Chapter 64 Cleverness can backfire
Qi Jingxuan immediately agreed: "Okay! I promise I won't tell Father!"
After speaking, he hesitated for a moment, then stammered, "Then... can I tell you about my mother?"
Shen Yan thought for a moment and nodded, "Okay."
Consort Shu prioritizes Qi Jingxuan above all else, barely even caring about the Emperor. If she knew the mastermind might be the Crown Prince or Prince Ning, she would only help them conceal the truth from the Emperor and wouldn't leak any information.
Qi Jingxuan breathed a sigh of relief, glanced at the sky outside, and murmured, "It's getting late. I wonder if Jinyu and the others have made any moves."
"The He family will probably need to discuss this for a while; they won't have a result so quickly," Shen Yan said. "When you entered the palace just now, did you only ask about Lin Si? Was there anything else?"
Lin Si's death angered and frustrated Qi Jingxuan, but he seemed quite bewildered when he returned. Shen Yan called him and he snapped out of his daze, but his expression didn't seem to be about this matter.
Qi Jingxuan instinctively wanted to say no, but then he remembered something and hesitated.
Shen Yan: "Is it hard to say?"
She wasn't the type to pry, but fearing she might miss a clue, she asked one more question.
“Not exactly,” Qi Jingxuan said, “It’s…something else, it has nothing to do with us, but…”
The more he spoke, the uglier his expression became; his eyebrows and eyes were almost furrowed together, as if he were in a great predicament.
After hesitating for a moment, he looked out the window to make sure no one was around before leaning close to Shen Yan's ear and whispering, "I ran into Qi Yunying when I left the palace."
Qi Yunying is the daughter of a concubine, the third younger sister of Qi Jingxuan, and is now the Third Princess. Because of her good birth and favored status, she is very arrogant and spoiled.
Shen Yan had seen her at a palace banquet hosted by Consort Shu, but she was quickly summoned away by Consort Gui and did not stay for long.
"And then you two had a fight."
She asked.
Qi Jingxuan shook his head, wrinkling his nose as if he was reluctant to speak. After a long while, he said, "I had just come out of my mother's palace. I was thinking about Lin Si and didn't pay attention to where I was going, so I bumped into her. Then... then her handkerchief fell and landed right at my feet."
“I picked it up casually and handed it to her without thinking much about it at the time. It wasn’t until I walked a while away that I suddenly remembered… I had seen that handkerchief before.”
Shen Yan frowned: "What's wrong with that handkerchief? Is there anything special about it?"
"The material of that handkerchief is ordinary, just the kind of silk handkerchiefs commonly found in the palace, which most of the concubines in the palace have. But the embroidery on it... I saw it before at a palace banquet in the first month of the lunar year."
"That day I drank a few too many drinks. When I was walking back from the Imperial Garden, I stumbled and was scratched by a branch. I was very angry and wanted to kick the tree, but when I turned around, I saw a handkerchief hanging on the tree."
The so-called tree was actually just a shrub about half a person's height, planted by the roadside and not in the way at all, and it was trimmed neatly. If Qi Jingxuan hadn't been drunk and walking unsteadily, he wouldn't have been hit at all.
He deliberately bumped into the tree, almost getting slapped in the face by the branch. He even wanted to teach the tree a lesson, but in the blink of an eye, his attention was drawn to the handkerchief on the branch, and he forgot about his plan to challenge the tree.
"The handkerchief was embroidered with two butterflies, one red and one green, flitting among the peonies. It was quite pretty..."
He paused again, his eyes flickering, and talked for a long time about how beautiful the handkerchief was.
Seeing this, Shen Yan guessed: "There was someone nearby at the time."
How did you know?
Qi Jingxuan was so shocked he almost jumped off his chair.
Shen Yan: "If you had just found a handkerchief by chance, you wouldn't be in such a predicament, stammering and unable to explain yourself clearly."
Qi Jingxuan chuckled awkwardly upon hearing this, and stammered as he continued, "When I passed by there, I vaguely heard some noises nearby, but I didn't pay any attention to them. After seeing that handkerchief..."
He coughed twice and mumbled, "I just told him to be careful, and then I left. I didn't go behind the rockery to catch anyone."
He skipped over a large part of the text, speaking very cryptically, but Shen Yan still understood the meaning and was quite surprised: "Since that handkerchief was commonly used by the concubines in the harem, you...you didn't call it out back then?"
Wouldn't that mean letting someone else give it to the emperor...?
"No, no," Qi Jingxuan hurriedly waved his hand, "Although that handkerchief is commonly used by imperial concubines, it is not made of the finest material. Moreover, concubines often have leftover scraps from making clothes, which they often give to their servants. Therefore, many influential eunuchs and maids in the palace also have such handkerchiefs."
“Those who serve in the palace cannot leave the palace unless necessary. Many of them spend their entire lives in the palace, so they often have companions... and become partners. Therefore, it is not unusual to run into them occasionally.”
"I don't really care about these kinds of things. If I happen to see them, I just pretend I don't know anything. That time, I thought I had just run into a couple who were having an affair. They were secretly meeting in the Imperial Garden while everyone else was busy during the palace banquet."
"I only glanced at that handkerchief before throwing it away, thinking it belonged to some palace maid. I never expected..."
Unexpectedly, it belonged to Qi Yunying.
Shen Yan's brows furrowed more and more as she listened, and she asked doubtfully, "Your Highness, are you sure you're not mistaken? The handkerchief you saw that day and the one you saw today... are they really the same one?"
“It’s definitely right,” Qi Jingxuan said confidently. “The embroidery pattern is not a common style in the palace. It was definitely not made by the embroidery workshop. It was probably made by a palace maid with good embroidery skills that Qi Yunying asked to do it for her.”
"She's incredibly audacious. Doing that kind of thing in her own palace is one thing, but why in the Imperial Garden..."
"Besides, she's a princess, and she has a lot of influence with the Emperor. What kind of husband wouldn't she want? Why would she do this? Don't you think... someone might be deliberately seducing her?"
"Although the imperial son-in-law generally doesn't have much real power, and those aristocratic families are unwilling to let their promising sons marry the princess, the imperial son-in-law is still a member of the royal family, and not just anyone can become one. While the aristocratic families look down on him, those with bad family backgrounds who love to scheme and plot are scrambling to become one."
"Could it be that Qi Yunying has fallen for some good-for-nothing, immoral, and poor young man, and got seduced in a moment of passion?"
Although his relationship with Qi Yunying wasn't exactly good, she was still considered his sister, and he didn't want to see her being schemed against.
"Who knows, that pretty boy might have deliberately lured her out to do those kinds of things, waiting to be discovered so he could climb the social ladder."
Qi Jingxuan said with a worried expression. After he finished speaking, he saw that Shen Yan did not respond for a long time. He thought that she was also thinking about how to persuade Qi Yunying to turn back from the wrong path. But when he turned his head, he saw that she seemed to be thinking about something, and her already clear eyes became brighter and brighter.
"No, no..."
Shen Yan murmured, then suddenly grabbed his arm.
"That handkerchief definitely doesn't belong to the Third Princess. Your Highness, think carefully again, what else did you see at the palace banquet?"
Qi Jingxuan felt dizzy as she shook his arm.
He tried to ignore the warm touch through his sleeve and carefully recalled the events of that day, but finally frowned and shook his head: "No, I was going to walk straight through. If I hadn't stumbled and almost fallen, I wouldn't have stopped there at all."
"Besides... the sound wasn't loud at the time, and it came from behind the artificial hill. Unless I went out of my way to go around it, there was no way I could have seen anyone."
After he finished speaking, seeing Shen Yan's somewhat disappointed look, he asked in confusion, "What's wrong? What did you think of? Why are you so sure that handkerchief doesn't belong to Qi Yunying?"
Shen Yan realized that she had been a little out of line and quickly withdrew her hand, explaining, "Although you didn't see anyone at the time, since you heard the sound, it means that the other person was very close to you. In that case, that person probably knew that you had seen the handkerchief. Even if they didn't know at the time, when they went to pick up the handkerchief later and found that it was missing, they would definitely realize that the handkerchief was left in the place where you had passed by."
"Since they are acting clandestinely, they naturally don't want to be discovered. So why would they leave behind a handkerchief that could expose their identities at any moment?"
"Therefore, the handkerchief you saw at the palace banquet could not possibly belong to the Third Princess. If it really were her, she would have destroyed it as soon as she got back, so why would she still be carrying it with her at all times?"
Qi Jingxuan was stunned for a moment, then suddenly slapped his forehead: "That's right! How come I didn't think of that? You're so smart, Aci!"
After saying that, he wondered, "Could it be that I really saw wrong? The handkerchief Qi Yunying is wearing today is not the same one I saw at the palace banquet. But it really looks alike...it's practically identical."
"I don't know if it's a piece or not, but I suspect... someone deliberately left that handkerchief with the Third Princess so that you would misunderstand and think that the person behind the rockery that day was the Third Princess."
"Shen Yan said."
Qi Jingxuan was startled: "Why do this? Qi Yunying may not be likable, but she doesn't deserve to be treated like this."
"It has nothing to do with whether she's likable or not, but with the true identity of the person behind the rockery. I bet you didn't bump into a palace maid or eunuch, but someone who absolutely shouldn't be there."
"You accidentally stumbled upon that person engaging in illicit relations. Although you assumed they were just having sex and didn't investigate their identities, you did see the handkerchief that had accidentally fallen to the ground..."
“That handkerchief must be able to reveal someone’s identity, either himself or someone who was with him at the time.”
“He was very worried when he got back, afraid that you would recognize him, so in order to clear himself of any wrongdoing... he did something unnecessary and gave the handkerchief to the Third Princess, or had someone make an identical one for her.”
Shen Yan felt as if the tangled mess that had been weighing on her heart for so long had finally found its starting point. As she combed along that starting point, it became smoother and smoother, and she felt as if she had suddenly seen the light.
"Actually, you didn't take that matter to heart at all and forgot about it as soon as you turned your back. But that person had a guilty conscience and always felt that you were a hidden danger. Even though you acted normally and without any abnormalities from January to March, he still couldn't rest easy and felt that you might remember it at any time. So... he arranged the spring banquet at the Marquis of Cheng'an's mansion, trying to drag you down with me, then manipulate public opinion in the capital, force His Majesty to demote you to your fiefdom, and then arrange for people to pretend to be assassins to kill you on the way and get rid of you completely."
"In that case... everything makes sense."
One problem they hadn't been able to solve was that Qi Jingxuan posed no threat to anyone in the capital, and no one would need to go to such lengths to eliminate a carefree prince like him. Therefore, Shen Yan always felt that he must have done something that she herself didn't care about, but which was crucial to others.
Unfortunately, Qi Jingxuan couldn't remember anything during those three months. He thought of all his enemies, big and small, and even who he had fought with when he was five years old, but he couldn't recall that he had accidentally witnessed a shameful affair at the palace banquet that day.
In his view, that day was no different from any other day. The long nights in the palace were unbearable, and it was perfectly normal to occasionally encounter someone who was interested in another woman. He was used to turning a blind eye to it.
He never imagined that behind the artificial hill were not eunuchs or palace maids, but someone who was so audacious as to have a secret rendezvous with someone.
He would have forgotten this matter forever; in his previous lives, he indeed never remembered it until his death. If it weren't for that handkerchief, he probably wouldn't have remembered it in this life either.
But the person behind the scenes was too clever for their own good and did something they should never have done—they left the handkerchief behind, trying to shift the blame elsewhere.
So today, after Qi Jingxuan had already paid his respects at the palace this morning and was not supposed to go back, a small accident caused the handkerchief to surface from the depths of his memory, reminding him of that day's palace banquet...
From that moment on, the trajectory of fate was completely altered.
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