As the moon waned and the stars sparsed, and night fell, even the noise from the red-light districts gradually subsided.
Groups of two or three guests emerged from Xunfang Pavilion, some with heavily made-up women in their arms, intending to take them elsewhere for entertainment.
Li Zizhuo, the eldest son of the Prince of Qiaochuan, also came out of Xunfang Pavilion. Of course, no one here knew his true identity; tonight, he was just a wealthy merchant from Qiaochuan.
Li Zizhuo's arm was also draped over a woman, but there was little excitement in his eyes. It was just that he had come here because of its reputation, only to find that Feng Wan, the courtesan from Xunfang Pavilion who could impersonate any woman in the world, was no longer there.
Li Zizhuo glanced at the woman beside him. She was beautiful, but he had seen too many of these common women in brothels, and she was nothing special. He sighed with dissatisfaction. Since her face was unattractive, he could only look elsewhere.
"Tonight you'd better do your best to serve me well, and I'll reward you handsomely if you do a good job, you hear me?!" Li Zizhuo exhaled a foul smell of alcohol as he spoke, and the woman subconsciously dodged away.
At this moment, Li Zizhuo took out a hundred-tael silver note from his sleeve and slapped it on the woman's face: "Did you hear that?"
Upon seeing the silver note, the woman's eyes widened, and she no longer dared to show any emotion. She nestled against Li Zizhuo like a little bird, saying, "Master, you can rest assured~"
Li Zizhuo finally showed a satisfied smile, pulled the person into the carriage, and drove back to the mansion.
That was a three-courtyard house that Li Zizhuo had ordered someone to buy in Shengjing City beforehand. It was a bit small, but he had come to Shengjing with a small entourage and did not want to attract attention. The three courtyards were enough for him and about ten guards to settle down, and it was a decent place to stay as a temporary residence.
Upon returning to the manor, Li Zizhuo embraced his daughter and headed straight for the main bedroom in the main courtyard.
The woman was indeed enthusiastic after receiving the silver note. As soon as she entered the bedroom, she hurriedly helped Li Zizhuo undress. After helping him remove his outer garment, she also took off her own outer garment and then walked to the bed wearing only a strapless long dress.
A bed curtain hung before the bed. The woman giggled, lifted a corner of the curtain, turned around, and beckoned to Li Zizhuo with her finger: "Master, come and catch me!"
As they flirted, the woman hid inside the tent. Li Zizhuo was laughing and about to chase after her when he suddenly heard her groan, and then her whole body burst through the gauze tent and fell straight to the ground.
Li Zizhuo's brows furrowed, and he instantly sobered up halfway. His gaze quickly shifted from the woman lying on the ground to the tent: "Who goes there?!"
The gauze curtain was pulled down from the inside, revealing a tall figure sitting upright on the edge of the couch.
"It's you..."
A ray of moonlight slanted through the window and into the room, illuminating the silhouette of the seated figure. Li Zizhuo never expected that Li Qingchen would come here in the dead of night.
His expression quickly changed from annoyance to a smile. "Oh dear, we brothers just met during the day. What, you're already thinking about your older brother again?"
Li Qingchen ignored him, so Li Zizhuo bent down and gently ran his fingers across the face of the woman who had fallen to the ground, seemingly full of tenderness: "But Qingchen, you really don't know how to cherish a woman. Look at this, how could you be so cruel to such a delicate woman?"
Li Qingchen's face darkened, and he had no intention of joking with him. He replied in a deep voice, "If only you could be so considerate to your own confidants."
As he said this, Li Qingchen got up from the couch, put his hands behind his back, and walked to Li Zizhuo.
Li Zizhuo straightened up and realized that he was referring to the subordinate who was disguised as a peddler and kept watch outside the Prince's Mansion. He smiled and said, "The subordinates are not doing their jobs properly. Keeping them around will only cause trouble."
Perhaps feeling that the woman lying between them was in the way, Li Zizhuo, who had just been saying "cherishing beauty," lifted his foot and kicked the unconscious woman into a corner.
Then, with a sinister smile, he raised his hand to pat Li Qingchen's shoulder, his words devoid of any sincerity: "Thank you for cleaning up my mess."
Li Qingchen slightly shifted his body, causing Li Zizhuo's hand to miss its target. He stared at Li Zizhuo with a cold gaze: "Did you send the person who poisoned you?"
"Poison? What kind of poison?" Li Zizhuo was still pretending not to know, trying to brush it off with a laugh.
But since Li Qingchen had come, he must have obtained sufficient evidence. He stared at Li Zizhuo, but suddenly opened a mother-of-pearl inlaid cabinet next to the two of them, revealing a person who was tied up inside!
This action completely caught Li Zizhuo off guard, and he was startled! But upon closer inspection, he realized that the person bound inside was none other than the person he had sent to Dali Temple Prison that day to bribe officials and deliver the food box!
"Li Qingchen, how dare you touch my people?!" Li Zizhuo immediately turned hostile, glaring angrily at Li Qingchen.
“Since you acknowledge that he is your man, it is tantamount to acknowledging that what he did was at your behest,” Li Qingchen said in a calm voice.
"What did he do?" Li Zizhuo still refused to admit it, intuitively feeling that his subordinates knew his temper and would never dare to betray their master.
Li Qingchen was too lazy to waste words with him. He raised his hand and ripped the cloth off the man's mouth, shouting, "Speak for yourself!"
The bound man spoke in a daze: "Today, the eldest young master ordered me to go to the Dali Temple prison to poison that woman surnamed Wei."
"What kind of poison was used?" Li Qingchen continued to ask.
"It's made with the highly poisonous Gelsemium elegans. The eldest son said he wanted to make sure that even if she only ate one bite, she would definitely die."
"You don't want to live anymore?!"
Li Zizhuo glared angrily at his subordinate, and without a word, he slashed at his neck, ending the man's life with a single blow!
Li Qingchen watched from the sidelines, making no attempt to stop him. After all, this man had committed heinous acts, and he had no intention of sparing his life. Since he couldn't be handed over to the authorities, letting him die at the hands of his own master would be a fitting end.
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