The maidservant reached the corner, and Li Ruizhang quietly followed her. Qiu Feng noticed someone was following her but didn't care. There was nothing wrong with the soup at the moment; she wasn't afraid of the Li family investigating.
Next, she encountered two more young masters from the Li family. Li Ruiheng and Li Ruijin tested the soup with silver needles but found nothing wrong. The two looked at each other, wondering if their sister's prediction had been wrong.
They had no choice but to let the maid pass. The three older brothers gathered together, each with their own doubts. They were now only waiting to see if their two younger brothers could succeed.
Little did they know that their two younger brothers had been taken back to their rooms to sleep by their nanny and were no longer in the courtyard.
When the maid entered the room, Aunt Cheng was still swaddling Li Xingran. Li Xingran was clean and comfortable, and was burping softly.
[After getting used to Mother's milk, it doesn't taste so bad anymore. It's even a little sweet, like Mother's scent.] Xu Ningyou was overjoyed. This daughter was truly a gift from heaven. She would definitely live a long and healthy life and protect her well.
Aunt Cheng was slightly surprised to see Qiu Feng. This was because the maid who specifically prepared soup for the lady of the house wasn't her.
Qiu Feng noticed Aunt Cheng's surprise and explained, "Qiu Shuang had a stomachache and went to the toilet. She begged me to bring soup to Madam for her."
[Soup? Oh right, the maid did bring soup. The devout woman, Li Xingran, prays to all the passing deities to protect my mother from drinking that soup.]
The soup itself wasn't poisonous, but the sachet my mother used year-round came from the Great Yue Kingdom. That sachet contained a medicine that would react with one of the herbs in the soup, producing a deadly poison.
[A slow-acting poison, undetectable. But my mother would gradually feel weak all over, even losing the strength to hold me. Eventually, her body would fester and she would die a gruesome death.]
Upon hearing this, Li Ting, who was on the roof beam, quietly slipped down and went outside into the courtyard.
Li Ruizhang and his two companions were puzzled when they saw their father leave the room and then go back in.
They all crowded around the wall to eavesdrop. They heard Li Ting instruct Qiu Feng to put down the soup and tell Aunt Cheng to go to the side room to rest, while he would take care of the madam and young lady.
Qiu Feng watched as Li Ting fed the soup to Xu Ningyou before leaving, unaware that Li Ting had used a clever positioning technique to make it appear to Qiu Feng that he had indeed fed her the soup, when in fact the soup had all spilled onto a handkerchief resting under Xu Ningyou's chin.
The three brothers could only pray in their hearts that their father wouldn't feed their mother the soup. But they were also worried about what would happen if she did drink it.
So Li Ruizhang knocked on the door and entered the room.
"It smells so good, Father. I'm hungry. Can I drink this soup?" After saying that, she snatched the bowl from Li Ting's hand and drank the soup in one gulp.
Li Ting glared at Li Ruizhang, who put down his bowl and ran all the way back to his courtyard.
Patting his chest, he thought, "My father's expression just now was terrifying; he looked like he wanted to devour me."
Although Li Ting was a martial artist, he was a martial artist with both literary and martial talents. If it weren't for the need to inherit the Li family's ancestral precepts, he would have definitely won the imperial examination that year, becoming the top scholar and being granted a title and position.
Even without hearing Ruan Ruan's inner thoughts, he would have sensed something was different tonight.
Li Ting stared at the empty soup bowl, wondering what the future held for the Li family.
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