Overwhelmed with agitation, Li Changqing had long lost his previous calm and composure. Face dark with fury, he barked at his disciple, “What are you still standing here for?! Go!”
The young disciple, startled by his master’s harsh tone, stammered a quick response and dashed out the door.
But before long, he came running back in with wide eyes. “Master! Lord Zhu is here—he came in person!”
At this time?
Li Changqing frowned, exhaled slowly, and closed his eyes before nodding. “I see. Take him to the tea room—I’ll be right there.”
The disciple hurried off.
Li Changqing composed himself and went to the tea room. The moment he stepped in, he saw Zhu Bin pacing anxiously.
Upon seeing him, Zhu Bin rushed forward with a furrowed brow and lowered voice. “It’s bad—something’s happened!”
“What exactly?” Li Changqing rubbed his temples. “It’s just Jiang Yanzhen. We planted people around him—how could he simply vanish?”
Zhu Bin was even more frustrated than him. After a pause, he sighed heavily. “Forget Jiang Yanzhen! He was part of the whole mess back then. As long as he’s sane, he wouldn’t dare open his mouth. The real problem is the Huang Daxin Temple incident—it can’t be covered up anymore!”
In less than a day, the affair at Huang Daxin Temple had become public knowledge.
People from all over the city were swarming to the site. The authorities couldn’t stop them even if they tried.
And he wasn’t the Grand Chancellor—how was he supposed to suppress something like this?
Only now did Li Changqing feel the full weight of panic. He clutched Zhu Bin’s wrist tightly. “That’s why we have to kill Jiang Yanzhen! He was the one who handled the Mount Mao case! If we eliminate him, there’ll be no one left to testify. So what if Qiu Chuying’s dead? Let it stay that way, understand?!”
Zhu Bin had also lost his composure. After Li Changqing’s outburst, he finally came to his senses. “I’ll send people to search right away!”
Li Changqing nodded, swallowing his anxiety. “I’ll head to the palace now. If I get any news, I’ll pass it to you—but you must make sure Jiang Yanzhen doesn’t survive this!”
But Li Changqing and Zhu Bin weren’t the only ones panicking.
In truth, ever since the temple incident broke out, Feng Yuzhang had been so scared it felt like his heart had stopped.
And to make it worse, he couldn’t find Xiao Yunting anywhere. His panic grew so great that he decided to try entering the palace, hoping to first seek an audience with Empress Feng.
But just as he reached the palace gates, he saw someone approaching in the distance, carrying a body on his back.
Suspicious, he squinted at the approaching figure. Something about the man seemed familiar.
The nearby imperial guards immediately drew their blades and barked, “What do you think you’re doing?!”
This was no place for commoners to wander.
Jiang Yanzhen swallowed hard and lifted his head, revealing his face. Then he dumped the corpse from his back onto the ground, shivered from the chill in his limbs, and knelt down.
“It’s me—Jiang Yanzhen! I beg the Emperor for an audience! Please—inform His Majesty!”
Feng Yuzhang immediately recognized who he was—Jiang Yanzhen, the Liu Wangfei’s maternal uncle!
Back when the Feng family was still in the capital, Jiang Yanzhen had been the one to falsely accuse them of pursuing and attacking Liu Wangfei, constantly giving them grief under the guise of justice.
So Feng Yuzhang remembered him clearly.
And now, he realized that the corpse Jiang Yanzhen had carried here was a woman—lying stiffly on the ground. Most horrifying of all, her forehead had been pierced clean through by a crossbow bolt. She lay motionless.
A dead body…
Why had Jiang Yanzhen carried a corpse to the palace gate?!
A chill crept up Feng Yuzhang’s spine.
The gate commander soon came rushing out. He took one look at Jiang Yanzhen, then at the body on the ground, and stood stunned for a moment before barking, “Wait here!”
He turned and hurried inside.
Jiang Yanzhen sat slumped on the ground, dazed and lifeless like a puppet with its strings cut. He stared blankly at the ground, not even seeming to know what he was looking at.
By now, the imperial court’s morning session had ended. Some ministers summoned by the Emperor were exiting the palace in small groups. They all slowed at the sight of the bizarre scene, watching with confusion and unease.
But Jiang Yanzhen had no attention left to spare for how others saw him.
His mind kept replaying Qi Yuan’s words.
Had it been anyone else threatening him, he might’ve held out. He wasn’t that easily scared.
But this time—it was Qi Yuan.
Qi Yuan, who killed people as easily as slicing vegetables.
When she said she’d kill, she meant it. She didn’t make idle threats.
He couldn’t risk his wife and children’s lives on a gamble.
The gate commander returned and glanced at the corpse. Then he looked at Jiang Yanzhen. “You can’t take the body in. His Majesty has ordered the Embroidered Guards to take over. Please proceed inside, Lord Jiang.”
Fine. Let them take the body. As long as people saw it, it was as good as the Emperor seeing it.
Jiang Yanzhen gave a broken nod and stood up like a soulless husk, stumbling through the palace gate.
Feng Yuzhang frowned, unable to make sense of what Jiang Yanzhen was trying to do.
But he couldn’t just stand at the gate all day either. He decided to return home and interrogate Feng Caiwei—what else had she done? What had she said to Xiao Jingzhao?
But just as he lifted the curtain of his carriage—
He saw another familiar figure.
This time, unmistakably familiar: it was none other than the Emperor’s favored confidant, the most influential man of the hour—Li Changqing.
Feng Yuzhang froze. His eyelids twitched violently.
Jiang Yanzhen had always been close to Duke Chu’s household—at least before he left the capital.
Now he was bringing a corpse into the palace to see the Emperor…
Was Li Changqing scheming again?
But Li Changqing didn’t notice Feng Yuzhang at all. His mood was foul—he wouldn’t have cared even if he had.
He strode into the palace with quick steps.
But this time, unlike before, he wasn’t granted immediate access to the Emperor.
He was stopped by Eunuch Xia.
With a polite smile, Eunuch Xia said, “Daoist Li, His Majesty is meeting with ministers right now. Please wait here a moment.”
Li Changqing had waited outside before during major deliberations, but this time, something felt different—and it made him deeply uneasy.
He couldn’t help probing, “Eunuch Xia, may I ask which minister His Majesty is meeting? To be honest, I have an urgent matter…”
Eunuch Xia merely smiled and replied courteously, “That I do not know. Daoist, please be patient and wait a little longer.”
Li Changqing cursed silently in his heart.
Ever since Pu Wuyong died, it had become much harder to gather information from inside the palace.
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