Chapter 176

In the end, it was Shunyi who sent the fourth prince to his death.

A great fire started in the eldest prince's bedroom. The fire raged and grew rapidly with the wind, burning for three days and nights. The clouds on the horizon were burned to a fiery red, and the color did not fade for a long time.

The fire-resistant timber was charred, demonstrating the ferocity of the fire. The entire main courtyard where the Crown Prince was located was reduced to ruins. Three charred corpses, unrecognizable, were unearthed from the ruins. The coroner examined the bodies and found black ash around the mouth, nose, and throat. There were no obvious external injuries on the bodies, and although the limbs were curled up, there were no signs of struggle. The cause of death was determined to be self-immolation.

After verifying their identities, it was determined that the three charred corpses belonged to the First Prince, the Fourth Prince, and Shunyi, a close eunuch of the Fourth Prince.

The only suspicious point at the entire scene of the deaths was that the fire was so intense that it was confined to the main courtyard where the eldest prince was located, without affecting any other areas. Because of this, the court officials—especially the remaining forces of the eldest prince's faction—expressed doubts about the deaths of the two princes, believing that someone must be behind it all, and their words pointed directly to the second prince, whom they were at odds with.

The second prince was indeed invited into the Three Judicial Offices to assist in the investigation.

Unfortunately, after a full half-month investigation, the fire that claimed the lives of two princes was ultimately ruled a suicide. Apart from the officials in charge of fire prevention in the capital, the Imperial Guards patrolling nearby that night, and the Prefect of Jingzhao who were either exiled, dismissed from office, or demoted from the capital, no one else was implicated.

Of course, these people were indeed wronged regarding the fire at the First Prince's residence. After all, those who want to die will die no matter what. Even if they were negligent in their daily lives, they would not dare to be negligent towards the prince. Even if he was a deposed prince, as long as he still lived in the prince's residence, there was still hope for his resurgence.

Having lived in the capital for a long time, one becomes accustomed to the fickle nature of human relationships and the ups and downs of life. Even the most stubborn person becomes shrewd and astute. They understand all too well the principle that if you don't cut the weeds at the root, they will grow back in the spring breeze. They will not offend people unless absolutely necessary.

Upon discovering the fire at the First Prince's residence, they did their utmost to provide assistance, but unfortunately, with two princes dead, someone had to take the blame.

They're just unlucky.

The reason Xue Jin'an knew so much about the events surrounding the fire was because the person in charge of investigating the case was Zhou Yushu disguised as Chu Wenjing.

On the very day the three charred corpses were unearthed and identified, Zhou Yushu arranged to meet Xue Jin'an at Jiu Tian Yi, accompanied by Fu Lu.

When Fu Lu heard the description of the fire, he also didn't believe it was suicide. "If it were suicide, it would be too strange. How come the fire seems to have eyes, only targeting the Crown Prince's courtyard?"

Zhou Yushu dipped his finger in tea and drew a simple house diagram on the table. He pointed to the location of the Crown Prince's main house and said, "The first time I went there, I smelled a very strong smell of fully burned kerosene. After three tests, it was confirmed that the main house was filled with kerosene from the inside."

"Judging from the burn marks, there were two fires in total. One started from inside the main house and spread outwards, and the other started from the courtyard wall and spread inwards... This is a method of fighting fire with fire. The arsonist did this intentionally to avoid involving others. When we arrived, the fire in the courtyard had already been extinguished, but the fire in the house was raging wildly with the help of kerosene. There was nothing we could do but wait for it to burn everything it could and then go out on its own."

"My God!" Fu Lu found it hard to believe that the two sides would end up like this. He speculated, "Is it possible that the people in the house were drugged and that's why there were no signs of struggle?"

As Fu Lu gathers more information, he learns more, sees more, and thinks more, so it's normal to have doubts.

The main reason was that he really couldn't understand it. The eldest prince had just lost his mother, and she had died because of him. It was hard for him to not want to live anymore. But the fourth prince had no reason to die with her!

Chu Wenwan has been dead for several years now, so it's really strange that the Fourth Prince is acting like he's going to die now.

And everything goes smoothly.

Of the three eunuchs serving the Fourth Prince, Shunxin was the most skilled, Shunde was the most honest, and Shunyi was the most intelligent. Moreover, Shunyi had been by the Fourth Prince's side for so many years, yet he was also a spy planted by the First Prince, providing the First Prince with a lot of information about the Fourth Prince. From any perspective, he should not have been willing to die so bravely.

Fu Lu couldn't understand why they committed suicide, so he could only consider homicide.

Zhou Yushu shook his head. "If they were just given a drug that makes them lose strength, like a muscle relaxant, their bodies should show signs of moving towards the exit, not deliberately turning their backs to the exit against the norm. And if they were completely unconscious, their bodies wouldn't exhibit such violent behavioral reactions. This is the body's instinctive struggle before death... All of these indicate that they were engulfed by the fire while fully conscious."

"Being burned alive...doesn't it hurt?" Fulu hugged his arms and shuddered, still not understanding why they would commit suicide.

If people can't understand each other, then there's an even greater barrier between machines and people.

Although Xue Jin'an could always accurately predict a person's thoughts, this was based on sufficient data. Currently, he had no idea about the private meeting between the First Prince and the Fourth Prince, so he had no way of predicting their thoughts.

At least in the last confrontation between the First Prince and the Fourth Prince, the Fourth Prince did not show any intention of dying.

Xue Jin'an had guessed that the two would eventually perish together, but he did not expect it to happen so quickly. The night after Xue Jin'an guessed that the Fourth Prince had planted spies for the First Prince, a fire broke out in the First Prince's residence without any warning.

It was precisely because of the hasty action that many traces were not erased, which allowed Zhou Yushu to solve the case without much effort. As for why the case was compiled so late, it was purely to appease the emotions of people inside and outside the court, which is why the investigation was repeated again and again.

Unfortunately, no conspiracy was uncovered.

Zhou Yushu came to Xue Jin'an not only to reveal information about the case, but also to get a definite answer from him.

Not to mention Fu Lu's suspicions about the case, even Zhou Yushu, who personally investigated the case, was not entirely convinced.

Xue Jin'an did not give an answer immediately. Instead, he started from the objective evidence and carefully extracted the hidden message in Zhou Yushu's words: "With such a large fire, it would be difficult to avoid affecting other people in the mansion if the method of fighting fire with fire was used. Unless it was anticipated from the beginning and multiple fire prevention measures were taken with this courtyard wall as the boundary."

Zhou Yushu sighed and nodded in confirmation of his guess.

The courtyard wall was coated with fire-retardant paint several times, and a water tank filled with water was placed every ten steps at the base of the wall, just in case. A ditch was also dug in front of it. With these multiple fire prevention measures in place, the fire naturally could not be started.

“The water tank was originally in the courtyard, and it was used to prevent water from flowing away. It is impossible to know when it was placed in this position, but the fireproof paint on the ditch and the courtyard wall was recently applied. These conclusions can be drawn from the soil traces and the purchase of the fireproof paint.” This is one of the main bases for Zhou Yushu’s judgment that it was a self-immolation.

Afterwards, Xue Jin'an asked some more detailed questions, which Zhou Yushu answered one by one. Xue Jin'an then used the character models of the three parties involved in his mind to reenact the incident.

"I can only speculate based on their personalities, and the accuracy rate is not high, less than 80%," Xue Jin'an cautioned before speaking.

"Less than 80% is 70% certainty, that's good enough." Zhou Yushu was satisfied with the accuracy rate and urged Xue Jin'an to start quickly.

Xue Jin'an treated all three equally and analyzed them all.

The eldest prince's suicide logic is not hard to understand. The successive betrayals had already exhausted him both physically and mentally. Although he was released from prison smoothly after this incident, and the blame was taken by Consort De, anyone with a brain knows what really happened. It's one thing to kill his own brothers in order to ascend the throne, but it's quite another that his brothers didn't even get the position of crown prince.

This incident not only made him appear ruthless, but also turned him into a fool who had tried to achieve nothing. In addition, because of his different bloodline, his path to the throne was completely ruined. For the rest of his life, he would be confined to the small world of the First Prince's residence, with no way forward in sight.

If Consort De were still alive, he might have persisted in living so that his mother could be well. Just like in the original story, the eldest prince was confined to the prince's residence for his entire life, while Consort De spent her days drinking, playing cards, and riding horses in the harem, becoming a unique and unconventional concubine in the harem.

But then Consort De died, in the arms of the eldest prince. Consort De used her death to hold the emperor hostage, giving the eldest prince a glimmer of hope—a life for a life.

“But this is not what the eldest prince wants,” Xue Jin’an commented sharply.

No matter how corrupted the eldest prince was by power, his initial motivation for vying for the throne was to allow Consort De to return to the capital openly as a native of the Southern Frontier, to ride horses and herd livestock on the grasslands, to the Qilian Horse Ranch in her heart, and to live a free and unrestrained life. —Although, this was not what Consort De truly desired.

The mother and son are quite similar in this respect; they are both equally stubborn and headstrong.

The eldest prince had no desire to live and died the moment Consort De died.

Coincidentally, what truly drove the Fourth Prince to despair was also the death of his birth mother, Chu Wenwan. Compared to the Fifth Prince, the Fourth Prince was undoubtedly fortunate. No matter how ruthless Chu Wenwan's methods were, she was genuinely devoted to her child, as evidenced by how arrogant the Fourth Prince had been before.

There is no doubt about Chu Wenwan's death; Xue Jin'an killed her with his own hands. That's true, and it is precisely because of this that Chu Wenwan's death became a thorn in the Fourth Prince's side.

The Fourth Prince has a conflicted personality. He has basic values ​​and can distinguish right from wrong. He knows that Xue Jin'an killed Chu Wenwan to avenge his mother, which is not a problem. However, the hatred of killing his mother stands between the two of them. He cannot get over it, nor does he dare to. In addition, he feels guilty towards Xue Jin'an. Back then, the death of the Tenth Prince was blamed on Consort Zhen. He had humiliated the original owner of the body many times because of this. Even if he did not get anything good out of it, it does not mean that he can erase the fact that he bullied others.

He tried time and again to find an excuse to attack Xue Jin'an, but in the end he found that he owed Xue Jin'an more and more, and was getting further and further away from the path of avenging his mother. In the end, he could only blame everything on the Gu worm.

If it weren't for the Gu worm, Xiao Shi wouldn't have died. If Xiao Shi hadn't died, his mother wouldn't have done anything wrong. If she hadn't done anything wrong, Xue Jin'an wouldn't have killed his mother... The Fourth Prince thus made sense of this.

Because the eldest prince was connected to the Gu worms, the fourth prince began to consider breaking ties with the eldest prince. If at this time he learned that the eldest prince was not only raising Gu worms, but also an accomplice to the murder, and that the eldest prince was one of the planners of the horse startling incident at the horse farm, which indirectly led to the death of Chu Wenwan, and that the fourth prince "recognized the thief as his father" and became an accomplice to the murderer who killed his mother, he would help him a lot, do a lot of things, and even become a core member of the murderer for a time.

What would the fourth prince have thought at that time?

Finally, regarding Shunyi. Actually, from the very first time Xue Jin'an met him at Qifeng Courtyard, when Shunyi replaced the stone with a steamed bun for the Fourth Prince, and later when he defended Shunde who brought food to Xue Jin'an, Xue Jin'an felt that Shunyi was a clever person with a quick mind and a very smooth way of handling things.

In novel writing techniques, whenever a tragic ending is mentioned, the author often likes to write that a prodigal son dies because of loyalty, a schemer dies because of faithfulness, and a commoner dies because of dedication.

Shunde's cleverness and shrewdness made him an excellent spy, but the final fate of a spy is to die alongside his master.

Regardless of which master he accompanies, he has become a hymn of praise.

"These are my speculations," Xue Jin'an said, taking a sip of water. "And this is the most perfect ending."

Zhou Yushu and Fulu were both amazed by what they heard and finally stopped speculating about a conspiracy behind the fire.

The fire that claimed the lives of two princes has finally been closed.

Xue Jin'an thought that the struggle for the throne should have subsided by now, but he did not expect that he had greatly underestimated the stupidity of the Second Prince.

After the death of the eldest prince, the second prince, who had successfully consolidated the remaining forces of the eldest prince's faction and become the "eldest son," became arrogant.