Chapter 103 Prepared to Become a Foundation
This time, the room was extremely quiet.
Fandi stood in the center, while Li Jin sat on an octagonal chair, waving a black folding fan in his hand.
He glanced at the crowd around him and said with a smile, "Everyone, get out. I want to have a private talk with him."
Whether it was Jin Shu or Chen Xi, although they didn't understand, they still left the room as Li Jin had instructed.
In the blink of an eye, only Fandi and Li Jin remained in the huge room, facing each other.
The teenager in front of me was slightly different from the one I met last time. He was unusually calm and composed, and showed no surprise at Li Jin sending the others away.
“You don’t seem surprised at all,” Li Jin said. “It’s as if you knew I wanted to see you alone.”
At this point, the hand waving the fan stopped: "It's like that day, when you knew the Six Doors had come, you took the body out of the box and hung it on the roof beam."
He laughed and said, "You have courage and boldness."
Glancing at Fandi's expressionless face, Li Jin raised his hand and pointed to the eight-immortal chair next to him, his gaze sharpening: "Sit down and talk."
He narrowed his eyes slightly: "Tell me slowly."
The midday sunlight, with its hazy hue, resembles a thin veil, gently cascading down from the azure sky.
In the courtyard of the Imperial College student dormitory, the shrubs, crabapple trees, and large roses are in full bloom.
The people who had been asked to leave the house stood in the courtyard, glancing awkwardly at each other behind the closed door.
"I have other matters to attend to, so I will take my leave now. If there is anything that requires the cooperation of the Imperial Academy, please give the order to Lord Chen." The Chancellor of the Imperial Academy bowed respectfully, then wiped the sweat from his forehead with his hand, sighed, and left the courtyard.
“The Grand Master is soft-hearted. He finds it hard to accept that his student would kill someone for such a reason.” Chen Xi glanced at Jin Shu and smiled faintly.
He sized up Jin Shu for a moment, his gaze lingering on the jade flute tucked behind her back. After pondering for a long time, he finally asked, "Is Mr. Jin acquainted with Song Zhen?"
When asked this question, Jin Shu paused for a moment, then smiled faintly without answering.
She knew Chen Xi was asking about the flute, so she couldn't answer.
Seeing that she remained silent, Chen Xi did not press her further, but instead began to ramble on: "If you had come a month earlier, this courtyard would have been filled with blooming peonies, making it exceptionally elegant."
As he spoke, he glanced at Jin Shu, who was more than half a head shorter than him, smiled slightly, and bowed: "Thank you for sending the letter, sir. Chen Xi's gratitude is beyond words."
Jin Shu panicked a little, gave an awkward laugh and nodded, as if she understood his intention.
Inside the room, Fandi poured two cups of tea for himself. He didn't hand them to Li Jin, but instead, in front of Li Jin, he turned the lids of the teacups upside down, poured some tea onto them, and drank it all in one gulp.
Only then did he place the cup of warm tea, which he had already tested for poison, next to Li Jin.
Li Jin watched his every move, her peripheral vision lingering on the clear tea.
Serving tea in this way was one of the essential skills that palace eunuchs and maids had to learn; ordinary people would never see it or know how to do it.
Fandi sat there, blew on the foam on his teacup, took a sip, and then glanced at Li Jin, asking, "Does Your Highness Prince Jing still remember the Brahma Sound?"
Vandi, the Sanskrit sound, just as expected.
The look in Li Jin's eyes softened slightly.
He nodded: "I will never forget."
"Why can't you forget?" Vandi looked up at him and asked expressionlessly.
Li Jin took a deep breath, closed the fan, and placed it aside.
He picked up the cup of warm tea, stirred the tea leaves on top, and took a big gulp. Under Vandi's gaze, he wiped the smile off his face and said in an extremely solemn and serious tone, "Because they are comrades who deserve to be remembered forever."
Comrades, how can we say we have no clothes? We share the same robes. How can we say we have no clothes? We share the same armor.
The boy in front of me, who was only sixteen or seventeen years old, had his Adam's apple bobbing up and down, and his hand holding the teacup trembled slightly.
He suppressed his urge to cry, and then chuckled.
"My sister didn't misjudge him." He put down his teacup, his eyes reddening.
His sadness was written all over his face, like a knife carving a deep mark into Li Jin's heart.
He was about to ask for details when he saw Vandi change the subject: "I shouldn't have been involved in this case."
He laughed: "I just didn't expect that even His Highness Prince Jing would have oversights. The teacup on the table was so obvious, and the box in the courtyard where the corpse was hidden, yet His Highness failed to notice."
Li Jin chuckled dryly at his direct criticism: "Prince Jing is not a god. On the Grand Tutor's territory, the biggest flaw would be if there were no weaknesses."
Hearing him say that, Vandi was taken aback, somewhat disbelieving: "You're not just making excuses, are you?"
Li Jin, with one eyebrow higher than the other, glared at him and said, "You think Chen Xi caught you by chance? You should be glad that the person who caught you wasn't Grand Tutor Su Yu."
After saying that, he folded the paper in his hand that read "No such person found" in half.
Seeing his slightly relaxed expression, Vandi rested his chin on his hand and suddenly spoke up: "The paper should have said 'No such person found'."
Meeting Li Jin's probing gaze, Fandi chuckled: "It's because His Highness's people were investigating that they gave the true information of 'no such person found.' If it were someone else, they would have found the words 'Song family donated life.'"
He pointed to the paper in Li Jin's hand: "Mr. Song specifically said that if there is an opportunity to meet His Highness face to face, he should tell His Highness that His Highness's past has been cleaned up, and the identity of that little boy and his family has also been arranged. He asked you to take some time after curfew to visit him discreetly."
After putting the paper away, Li Jin looked at Fan Di's grinning face and sighed, "You talk too much."
Why did Song Zhen put such a lively and talkative person in the Imperial Academy, right under the Grand Tutor's nose?
Fandi, however, didn't seem to mind and looked at Li Jin with a smile: "Your Highness, rest assured, Fandi is also prepared to become Your Highness's cornerstone."
He glanced at Li Jin's face and took a deep breath: "I will protect His Highness's little child at the Imperial Academy..." He paused, "and his little page."
"Your Highness hasn't forgotten this, has he?"
Li Jin certainly hadn't forgotten that, in exchange for helping him erase Jin Rong's existence, he had promised Song Zhen that he would arrange for a child to be placed next to Jin Rong and sent to the Imperial Academy together.
Seeing that he nodded, Vandi gradually stopped being playful, lowered his voice, and cautiously said:
"Chen Wen is not dead, Your Highness, please rest assured."
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