Before dawn, Yingzhou City was shrouded in a thin mist, and the rapid sound of horses' hooves shattered the silence.
"Urgent message! His Highness the Crown Prince has been assassinated!"
The courier, covered in blood, tumbled off his horse, still clutching the blood-stained silk scroll tightly. Wang Po, the old woman at the roadside breakfast stall, was so frightened that she knocked over her oil pan, splattering boiling oil onto the "Crown Prince's Benevolence" notice on the wall, instantly burning a charred hole in it.
"I heard he was shot through the heart by a poisoned arrow and died on the spot..."
"Heavens above! Isn't the Crown Prince in the capital? How could he be..."
"A fire broke out in the Eastern Palace at the hour of Chou last night. When the guards discovered it, His Highness had already..."
The whispers spread like wildfire. Xin Jiuwei stood in the shadow of the corner pharmacy, her fingertips digging deeply into her palms. In her previous life, the Crown Prince had also died in this late autumn, only half a month later. And in this life, the Crown Prince's death—his heart pierced by a poisoned arrow—was exactly the same as Qi Huaiyu's death in the underground palace.
The pharmacy clerk was stuffing a celadon bottle into her bundle: "The antidote for the 'seven-day decay' that you requested, young lady, is all here..."
"Change it to arsenic," she suddenly said, her voice as cold as ice.
The waiter's hand trembled, and the porcelain bottle nearly fell to the ground: "This...this is deadly upon contact with blood..."
Xin Jiuwei placed a gold ingot on the counter: "Add two ounces of arsenic."
####**II. The Holy Monk's Background Causes a Citywide Uproar**
At 3:45 AM, the sound of the bell at Lingyin Temple shook the autumn leaves off the trees.
When the imperial envoy, holding the bright yellow imperial edict, stepped onto the mountain gate, the crowd of onlookers had already packed the stone steps so tightly that they could not move. Several young men who looked like scholars pushed their way forward, even knocking over the banner that read "Master Jueming's Buddhism is Boundless".
"By the grace of Heaven, the Emperor decrees: The Sixth Prince, Xiao Xun, shall immediately return to the capital to preside over the funeral rites for the Crown Prince..."
An uproar erupted like a tidal wave.
"Master Jueming is a prince?!" Old Liu, the candy seller, was so shocked that he dropped his tools.
"No wonder he's so knowledgeable about military strategy..." the silk shopkeeper exclaimed in sudden realization, "Last year he annotated 'The Art of War' by Sun Tzu..."
"I heard that his mother was from Yaotai twenty years ago..." The storyteller suddenly fell silent, his mouth tightly covered by his companion.
Xin Jiuwei stood by the window of the teahouse's private room, watching that familiar figure emerge from the mountain gate. Xiao Xun was dressed in plain white mourning clothes, his arrow wound on his shoulder still unhealed, the dark red stain seeping through the snow-white linen. Besides the mourning sash, he also wore a gilded sachet around his waist—the very same container that held her copper key in the hot spring villa that day.
"Your Highness," Liu Ya knelt on one knee, "everyone in the Xin household says that the Third Miss went to Yuncheng to check the accounts three days ago."
Xiao Xun paused almost imperceptibly as he stroked the sachet. In the morning light, Xin Jiuwei clearly saw his left little finger twitch unnaturally—an old wound left from when he rescued her from the fire.
"Let's set off."
As the carriage escorted by the black-armored imperial guards disappeared around the corner of the official road, a thin crack appeared in the teacup in Xin Jiuwei's hand.
The autumn rain in Yuncheng lingered for three whole days.
Xin Jiuwei sat in the side room by the window. Before her lay not an account book, but a secret map marking the Second Prince's henchmen. Outside, the chatter of laborers on the dock mingled with the sound of rain.
"That scholar booked the entire cabin floor, throwing money around like it was free..."
"Half of his face was rotten, yet he wore a silver mask; his cough sounded like a broken bellows..."
"When I was moving my luggage, I noticed that a piece of his right pinky was missing..."
The teacup shattered completely in her hand with a "crack." Scalding tea mixed with drops of blood dripped onto the secret map, blurring the three characters "Qi Huaiyu" into an indistinct pattern.
—It's him!
She would never forget that rainy night, when Qi Huaiyu coughed like that as he plunged the dagger into her heart.
"Sir?" the waiter called softly from outside the door. "Your boat is ready, but the weather..."
"Let's go now." She pulled a bandage over her bleeding hand. "Add another ten taels of silver, and get the fastest boat."
In the study of the Xin family mansion at midnight, the candlelight flickered erratically in the drafty air.
After listening to his daughter's account, Xin Hong's jade thumb ring shattered in two with a "crack." The shards embedded themselves in his flesh, and blood trickled down his palm lines, but he was completely unaware.
Are you sure it's him?
"The boatman said the man was missing a piece of his right little finger," Xin Jiuwei said softly, a metallic taste of blood rising in her throat.
The banana leaves outside the window pattered loudly in the night rain. Xin Hong suddenly stood up and pulled a yellowed map from the cover of the Analects. The parchment was densely marked with the northern trade routes and... the outposts of the Rong tribes, with some places marked with bright red wolf head symbols.
"Three years ago, the late Crown Prince entrusted me with a secret investigation into the theft of military equipment from the border." He pointed to a mountain pass called "Soul-Severing Valley," "If Qi Huaiyu truly defected to the Second Prince with the secret of the Dragon Breath Arrow..."
"The North will surely descend into chaos." Xin Jiuwei replied, her fingers unconsciously tracing the arsenic hidden in her sleeve. "My brother is there."
The candlelight flickered and burst. Xin Hong suddenly slammed the black iron token on the table, the ferocious beast head on it clearly visible in the firelight: "With this, you can mobilize all the hidden agents along the way." He paused, his voice suddenly hoarse, "Including... the old guard from Yaotai."
Xin Jiuwei suddenly looked up. Yaotai—these two characters were engraved on her mother's belongings; the former palace of the Crown Prince...
"You knew all along?"
The answer she received was the creaking sound of the hidden door to the study opening. A hunched old servant emerged carrying a gilded box, the lid of which bore half of a dragon pattern that matched her jade pendant!
The autumn sun was particularly dazzling on the day we set off.
Xin Xiyao insisted on escorting her to the Ten-Mile Pavilion. Behind the two sisters' carriages followed a furtive figure—Xin Yunzhou, dressed as a servant, his face smeared with black, but his red-rimmed eyes were still visible.
"Nonsense!" Xin Xiyao grabbed his ear, "The border documents have already been issued..."
"I'll just see my little sister off!" The boy's voice choked with emotion, "The North is so far away..."
Xin Jiuwei suddenly shoved a copper talisman into his hand. The talisman was engraved with a picture of Yazi holding a sword, which was the one that Xiao Xun had secretly placed at the bottom of her bundle that night.
"Keep this safe." She lowered her voice. "If you encounter an army in black armor carrying wolf-head swords, showing this can save your life."
Xin Xiyao's fingertips trembled slightly as she removed the jade pendant from her neck. The phoenix feathers on the mutton-fat jade were clearly defined, and the strange runes on the back gleamed with an eerie blue light in the sunlight.
"My mother said before she passed away..." She tied a red string around her sister's neck, "Seeing the talisman is like seeing her."
Xin Jiuwei suddenly hugged her older brother and sister. In a daze, she returned to the day of their farewell in her previous life, but this time she could not smell the blood, only the scent of agarwood on her elder sister's clothes and the smell of rust on her brother's armor.
"Wait for me to come back."
As the carriage drove away from the pavilion, she didn't look back. The red maple leaves lining both sides of the official road were ablaze, just like the scene in her previous life when she was forced to go to the capital. Only this time—
"Whoosh!"
Suddenly, a strong gust of wind lifted the carriage curtain. On a distant mountain peak, a figure in black reined in his horse, the white mourning sash on his shoulder fluttering in the wind.
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