A strange taste, his tongue couldn’t discern it at all, as if his taste buds were numb. When the dicine reached his throat, it burned like fire, heating all the way to his heart.
Xia Wenjin raised her eyebrows and finally said, "This is the last bowl of dicine!"
Huangfu Jingchen felt sowhat unsatisfied, was this really the last bowl? Did this an that the days of her caring for him while he recovered were coming to an end? Would there be fewer opportunities for them to be alone together in the future?
Xia Wenjin asked him, "Are you going with to Liangzhou to get the Jade Pendant, or will you give an address, and I’ll get it and send it to you?"
Huangfu Jingchen replied, "I’ll go with you!"
Xia Wenjin glanced at him, then looked again, smiling, "Are you sure you still have the life to go to Liangzhou? You just saw it with your own eyes; that was arsenic!"
Huangfu Jingchen laughed, looking at Xia Wenjin with an unusually gentle gaze, "If you wanted to kill , you wouldn’t need to go to such trouble. Just that arsenic could kill ten tis! Spending so much ti and effort brewing the dicine, if it’s just to kill , why pay attention to the timing? Why pay attention to the order of ingredients? Why even need the ingredients at all?"
His calm deanor, with eyes that seed to see through everything, made Xia Wenjin find it quite dull.
She rolled her eyes and said, "Consider yourself lucky. If your wounds hadn’t suppressed the poison in your body, once it exploded, not even an immortal could save you. Drinking this bowl of dicine finally removed the root of the disease."
She did not say that from now on, ordinary poisons would be useless against him.
The formulas passed down by the Poison Venerable were each a peerless treasure, but also extrely difficult.
Huangfu Jingchen was sowhat surprised, "I was poisoned? But at that ti, the hidden weapons of those n in black did not hit . Their weapons were not poisoned!"
Xia Wenjin gave him a look, "The poison has been in your body for at least four months; it’s a chronic poison. It will flare up in two years. Once it erupts, there’s no saving it! Think about how you got poisoned four months ago!"
If she hadn’t discovered the hidden, slow-developing toxins in his body, she wouldn’t have bothered with this.
Huangfu Jingchen was greatly shocked; four months ago, he was in the Capital City.
That was the exact ti he stayed in the Capital City for a month.
During that month, although he visited the Imperial Palace for the Grandpa’s banquet, most of the ti he stayed at the guesthouse.
Yes, there were also the banquets between him and his cousins.
Among the elders in the Capital, only the forr Crown Prince, now Prince Liang and Prince Li, held banquets in their mansions.
As they were elders, he naturally could not refuse these invitations.
Could it be that soone poisoned him at that ti?
Poisoning him four months ago with the intent to have it activate two years later, who could be so insidious? Planning to harm him two years later?
Was the person who poisoned him also the one who sent assassins to kill him this ti? Probably not, if they had such foresight, why bother sending people to kill him; it’s completely unnecessary.
Who exactly was that person?
And who sent the assassins to kill him?
Also, after this incident, he was certain that the assassins Xia Wenjin encountered last ti were also targeting him.
He never had much fondness for the Capital City, but upon further thought, it filled him with terror. He was also deeply ashad of his carelessness. Turning his head, he saw Xia Wenjin’s pale face, her eyes looking at him with sothing strange that made him uneasy.
However, it was only for a mont, and Xia Wenjin averted her gaze.
Huangfu Jingchen asked, "What are you thinking about?"
Xia Wenjin did not speak.
She was thinking about the chronic poison in Huangfu Jingchen’s body, the kind used by the Royal Family.
She suddenly recalled sothing; last ti, Huang Zheng was angry with her for not repaying a debt, and always running away. He once gave her a pill, saying it would take effect in a year.
That poison seed to be sothing only the Royal Family would have! It was a vague connection she couldn’t be sure of.
If it was, how did Huang Zheng co to possess it?
She shook her head again. The internal struggles within the Imperial Family were intense, with several princes vying for the supre position. Many things originally exclusive to the Imperial Family gradually leaked out—even if in minuscule quantities, it wasn’t impossible.
If Huang Zheng’s family were wealthy and willing to spend the silver, they could indeed purchase such things.
And soone casually holding several thousand taels of silver notes is naturally quite affluent!
Fortunately, she knew dicine and was knowledgeable about poisons.
She couldn’t help but think of the master who taught her the art of dicine and poison in her past life, wondering if they would et again in this life!
Returning from Yifeng Building to the mansion, Prince Li locked himself alone in the secret chamber of his study.
He sat at the table, in front of him a pile of letters; so were ssages from his eldest son in the vassal land, others were correspondence with important people.
But now, his gaze was not on those letters.
In his hand, he held a tiny bottle, transparent, containing a pill that filled half the space.
Clearly, there were originally two inside.
Prince Li toyed with it, his mind wandering back to four months ago, when the Capital was bustling. Every Imperial Grandson over fourteen, except for his eldest son Huangfu Jingwei who had just returned to the vassal land, ca to the Capital. Many under fourteen ca as well.
Father didn’t say it outright, but except for Prince Cheng in far-away Yunzhou, with little communication to the Capital, who didn’t know what it all ant?
So many young people gathered together, outstanding ones, exceptional ones, unique ones... each with their own traits.
His son Jinglun was the most excellent, fourteen years old, versed in both literature and martial arts. True to his na, he was full of knowledge, mastering works of famous scholars throughout history, tiless classics, theories of governance, and conduct for self-cultivation.
He had taken Jinglun to visit the world’s greatest scholar, the head of the intellectual stream, Dean Gu Hanmo of the Wenbo Academy. He wished to ask Gu Hanmo to accept Jinglun as a direct disciple. With this connection, both Jinglun and he would have a bigger stake in the Capital in the future.
However, Gu Hanmo refused.
He intended to take in the son of Third Brother, Huangfu Jingchen, the boy who ca alone to the Capital, as Prince Cheng had gone directly to his vassal land without establishing a mansion in the Capital. He didn’t even have a place to stay, living directly in the guesthouse as Prince Cheng’s heir.
Huangfu Jingchen, who would have thought, Third Brother raised a seemingly gentle but shrewd son.
That day, he had Jinglun invite all the Imperial Grandsons over as guests, supposedly to foster their brotherly bonds. As an elder, he naturally did not participate.
The Imperial Grandsons had a great ti playing together.
It was then he discreetly had soone use a Lingyin pill on Huangfu Jingchen. He only had two, and acquiring them had cost him a vast amount of effort and tens of thousands of taels of silver.
Though it is a poison, even describing it as worth a fortune per pill would be an understatent.
If he’d known Old Third would act against Huangfu Jingchen, why would he have wasted a Lingyin pill?
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