to the Imperial Medical Office to fetch something. Several other court physicians gathered around as well. The consorts watching had never seen the physicians mobilize like this. After conferring, they confirmed the substance was rare. Physician Chu hesitated for some time, then stepped forward to report. “Your Majesty, this substance may be connected to the previous dynasty.”

The previous dynasty. A sharp edge passed through the Emperor’s gaze. “Something from the previous dynasty?”

“This physician has heard of a secret substance used in the previous dynasty’s palace, called Suihongzi. It resembles common medicinal herbs, particularly licorice root, and is easily mistaken for one. Its scent and medicinal properties are nearly impossible to detect. Ingesting small amounts causes dizziness, weakness, and symptoms similar to a wind ailment. Over time, however, it poisons the body, causing progressive physical deterioration until the organs fail and death follows.” Physician Chu paused in thought, then said carefully, “There is one further point. This substance also damages the mind. In mild cases, it causes confusion and disorientation. In severe cases, it drives a person to madness.” duskblossoms | translated by adeline

At the word madness, every eye in the room turned to Consort Ning. Could this be what had driven her out of her mind?

As the physician spoke, Consort Ning’s face had gone from bad to worse. The onlookers assumed she was frightened by the revelation about Suihongzi. Ying Fusheng kept his expression worried, but his gaze went straight to Consort Ning. She alone knew that the physician had just laid out the full properties of Suihongzi, and she was more terrified now than she had been at any point before.

The Empress Dowager frowned slightly. “Consort Ning was harmed by this substance?”

The court physicians hesitated. Consort Ning’s condition did match the symptoms of madness, but her pulse was not weak at all. At most she showed some shortness of breath, and that was largely attributable to her poor sleep. The physicians’ uncertainty left the onlookers unsettled. That such a poison could exist within the palace, and be so difficult to detect.

Consort Ning heard the physicians failing to confirm anything, and the panic that had gripped her began to ease.

“You cannot determine it?” the Emperor asked.

Bizhu recovered her wits before Consort Ning did. She looked at the two attendants who had been caught trying to flee. There was no choice now but to abandon them. “My lady has truly been…”

Consort Ning’s reason snapped back. She looked toward the two people being held by the Embroidered Guard. They were the contacts she used to pass messages to her father. They knew what to do. The two attendants met her eyes. One of them went pale and parted his lips slightly.

At that instant, Qi Hanzhou’s gaze sharpened. Two fingers closed around the man’s jaw, and with a sharp crack, he dislocated it on the spot.

The sudden movement startled everyone. The attendant stared at him in terror. Qi Hanzhou’s expression did not change. He handed the man off to the Embroidered Guard beside him. “Check the back teeth. He was about to swallow poison.”

Consort Ning’s face went stiff.

The Embroidered Guard extracted the poison from the attendant’s mouth, and the faces of everyone present went several shades paler.

This had started as a prince falling into the water. No one could have imagined it would lead to a secret poison from a fallen dynasty, a palace attendant attempting to poison someone and then swallow poison to silence himself.

Empress Xu read the Emperor’s expression and turned immediately to her own attendants. “Go and find out which palace brought these people in.”

Her attendants moved at once. Eunuch Rong, standing beside the Emperor, saw what was happening and sent his own people as well. The two attendants who had tried to take the poison were dragged aside.

Both attendants were young, which made them easier to trace. The order went out, and the Office of Rites pulled their identity tablets and entry contracts. They had entered the palace only within the last few years, with household registrations that could not be verified before their entry, and had been placed directly in the Weiyang Palace from the start.

Qi Hanzhou’s brow furrowed. Something felt wrong.

He turned slightly and saw Ying Fusheng sitting there, eyes lowered, expression worried, yet the look in those eyes was so calm it was almost indifferent. His gaze swept over the kneeling attendants and then over Consort Ning in the distance, and it was clear that from the calming incense onward, all of this had unfolded exactly as he had anticipated.

Then Qi Hanzhou noticed the pallor of Ying Fusheng’s lips.

A chill ran through him.

The matter was not over. Everyone else was still reeling from the attendant’s attempted s*icide when a commotion broke out outside.

Several medical apprentices came and went. Physician Chu had already given his instructions and now stepped forward to report. “Your Majesty, the toxicity of Suihongzi is difficult to detect by conventional means. After consultation, this physician and his colleagues believe we may attempt an ancient method from the previous dynasty. There is an old technique that can reveal poison in the body.”

The apprentices brought in a basin of liquid. It was black. When the basin was set before Consort Ning, her expression curdled at the sight of it. She had thought this matter might drag on inconclusively, but Physician Chu had produced this.

“This is a preparation of secret medicinal compounds. If a person has ingested Suihongzi, contact with this liquid will cause a purple line of blood to appear on the skin.” Physician Chu finished speaking and looked at Consort Ning. Seeing the panic in her eyes, he said quickly, “My lady, this substance is harmless. Please extend your hand.”

Consort Ning stared at the liquid, her body rigid. But every eye in the room was on her, and she had no choice but to reach out. The moment her hand entered the liquid, a chill ran through her entire body, and her hand began to tremble uncontrollably.

Physician Chu waited, but she did not move. “My lady, forgive the intrusion.”

He took her hand and lifted it out. Not only was there no purple line on her right hand, the dark black liquid had barely left a mark at all. Consort Ning’s hand was clean.

Consort Ning had not been poisoned.

“What? How can there be nothing?”

“Has the ancient method stopped working? But the physician said Suihongzi was a poison, didn’t he?”

The onlookers exchanged bewildered glances. Consort Ning showed no signs of poisoning. Then what was the Suihongzi found in the Weiyang Palace for? The Embroidered Guard looked toward the detained attendants. If there was no poison, why had they been so desperate to kill themselves?

Then, from somewhere in the crowd, a voice said, “So who was the Suihongzi meant for?”

In the Weiyang Palace, besides Consort Ning, who else was there to target?

duskblossoms | translated by adeline

Every eye turned immediately to the Sixth Prince, who had been sitting in silence. He had been in the water for some time, and his face was still extremely pale. The warmth of the brazier and the thick robes seemed unable to drive the cold from him. Everyone in the palace knew the Sixth Prince had been sickly since childhood, bedridden for years. If not for his plea on his mother’s behalf at the Wangyue Pavilion banquet the previous year, he might never have left his bed at all. Everyone had been focused on Consort Ning just now, but one of the symptoms of Suihongzi was precisely this kind of physical weakness.

The Empress Dowager’s face turned ashen. She rose sharply to her feet and looked at her grandson, his gaze unfocused and uncomprehending, not even aware of what was happening.

“Physician!” the Emperor said, his voice sharp with fury.

The medical apprentices carried the basin forward. Physician Chu, cold sweat breaking across his brow, took the Sixth Prince’s hand. It was ice cold. He placed the hand into the liquid, and in fewer than three breaths, a deep purple line rose swiftly across the back of the Sixth Prince’s hand, vivid and alarming.

Ying Fusheng’s instinct was to pull his hand back, but everyone around him had clearly seen the line on his hand. He looked down at it suddenly, and went still, staring.

Any remaining doubt about whether the ancient method still worked vanished the moment that purple line appeared on the Sixth Prince’s hand.

A chill swept through everyone who saw it. All eyes moved between Consort Ning and the Sixth Prince.

“Reporting.” An Embroidered Guard came forward. “We found residue consistent with Suihongzi in the medicinal food being prepared at the Weiyang Palace.”

“In Consort Ning’s medicinal food?” the Emperor asked.

“No.” The Embroidered Guard continued. “According to the palace attendants, it was Consort Ning who gave the order for it to be sent to the Cining Palace. For the Sixth Prince.”

The room fell completely silent.

Empress Xu looked at Consort Ning, then asked, “You are certain it was Consort Ning’s order?”

“Yes. This morning, Consort Ning’s personal maid Bizhu came specifically to give the instructions and personally inspected the preparation.” The Embroidered Guard looked toward the palace maid kneeling beside Consort Ning to confirm. “The attendants who prepared the medicinal food all confirmed it, and a number of people can verify that Bizhu was present.”

Bizhu. Consort Ning’s personal maid, who had been at her side since before she entered the palace.

Every matter in the Weiyang Palace, large or small, passed through her hands. She was trusted completely.

“The toxicity of Suihongzi only takes effect after it has been simmered into a preparation.” Physician Chu examined the residue the Embroidered Guard had brought and separated out several pieces. “This is Suihongzi. There is no doubt.”

Shock rippled through the entire room. The Empress Dowager rose to her feet, her gaze blazing as it fell on Consort Ning.

The Emperor turned to Consort Ning, his voice deliberate and measured. “Was this your order?”

Consort Ning knelt in a daze.

Every last trace of color left Bizhu’s face. It was over.

The Sixth Prince had been basking in imperial favor, and the Empress Dowager had kept him at the Cining Palace to recuperate, and only then had he slowly begun to improve. But his body had been capable of recovery all along. Why had his condition only grown worse while he was at the Weiyang Palace, until he could not even get out of bed, rarely seen by anyone? The Sixth Prince had been bedridden for years. Consort Ning had always said it was a weakness he was born with, and she had regularly called physicians to examine and prescribe medicine. He drank the medicine. He did not improve.

A secret poison from a fallen dynasty hidden in a compartment. Medicinal food prepared on deliberate orders. With the memory of the prince falling into the water in the Imperial Garden still fresh in everyone’s minds, no one would believe Consort Ning had nothing to do with any of it.

Years of illness. The Sixth Prince was not yet eleven years old.

Even a tiger does not devour its own cubs. How could Consort Ning dare?

Consort Ning stared blankly at the medicinal food. Her reason was slowly returning, and with it came a feeling of absurdity. When had it all started to go wrong? She looked around in a daze. The eyes around her held shock, revulsion. Whispers crept into her ears. The reputation she had spent years carefully building shattered in an instant, and in the eyes of everyone present, she became a poisoner.

Then, from across the room, she saw Ying Fusheng.

The boy sat surrounded by physicians, curled in on himself. While everyone else condemned her, a flicker of contempt passed through his eyes. That gaze clung to her like a festering wound. Consort Ning finally understood when it had all gone wrong. From the night that bastard fell into the water the previous winter, not a single day had gone her way. Everything had spiraled out of control from that moment on.

Then the boy being tended by the physicians parted his lips slightly, and it looked as though he smiled at her.

That smile, there and gone in an instant, reached something deep inside Consort Ning and turned it to ice.

“It’s you! You’re not him! You’re a demon! A demon that crawled out of the water!” Consort Ning snapped. She lunged at Ying Fusheng, knocking the physician aside.

The sudden outburst caught everyone off guard.

Qi Hanzhou moved forward, his arm sweeping out to block her. He pulled Ying Fusheng back several steps. The Embroidered Guard closed in from all sides, and the palace attendants finally reacted, rushing to restrain Consort Ning. She struggled against them, her eyes fixed on Ying Fusheng with savage intensity. Then she saw something, and her expression froze.

The boy stood within the ring of the Embroidered Guard’s protection, watching her the way one watches an insect. His lips moved, shaping words without sound.

Madwoman.