Prayer accident
Five days later at noon
A very light knocking sound came from outside the side room of Chen'an Residence, a rhythm unique to Qingwu.
Gu Jinghong withdrew her hand, turned around and opened the window.
Qingwu slipped inside, her movements as swift as a cat's, yet her face held a rare hint of solemnity. She quickly closed the door and lowered her voice: "Prime Minister, the matter has been investigated."
"Speak," Gu Jinghong said calmly, but his mind was already racing.
Qingwu spoke very quickly, “...Room No. 3, C-section of the 'Yuelai' Inn on North Street is one of their contact points. Every day at the beginning of the fourth hour (9-11 AM), someone will go there to collect information. The woodshed in the backyard of the 'Li Ji' General Store in the south of the city is another place to stay. Two people usually take turns on duty after nightfall…”
The intelligence was detailed and accurate. Gu Jinghong nodded slightly. She never doubted Qingwu's abilities.
However, after Qingwu finished reporting, he did not wait for instructions as usual. Instead, he secretly slipped a small command token from his sleeve and quickly put it into Gu Jinghong's palm. At the same time, he said in a lower and more urgent voice, "Also... the Lord has strictly ordered that the South Wind Secret Box must not be opened by anyone before the time is right! Anyone who disobeys... will bear the consequences."
Gu Jinghong held the secret token, which still carried the warmth of Qingwu's body, and his fingertips paused almost imperceptibly.
Her gaze fell on Qingwu's slightly awkward figure—the order had been reversed.
The orders from the host are always given directly to her, the Grand Secretary, who then decides whether and how to inform her subordinates based on the circumstances.
But this time, he bypassed her and gave it directly to Qingwu?
Gu Jinghong remained expressionless as he returned the secret token to Qingwu, his voice calm and even: "Understood. The Lord's foresight is well-founded. You have done well. Go now and remain still until I give you further instructions."
Qingwu's eyes flickered slightly, as if she wanted to say something but hesitated. However, seeing that Gu Jinghong's expression remained unchanged, she said no more, bowed, and quickly withdrew.
The Chen'an Residence has returned to silence.
Gu Jinghong seemed to be looking at her calm face in the mirror, and immediately a plan came to mind.
She quickly wrote down the information Qingwu had dictated, using specific drug names as code words, on a seemingly ordinary prescription slip and tucked it into an old purse. She then placed another prescription on top.
Then she changed into the plain clothes of an ordinary maid in the Prince's mansion, tied her hair into a simple bun, picked up a small rattan medicine basket, and walked lightly out of the Prince's mansion toward the largest pharmacy in the capital, "Jishetang".
The air inside "Jishetang" was filled with the aroma of medicine, and people came and went.
Gu Jinghong blended into the crowd and walked naturally toward the medicine counter. He handed over a piece of paper with a prescription for a cold written on it. While the clerk turned around to get the medicine, he subtly moved his fingers, intending to slip the prescription containing the information from his purse into an inconspicuous gap in a bamboo basket in the corner of the counter.
Slender, pale fingers slowly reached into the crevice...
Just as her fingertips were about to touch the bamboo basket, a tall shadow loomed over her, and the familiar feeling made Gu Jinghong subconsciously turn around to look.
Sure enough, what caught my eye was Xiao Chengyan's incomparably handsome face, which was now covered with a layer of frost.
He was dressed in royal court attire, his eyes were dark and unfathomable, and his deep voice carried a sense of oppression, yet it reached her ears clearly in the noisy pharmacy, "Gu Jinghong? What are you doing here?"
Gu Jinghong was stunned for a moment, and a perfectly timed look of surprise and a hint of frightened grievance quickly appeared in her eyes: "Your Highness?...This servant has come to get some medicine for the little maid in the courtyard to treat her cold. She caught a chill while on night duty last night."
Xiao Chengyan's gaze swept over the wicker basket in her hands, and finally landed on the piece of paper with a prescription for a cold written on it that the shop assistant had placed on the counter.
"Is that so?" He picked up the prescription with remarkable ease, his gaze shifting from Gu Jinghong to the prescription.
Gu Jinghong's heart was in her throat, but thankfully she was cautious and had left behind a genuine prescription...
Xiao Chengyan glanced down at the prescription and saw that it was indeed a common prescription for treating colds.
However, he flipped his finger and turned the prescription over.
"Polygala tenuifolia, 3 qian, core removed, processed with wine", "Acorus calamus, 2 qian, nine nodes preferred", "Dragon bone, 5 qian, calcined, ground into powder", "Oyster shell, 6 qian, raw"...
His brow furrowed slightly... These medicines, when combined, were clearly the main ingredients of an ancient prescription for treating amnesia, forgetfulness, and especially dementia.
He abruptly looked up, his gaze like that of a hawk seizing Gu Jinghong's instantly pale face, his voice icy cold: "You're getting medicine for a cold? Then who's this prescription on the back... for treating amnesia? Hmm?"
A thin layer of tears quickly welled up in Gu Jinghong's eyes, her long eyelashes trembled and drooped, and her voice carried a barely perceptible sob: "It's for this servant."
She turned her head slightly, inadvertently revealing a delicate and graceful neckline. "I...I don't remember anything from before I was ten years old. It's all a blank. Sometimes when I see others talking about their childhood, I feel...very sad. I heard that this prescription might be effective, so I secretly wrote it down, thinking of getting the medicine to try it out."
She raised her tear-filled eyes, bravely meeting Xiao Chengyan's scrutinizing gaze, with a hint of desperate honesty, "This servant knows that my status is lowly and I shouldn't ask for too much, but... but I just want to remember, even just a little bit..."
While fabricating this lie, Gu Jinghong also kept an eye on the movements of the people coming and going in the pharmacy.
Just then, she saw someone about to walk past her, and she suddenly turned around, causing the person to "accidentally" bump into her.
"Ah!" Gu Jinghong exclaimed, as if pulled by the person, staggering forward uncontrollably. The wicker basket slipped from his grasp, and its contents scattered to the ground with a "clatter," including the prescription that Xiao Chengyan had seen and was now unconsciously clutching in his hand.
Chaos is the best cover!
In the instant Gu Jinghong lost her balance and fell, her gaze instantly locked onto the prescription that had fallen among the scattered clutter. It landed right on the edge of a half-full bamboo basket containing medicinal herbs, not far from her feet.
Xiao Chengyan was slightly swayed by her fall and the scattered items, and tried to steady her.
In that brief moment, Gu Jinghong frantically and instinctively lunged forward, her target a low shelf piled with various medicine packets that looked rather unstable.
Her hand "just happened" to land on a stack of medicinal herbs wrapped in oil paper, piled high, with little force, yet precisely disrupting her balance.
"Crash—Bang!"
The stack of herbal medicine packets cascaded down like toppled dominoes. Several heavy packets landed squarely on the bamboo winnowing basket that was half-filled with herbs.
The bamboo winnowing basket was knocked askew by the impact, and the medicinal herbs inside, along with the flimsy prescription on the edge, were instantly covered and buried by the spilled herbs, leaving the scene in a mess, with medicinal powder flying everywhere and a mixture of smells.
"Ouch!" Gu Jinghong's hand was hit, and he let out a short cry of pain. His body lost its balance again due to the chain reaction of this "accident". He almost fell half-kneeling and half-prone among the pile of scattered medicinal herbs and medicine packets, looking extremely disheveled.
Amidst the swirling dust, Gu Jinghong slumped among the scattered medicinal herbs, her long hair slightly disheveled, her clothes dusty, her arm reddened from the impact, and her upturned face smeared with ash. Her eyes, which always held secrets, now held only pure pain and bewilderment, like a butterfly battered by a storm and trembling in the mud.
This scene strangely overlapped with a vague yet sharp fragment from the depths of Xiao Chengyan's memory—the first time he met A Ning!
When Xiao Chengyan first met A Ning, he encountered A Ning and her uncle being chased by bandits.
At that moment, Ah Ning had accidentally fallen off the carriage, covered in mud and grass clippings, her hair disheveled, and her face scraped. When she saw him, she looked up at him with the same expression of vulnerability and grievance, her eyes wet with tears, and cried out, "It hurts..."
That fleeting, undisguised vulnerability and helplessness, that need for protection... inexplicably created a fatal overlap with Gu Jinghong's appearance before him!
Xiao Chengyan's scrutinizing and angry gaze shattered instantly, like ice being struck by a stone, replaced by an extremely complex and bewildered expression.
Gu Jinghong noticed the change in his eyes and seized the opportunity to finally "get her hands" on the prescription.
She quickly clenched it in her palm, and while rummaging through the herbs, a small, water-soluble special pill that had been hidden under her fingernails was crushed and silently smeared onto the prescription, mixed with the sweat from her palm.
The writing on the prescription, done with a special solution, quickly began to bleed, blur, and disappear upon contact with this solvent...
"Found it!" Gu Jinghong cried out, clutching the paper, now a blurry mess with the writing almost completely dissolved, tightly in her hand. Her shoulders trembled slightly as she let out suppressed, soft sobs.
Looking at her curled-up, weeping back, then at the mess on the ground and the medicinal powder in the air, and the "prescription" in her hand that had become a piece of waste paper, Xiao Chengyan felt that the surging anger and doubt in his heart were replaced by a deep weariness and an indescribable complex emotion.
He bent down and, half-lifting and half-carrying, forcefully pulled Gu Jinghong, who was curled up on the ground, to her feet, then gently patted the dust from the medicinal powder off her body...
"Let's go." Under Gu Jinghong's surprised gaze, Xiao Chengyan's voice was low and hoarse.
Gu Jinghong obediently followed him, staggering towards the carriage outside the door.
Changfeng had already lifted the carriage curtain and was waiting outside.
Xiao Chengyan helped Gu Jinghong into the carriage and then sat down himself.
The carriage curtain fell, plunging the carriage into darkness.
Gu Jinghong sat obediently on the side, while Xiao Chengyan sat in the main seat with his eyes closed.
The chaos in the pharmacy, her desperate figure, and that damned, lingering phantom of "A-Ning"... all intertwined and clashed repeatedly in his mind.
He opened his eyes and looked at Gu Jinghong with a complicated expression.
“Gu Jinghong…” His deep voice echoed in the small space, carrying a chilling tone, “You’d better pray that all of this today is really just an ‘accident’.”
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