Chapter 382 Who is lying?

Gongsun Yushu was stunned for a while, "...Do you think I lied to you?"

"What else?" Zhu Lan asked coldly, "Where did the rumor about the cat-for-prince substitution in the palace come from? Don't you really know?"

"Young Master, I've told you before, I know more than you think, I advise you to tell me the truth, otherwise——"

Zhu Lan's eyes flashed with coldness.

Although she acted like that on the surface, she had actually been observing Gongsun Yushu's expression as he spoke, and it seemed...he didn't seem like he was lying.

If Gongsun Yushu deceived herself, she could only say that his acting skills were better than Yu Wei's.

That would be too extreme.

Seeing that Zhu Lan didn't believe him, Gongsun Yushu immediately became anxious and tried even harder to prove that what he said was true.

"I, I really didn't lie to you! If the rumor wasn't about stealing the child, what else could it be about?

As for the matter of stealing the child, go ask the elderly villagers living near Ciyun Pagoda, I’m sure someone will remember it!

But those idiots certainly could not have imagined that there were actually two princes living in the courtyard of Ciyun Tower at that time!"

Zhu Lan's eyebrows furrowed more and more tightly, and after a moment of silence, he said calmly:

"I'll give you one last chance, tell me the truth."

Gongsun Yushu was so anxious that he didn't know what to do and almost used his hands to gesture to Zhu Lan.

"Well, let me give you another reminder, young master." Zhu Lan said.

"Before you, there was another child who was going to enter the palace to replace the crown prince. That child's name was Chen Zao."

"Later, the bedroom where the Crown Prince's biological mother lived caught fire, and only one baby survived, and that is the current Crown Prince."

Zhu Lan looked at Gongsun Yushu standing there in a daze with blank eyes, and it seemed that he really had no idea about this.

Yunzhou is so far away from the capital, and I caused such a big fuss in the court because of the prince's background. It has been less than a month, so it is possible that the news has not reached Yunzhou.

But the next moment, Gongsun Yushu's words made Zhu Lan's heart suddenly tremble!

"No, before me...there was no such thing as a baby entering the palace. You must be mistaken."

"What!?" Zhu Lan couldn't believe it and even suspected that he had heard it wrongly.

Gongsun Yushu said:

"Although I didn't remember anything at the time, my father told me about it. That was the history of the rise of our Ning'an Marquis's Mansion. My father remembered it very clearly!"

"The person the court sent out of the palace to look for a suitable baby let the secret slip in front of my father."

"They did find another baby before me, and it seemed to be a boy among twins."

"The boy's parents deliberately misreported the child's birth time in order to send their son to the palace, get a sum of money, and gain wealth and glory in the future."

"The twins were born the day before the Crown Prince, fifteen hours earlier. They were not allowed to replace the Crown Prince. But the parents did not tell the truth and lied about the birth time of the children by five hours later, which met the requirements."

"Just when the child was about to enter the palace, the secret was exposed. Naturally, the child was not brought into the palace and was sent back to someone else."

"They then started looking again and finally found me."

After Gongsun Yushu finished speaking, he glanced at Zhu Lan's expression cautiously.

Although Zhu Lan did not show anything on the surface, his heart was filled with turmoil and storm.

Gongsun Yushu's words just now could be said to have directly overturned everything she had found out before!

Zhu Lan thought of a possibility and then asked:

"Did you enter the palace before or after the fire in the bedroom?"

"After the fire." Gongsun Yushu answered decisively this time.

"You didn't remember anything at that time, how would you know?"

"Because my father often talked about it." Gongsun Yushu said, "He said that the time of my birth was a coincidence."

"If he had been born later, more than twelve hours later than His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, this good thing would not have been ours."

"If it had been sent to the palace a little earlier, half a day earlier, he might have died in the fire."

Zhu Lan stood there in a daze.

If Gongsun Yushu did not lie, then Chen Zao never entered the palace that year, and even the testimonies of Old Lady Chen and Chen Li were all false.

Moreover, when the fire broke out in Concubine Lan's bedroom, there was no other baby inside. Yan Xiuyun was the only one there from beginning to end!

But……

wrong.

wrong!

The more Zhu Lan thought about it, the more confused he felt, and his thoughts were a tangled mess.

She hadn't been so confused for a long time.

Zhu Lan began to recall the whole incident and found that everything started from the day he went to Chu Xiuning's home and the conversation between them.

It was Chu Xiuning who told her that at that time another child had entered the palace and was exchanging swaddling clothes with the prince when the bedroom caught fire and the whole place was in chaos.

Chu Xiuning said that he only rescued one child in the end, whose identity was unknown, and that was now Yan Xiuyun.

What Gongsun Yushu said now is completely opposite to the facts described by Chu Xiuning at that time.

At least one person must have lied.

Zhu Lan was more suspicious of Gongsun Yushu, so he looked into his eyes and said:

"Young Master, now please tell me what you just told me in reverse chronological order."

She emphasized again: "Note, it is said backwards."

Gongsun Yushu looked at him strangely, as if he thought she was meddling, but in the end he didn't say much.

Then he recalled the past, and although his speech was discontinuous, he told it in reverse chronological order.

Zhu Lan's doubts grew even greater. If Gongsun Yushu lied, the lie he made up on the spur of the moment would surely have flaws in the second flashback.

But what Gongsun Yushu repeated was basically the same as what he had said before.

This shows that this matter was not made up on the spur of the moment. At least for Gongsun Yushu, this was a real incident.

So if we rule out Gongsun Yushu... could it be that Chu Xiuning had been deceiving me from the very beginning?

(P.S. I’ve been so busy with work lately that I don’t have much time to write. Tomorrow, there will be three updates for the important plot, just to make the reading smoother for everyone. But after that, there will be a single update for about a week for the transition chapters to save manuscripts and optimize the subsequent outlines. I hope you guys will understand!

The story of the prince's origin is coming to an end, but there are still key plots. These chapters contain a lot of information, and some doubts will be explained later. Then Lanbao and his classmates will be promoted~)