Chapter 8

TRANSLATED BY MYPEN_22

"Your Highness, come here for a moment, I have something to say to you." Yan Shi said to Hua Ling and pushed the door into the room.

    Hua Ling said, "Mute Sister, go down and get busy first, I'll talk to my brother for a while, and I'll look for you later."

    Hua Ling entered the room immediately afterwards, "Brother, what do you want to say to me?"

    Before Hua Ling entered the room, Yan Shi had already swept the whole room quickly, when he left this morning, he had specially ordered the room not to be tidied up yet, in order to find out how he had been tricked last night.

    But as he had seen yesterday, he had found nothing, so he had to start with Hua Ling.

    "Your Highness, please sit down." Yan Shi sat on a chair and gestured for Hua Ling to sit on the chair next to him.

    "Brother, don't call me Concubine," Hua Ling's eyes caught sight of the messy bed just now, and thinking of yesterday's incident, his face flushed suspiciously red, and now s

he lowered his head and spoke in a small voice.

    Yan Shi was obedient to him, "Then does your Highness have a courtesy name?"

    "No," Hua Ling lifted his chin slightly to look at Yan shi, "I have just come of age and am in a hurry to get married, so I haven't had the time to get one yet. Why don't you take one for me?"

    Yan Shi didn't refuse and said after some thought, "How about Ming Ting?"

    "Sure, I'll call myself Mingting then. I finally have a courtesy name," Hua Ling said joyfully, "Brother, you can call me Ling'er from now on."

    Yan shi was quite speechless, so why did he pick up a name just now?

    After opening his mouth, he did not say the word "Ling'er". The words rolled around in his mouth, but he said, "Mingting, did your mother ever give you anything before you got married, like some kind of tonic to strengthen your body?"

    Yan Shi did not find any clues in the house, so he could only coax Hua Ling to see if he could get any useful clues from him.

    Hua Ling cocked his head and thought about it again and again, and finally affirmed, "My mother didn't give me anything like that."

    If Yang had given the poison to Hua Ling as a tonic, Hua Ling's temperament would have been exposed, so the poison must have been placed in a place that Hua Ling did not know. So Yan Shi asked, "Did your mother give you anything before you married me?"

    "Ah! My mother gave me a peace talisman," Hua Ling slapped his head, "she said she personally went to the temple to beg for it for me, to bless me and my brother to love each other until we grow old."

    "Then where is the peace talisman?" Last night, although Yan Shi could not move, he had watched all of Hua Ling's actions. According to reason, he should have carried a peace talisman with him, but he had only seen Hua Ling holding a flute. At that time, Yan Shi wondered why he was carrying a flute with him, so he asked him about it in the morning.

    He said that his mother had played it before she was born, so he had it with him at this time. It was a white jade flute of the highest quality, and there was nothing suspicious about it.

    "The peace talisman is inside the cover," Hua Ling said, and went to the inner room, picked the cover up from the floor and sat down on the chair, "Do you want to read it?"

    "Take it out and show it to me." If he was right, this so-called peace talisman must have been laced with medicine.

    Now that the matter had come to this stage, he had already guessed the real purpose of the Duke of Kangle's House in drugging him and marrying Hua Ling to him. One of them was to draw him in. He and King Zhaoge are not the only ones who want to win the throne. Besides them, there are two other princes who are eyeing this position.

    It has to be said that the Emperor has a knack for dividing power and checks and balances. Although his successor had great glory, his mother's clan was not able to take over the court, and although the entire Ministry of the Household and the Ministry of Penalty was under King Zhaoge's command, King Zhaoge did not have military power, and without it, he was unsure of what to do.

    The Ministry of Officials and the Ministry of Rites are in the hands of the third prince, King Ding, and the Ministry of Works and the Ministry of War are in the hands of the fourth prince, King Mu. The six ministries have all fallen into the hands of these three princes, and have been in a stalemate for years, with mutual checks and balances.

    Although Yan Shi is the eldest son, his mother's family is weak and he is isolated in the court, so he has no chance to achieve great things compared to those three sons.

    But the reason why King Zhaoge had drawn him in was because of his mother's weakness. After the death of Empress Yuan, Emperor Chong had an excuse to take back some of the military power, and he had sent his maternal grandfather's family to the southern frontier, where they had not returned.

    Although the military power of Yan Shi's grandfather had been weakened in the past ten years, it was still better than that of King Zhaoge, who had no military power at all.

    Therefore, for the sake of his military power, King Zhaoge also wanted to draw him in. Although there is hatred between them, in this world there are only eternal interests, not eternal enemies.

    Besides, Yan Shi is the eldest son, so if the Emperor really makes King Zhaoge the Crown prince, it is doubtful that there would be any stubborn old ministers in the court who would say that it is not in line with the rituals. Now that he has brought in Yan Shi, he has also brought in those stubborn old ministers. Everyone in the court knows the feud between the two, now that he has lowered his posture and taken the initiative to seek peace, won't he also gain a good reputation?

    Therefore, no matter which way he looked at it, it was not a loss for him to bring in Yan Shi. And so, the marriage was given.

    Of course, King Zhaoge was not a fool, and he knew that even if he gave Hou Ling hand in marriage to Yan Shi, he would not easily become his man. He must have expected that Yan Shi would not touch Hua Ling, so he pushed him to do so.

    A husband with a real name is better than a husband without a real name, isn't it?

    Yan Shi squinted his eyes, and pulled himself out of the thoughts he had just had. Hua Ling's red head was double-layered, and he had already used a pair of scissors to cut the edge of the red head along with the thread, and reached inside to find the peace talisman.

    "When my mother gave me this talisman, she said that it was not like any other talisman and could not be worn on the body, but could only be placed inside the red head. For this talisman, I had this cover specially made."

    No wonder he had a red head yesterday.

    He had taken precautions and held his breath before he got the talisman, and then put it down. He turned around and went out of the door, called Qingji and asked him to take the talisman away.

    There must be something strange about this talisman, but Hua Ling and Qing Ji were fine when they touched the talisman, could it be that... Yan Shi thought about it, the medicine in this talisman should only work on people with internal strength. That was a good plan. He might not touch Hua Ling, but he couldn't not lift the cover. As soon as he got close to the cover and smelled the medicine on it, he would be trapped.

    After he lost his strength, wouldn't he just let Hua Ling do whatever he wanted?

    "You can rest in your room first, I have important things to do." Yan Shi did not want to stay in the same place with Hua Ling anymore, even if he rounded up the room, it would not change anything.

    It did not take long for the mute sister to come in with a tray of fruits.

    "You are getting better and better at pretending to be a good girl." An old voice rang out in the room, not too loud, but loud enough for Hua Ling to hear clearly.

    When he looked at the dumb sisters

, she was still lean and thin, but her back was straight, not even a hunchback.

    Hua Ling took a grape and stuffed it into his mouth, "It's still a good lesson from Sister." Hua Ling's voice was not too loud, and he kept his voice low for fear of being overheard by others.

    Mute Sister said, "What do you want to do next?"

    "I haven't thought about it yet, but there's no hurry. I've only just been married, so let me be comfortable in my brother's presence for a while first. But well -" at this point, Hua Ling's eyes, which had just been full of tenderness, changed to reveal a bloodthirsty glow, "That old eunuch in the palace has really lived too long."

    Mute Sister naturally knew that he was referring to Eunuch Lian Gui: "But keeping him will be useful in the future."

    "No," even his voice turned grim, "he deserves to die for insulting my brother!"

    The mute Sister nodded, "Then the matter does not require your personal hand."

    When Hua Ling was about to speak, Sister Mute continued, "The people in the palace are not there for them to eat for nothing, so if you want to be discovered by the King sooner, then feel free to fool around."

    Hua Ling was convinced by the latter words of the mute sister, and for the sake of his brother, he could only compromise. But where has my brother gone? He didn't say he was taking me with him.

    At this moment, Yan shi was with Jiang Qingyue at the Da Lisi Temple, looking at the corpse that had been fished out of the pond in the west of the city this morning.

    "The coroner has confirmed that the body was drowned." Jiang Qingyue said, "There are no signs of a struggle on the shore, and we also found his clothes and shoes on the shore."

    Yan Shi examined the clothes and shoes carefully, and then looked at the man's body carefully, "This man looks familiar."

    Jiang Qingyue said, "This man is not the two people who disappeared before, he is a jianghu man, nicknamed 'Life Snatcher', with thirteen lives on his back, a wanted criminal by the government."

    "Qing Yue," Yan Shi stood up from the ground, "what do you think?"

    Jiang Qingyue replied, "According to the traces left at the scene, it was a suicide. But I always think it's not that simple. The fact that he was wearing night clothes means he must have had something important to do last night. If there were wounds on his body, it could be explained by the fact that he failed in what he did last night and was killed by an enemy. But there was not a single wound on his body and his clothes were not torn in any way, which would suggest that what he did last night should have been a success. If that's the case, why did he suddenly think of killing himself?"

    "Find out when he arrived in the Imperial City, where he lived, who he interacted with, and who he met and what he did on the day of his death."