Chapter 89 It turns out the son said she seduced his father, and the father said she seduced him...

"Sister Shen," Gao Zheng looked Shen Yan up and down after entering the room, and nodded to make sure she was alright. "I'm relieved to see you're okay."

Only then did he give Qi Jingxuan a perfunctory bow.

Three days have passed since the palace coup. Because the emperor ordered the Court of Judicial Review, the Ministry of Justice, and the Censorate to conduct a joint trial, Gao Zheng has been very busy these past few days and has not been able to come to visit.

I finally managed to find some free time today, so I stopped by to visit Shen Yan and also to talk to them about the case.

Shen Yan rose and returned the greeting, then had a servant pour him tea before saying, "I've heard that the Dali Temple has been very busy lately. What brings you here today, Brother Gao?"

“Exactly,” Qi Jingxuan chimed in sarcastically, “If you’re so busy, just focus on your work at the Dali Temple and get the case sorted out. What are you doing running around like this!”

Gao Zheng ignored him and said to Shen Yan, "I heard that the Xie family led troops to attack the Prince's Mansion on the day of the palace coup. Although Uncle Shen said you are fine, I am still not very reassured and think I should see for myself."

Qi Jingxuan was so angry that he almost twisted his nose out when he saw that the other man completely disregarded him and said such ambiguous things in front of him.

"It's been three days. What good is it that you're only arriving now if something really happened? Stop pretending to be kind!"

He's already married to Aci! How can this guy still be so shameless! He calls himself a scholar, has he no shame?

Gao Zheng, however, remained unperturbed, his expression calm, with even a hint of provocation in his eyes.

On the day Prince Ning forced the emperor to abdicate, he was on duty at the Dali Temple. After the incident, all government offices in the capital were placed under control, and no one was allowed to enter or leave without an imperial edict, to prevent Prince Ning's faction from colluding with each other. At that time, he was unable to go to the nearby Hanlin Academy to check on his father's safety, let alone come to Prince Jin's residence.

Fortunately, things ended quickly. He learned that the crisis here had been resolved when he learned that the Prince of Jin's mansion had been besieged, and that Qi Jingxuan and Shen Yan had both entered the palace.

At that time, there was no safer place than the palace. In addition, after Shen Mingshan returned to the Hanlin Academy, he learned from him that Shen Yan was safe and sound, so he was relieved.

Later, the emperor wanted to thoroughly investigate the case of Prince Ning, and even summoned him alone for this purpose. He thought that although Prince Ning had been imprisoned, there were still many things related to him that had not been investigated, and Shen Yan should also want to know the details, so he investigated the case diligently for a few days and came over after making some progress.

Now that he had personally confirmed that Shen Yan was unharmed, and having also learned of another matter by chance, he was in a very good mood and did not take Qi Jingxuan's mockery to heart at all.

"I've come here today for two reasons: first, to see you, and second, to tell you some inside information about the Prince Ning case."

He then recounted everything he had gained over the past few days, without holding anything back.

It wasn't that he was ignorant of the rules and revealed the case details without permission, but rather that the Ning Prince case had been closely related to Shen Yan and her companion from the very beginning, and it was even because of their leadership that the case could be thoroughly investigated. Although the Emperor instructed him not to divulge the case details, he also said that the Jin Prince's residence could tell him the truth, so Gao Zheng told him everything he knew without reservation.

“She really is Fan Yongxian’s wife,” Qi Jingxuan slapped his thigh and said, “I suspected her the most at the time, but I had no evidence. This kind of thing concerns the other party’s reputation, so I didn’t say anything without concrete evidence.”

Gao Zheng said that the woman who appeared in the Imperial Garden with Prince Ning at the palace banquet in the first month of the lunar calendar was Liu, the wife of Fan Yongxian, the Minister of War.

When Lady Liu and Prince Ning were committing their illicit affair behind the artificial hill, she accidentally dropped her handkerchief, which was blown by the wind into the bushes outside, where it was seen by Qi Jingxuan, who was passing by in a drunken state.

Liu's wet nurse came from southern Jiangsu and was once a top embroiderer in the area. However, she damaged her eyes from embroidering by lamplight for a long time and could no longer earn money with this craft, so she entered the Liu family as Liu's wet nurse.

Although the wet nurse could no longer embroider for long periods, she could still teach some needlework. Liu had been raised by her since childhood and had learned excellent needlework skills. After arriving in the capital, she felt that the skills of some embroidery workshops in the city were not as good as hers, so she often embroidered small items herself. That handkerchief was embroidered by herself.

This embroidery style is not popular in the capital, and not many people know how to do it. Therefore, even though the handkerchief has an ordinary pattern, she was still very worried that Qi Jingxuan would recognize it.

Prince Ning tried his best to reassure him, saying that Qi Jingxuan was a man who had been drunk that day and could only remember the pattern of the handkerchief, not the embroidery. Besides, he had already given the handkerchief to the Third Princess, who rarely went out from the palace and had few opportunities to meet Qi Jingxuan. It was unlikely he would see the handkerchief again and wouldn't remember it. Even if he did remember, once he found out the handkerchief was in the Third Princess's possession, he would only assume it was the Third Princess and some other man behind the rockery in the Imperial Garden that day, and would certainly not investigate further, much less reveal it.

Although Prince Ning disliked Qi Jingxuan, the two had grown up together in the palace and spent more than ten years together, so he still knew him to some extent.

Although this man acted arrogantly, he always believed in "I won't offend others unless they offend me." His relationship with the Third Princess wasn't exactly good, but it wasn't to the point of direct confrontation either. Even if he didn't care about matters concerning the Third Princess's reputation, he wouldn't deliberately expose them to embarrass her.

As long as Qi Jingxuan doesn't speak up, the events of that day in the Imperial Garden will never be known.

Prince Ning used this to reassure Lady Liu, but how could Lady Liu possibly be at ease?

That handkerchief was embroidered by her own hand; it was the only one of its kind in the entire capital. Prince Jin and the Third Princess were siblings. If he discovered that the Third Princess didn't have such a handkerchief before the palace banquet, and that it only appeared after that day, wouldn't it be easy for him to suspect a frame-up and easily establish that it was a gift from Prince Ning?

If he were to discover that she, the wife of the Minister of War, once owned an identical handkerchief that had been lost, wouldn't he immediately be able to deduce that she and Prince Ning were behind the artificial hill that day?

Liu was of humble origin; she was chosen by Fan Yongxian as his second wife solely because of her beauty. Because of her youth, roughly the same age as Fan Yongxian's eldest son, Fan Cong, rumors began to circulate.

Fan Cong was already unwilling for his father to marry such a young second wife, and these rumors made him even more resentful, so he simply requested to be transferred to a post outside the capital.

He simply left, but Liu suffered a terrible fate.

Fan Yongxian initially didn't take the rumors seriously, but after his son left, he began to suspect that his young wife had really done something inappropriate, which was why his son had left Beijing because he couldn't bear the disturbance.

From then on, Lady Liu was as if she had been banished to the cold palace. She had the title of wife of the Minister of War, but she lived like a widow.

That would have been bad enough, but Fan Yongxian is also a heavy drinker. In the past, when he was drunk, he would occasionally hit her, and then apologize and promise never to do it again after sobering up. Now, he beats and scolds her at the drop of a hat, and even thinks it's justified to do so.

Outsiders all said that Liu was lucky, because Fan Yongxian even drove away his own son for her sake. Only Liu herself knew what kind of life she had been living these past few years.

So when he later realized that Prince Ning had feelings for him, he didn't hesitate much and went along with it.

The Fan family father and son accused her of seducing their father, and the father accused her of seducing their son. Since she had been unjustly branded with this stigma of infidelity, she might as well make the stigma real. She not only wanted to be with other men, but also with men of higher status and greater power than the Fan family father and son.

Thus began Liu's entanglement with Prince Ning. She found great pleasure in their encounters, as if it were a form of revenge against the Fan family. She even secretly hoped that one day this affair would be discovered. She imagined Fan Yong finding out first that he had been cuckolded by the unshakeable Prince Ning—the scene would surely be hilarious.

But when that day really seemed like it could come at any moment, she was terrified.

She began to think of ways to make amends. First, she stayed up all night to embroider an identical handkerchief to prove that hers had never been lost. Then, she found a silk shop and bribed one of the managers to hire several embroiderers from southern Jiangsu to embroider handkerchiefs and purses with this pattern to give to the women of various households.

As a result, many women in the capital had similar handkerchiefs, and even if Prince Jin remembered this incident one day, he probably wouldn't be able to tell who was in the Imperial Garden at the time.

She thought she had handled the matter very cleverly, but to her surprise, Prince Ning was furious when he found out, thinking she had gone to unnecessary trouble.

Fortunately, Liu was not foolish enough to do such a thing with a cloth shop or embroidery workshop related to her family. When Prince Ning sent people to clean up the mess, he found that the silk shop was owned by a relative of the He family by marriage. He breathed a sigh of relief and left this clue behind, pointing to Qi Jinghong.

Although Qi Jingxuan and others suspected Liu when they investigated the matter, Liu's wet nurse had passed away years earlier and had not come to the capital with her. After the incident, Liu also strictly ordered her two maids who had accompanied her to not mention the wet nurse to outsiders. Therefore, they could only suspect her in the end and had no concrete evidence.

But Qi Jingxuan was more suspicious of her at the time, not because she was younger and prettier, but because she didn't have children.

Although both were second wives, Zhuang Cheng, the Minister of the Court of Judicial Review, already had a son and a daughter. He felt that if Madam Zhuang had even a little consideration for her children, she wouldn't have done such a thing, especially in a dangerous place like the Imperial Garden.

But while I may have these thoughts, since it concerns a woman's reputation, it's best not to speak lightly without concrete evidence.

Qi Jingxuan originally didn't care about these things; what did reputation have to do with him? But Shen Yan had suffered because of her reputation, dying time and time again in front of him. Even after marrying him and becoming a princess in this life, she was still secretly gossiped about. He realized that rumors could determine life and death, so he became extremely cautious about them.

Now that he was certain his initial suspicions were correct, he had a feeling that he had known it all along.

Gao Zheng glanced at him: "Your Highness is truly adept at hindsight."

They didn't say anything then, but now they're saying this as if they're so farsighted.

Qi Jingxuan chuckled, suppressing the urge to curse, and turned to Shen Yan to complain, "Aci, look at him, I..."

He stopped mid-sentence when he saw Shen Yan's dazed expression, and tugged at her sleeve worriedly, "Aci, what's wrong?"

Shen Yan's thoughts were completely elsewhere, and she murmured, "So it's because of the Liu Yuan case... I see."