Chapter 117 Hidden Truth
As the man spoke, he reached out to roll up the scroll.
"Who, who asked you to put it away!"
Seeing that he was really about to take action, Wen Ning felt a little anxious and subconsciously held down his hand, with a trembling voice of extreme shame.
She paused, almost biting her lip before squeezing out the rest of the sentence, "...put it here, don't let anyone else see it."
Xie Jinglan paused, a smile instantly spreading across his eyes as he quickly replied, "Of course not. Ning'er knows this. I don't have any maids around to serve me personally. Even if someone came to make the bed, they definitely wouldn't be able to open the secret compartment on the bed rail, let alone see the painting inside."
A huge weight lifted off his shoulders, and he was overwhelmed with joy.
He tentatively and extremely gently kissed her fingertips. Seeing that she did not resist, he then cherishedly kissed her forehead and the tip of her nose... Their breaths blended together. Wen Ning suddenly turned her head and said in a voice as thin as a mosquito, "I haven't showered yet..."
These words sounded like the best invitation. Xie Jinglan chuckled softly, a hoarse "OK" escaped from his throat, and then he picked her up and strode behind the screen.
He bit her earlobe, his voice full of triumphant smile, "Let's wash together."
…
The next morning, as the light of day had just filtered through the window, Wen Ning was still buried in her quilt, not waking up, while Xie Jinglan was already standing in the corridor, fully dressed.
"Master, we have found the whereabouts of Miss Yin'er's body."
The secret guard paused for a moment, then spoke solemnly, "We have repeatedly reviewed old records and various reports, and have confirmed that six months ago, the Crown Prince secretly traveled to the mass graves in the western suburbs in the dead of night, traveling with a small entourage. At that time... he left with a body wrapped tightly in a cloak, a figure strikingly similar to Miss Yin'er."
The air suddenly froze.
The secret guard lowered his head and continued, "For the next six long months, the body disappeared without a trace, and there were no leads inside or outside the East Palace. Your subordinates are incompetent and have yet to discover its final whereabouts."
This means that after half a year, perhaps only the prince knows where Yin'er is finally buried.
Xie Jinglan's face was calm. He waved his hand, and the secret guards retreated quietly as they had come.
He couldn't hide this from Ning'er.
…
In the afternoon, the bumpy carriage was heading towards Cai Huichun's residence.
There was an unbreakable gloom in the carriage.
Wen Ning sat on the cushion, the coolness still lingering on her fingertips.
After a while, she finally couldn't help but speak, her voice trembling with disbelief.
"Prince... why did you do this?" She grabbed Xie Jinglan's collar and looked up, her eyes filled with confusion and pain. "He used Sister Yin'er and killed her...wouldn't he let her go even after his death?"
This speculation was filled with great sadness and absurdity, which made her heart ache, but she couldn't help but speculate on that extremely twisted possibility.
Xie Jinglan held her trembling body deeper in his arms, trying to dispel the panic in her heart, "Perhaps, he also has regrets in his heart."
When he arrived at Cai Huichun's residence, Xie Jinglan told him the news in a deep voice.
After hearing this, Cai Huichun's skinny body shook violently and he fell back into the wheelchair. His cloudy eyes instantly lost all their luster, leaving only a dead grayness.
His withered hands gripped the handrail tightly, trembling.
Then he suddenly raised his blurry eyes and looked into the void, as if he saw the scene of the past again, and his emotions suddenly became excited. "That year...that year, I knelt before the Queen and begged bitterly! 'Please, Your Majesty, have mercy and allow me to see a lock of my daughter's hair every month! I have no other request, just a test of the potion, and by the withering of the hair, I can tell whether she is dead or alive... As long as I know that my daughter is still alive, I will willingly develop poison for you, Your Majesty, without any second thoughts!'
But my dear! I was so obedient and worked so hard to make the poison, but in the end, my dear still suffered so much! "
He pounded his chest hard, whimpering in pain.
"I know that the palace is a place where people are eaten alive. I should have risked my life to rescue you from that pit of fire long ago!"
This confirmation, which came half a year late, was like the cruelest knife, completely cutting off the last bit of self-deceiving hope in Cai Huichun's heart.
Wen Ning shed silent tears and gently patted her master's violently trembling back.
After a long time, Cai Huichun slowly closed his eyes.
When he opened his eyes again, a dead calmness appeared in those cloudy eyes.
He looked at Wen Ning, his voice hoarse but remarkably clear, "Ning'er, please step out for a moment. Your Master...has something to say to the Marquis alone."
After Wen Ning closed the door and left, looking back every few steps, Cai Huichun's eyes fell on Xie Jinglan.
He had nothing left and nothing to fear anymore. At this moment, all he had left was the determination to reveal the bloody truth that had been buried for twenty years.
He spoke, his voice dry and raspy, "Twenty years ago, Concubine Lu and I were both drugged and ended up lying unconscious on the same bed. Although we both knew nothing had happened, we were caught red-handed by someone with ulterior motives, leaving us with no way to defend ourselves."
"Later, I was dragged into the torture chamber, where they pulled out my leg bones and beat me into confessing. I thought I was dead, but I didn't expect the queen to secretly find a scapegoat and bury me in a mass grave."
At this point, he made a muffled sound in his throat, as if suppressing hatred, "I was lucky enough to survive, and all I wanted was to protect my wife and daughter, but the queen soon came to me and asked me to make poison for her, saying that as long as I was obedient, she could save my whole family's lives.
I would rather die than obey, even if my whole family died, than do such a heinous thing! But as soon as I said this, her men strangled my wife to death with a white silk scarf on the spot, and my young daughter Yin was so frightened that she couldn't even cry.
Old Man Cai's voice suddenly trembled, and tears welled up in his eyes again. "My daughter was so young at that time. I really couldn't bear to see her die with me, so I had no choice but to bite my teeth and agree to the Queen's request."
"But I didn't expect that she didn't let me take my daughter away. Instead, she tampered with my wife's body and replaced it with Concubine Lu, who was supposed to hang herself. Concubine Lu didn't hang herself. It was just a plot by the Queen."
He took a breath and continued, "Lu Zhaoyi was originally a maidservant beside the Queen. As fate would have it, she caught the eye of the Emperor and his favor grew day by day. It seemed that she was about to become equal to her former master.
The Empress hated her, perhaps out of a woman's natural jealousy, but also out of a fear of having her power threatened. The Empress refused to let Concubine Lu die, because she didn't want her buried in the imperial mausoleum. Deep down, she couldn't accept the thought of a once lowly servant being buried alongside her in the mausoleum, sharing the same veneration from future generations.
So she asked me to take Concubine Lu out of the palace and never show her again, in exchange for my daughter living as a hostage in the palace.
Over the years, I've been constantly making poison for her, but I never knew who those insidious things ended up being passed on to... It wasn't until I became increasingly bewildered from testing poisons so often that the Empress and the Crown Prince gradually relaxed their surveillance of me."
He looked up at Xie Jinglan, his eyes filled with regret. "Until... until I diagnosed the Marquis's pulse at Fuyan Mountain and discovered that the poison he was suffering from was concocted by me! Only then... only then did I vainly try to grasp at this life-saving straw, hoping to use this incident to force the Marquis to rescue my poor Yin'er from the palace..."
In fact, before this, Xie Jinglan had already deduced the general truth in his mind about the context of these old events and the root cause of the poison he had been poisoned with.
But when Cai Huichun revealed the deeper secrets in his hoarse voice, he was still shocked and couldn't believe it for a moment.
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