He exchanged a glance with Minister Qi.
The two rarely agree on sothing, and they didn’t stop Chu Heng this ti.
As Chu Heng was leaving,
he suddenly heard a loud bang, as a vase fell to the ground and shattered into pieces.
The guard’s voice, trembling with fear, sounded: "Lord Chu, it was my mistake..."
"My lord, there’s sothing wrong with this vase, it seems to be a..." He hadn’t finished the word ’chanism’.
Then there was a cracking sound.
The painting behind the screen split open, revealing a passage that connected the two tea rooms.
Minister Xiang looked sharply at Chu Heng, and indeed saw a smug expression on his face, eyes wide with rage. Only at that mont did he realize that from the beginning, Chu Heng had orchestrated this entire situation for this very mont!
From the start, he was the target.
It wasn’t, as he thought, that the other party wanted to take Hu Hua down and cause him to lose an ally.
Minister Qi’s eyes deepened as well, looking at Chu Heng with trepidation.
The room was very quiet.
Even Hu Hua’s cries had hushed in that instant; he couldn’t dare imagine what he was seeing now.
In the silent room, a soft sneer echoed.
"Oh, this teahouse is quite interesting, two rooms with a hidden passage, Great Minister Qi and Minister Xiang, you both have such luck, booking a teahouse with the rooms side by side. Surely you weren’t aware of this teahouse’s construction secret, right?"
"I wonder if the other rooms in the teahouse have similar designs." Chu Heng seed to be explaining on behalf of Minister Qi and Minister Xiang but actually emphasized the deep connection between the two.
Minister Xiang had always been an opponent of Minister Qi in court; if they were openly getting along, it wouldn’t be an issue, but if the Emperor were to believe they were secretly close, wouldn’t that clearly make them out to be colluding together, plotting sothing, and being guilty of wrongdoing?
He felt the nerves on his forehead twitching violently, his face going a livid shade, but he still had to cover this up verbally: "Lord Chu, if it weren’t for today’s unexpected discovery, I wouldn’t have known this tea room had such a hidden setup."
"It’s just unfortunate that this shopkeeper isn’t honest with his dealings, failing even to clarify such matters."
"If it weren’t for the fact that Minister Qi and I were in neighboring rooms and have little interaction usually, we would have long noticed this room setting. This teahouse needs to be thoroughly checked, or in the future, if soone barges in while having tea in a private room, it would be hard to explain!" Minister Xiang gave a sharp, angry snort.
He imdiately ordered his guard to bring the shopkeeper over.
At the sa ti, he waved his hand to have his subordinates inspect the other rooms.
The guard soon returned, bowing to report to Minister Xiang: "My lord, similar chanisms were found in the other rooms as well."
"Hmph, why don’t you fess up already, what is this tea room actually used for!" Minister Xiang shouted angrily, looking at the shopkeeper with bloodshot eyes, as if he wished to devour him.
The shopkeeper felt a chill in his heart, instinctively wanting to look towards Minister Qi.
But out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other party’s cold deanor and that gesture, clearly indicating he should take responsibility with his life.
"Spare , my lord, I genuinely don’t know about the chanism’s location. After becoming the shopkeeper, I never noticed this chanism either, and this teahouse was also bought from soone else’s hands previously." The shopkeeper wailed his grievances.
He continued to kowtow on the ground, soon bleeding profusely from his head.
"Spare , my lord..." The shopkeeper kept trying to distance himself from the situation, attributing everything to his ignorance.
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