Chapter 8, Eighth Side, Sacrifice
Chen was still wearing the mask, obscuring his expression. However, someone stepped up from behind a circle of guards, holding a knife to Chen's hand, and his voice betrayed his anxiety: "You captured him?"
"Yes." Lu Huantang replied neither humbly nor arrogantly.
"Why didn't you call for help after you caught him? Why did you come alone?" Chen's words silenced all of Lu Huantang's explanations.
Lu Huantang couldn't possibly say that he wanted to make Liu Bo one of his own, which was why he didn't call for reinforcements, could he?
Lu Huantang's silence further confirmed the suspicion that he had killed Lu Huantang to silence him.
Seeing this, Chen suppressed the urge to kill him and sneered, "Miss wasn't poisoned by the dagger at all; you're just trying to confuse the situation and buy time!"
Chen teleported behind Lu Huantang and instantly bound his hands behind his back. Perhaps because he had been busy for a while, Lu Huantang couldn't break free. He was slightly surprised; it seemed that everyone in the Jiang family was a master. In the end, Lu Huantang was escorted by Chen to the outside of Jiang Linzhi's sleeping quarters to await his fate.
Even while kneeling, Lu Huantang remained neither humble nor arrogant, saying, "This subordinate is incompetent. Although I found out the mastermind, I allowed the witness to commit suicide. Please punish me, Mr. Qi."
Chen recounted every detail of the matter to Qi Lingjun and concluded directly, "Mr. Qi, this person claimed to be looking up the murderer, yet he silenced the murderer twice. He must be a spy!"
After a long while, Qi Lingjun emerged from the hall, his face etched with exhaustion. "Who orchestrated this?"
“Regent.” Lu Huantang said without the slightest hesitation.
"...You can't just accuse someone like that. Can you use that as evidence?" Qi Lingjun frowned deeply. Even if the evidence was conclusive, he wouldn't dare to identify the mastermind.
This means abandoning Lu Huantang: Lu Huantang was originally on the Regent's side, and staging a self-inflicted injury to infiltrate the Jiang family would be more powerful than any evidence.
Loyalty or disloyalty, both lead to certain death. Lu Huantang, however, forged his own path, stating righteously, "Using subordinates as evidence would be a waste. My purpose is to gain promotion and titles, not to be a scapegoat."
Such candor is quite rare these days.
Qi Lingjun sneered inwardly. Given the situation, was he still so clueless? Either he had failed in his duties and offended the Jiang family, or he had been used as a pawn to turn against the Regent. Either way, he was going to die, yet he still dreamed of promotion and titles. Qi Lingjun pinched the bridge of his nose. "Take him away."
Four men held Lu Huantang down, but he remained kneeling and stubbornly asked, "How is Your Highness?"
"The poison has been suppressed, but we are still looking for an antidote."
“Uncle Liu had no wounds but was poisoned. I suspect the poison might not be poison at all, but rather two things that clash,” Lu Huantang finally remembered. “He replaced my horse oil with otter oil today, so there might be something wrong with the horse oil.”
A glint flashed in Qi Lingjun's eyes, and he immediately ordered an investigation. It wasn't long before it was discovered that the horse oil did indeed contain a herb that was incompatible with Jiang Linzhi's medicine.
The crowd busied themselves again, and Chen paced nervously outside the door.
Lu Huantang just knelt there, and no one told him to get up.
As dawn approached, Qi Lingjun finally emerged from inside, his brow furrowed with weariness. Upon seeing Lu Huantang still kneeling upright, he said, "The poison hasn't been cured."
"May I take a look?"
Qi Lingjun gave him a meaningful look. "Come in."
The hall was filled with the strong smell of herbs. Behind the screen, Jiang Linzhi lay on the bed, pale as a paper-mache sacrificial doll.
Lu Huantang unconsciously clenched his fist. The person he was going to kill just a few months ago was now lying weakly in front of him. If he just made one cut, could everything go back to normal?
If he kills her now, what are the chances that he can kill everyone here, and what are the chances that he can go back?
His fist clenched and unclenched, then unclenched again.
In the instant his thoughts were racing, Lu Huantang calmed down and said, "Lend me a small knife."
Qi Lingjun asked warily, "What do you want?"
“Saving her is also saving myself,” Lu Huantang said, looking at Qi Lingjun.
Qi Lingjun didn't hesitate much and handed over a small knife.
Lu Huantang immediately slashed Jiang Linzhi's finger. Qi Lingjun managed to stop himself from pushing him away. Seeing that Lu Huantang had also slashed his own finger, with blood tangled together, Lu Huantang had nowhere to escape.
This is a pledge of life and death where we share the same breath.
Qi Lingjun hurriedly stopped Jiang Linzhi's bleeding and said coldly, "I'll give you six hours."
This poison is insidious; he probably won't last six hours, he's just making empty promises. Lu Huantang didn't dare delay and left quickly.
Qi Lingjun bandaged Jiang Linzhi's hand and put it back under the covers, asking, "Does it hurt?"
Jiang Linzhi, who was "unconscious," gave a soft "hmm," but she wasn't faking poisoning; she was genuinely poisoned. It's just that her constitution was special, so she wouldn't die for the time being.
She was in so much pain that she couldn't sleep. She could only close her eyes and grit her teeth to endure it, afraid that if she opened her mouth, she would cry.
No matter how much Qi Lingjun couldn't bear it, he couldn't take her suffering for her. He carefully slipped into the blankets, wanting to warm Jiang Linzhi's icy body, but he dared not get too close, afraid that even the slightest movement would cause her excruciating pain. He whispered, "It'll be over soon, just bear with it for a little while longer. I hope you haven't misjudged him."
"You misread it, just kill him."
At dawn, a man and a horse galloped out of the city. Lu Huantang knew every place in the capital. He found a dilapidated Guanyin Temple, where there was a traveling doctor practicing medicine.
The itinerant doctor was woken up and didn't want to get up, but when he saw it was Lu Huantang, he took a sip of wine to sober up and said with dissatisfaction, "I have to pay more."
"I'll give you whatever money you want, as long as you can save him."
The itinerant doctor, his eyes half-closed in sleep, felt for Lu Huantang's pulse, then his eyes widened instantly, and his expression gradually turned serious.
The old Chinese medicine doctor frowned, a sign that it was probably bad news. Lu Huantang endured the angina and waited quietly for his conclusion. After a short while, the itinerant doctor finally stopped, shook his head and said, "It's incurable. Just wait to die."
This itinerant doctor's medical skills were strange yet extremely skillful; even he couldn't cure it, so the poison was truly potent. Lu Huantang felt an even greater pain in his chest and gritted his teeth, asking, "Who can cure it?"
The traveling doctor, Number Four, didn't care how much pain Lu Huantang was in. He arrogantly said, "If even I can't cure him, who can? If the Maiwu tribe hadn't been wiped out decades ago, maybe I could bring him back to life."
Lu Huantang looked at the itinerant doctor's wine gourd and said, "I have a jar of 41-year-old Fenjiu. If you treat me, I'll give you the wine for free. If you don't treat me, that jar of wine will be lost forever and become useless."
"Damn it!" the quack doctor cursed. "That...that's good wine! Let's call it a day, I'll take you to my old woman."
Although Lu Huantang, who was following behind, was in great pain, he had already secretly drawn his dagger, thinking: if he can't cure him, he will transfer the poison to him as well, so that he will have no choice but to do his best.
Following the itinerant doctor through a maze of twists and turns, the two arrived at a cemetery behind a shady mountain. The biting north wind nearly made them lose their footing. Behind the cemetery lay the mountains of the northern frontier, and beyond those mountains was a volcanic lake—a desolate and uninhabited land of death.
Is this place inhabited? It seems more like a place to dispose of a body. Lu Huantang's heart began to clench frequently. He thought the itinerant doctor was playing a trick on him. After all, if he hadn't used his internal energy to suppress the poison back then, he would have been buried in the yellow sand long ago with the itinerant doctor's inefficiency in treating illnesses. He immediately wanted to leave.
Unexpectedly, the itinerant doctor grabbed the hand holding the dagger, startling Lu Huantang, who was surprised that such an old man was so alert.
The itinerant doctor, unaware of the danger behind him, simply tapped on a tombstone in a cemetery.
The stone tablet crashed down, revealing an entrance behind it. The path was probably difficult to traverse, so the itinerant doctor pulled Lu Huantang inside. After a brief period of darkness, a scene of birdsong and fragrant flowers came into view. The tomb chamber was enormous, much larger than the single coffin seen from the outside.
The itinerant doctor walked into a room where there were seven or eight knee-high old women. He greeted them familiarly and spoke some strange dialect to one of the old women.
The old woman looked over with her cloudy eyes and waved to Lu Huantang.
Lu Huantang approached, and the old woman, without a word, directly grasped his wrist. After a moment, the old woman became excited and called over all the other old women. The group took turns taking his pulse, chattering excitedly. It was as if the person before them was not about to die from poisoning, but a rare and extraordinary person.
Lu Huantang couldn't understand a single word of their language; he felt like he'd fallen into a fly nest, his head buzzing. But for the sake of the antidote, he endured the angina and quietly waited for them to finish their discussion.
It was only when the itinerant doctor saw his discomfort that he spoke up to remind them, and the old women, like bees, returned to their places and began to prepare the medicine.
The old woman rushed upstairs and spoke a few words without entering the hall.
The traveling doctor translated, "The price is negotiable, but you need to bring the poisoned person with you later. That person is quite remarkable; it's truly impressive that he hasn't died after being poisoned for so long."
Lu Huantang was shocked, "Your wife can tell that it wasn't me who was poisoned?"
The quack doctor's pride was palpable. "Of course! My wife is amazing! How about this price?"
“She is my master, and I’m not sure I can bring her here,” Lu Huantang said truthfully.
The old quack doctor translated, and the old woman's expression instantly turned serious. She rattled off a sentence, which the quack doctor translated back, "If the person doesn't come, then bring three thousand taels!"
Three thousand taels? The Regent's annual salary is only three thousand taels. Where would a mere guard like him get three thousand taels? But Jiang Linzhi definitely has it. Lu Huantang felt pain all over his body. He gritted his teeth and said, "I know. Give me the antidote first, and I'll bring the money."
Without signing a document, the itinerant doctor gave the medicine to Lu Huantang, seemingly unafraid that he would take it and run away.
Lu Huantang could no longer bear the pain. He opened the box, and the large, dark box of medicine looked rather disgusting. He scooped out a finger's worth and put it in his mouth to suppress the poison. He didn't even have time to circulate his internal energy before he immediately spurred his horse back.
Upon returning, Qi Lingjun glanced at the food and frowned with concern, saying, "You eat first."
Lu Huantang ate another spoonful without drinking any water and swallowed it directly. It had a miraculous effect. After drinking it and circulating his qi for a week, the little pain he had left had subsided.
Seeing that Lu Huantang was alright, Qi Lingjun dared to feed the medicine to Jiang Linzhi.
With the poison neutralized, Lu Huantang breathed a sigh of relief. After asking if there were any other instructions, he left. As soon as he stepped out the door, Cong Chen grabbed him and pinned him down.
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