The emperor's face changed suddenly when he heard this. He looked at Su Sheng with a gleam of lightning in his eyes: "You! You took the prince into the mountains to hunt?!" He always thought that the prince was weak and must be resting in the tent.
Su Sheng's scalp tingled, and he fell to his knees with a thud. He said with a stiff upper lip, "It's...it's my fault for not being considerate! Uncle Emperor, calm down. I'll go find him right away! I'll risk my life to bring my cousin, the Crown Prince, back!"
Xin Yiwei added fuel to the fire and added slowly: "Don't worry, Your Majesty. The fourth prince Xin Yi Zigu hasn't returned to the camp yet. Who knows, he and the crown prince may be together and they can take care of each other. Cousin Su Sheng doesn't have to be so panicked." These words sounded like comfort, but in fact, every word was heartbreaking.
Su Sheng cursed inwardly: "Being together is even more fatal! If the Crown Prince dies next to the Fourth Prince, his Su family will never be able to clear their name! He was even more afraid of implicating Jiang Songyi! The Emperor had already stood up suddenly, and was about to give a stern order to send the imperial guards to search the mountain—"
"Your Majesty! Your Majesty! Something terrible has happened!" Suddenly, a sharp, crying scream from the young eunuch came from outside the tent. It penetrated the rain and the noise in the tent and pierced everyone's eardrums!
Su Sheng shuddered, his heart trembling. Only one thought remained in his mind: It's over! Could his cousin, the prince, who was so tall and precious, really have been... drenched to death by this deadly rain?!
The emperor's face turned pale and he shouted, "What are you so scared about? Tell me!"
The young eunuch rolled and crawled into the tent, his whole body wet and shaking like a sieve. He was so scared that his soul was out of his body. His lips were trembling and he couldn't utter a word. He just turned his head in horror and stared at the direction of the tent door.
The tent was instantly silent, a pin drop audible, as everyone's gaze was fixed on the swaying curtain. Heavy footsteps mingled with the sound of dripping rain and suppressed groans of pain. The curtain was suddenly flung open!
Several guards, covered in mud, stumbled in, carrying a crude, makeshift stretcher. The man on the stretcher lay huddled, one hand clutched tightly over his face. Blood gushed from between his fingers, covering his left eye, staining half his cheek and his shirt. It dripped onto the ground, creating a glaring scarlet patch. He uttered intermittent, horrifying groans of pain.
It was the fourth prince Xinyi Zigu!
Jiang Yuyao followed closely beside the stretcher, her face as pale as paper. Her carefully combed hair was messed up by the rain, and a few strands of wet hair stuck to her forehead. The hem of her gorgeous palace dress was covered in mud. She twisted the wet handkerchief in her hands helplessly, her eyes filled with real fear and helplessness.
Xin Yiwei was the first to react. He stood up abruptly, his face instantly filled with exaggerated "concern". His voice rose high, filled with "shock": "Fourth brother?! Oh my God! What happened?!"
The young eunuch finally found his voice and cried out sharply, his voice breaking:
"Your Majesty! The Fourth Prince... The Fourth Prince was assassinated! He was shot in the left eye by an arrow—!"
The sound of horse hooves outside the tent grew closer, and Su Sheng's palms, clutching the hem of his clothes, were already sweating. When he saw the blood-stained four-clawed dragon robe on the stretcher, he breathed a sigh of relief—it wasn't his cousin, the prince, in apricot-yellow attire!
The incense burner inside the tent was knocked to and fro. Taking advantage of the chaos surrounding the unconscious Fourth Prince, Su Sheng crouched and slipped out of the tent. The autumn wind, swirling with grass debris, blew against his face, but he didn't bother to rub his eyes. He ran straight to the sycamore forest in the southeast corner of the hunting grounds. That was where the Crown Prince usually rested.
"Ancestors, please bless me, my cousin the prince, and don't let anything happen to him." The young man ran while tearing open the sachet of mugwort from his waist. This was the amulet that his mother had specially asked for before he left.
Inside the imperial tent, the old emperor's knuckles turned white as he clung to the gilded chair back. Just now, the guards had urgently reported, "A nobleman has been seriously injured," and a flashback flashed before his eyes: the prince, twelve years old, fell from his horse while hunting. Only when he saw that the mangled remains on the stretcher belonged to his fourth son, Xinyi Zigu, did he manage to suppress the rage rising in his throat.
"Where are the people from the Imperial Hospital!" The dragon-patterned cuff swept the jade paperweight off the table, breaking it into seventeen or eighteen pieces.
The Yangs, father and son, were the first to rush to the stretcher. General Yang, a veteran of thirty years of battle, was horrified by the blood pouring from the Fourth Prince's left eye and took a step back. Yang Weimin, the legitimate son, suppressed his nausea and glared at the Third Prince, Xin Yiwei, who was fiddling with his quiver in the corner. "The hunting grounds are guarded by imperial guards for ten miles. How could barbed wolf-tooth arrows have found their way in?"
"Second brother, what you said is completely unreasonable." Xin Yiwei threw the feather arrow to the ground, his muscles tense beneath his dark armor. "When Fourth Brother got into trouble, I was accompanying Father to taste the newly-minted Yunwu Tea."
The Imperial Physician and his three apprentices hurried over, their medicine chest clinking with scissors and gauze. The Fourth Prince suddenly leaped up, his bloodied fingers nearly digging into the old physician's shoulder blade. "If you can't cure my eyes, your entire family will contribute to the Lishan Imperial Mausoleum!"
"Your Highness, be careful!" Four medicine boys hurriedly held down his kicking legs. The old doctor trembled as he pried open his eyelids, which were caked with flesh, and his cloudy pupils suddenly constricted—his amber eyeballs had become a mass of scarlet rotten flesh.
Gasps echoed from within the tent. Jiang Yuyao clutched her handkerchief and tried to step forward, but Old Madam Yang grabbed her sleeve tightly. The future princess stared at her fiancé's stern face and suddenly remembered the Fourth Prince's smiling eyes, brighter than the lights of the Qinhuai River, as he pinned flowers on her head during the Lantern Festival last year.
"Your Majesty," the old doctor kowtowed, the pearl on his official hat trembling. "The Fourth Prince's left eye has been pierced by a three-edged arrowhead. If the rotten flesh is not removed in time, the right eye may be affected."
"You quacks!" Xinyi Zigu roared, waving away the medicine boy. Half his face was covered in blood scabs, like a devil crawling out of hell. "Father! I want the chief judge of the Imperial Hospital to treat me! I want the Gu doctor from southern Xinjiang! I want it!"
"Hold him down." The emperor closed his eyes, his body hunched like a dead tree beneath his bright yellow uniform. During the bloody battle at Pingyang Pass, he had witnessed soldiers festering from arrow wounds. The fourth brother's eyes... I'm afraid he can't be saved.
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