Inside Yanxi Palace, Lin Yun leaned against a soft couch, her fingertips drooping limply, the embroidered handkerchief in her hand quietly slipping to the ground.

She tried to bend down to pick it up, but even such a simple action made her vision go black and her chest feel tight and painful.

"Your Highness!" Granny Li rushed forward to support her, but her hands were ice-cold. "Why are your hands so cold?"

Lin Yun forced a smile, her voice as weak as a mosquito's buzz: "It's nothing, I probably just didn't sleep well last night..." But even she herself didn't believe it.

For the past two weeks, she has experienced heavy, leaden limbs when she wakes up in the morning, drowsy and sleepy in the afternoon, and even occasional palpitations and shortness of breath.

When the imperial physician took the patient's pulse, he only said that "the fetal energy is slightly weak" and prescribed several doses of medicine to stabilize the pregnancy, but there was no improvement whatsoever.

Granny Li stared at her mistress's pale lips, alarm bells ringing in her mind! This wasn't ordinary fatigue; it was clearly...

"Chief Steward Su!" Granny Li stumbled into the side corridor of the Hall of Mental Cultivation, grabbed Su Peisheng's sleeve, and said in a trembling voice, "Her Highness Consort Shu is not right! This old servant has served three masters during their pregnancies and childbirths, and has never seen such symptoms before—Her Highness doesn't even have the strength to comb her hair!"

Upon hearing this, Su Peisheng's expression changed drastically, and the whisk in his hand fell to the ground with a "clatter." He knew better than anyone how much the Emperor valued Consort Shu; if anything were to happen to her…

"Quickly! Summon all the Imperial Hospital staff on duty to Yanxi Palace!" he shouted sternly, staggering as he turned around, his back already soaked with cold sweat.

Seven or eight imperial physicians knelt outside Yanxi Palace, taking turns to take Consort Shu's pulse. The chief physician, Wang, frowned deeply: "Her pulse is deep, weak, and thready, definitely a sign of deficiency of both qi and blood. She should have been given a pregnancy-stabilizing medicine daily; it shouldn't have come to this..."

"Useless!" Su Peisheng interrupted sharply, "His Majesty ordered that Consort Shu's food and clothing be tested for poison, yet you couldn't find the reason?!"

Suddenly, the youngest imperial physician, Liu, exclaimed in a low voice, "Wait! Her Majesty's fingernails are bluish, and there are tiny purple spots at the base of her tongue... This seems to be—" He abruptly fell silent, exchanging a horrified glance with the other imperial physicians.

Imperial Physician Wang took a deep breath: "Chief Eunuch Su, if this old minister is not mistaken, Her Majesty has probably been poisoned by a slow-acting poison!"

The hall fell into a deathly silence.

Suddenly, Granny Li lunged at the peony bonsai by the window, frantically digging through the soil with her fingers: "Her Majesty personally tends to these flowers every day!" As the soil flew, a faint, sweet, fishy smell wafted out.

Physician Liu dipped a small amount into the powder and ground it, then his expression suddenly changed: "Heartbreak Grass! This poison seeps into the skin upon contact with water, and penetrates immediately upon contact with the skin!"

Even more horrifying was yet to come—the new clothes sent by the Imperial Household Department, after being soaked in the medicinal liquid, developed a layer of eerie blue fluorescence. "The Cold Fragrance Powder!" Imperial Physician Wang nearly collapsed. "This poison stains clothes without leaving a scent; prolonged wear will cause stagnation of blood and qi, inevitably leading to miscarriage!"

Su Peisheng's face turned ashen, his mind flashing back to the frequent comings and goings of palace maids at Changchun Palace recently. His teeth clenched so tightly they gurgled: "What a brilliant move to kill without shedding blood..."

As chaos erupted in Yanxi Palace, Yongzheng strode swiftly through the night. He pushed aside the kneeling, weeping palace servants and tightly embraced the unconscious Lin Yun.

"Investigate." The emperor's voice was colder than an ice blade. "I want this harem—dug up three feet from the ground!"

As soon as the decree was issued, a tense atmosphere immediately descended upon Yanxi Palace.

Su Peisheng personally oversaw the operation, leading the elite eunuchs and guards of the Censorate to completely surround Yanxi Palace.

Palace maids, eunuchs, nannies, and even the rough servants who did cleaning were all isolated and interrogated.

The air was thick with oppression and fear, as if even breathing carried the chill of a blade.

The first to break down was Dongmei, a palace maid who swept and cleaned Yanxi Palace.

She was locked alone in a dimly lit room. The eunuchs from the Imperial Prison only used two rounds of finger-crushing to make her collapse to the ground, tears streaming down her face.

"I confess! I confess everything!" Dongmei trembled as she crawled forward, her forehead pressed against the cold floor tiles. "It was Sister Chuntao from Changchun Palace... She gave me a packet of powder, saying that if I sprinkled it on the flowers and plants that Consort Shu tended, it would make her look haggard... I didn't know it was poison!"

Su Peisheng's eyes sharpened, and he slammed his whisk heavily on the table: "Continue!"

Dongmei sobbed, "Chuntao said that Her Majesty the Empress promised to transfer me to Changchun Palace to serve after the matter was settled, and to reward me with fifty taels of silver... I entered Yanxi Palace with Chunlan and Xiahe, but Her Majesty usually only allowed the two of them to serve her. I was momentarily bewitched, but I really never thought of harming Her Majesty! I secretly tried the powder, and it only made my hands slightly itchy, but who knew..." She suddenly fell silent, looking at the door in horror. The people from the Shenxing Division were dragging another palace maid past, whose ten fingers were already bloody and mangled.

Dongmei's confession opened a crack in the defenses.

Soon, Xiaohe, a palace maid in charge of washing clothes in Yanxi Palace, was also exposed. Under torture, she confessed that she had mixed a kind of "clothing fragrance" into the incense burner of Consort Shu's clothes.

"The old nanny from Changchun Palace said that this incense can calm the nerves... I really didn't know it was poisonous!" Xiaohe's cries gradually weakened, and she finally fainted on the torture bench.

---

That night, the Censorate raided the Imperial Household Department's embroidery workshop, arresting dozens of embroiderers. One of them, surnamed Zhang, turned ashen-faced before the instruments of torture could be used, collapsing to the ground before the torture even began: "I'm innocent! That batch of fabric was personally delivered by Granny Wang from Changchun Palace. She said it was newly tribute silk from Jiangnan, and ordered us to prioritize making clothes for Consort Shu..."

Su Peisheng narrowed his eyes: "Is there anything unusual about the fabric?"

Zhang Xiuniang trembled like a leaf: "Wang Mama instructed us to use a special dye, saying it could prevent insects from biting... but when we were dyeing the thread, our hands all broke out in rashes..." She suddenly covered her mouth, as if realizing something terrible.

The imperial physician examined the remaining dyes in the embroidery workshop on the spot and found that a trace amount of "Cold Fragrance Powder" could be extracted from them.

This toxin melts when heated and can seep into the bloodstream through the skin. Prolonged exposure by pregnant women will inevitably lead to miscarriage.

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