Chapter 90: The Free and Easy Young Marquis (23)
Was Huo Xian’s strike heavy? He felt it was quite heavy. He had fully prepared himself mentally before taking action.
However, compared to the suffering of the original host, whose every bone was systematically broken, Xiao Jinli’s pain seemed insignificant.
The reason the original host’s hatred for Xiao Jinli was so deep was truly for a good reason.
“Huo Xian, are you in there?” Ning Chen’s voice came from behind the door. “I’ve brought Medical Immortal Du!”
Oh no!
Only these two words filled Huo Xian’s mind. He looked guiltily at Xiao Jinli’s broken arm… if the tendons weren’t snapped, he wondered if Medical Immortal Du could still take his pulse.
Before coming to see Xiao Jinli, he had asked Ning Chen to fetch Du Hanxu. Du Hanxu was able to diagnose the Mind-Bewildering Grass poison. He suspected Xiao Jinli’s mental state was affected just like Emperor Haoyuan’s. As it turned out, Xiao Jinli’s “begging-to-be-beaten” appearance had caused him to be momentarily influenced by the original host’s memories, and he had struck too hard.
When Ning Chen led Du Hanxu into the cell and they saw the ghastly state of Xiao Jinli, who had lost all color in his face, their gazes became incredibly strange.
“You… you really hit him hard,” Ning Chen couldn’t help but click his tongue.
“Mm-hmm.” Huo Yuan agreed, nodding along.
Huo Xian: […] Come on, someone touch my hand. This is my first time doing something so cruel, my hand is still shaking!
Fortunately, Medical Immortal Du’s medical skills were superb; he actually managed to take a pulse from Xiao Jinli’s broken body. Just as he had expected, Xiao Jinli was also poisoned with Mind-Bewildering Grass. The Medical Immortal was puzzled. The toxicity of this Mind-Bewildering Grass wasn’t strong, so why was it being used so widely? Could it be that he had a misunderstanding of its toxicity? Thinking this, he took out several long green leaves that looked like leeks from his medicine box, put one in his mouth, and began chewing.
Huo Xian & Huo Yuan & Ning Chen: [???]
“Medical Immortal, what are you doing? If you’re hungry, why are you eating leeks? Should I take you out for a meal?” Ning Chen wasn’t someone who couldn’t tell one grain from another. His mother had started a small vegetable patch in the back of the Duke’s manor, and they grew leeks there.
Du Hanxu gave him a sidelong glance and said gloomily, “These aren’t leeks. This is Mind-Bewildering Grass.”
“Mind-Bewildering Grass?” Huo Xian took the leaf that looked just like a leek from his hand and sniffed it. The scent was indeed different from a leek; it had a faint grassy fragrance that wasn’t unpleasant.
“Mind-Bewildering Grass and leeks do look very similar. However, the leaves of Mind-Bewildering Grass are shorter and they don’t flower. It’s rare in the Central Plains,” Du Hanxu explained to them.
“If it’s rare, then why do you have it in your box, and why is it so fresh?” Ning Chen asked, feigning curiosity.
“Rare doesn’t mean non-existent.” Du Hanxu gave him a look as if he were an uncultured brat. It was because he had previously diagnosed Emperor Haoyuan with Mind-Bewildering Grass poisoning that he had suddenly regained interest in the plant. He had spent a lot of effort searching and finally found two stalks. They were now growing at his home. When Ning Chen went to fetch him, he happened to be studying them, and in his haste to leave, he just tossed them into his medicine box.
Huo Xian pinched the Mind-Bewildering Grass in his hand and fell into deep thought. Huo Yuan suddenly asked, “Medical Immortal, if someone mixed Mind-Bewildering Grass and leeks together, could you tell them apart?”
Du Hanxu stroked his beard and said calmly, “You would only need to smell the scent.”
“What if they were stir-fried together as a dish?” Huo Yuan asked again.
Du Hanxu paused. Stir-frying leeks and Mind-Bewildering Grass together? Forgive the old doctor, but while he had seen stir-fried leeks, he had never seen stir-fried Mind-Bewildering Grass. However, the scent of leeks was naturally strong. If the faint-scented Mind-Bewildering Grass was mixed in, it might be difficult to notice.
Ning Chen suddenly said, “A few years ago, there were disasters across the country, and the treasury’s silver was used for relief. Both the court and the inner palace had to tighten their belts. Every consort, including the Empress, started a vegetable garden in their respective palaces. The first one to plant vegetables was Consort Yan of Yongning Palace.”
Consort Yan, the biological mother of the Fourth Prince, Xiao Jinchi.
And in Great Chang, leeks were the most common green vegetable on the tables of the common people. Especially in the cold winter, the frost-resistance of leeks allowed many people to have green vegetables to eat.
The palace was no exception.
Du Hanxu didn’t dare to speak anymore. Huo Xian and Ning Chen exchanged a look. To poison Emperor Haoyuan silently, perhaps no complicated operation was required.
“Huo Xian, I have a bold idea…” Huo Yuan tugged at Huo Xian’s clothes, stood on his tiptoes, and whispered in his ear.
Ning Chen really wanted to listen but was afraid of getting hit.
After confirming that Xiao Jinli was indeed poisoned by Mind-Bewildering Grass, Huo Xian had Ning Chen send Du Hanxu back. Du Hanxu wanted to ask if he should set the Third Prince’s bone and treat his wound, but Ning Chen didn’t let him ask. As he dragged the man away, he was still grumbling, “Why is everyone always ordering me around? I’m not your servant.”
“You’re a tool man,” Huo Yuan added quietly.
Huo Xian reached out and pinched his face. Huo Yuan was dissatisfied. “I’m not a cat right now.” Why did he keep pinching his face? There was no fat on his face, and it hurt if he pinched too hard.
Huo Xian thought to himself: If you were still a cat, I’d have to go on strike.
He hadn’t let Du Hanxu treat Xiao Jinli because he had already sentenced Xiao Jinli to death. Since the original host’s wish was to grind Xiao Jinli’s bones to ashes, he essentially had to kill Xiao Jinli first.
Looking at Xiao Jinli, who was lying on the ground like a corpse, Huo Xian asked indifferently, “When did you find out about your true parentage?”
Xiao Jinli acted as if he hadn’t heard, but the mockery at the corner of his lips told Huo Xian that he had.
“Is Yang Jindong your father?” Huo Xian asked again.
Xiao Jinli still didn’t say anything, his breathing shallow.
“Who told you Yang Jindong was your father?” Huo Xian laughed slowly. “Xiao Jinli, you’re so conceited about your own brilliance, but how do you know you aren’t just a pawn in someone else’s hand? Yuanyuan, let’s go.”
“Okay,” Huo Yuan replied.
Just as they were about to turn and leave, Xiao Jinli finally spoke from within the cell: “Wait!”
After leaving Xiao Jinli’s cell, Huo Xian planned to go take a look at Yang Jindong. Unexpectedly, Yang Jindong had actually committed suicide to atone for his crimes, strangling himself with his belt. By the time the jailers found him, he was already dead.
Tu Nan stood at the cell door, his teeth clenched so hard they might break.
[Huo Xian, he was also poisoned with Mind-Bewildering Grass.] Huo Xian had sent Du Hanxu back a step earlier, otherwise, he could have had Yang Jindong checked too. Since Du Hanxu was gone, Huo Yuan had to do it himself. He still had a base of one thousand points. If he was frugal, he could hold out. Anyway, testing didn’t cost many points.
Huo Xian squatted before Yang Jindong’s body. Yang Jindong was sitting facing the wall, and even after death, he maintained his original posture. What he was thinking was, how could someone bring themselves to strangle themselves with a belt, and even have such a calm expression at the moment of death?
Just like… the physically weak Noble Consort Wang Yujie, who was able to shatter her frontal bone.
Everything that happened in the palace was already a hot topic in the capital by the next day. Furthermore, the news that the Third Prince, Xiao Jinli, was actually the son of the Capital Guard Commander Yang Jindong had also been spread. For a time, the people in the capital were in a state of panic, and no one left their homes unless necessary.
At this time, good news came from the palace regarding the Fourth Prince—he could see!
The Fourth Prince, who had been diagnosed with blindness shortly after birth, was seeing an improvement in his eyes. Although his vision wasn’t as good as a normal person’s, seeing things at close range was no longer a problem.
After the Crown Prince and the Third Prince had both met with disaster, the Fourth Prince became the undisputed choice for heir in the eyes of the court officials. After all, when Xiao Jinli attempted his coup, Xiao Jinchi had performed with incredible calmness and poise. Under his direction and arrangements, everything had proceeded in an orderly fashion.
Everything Xiao Jinli had done seemed to have served as a wedding gown for this “heaven-blessed” Fourth Prince.
“Yuanyuan, the real bug in this world isn’t Xiao Jinli, it’s Xiao Jinchi.” Huo Xian had sorted everything out, and the final target pointed to the unassuming Xiao Jinchi.
Huo Yuan’s little face was like a palette of colors. Gritting his teeth, he said, “I’m going to file a complaint later!” He paused and then became confused again. “But how did Xiao Jinchi do it? When I first saw him, I didn’t find any mechanical lifeforms on him.”
Huo Xian was silent for a moment. After a while, he proposed a possibility: “What if Xiao Jinchi devoured the mechanical lifeform?”
“What?” Huo Yuan was shocked, then shook his head rapidly. “Impossible, that’s impossible. Mechanical lifeforms are vulnerable before high-dimensional space consciousness entities, but in low-dimensional worlds, even if they aren’t invincible, they are still a lethal weapon.”
“Do you remember how I accidentally rescued you?” Huo Xian asked.
Hearing this, Huo Yuan couldn’t help but freeze.
“Mechanical lifeforms can choose to expose themselves or stay hidden within the chosen target’s body. If they don’t actively expose themselves, just like Zhao Xiyou in the previous world, the target won’t know their transmigration was thanks to a mechanical lifeform until the day they die.” Huo Xian’s tone was steady. “If they actively expose themselves to request a binding, it’s not hard to lock onto them.”
Huo Yuan’s mind was agile now. He followed Huo Xian’s lead and guessed, “You mean Xiao Jinchi is like you? He destroyed the mechanical lifeform that wanted to bind with him?”
Huo Xian didn’t state it as a fact, only saying, “This isn’t a supernatural world; there’s no such thing as accumulating merit. A person’s luck fluctuates. Xiao Jinchi has no way of doing good deeds. You said his luck was strange. Other than him having some kind of fortuitous encounter, I can’t think of anything else.”
Huo Yuan pondered Huo Xian’s words carefully, and then his eyes rolled. “If the mechanical lifeform Xiao Jinchi devoured left him an ‘inheritance,’ and that inheritance included things like hypnosis or mind-control arts that beguile people, it would explain why Emperor Haoyuan, Xiao Jinli, and the Noble Consort had so many strange behaviors. After all, no one would be on guard against a ‘blind man.'”
Indeed, no one would be on guard against a “blind man,” so Xiao Jinli had fallen into the trap without even realizing it.
In the cell, Xiao Jinli had revealed a bit. It was only when Huo Xian asked that he realized something was wrong with him. For example: he knew Yang Jindong was his biological father, and he knew it was his mother, the Noble Consort, who told him. But when he tried to remember when she told him or what his mood was at the time, he had no memory of it at all. It was as if “Yang Jindong is my father” had been engraved into his memory.
Don’t be fooled by the Noble Consort’s title as the most favored consort or that Emperor Haoyuan frequently visited the Palace of Celestial Music. Once the palace gates were closed, who knew if the Noble Consort was truly favored or not? At least Xiao Jinli was clear that the so-called favor was something the Noble Consort had begged for herself, using Emperor Haoyuan’s guilt. What was even more ridiculous was that Emperor Haoyuan thought he owed her, unaware that when he had laid out a plan to win over the Duke of Liang, he hadn’t actually arranged for any “sleeping” to occur. It was the Noble Consort who had taken the initiative to use her purity to pave the way for Emperor Haoyuan. What she wanted was exactly the Emperor’s guilt, and… that position of “Mother of the World.”
Regrettably, the development of events back then had ultimately defied expectations. Emperor Haoyuan’s and the Noble Consort’s plans had clashed, and she could only marry the heir of the Duke of Liang.
After listening to Xiao Jinli’s account, both Huo Xian’s and Huo Yuan’s worldviews were refreshed once again.
They had already pinned Emperor Haoyuan to a pillar of shame for men, but now Xiao Jinli had “whitewashed” him. At the same time, Huo Xian finally learned that when a woman has ambition and methods, it really has nothing to do with men.
Unfortunately, the Noble Consort’s luck was a bit poor.
She probably didn’t know until the day she died that she was just a puppet in someone else’s hand.
“Then… who exactly is Xiao Jinli?” Huo Yuan thought for a long time until his head felt a size larger, so he just discarded the thought and brought up another question. “If he’s not the Noble Consort’s son, then what about her child?”
Huo Xian: “…We probably need to go to the palace.”
Setting aside whether they could find out about Xiao Jinli’s parentage from Emperor Haoyuan, they were now certain that Xiao Jinchi was the boss pulling all the strings. Placing Emperor Haoyuan in front of him would probably make the Emperor look like a little lamb.
What a truly wondrous and eerie development.
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