Chapter 80

After a moment, she asked, "I can understand bribing officials and forming cliques, but what is the purpose of colluding with the enemy and betraying the country?"

The Third Prince is, after all, a member of the Vermilion Bird royal family. Even if he and Mu Qinhan are vying for power in the court, they should be united against a common enemy when facing external threats.

Mu Qinhan patiently explained to her, "My guards intercepted his correspondence with the Southern Rong. He agreed to cede eleven cities on the southern border to them on the condition that they send troops to help him ascend the throne."

He stroked the secret letter in his hand. "The Southern Rong were not the only tribe that exchanged goods with him. Of the hundred tribes that came to his birthday banquet before, probably half of them had received benefits from him or made promises from him."

The reason sounded both absurd and reasonable. Mu Yulu nodded in sudden realization, "Since you already have some evidence, you must have already guessed his plan?"

Mu Qinhan raised an eyebrow slightly. "Of course. If I couldn't even see through his little trick, I wouldn't be the regent."

He said to Mu Yulu, "I know what he wants to do, but I don't have enough evidence. Over the years, through investigating his confidants, I can confirm that most of the evidence is hidden in the Mu residence."

Mu Yulu nodded again: "So you repeatedly sneaked into the Mu residence at night to find evidence?"

Mu Qinhan gazed at her, then smiled. This time, the smile in his eyes was genuine. "Before, I sneaked into the Mu residence at night to find evidence, but after meeting you, it wasn't just for that anymore."

Mu Yulu avoided his gaze, not wanting to discuss this topic with him: "Then how did you determine that the evidence was hidden in the Mu residence? The Third Prince has so many confidants, why would he choose to entrust such an important thing to my father?"

“Your father is just a merchant, and not a native of the capital. He came here to do business a few years ago.” Mu Qinhan put the secret letter back into his sleeve. “If the people of the Three States Pavilion hadn’t found irrefutable evidence of his collusion with the Third Prince, I wouldn’t have suspected him.”

His tone was somber: "It is precisely because we cannot easily trace back to your father that the Third Prince chose to hide the important secret letters in the Mu residence."

Mu Yulu frowned, catching another key point: "Sanzhou Pavilion?"

Mu Qinhan knew who she was thinking of again, and he said without any hesitation, "The Three States Pavilion is the world's top assassin intelligence organization. As long as you pay them, they will do things for you."

“Previously, Sanzhou Jinse accepted my mission to investigate the movements of Mu Yugang and the Third Prince, and at the same time, he also accepted the mission to assassinate the Third Prince at the birthday banquet. He did help me find out Mu Yugang’s movements, but he was poisoned on the night of the assassination and failed to complete the mission.”

Mu Qinhan's tone was casual, yet it pulled Mu Yulu back to that thrilling night.

I see.

So this was the reason why Mu Qinhan knew so much about Sanzhou Jinse, and also the reason why he appeared on the roof of the Mu residence's study on the night she first met Sanzhou Jinse.

Mu Qinhan observed her expression with great interest, then continued, "You're shocked by this?"

What he said next shocked her even more: "As long as it's money, the Three States Pavilion will accept it all. In fact, your Mu family also has a top assassin from the Three States Pavilion lurking in the shadows. He has been working for the Third Prince, but your father is unaware of it."

Almost instantly, Mu Yulu guessed the person's identity: "Are you talking about Feng Wentang?"

Mu Qinhan nodded slightly: "To be precise, you should call him Sanzhou Wentang."

Okay, okay.

Mu Yulu nodded, thought for a moment, and then nodded knowingly again.

In this way, everything makes sense.

“I will be infiltrating the Mu residence again in three days. You will come with me then, and this time you will be the one to find evidence.” Mu Qinhan told her about the upcoming plan: “The main reason why we couldn’t stay at the Mu residence for long before was that Sanzhou Wentang was too perceptive.”

"This time I will release the news in advance, telling everyone in the capital that you fell off a cliff with the assassin on your wedding day."

Mu Qinhan said with a half-smile, "I suppose Sanzhou Wentang thinks the same way you do, wanting to see you alive or dead. He will definitely take the risk to find you. The best time for us to infiltrate the Mu residence is when he leaves."

Mu Yulu pretended not to notice the sarcasm in his words: "How do you know he'll definitely go? What if he doesn't fall for it?"

"On the day of the wedding, Sanzhou Jinse stormed into the Prince's mansion alone and kidnapped the Princess. This incident caused quite a stir in the capital," Mu Qinhan said. "But they don't know that I have already brought you back to the Prince's mansion. Sanzhou Wentang was secretly inquiring about your situation just two days ago."

He narrowed his eyes: "He seems to care about you quite a bit."

Mu Yulu sighed inwardly. Talking to this person was exhausting. Every sentence was a roundabout way of saying the opposite of what she meant. It was either sarcastic or a roundabout way of probing.

She changed the subject again: "You asked me to help you find evidence, but I know nothing about these things, and I don't know what I can do."

Mu Qinhan looked directly into her eyes: "I have investigated everyone in the Mu family, including you."

“I know you’ve always been at odds with your father, but that’s precisely why you’ve been provoking him and trying to understand him. In fact, you’re the person in the entire Mu family who knows him best. I need you to use your knowledge of him to help me find where he’s hiding the evidence.”

Mu Yulu nodded, then shook her head.

She agreed with the first part of his statement; she did indeed understand him better than Mu Yugang had imagined. However, she had doubts about the second part.

Although her father was vulgar and mercenary, he could also be described as cunning and shrewd. Mu Qinhan and Sanzhou Jinse had visited the Mu residence many times but returned empty-handed. How could she easily find the place where Mu Yugang hid the evidence?

Mu Qinhan guessed what she was thinking and dispelled her concerns with a single sentence: "You don't need to feel too much pressure. Just think of it as searching for treasure. You can relax and guess where he would most likely hide a large sum of money if he got it."

Mu Yulu searched her mind for a moment, then said somewhat blankly, "I actually thought of a place."

Three days later, Mu Qinhan, dressed in night clothes once again, returned to the Mu residence with Mu Yulu.

As soon as they climbed into the backyard, Mu Yulu led Mu Qinhan directly to the dog hole she had crawled through when she was a child.

The weather was bad tonight. The night was so thick it seemed to press down on the deep mansion like spilled ink. Only occasionally could a few thin rays of moonlight pierce through the heavy clouds and gently fall upon the world, casting a flickering light in the backyard of the Mu family mansion, only to be swallowed up by the deeper darkness in an instant.

Such weather presented an excellent opportunity for Mu Yulu and her companion. Concealing themselves in the darkness, the two successfully found a dog hole hidden in the corner of the backyard wall, covered by vines.

She exchanged a glance with Mu Qinhan, who instantly understood her meaning. He then squatted down and began to feel around inside the cave entrance.

Although she had this guess, she wasn't entirely sure. Moreover, if there really was a secret hidden inside the dog hole, it must have been hidden in a very secret place. Perhaps there was some kind of mechanism hidden inside this small dog hole. She didn't understand these things, so she could only ask Mu Qinhan, as a prince, to personally dig out the dog hole here.

However, Mu Qinhan himself did not seem to feel wronged. He carefully felt the rough and damp inner wall of the dog hole. When his fingertips touched a place with a completely different feel from the other places, he frowned, applied a little pressure with his fingertips, and heard a very slight loosening sound from the wall.

Mu Yulu observed Mu Qinhan's expression and her heart skipped a beat when she saw him suddenly become so serious.

Did she really guess right? She found the right place right away?

A moment later, Mu Qinhan pressed down sharply with his fingers at a clever angle, then pulled them back. The wall made a soft click as he pulled it out, revealing a dark, narrow space inside the dog hole.

A pungent smell of old dust and moldy paper wafted over, and Mu Qinhan took out several neatly stacked scrolls.

Mu Yulu couldn't help but lean her head over.

By the flickering moonlight, the two could see that they were several rather old ledgers, their edges worn and frayed. When they opened them, they found a dense collection of alarming entries.

In a certain year and month, a certain amount of military rations were released from the warehouse under the pretext of being old or damaged, but the final destination was marked with an unfamiliar name with a foreign flavor, often accompanied by a note: "It has been properly arranged with so-and-so."

One by one, line by line, countless grains flowed out of the Vermilion Bird Kingdom and into the enemy's granaries in this way.

Mu Qinhan's gaze swept over the ink-written characters, his eyes as deep as ever, revealing no emotion. After a while, he put all the account books into his robes, then turned to Mu Yulu with amusement: "Your father's hiding place for these account books is truly peculiar. No wonder we've made several unsuccessful nighttime visits to the Mu residence."

He asked Mu Yulu, "But how did you guess this place?"

Mu Yulu knew that he was probably suspicious of her and was probably testing her again, so she said frankly, "Because when I was little I always liked to crawl through dog holes to play. When my father found out, he hung me up and beat me severely. He said that crawling through dog holes was an insult to the name of a lady from a good family. He was so angry that he almost fainted and wished he could beat me to death."

"Looking back now, although the old man was easily angered, his reaction that day was actually very strange. The way he looked at me was less anger and more suspicion that he was afraid I had discovered something."

She glanced at Mu Qinhan, then hummed in agreement and said, "Just like the way you look at me right now."

Mu Qinhan laughed, but it was a rather helpless laugh: "Don't wrong me, I didn't do it."

Mu Yulu shrugged. "Actually, I was just guessing. Besides, there are so many dog ​​holes in the Mu mansion, dozens inside and out. I suspect that my father used them to cover up the truth. It's just luck that we were able to find the dog hole where we were hiding things so quickly."

Mu Qinhan nodded in agreement: "Then, in your opinion, where will the next hiding place be?"