65 stones
◎After this matter is over, he will tell her everything.
Oral descriptions should not lead to wild imaginations; instead, one should simply write down all the clues from the drawing.
The "elixir of immortality" is only in the hands of three families: Zhao, Gu, and Zhou.
Marquis of Jianchang, from the Empress's maternal family; Grand Tutor Gu, formerly the Crown Prince's tutor; Commander Zhou, the adopted son of the Grand Eunuch Hu Yude.
These three households have one obvious thing in common: no matter how much the emperor stayed indoors, he always had a chance to meet them.
Du Zhijin suddenly spoke up: "And there's Consort Li. Wu Ti mentioned before that Consort Li had a difficult childbirth, and they searched all over the capital before finally finding a single elixir."
Zhao Zhonggan's eyes widened suddenly, and he murmured, "No way, could its ultimate goal be to possess the emperor?"
After saying that, he covered his mouth, his face full of terror.
The wind rustled through the bamboo outside the window, and the once melodious sound, like shattered jade, now sounded eerie and terrifying, as if countless ghosts were lurking outside, ready to break in at any moment.
The thought was so terrifying that Zhao Zhonggan broke out in a cold sweat the moment he uttered it.
He unconsciously took two steps closer to Du Zhijin. With the two precious swords, Xingyue and Zuilan, by his side, his mind finally calmed down a little.
Ying Jianhua did not immediately answer Zhao Zhonggan's question. He wrote the two characters "Lifei" next to "Zhou," dipped his brush in vermilion, but hesitated to put pen to paper, letting the full ink drip onto the paper and spread a dazzling bright red.
He clearly remembered Du Zhijin saying that Liulijing possessed a dragon vein and an array set up by the elders of Dengxian Mountain. Dengxian Mountain would not protect a single dynasty; the array was designed for the dragon vein. Liulijing was not the capital of a new dynasty, but the ancient capital of nine dynasties. It was not the emperor who chose it, but it that chose the emperor.
Why is the monster targeting the emperor? Possession has a time limit; could it be after the dragon vein?
Du Zhijin noticed the worry in his eyes and guessed that it was because Zhao Zhonggan's presence made things inconvenient. She simply urged someone to go visit the Lady Hou. Zhao Zhonggan hesitated for a moment, then didn't press the matter further and quickly walked towards his mother's courtyard.
Once they were alone in the courtyard, she asked, "What have you thought of?"
Instead of directly stating his conjecture, Ying Jianhua continued to seek confirmation from her: "Can the dragon vein be taken away?"
She paused for a moment, then replied, “No. I don’t know much about this, but I remember reading in the books that dragon veins have no physical form and are unshakeable. The rise and fall of dynasties are actually unrelated to them; they protect the world. But successive emperors insisted that they should belong to them, so they built magnificent imperial cities to hide the true traces of the dragon veins and not allow anyone to covet them.”
He pressed further, "If the monster's goal is the dragon vein, wouldn't it be enough to simply wait for it to come to it if it knew where the dragon vein was?"
Du Zhijin shook his head: "Originally, cultivators could sense the dragon vein, but the formation targets not only demonic power but also spiritual power, so apart from the emperors of past dynasties, no one knows exactly where the dragon vein is."
In the rules of the ordinary mountain sect, humans are always considered as separate entities with their own karma, and cultivators and demons should be excluded.
This was the first time he had ever heard of an array suppressing even cultivators. Hearing this, he frowned and looked at her disapprovingly: "You've never mentioned your cultivation being suppressed before."
She gave an awkward smile, raised her head high, and said confidently, "Even if I suppress my cultivation, I am still the number one in the world."
He wanted to say something to her, but wasn't he afraid of putting himself in danger? Then he realized he had no right or status to say anything to her, and immediately gave up the idea.
Yes, he was a doctor in Wuling Village, but what is he now?
Seeing him fall silent again, Du Zhijin felt sullen.
She picked up the calligraphy brush on the table and quietly drew a sad cat face in the corner of the paper.
Sigh. When will Amo realize she likes him? Isn't she being obvious enough?
It's okay if you don't like her, just be happy.
"What are you drawing?" Even though I forced myself not to look at her, my eyes still kept wandering around her out of the corner of my eye.
Du Zhijin held up the paper, hid his face behind it, and provided the voiceover for the sad cat face: "Amo is just like this cat."
As she spoke, she made a stroke with her pen, turning the cat's originally droopy mouth into an upturned one, and her voice became cheerful: "Now the cat in the painting is smiling, it's your turn to smile."
Ying Jianhua accepted the painting under her expectant gaze, her eyes pausing slightly.
Forgive his poor eyesight, but he simply couldn't connect the blob of ink before him with a "cat" or even "himself." But...
"It does have a certain rustic charm."
Du Zhijin exclaimed in delight, "Amo, you smiled!"
He instinctively retorted, "No, you're mistaken."
She tilted her head and didn't speak, her eyes reflecting the slight curve of his lips.
He forced a smile down his face, trying to cover it up, but didn't forget to clarify: "Besides, I'm not a cat."
“Exactly,” Du Zhijin whispered.
He heard it anyway, and so he retorted, "No."
"Yes." "No!" "Yes!"
In the end, both of them couldn't help but laugh, their throats feeling like they had ten pounds of honey.
It was a childish and meaningless conversation; Honghua would probably look down on them if she were there. Even so, Ying Jianhua still felt that she should laugh.
Du Zhijin is such a person; no matter how bumpy or complicated the road ahead may be, he can still smile at the wildflowers by the roadside.
If you ask her what's so funny, she'll tell you, "Isn't it something to be happy about when the flowers bloom?"
Similarly, those conspiracies and schemes are not worth worrying about, and there is nothing worth keeping secret in one's heart.
He looked into her clear eyes and thought.
Once this matter is over, he will tell her everything.
Whether she accepts his feelings or his past, he accepts it all.
Seeing that he stopped laughing and a different emotion welled up in his eyes that she couldn't understand, Du Zhijin also stopped laughing.
They looked at each other, just like when Ying Jianhua took her home and she woke up to find her there.
"Hey Amo, wasn't your father a painter?" She looked at the messy brushstrokes in her hand and suddenly remembered.
Ying Jianhua nodded and followed her gaze to a blank sheet of paper.
She clapped her hands suddenly and said on a whim, "Then can you draw a portrait of me? I don't have a portrait yet."
Upon hearing this, he hesitated for a moment before agreeing: "Alright. I'll paint it for you when I have some free time after this matter is settled."
He thought that if he was rejected after revealing his feelings, at least he would still have a portrait.
————
"We assume the monster's target is the emperor, and the condition for possession is taking 'Yu Nie Zhenren's' medicine. Wu Ti can no longer be possessed, so we can rule her out. Currently, we only know that Lady Hou and Consort Li must have taken the medicine. Gu and Hu are unknown, or perhaps it is someone else."
Zhao Zhonggan raised his hand: "I've inquired. Consort Li is using the medicine given by Grand Tutor Gu. And according to the eunuch, Eunuch Hu also often faints and relies on elixirs to prolong his life. His symptoms are the same as my mother's."
Ying Jianhua asked, "Would the Empress come to visit Lady Hou when she fell ill?"
He replied, "It happened two or three years ago. My mother and aunt had a good relationship, and it was my mother who facilitated her first encounter with the emperor. However, I haven't been home for the past year, so I don't know the details."
Will the emperor come along?
He shook his head.
Du Zhijin: "It seems that monsters won't let any opportunity slip by. But how come it didn't succeed in taking advantage of Eunuch Hu, who spends every day with the emperor?"
That was rather disrespectful. Ying Jianhua coughed a few times and pointed outside.
Our dynasty has the Embroidered Uniform Guard.
She said "Oh," and her expression became even more excited, her gaze drifting off to who knows where.
Zhao Zhonggan's identity came in handy once again. He explained to the two men, "It's a long story. Actually, it's not just my father; many old officials in the court don't like to talk about those mysterious things because the emperor doesn't like them. As the saying goes, what the superiors do, the inferiors follow. If it weren't for curing my mother's illness, my father probably would never have touched it in his entire life. The fact that Eunuch Hu is so highly regarded by the emperor naturally means that he doesn't believe in this stuff. So, for the first two years, the 'miracle medicine' didn't reach him. He only started taking it in the last year."
"The reason is quite simple. He was old, and eunuchs have no offspring. No matter how many adopted sons he had, he was never at ease. He couldn't escape the common desire to live longer after taking the medicine, because he couldn't let the good fortune he had worked so hard for die before he could enjoy it. And since the second month after he started taking the medicine, the emperor stopped summoning him."
Du Zhijin: "So, the emperor is quite perceptive." She became increasingly curious about what could have caused an emperor to lock himself in the palace, stop attending court, shun his family, and even order that no one in Liulijing be allowed to discuss gods, ghosts, demons, or monsters, willingly giving up the vast empire to live a life of seclusion in a corner of the world.
With the dragon vein here, shouldn't he feel at ease?
Zhao Zhonggan nodded and mysteriously pointed to the sky: "Otherwise, why would we keep so many Imperial Guards? They're there specifically for this kind of thing!"
"Ahem!" Seeing that none of them took the Embroidered Uniform Guard seriously, Ying Jianhua had to remind them again.
Du Zhijin took the lead in yielding, while simultaneously giving Zhao Zhonggan a look that stopped him.
If the senior sister is unhappy, the junior brother cannot be happy either; this is a rule of the sect.
Looking at the two of them, who resembled quails, Ying Jianhua found it amusing.
He no longer gets jealous or obsessed over trivial matters. After deciding to be honest with Du Zhijin, the vines that had been entangled in his heart began to unravel one by one.
He tapped the table, steer the conversation back on track: "If the Lady of the Marquis can be controlled, then the most suspicious person right now is Consort Li. But even you and I know that Consort Li took the elixir of immortality, so what about the Emperor?"
“I think the news that Consort Li used the elixir might have been deliberately leaked by the demons,” Du Zhijin said. “I used to think that demons only had brute strength, and the difference between them and humans was that they weren’t smart enough. Like Jiangwei and his people, Jiangwei was so simple that he was willing to bleed to repay a debt of gratitude, while his people would bully and ostracize him because of the slightest difference in color. When Heaven endowed demons with power, it also took away their ‘mind.’ But the phantom demons I’ve encountered recently have made me start to think about whether there is a group of demons that has already approached human intelligence.”
"The actions of these fake beings tell us that, yes, they are clever, and they are just as capable of scheming. If the emperor knew that even Consort Li could be possessed, what would he think?"
Upon seeing the painting, Ying immediately replied, "He would be afraid."
"The monster is telling him that you have nowhere to escape."
When you wake up the next day, is the person next to you still a "person"?
[Author's Note]
I had a long argument with a dishonest deliveryman, and I finally managed to write this chapter, feeling exhausted. I hope you all won't encounter a deliveryman like that!
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