Chapter 260 Cloth
Qi Yuxuan was lost in her thoughts and did not notice that the Crown Prince, who was chatting and laughing with the military officers on the horse track, looked up at her again.
Today's Dragon Boat Festival banquet came to a successful conclusion. After all the pleasantries were over, Qi Yuxuan excused herself to play with Minying for a while, bid farewell to the Princess, and then brought the child to the East Palace.
The Crown Prince had already washed up and changed into his everyday clothes. He was waiting in the front hall when Sun Miao told him that someone had arrived. Only then did he put down his memorial and have someone invite him in.
Stepping across the threshold, separated by a sandalwood screen depicting landscapes, flowers, and birds, Qi Yuxuan was momentarily stunned to see the elegant Crown Prince sitting by the long table.
Without looking at his figure, one could not imagine his graceful movements while shooting willows and playing polo, based solely on his handsome face that combined all the best features of the emperor and empress.
After Qi Minying was lured away by the Crown Prince's words about newly presented trinkets, she finally got straight to the point.
"Cousin, what did the Lin family in Lancheng discover?"
The prince walked around the screen and back to the long table: "No rush, take a look at this first."
He took something out of a hidden compartment on the bookshelf. Before Qi Yuxuan could avoid it, she could only see the location of the hidden compartment clearly.
"What's this?"
The prince held a wooden box in his hands. When he opened it, there was a neatly folded pink cloth inside.
She suddenly realized that she was too close to the Crown Prince. Just as she was about to take a step back, she saw the Crown Prince hand her a wooden box.
You'll understand once you see it.
For some reason, Qi Yuxuan remembered the phoenix-headed jade hairpin he had handed her in the snow that day, and suddenly took a big step back, her voice turning cold:
"Your Highness, what exactly is it? Just tell me directly."
Qi Jun's hand hovered in mid-air for a moment.
"Don't be afraid, I didn't mean anything by it. It's just that there's a lot written on it, and it's hard to summarize in just a few words. It's better to see it for yourself and see for yourself."
The young man's voice was deep and gentle as he spoke slowly and deliberately, as if he was not offended by her misunderstanding, but rather as if he was carefully comforting her.
Qi Yuxuan's back slowly relaxed, feeling embarrassed by her stress response.
She didn't speak, maintaining her distance, and reached inside to take out a handkerchief.
The pink cloth with its intricate embroidery was not noticeable when folded together, but when fully unfolded, the contents written in dark brown blood were shocking.
Qi Yuxuan's fingers trembled slightly.
The person who wrote this blood letter seemed to be near death. Many of the characters had simplified strokes, the pressure was uneven, and the broken fingerprints were very obvious. It took her some effort to fully understand it.
Upon seeing the signature "Aru," it felt as if everything that was known had been made clear and presented completely to Qi Yuxuan.
It turns out that Aru and Qu Qing were both pawns secretly planted by Prince Duan.
Aru has been hiding in a brothel since childhood, doing many evil deeds for Prince Duan, all in exchange for her freedom after ten years of promise. However, Prince Duan betrayed her and poisoned her, so she could only continue to endure humiliation and serve him, waiting for the day when she could personally kill Prince Duan.
However, later, Aru discovered that Prince Duan frequently summoned her fellow villager, Qu Qing, to serve him. She then realized that Prince Duan was not only impotent but also had a preference for men! Later, Qu Qing went out to help Prince Duan slaughter "pigs"—
This was what alarmed Qi Yuxuan the most.
I thought that Prince Duan was obsessed with the elixir of immortality, which is why he kept so many sorcerers to concoct the pills. But the truth is that the sorcerers claimed that the pills contained poison, and that taking them directly would not grant immortality. They said that the heart and liver of people who had been taking the pills for a long time must be used to make the medicine in order to guarantee immortality.
Prince Duan, after all, had limited abilities and could not actually capture hundreds or thousands of people, lock them up, and feed them medicine. Moreover, the sorcerer said that the longer the medicine was taken, the more hearts and livers would be produced, and the better the effect of the medicine would be.
So he sent people among the people to spread the pill under the names of "fertility pill," "male fertility pill," and "panacea," saying that as long as one takes it for a long time, all wishes will come true.
"Slaughtering pigs" means taking the lives of people who have been taking medication for a long time, and then cutting out their hearts and livers to send back to them.
The "pig" that Qu Qing went to kill was the Xie family of Jiangdong County, specifically the Xie Tingzhou family.
As agreed, they killed the Xie family in the dead of night and staged a fire, but as flames soared into the sky, a night wind blew, and all eleven households in the alley perished in the inferno...
Qi Yuxuan had heard Xie Tingzhou talk about his family before.
The Xie family he belonged to was just a distant, obscure branch, and for several generations there had only been one male heir. His father, because of his good learning, bought an official position and later became a fifth-rank prefect, enjoying a period of great prestige. However, his good fortune did not last long. His father was also nearly thirty years old and had no son. He longed to have a boy and married countless concubines, but had no principal wife. He had only one condition: if a boy was born, he could be made the principal wife.
Xie Tingzhou's mother obtained the so-called "male-producing medicine," and not only did she take it herself, but other people in the household were also influenced and began to take the pills, including the head of the Xie family.
Thus, Xie Tingzhou, who was born with a poor constitution, came into being.
During that great fire, only Xie Tingzhou was tied to the well by his wet nurse, while his aunt and youngest daughter, who had returned home to visit their families, escaped the blaze. Yet, he became the target of everyone's ire. Human nature is complex, and even the distant branches of the Xie family couldn't understand why, in such a massive fire, everyone else in the house perished while he alone survived.
He was an unlucky person from birth, who had caused the deaths of all his relatives and neighbors. Even his aunt, Xie's aunt, did not want to raise him. It was only because Xie Tingzhou said that he could write and paint and sell the paintings to earn money for his aunt and her daughter that he was able to get food.
As he passed the imperial examinations for the first, second, and third ranks, his status in the hearts of his aunt and half-sister rose higher and higher.
Qi Yuxuan only found out about these things later.
Now, the cloth in front of her tells her directly that the murderer who killed the Xie family and more than a dozen neighboring families, more than a hundred people, is Qu Qing and the Prince Duan behind her.
Furthermore, Aru wrote that before serving Prince Duan, Qu Qing had a family. When Prince Duan approached him, he was prepared to die with him. On that occasion, more than a dozen families were killed because of him. Qu Qing felt extremely guilty, but he underestimated how much Prince Duan valued his life. In the end, he failed and rolled down the cliff.
Having learned from the previous experience, Aru had no choice but to pretend to be poisoned and act crazy. However, she accidentally learned that Qu Qing's daughter had actually entered the Xiao family and become a member of the Xiao family.
She robbed Qi Yuxuan on the road because she had heard that Qi Yuxuan was a member of the Xiao family and wanted to attract her attention so she could find out more. She had no idea that the Xiao family had another girl.
Later, when she found out that Qi Yuxuan could help her bring down Prince Duan, she wrote this book, hoping that it could help her one day.
Perhaps before the cloth was even delivered, Aru was silenced. She still remembered Chen Liao's description of her gruesome death...
It took Qi Yuxuan a long time to recover from the shock of the reality.
"So, where did my cousin get this thing from?"
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