The palace attendant trembled as he bowed low and recounted the events in detail.
It turned out that just this morning, less than half an hour after porridge was distributed by the Disaster Relief Bureau, the disaster victims began experiencing mass vomiting, diarrhea, and even fever and convulsions. Some became so severely ill they were on the verge of death. The Disaster Relief Bureau had been temporarily established under the Crown Prince’s leadership, with the Ministry of Revenue and the military involved in coordinating the relief efforts. Upon hearing the news, the Crown Prince immediately left the palace and rushed to the scene.
Hundreds of victims had fallen ill, and there weren’t enough physicians to provide timely treatment. The site was filled with cries and groans of agony. When the Crown Prince arrived with his guard, someone pointed him out as the chief official in charge of the relief, and the disaster victims rushed forward, clinging to his horse, desperately begging him to save them.
The palace guards, fearing the Crown Prince would be harmed in the chaos, tried to separate him from the crowd and accidentally injured a few people in the process. This only inflamed the disaster victims further. Word spread to other nearby refugee camps, and more people stormed over demanding answers. The Crown Prince was soon completely surrounded by a panicked and enraged mob, as if caught in boiling water.
One of the guards rushed back to the palace to report the situation. The palace attendant on duty realized the urgency and, with no other option, interrupted the Emperor’s birthday ceremony to deliver the news.
Emperor Jinglong suddenly rose from his throne, stood in thought for a moment, then slowly sat back down, his expression darkening with displeasure. He said coldly, “The Crown Prince is no longer a child. If he can’t handle something as minor as this, what else could he possibly be trusted with?”
It was clear he had no intention of intervening, waiting to see how the Crown Prince would handle it.
The gathered civil and military officials exchanged glances, whispering with complex expressions. Assistant Grand Secretary Yang Ting was the first to step forward, urging the Emperor to prioritize the Crown Prince’s safety and send troops to pacify the unrest. The Emperor remained silent.
At this, several ministers came forward to praise the Emperor’s wisdom in testing and tempering the Crown Prince through such adversity, advising Yang Ting not to let soft-heartedness hinder the Crown Prince’s growth.
Yang Ting argued back, saying that even when polishing jade, one must use the right tools and the correct pressure—otherwise, it would shatter. He persistently urged the Emperor to issue an order.
The Emperor responded coldly, “On this grand occasion of my birthday, when all officials have come to offer their gifts, the Crown Prince’s present to me is a civil riot. What, am I now expected to personally lead troops to clean up his mess?”
Yang Ting was left speechless, and could only apologize on behalf of the Crown Prince in his capacity as the Prince’s Grand Tutor, once again pleading with the Emperor to consider his paternal bond.
The officials debated fiercely. Some accused the Crown Prince of recklessness that incited rebellion. Others defended his quick thinking, believing he could resolve the issue. Some suspected deliberate sabotage, calling for troops to suppress the unrest. Others argued that the people, already victims of disaster, now faced illness—this was adding insult to injury, and physicians should be urgently dispatched.
Su Yan silently observed and realized that, regardless of their opinions, the officials were now subtly dividing into two factions.
It used to be that the Crown Prince’s playful and lazy behavior earned plenty of scolding from the scholars and censors, but the current situation was no longer on that level. Especially the officials closely aligned with the Wei family—they seemed to have gained new confidence from the Emperor’s cold reaction, seizing the chance to speak against the Crown Prince, their words increasingly hostile and veiled.
In the end, the ailing Grand Chancellor Li Chengfeng, who had left the court early to rest, hurried back to the palace upon hearing the news. He directly asked the Emperor, “If something happens to His Highness the Crown Prince, will Your Majesty regret this after your anger cools?”
The Emperor’s expression finally changed slightly, and he relented. He ordered the Imperial Guard to intervene and explicitly assigned Su Yan: “Since you’re the head of the investigation team for the Baizhifeng explosion, you should also oversee the aftermath of the disaster victims. Go with the Imperial Guard to see the situation and report back to me.”
Su Yan had already been looking for an excuse to leave and check on the Crown Prince, so this imperial command suited him perfectly. He immediately accepted and left Fengtian Hall.
Upon exiting the Meridian Gate, he didn’t even bother with a carriage, spurring his horse at full speed toward the Disaster Relief Bureau.
The Bureau was located in the west of the city, near several refugee camps. When Su Yan arrived, he saw the courtyard packed with people—some standing, some sitting, some lying on the ground—groans and weeping filled the air. Outside the courtyard, layers of people were crowding around, pressing to get in.
The Crown Prince was surrounded in the center, speaking to several kneeling officials. His bright red robe, embroidered with golden dragons, made him stand out.
Su Yan noticed that while the scene was chaotic, it hadn’t yet descended into total disorder. It seemed the situation was somewhat under control. He let out a breath of relief and pushed his way through the crowd.
“Young Master!” he called loudly over the heads of the people.
Zhu Helin turned at the sound. When he saw Su Yan, his face seemed to light up, his mouth involuntarily curving into a smile. “Qinghe! Come here, be careful not to get squeezed.”
The guards opened a path. Su Yan approached, first carefully inspecting the Crown Prince. “Good thing you’re unharmed.” He added, “Word has reached Fengtian Hall. His Majesty sent me to assess the situation. The Imperial Guard will arrive shortly. What happened here?”
“Ask him!” Zhu Helin raised his foot and kicked the man kneeling before him, knocking him flat on his back. Su Yan recognized the man as a low-ranking logistics officer, his face drenched in sweat and tears, pale with fear. After being kicked, the man hurriedly knelt again, shaking so badly he couldn’t speak coherently. Behind him were two minor clerks, both equally panicked.
The surrounding disaster victims shouted in fury: “Kill him! Kill this corrupt dog official!”
“Who would’ve thought that after my husband survived the great explosion, he wouldn’t survive the corruption of these officials!”
“These people deserve to be hacked to pieces! Your Highness, please seek justice for us!”
Zhu Helin nodded to the people, then turned to Su Yan to explain, “I suspect the problem was in the porridge. I had it tested for poison, but nothing came up.”
Su Yan knew that in this era, the so-called poison tests could only detect obvious substances like arsenic. Most other toxins wouldn’t show up at all.
As expected, Zhu Helin continued, “So I went to the warehouse to inspect the stored grains and found that they were all moldy, blackened, and stinking. They were rinsed with alum water to make them look presentable, then cooked into mixed grain porridge for disaster relief. How could eating such stuff not make people sick? I checked—there was nothing wrong with the rice originally allocated by the Ministry of Revenue. It all went bad after arriving at the Relief Bureau. Someone must have sold off the good rice and replaced it with inferior stock.”
He spoke as his face was filled with rage, and even Su Yan felt a surge of righteous anger: it seemed that profiteering from national disasters was something that transcended time—it had existed in every era.
“This man is just a low-ranking petty official. He doesn’t have the capability or the courage to pull this off alone. There must be someone behind him. I just interrogated him for quite a while—he cried, he trembled, but he simply refused to confess. Looks like he needs to be shown something a little more persuasive.”
As he spoke, the Embroidered Uniform Guard arrived and quickly surrounded the entire courtyard. Seeing this, Zhu Helin’s thoughts turned. He said to the officials of the Relief Bureau, “If you still won’t tell the truth, I’ll send you to the Northern Surveillance Bureau. Let you have a taste of the tortures in the imperial prison!”
The official seemed to have been shocked to the limit. Suddenly, he stopped trembling. He raised his head and glanced at the Crown Prince.
His face was deathly pale, making the blackness of his pupils seem especially deep, and there was an inexplicable meaning in his gaze that unsettled Su Yan. In the blink of an eye, the man suddenly kowtowed heavily to the Crown Prince, then abruptly stood up.
The guards thought he was about to attack and immediately formed a protective circle around the Crown Prince, but unexpectedly, the man dashed to the side and, without hesitation, jumped straight into a well in the courtyard.
“…He jumped into the well!” someone in the crowd cried out in shock.
Su Yan shouted, “Quick! Save him!”
The guards quickly reacted. Two of the best swimmers tied thick hemp ropes around their waists and were lowered into the well to search for the man, but they couldn’t find him.
“That man must not know how to swim at all; he’s probably sunk. I’ll dive deeper to look,” the guards took turns diving to the bottom.
After a while, one of the guards surfaced, wiped the water from his face, and called out loudly, “Your Highness, I didn’t find the man, but I found something strange. Should we pull it up and have a look?”
Zhu Helin leaned over the well, “What strange thing?”
“Not sure—it feels like a pillar, standing upright, half-buried in the mud.”
“A pillar?” Zhu Helin turned to look at Su Yan, who returned his gaze with confusion. The Crown Prince then ordered, “Pull it up and see.”
The guard dove down again, tightly fastened a hemp rope around the object, and the team outside the well heaved together. After considerable effort, they finally hauled the object out of the water and dragged it to the edge of the well.
It turned out to be a stone pillar over a person’s height and about as thick as a washbasin. No one knew how long it had been submerged in the well; the surface was covered in water stains and grime, but faint, chaotic carvings could be seen on it.
The guards continued to search for the body, while the Crown Prince circled around the strange stone pillar, increasingly curious about the markings. He ordered his men, “Scrape off all the filth on it with small knives.”
Soon, most of the grime and algae were cleaned off, revealing ancient-looking characters carved into the stone.
Zhu Helin had the pillar set upright, pieced together the scattered characters, and read aloud: “Blade Edge Day Destroys the World…”
“What does that mean?”
This unexpected and bizarre incident gave Su Yan a strange feeling of déjà vu. He was still trying to pin down this sense of familiarity when the people around them started to chatter:
“‘Blade Edge Day’—what day is that? Is there such a thing in the heavenly stems and earthly branches?”
“‘Destroy the world’—it sounds ominous.”
“How did this pillar even get here? This well has been in use for decades, but no one ever knew this thing was at the bottom.”
“Who knows, maybe it’s Heaven’s will.”
Su Yan suddenly shivered—he now knew what this familiar feeling was. It was a classic tactic used by professional cult leaders to incite rebellion: either a nursery rhyme or a ‘prophecy’ tied to a strange object.
As the crowd’s discussion gained traction, an Eastern Palace guard suddenly had an epiphany and shouted, “If you combine the characters for ‘blade edge’ and ‘day,’ don’t they form the character ‘Zhao’? ‘Zhao destroys the world’—could this be saying that someone with the surname Zhao will bring about the downfall of the world—”
He abruptly fell silent.
Zhu Helin frowned and snapped, “What do you mean? Explain it clearly to me!”
The guard shook his head desperately, refusing to say another word.
Someone in the crowd pondered aloud, “What that soldier said makes sense… It could be someone with the surname Zhao, or it could be someone whose name contains the character ‘Zhao’…”
Someone whose name contains ‘Zhao’? Zhu Helin seemed to realize something, and his face changed.
“What’s on your mind, Your Highness?” Su Yan asked.
Zhu Helin shook his head repeatedly and ordered the guards to bring some cloth to wrap up the stone pillar and load it onto the carriage to bring back to the palace.
The body of the official was eventually retrieved from the bottom of the well. Dead men tell no tales, and the remaining minor clerks claimed complete ignorance. The black hand behind the substitution and resale of the disaster relief rice would need further investigation. The priority now was to treat the sick refugees.
Fortunately, the Embroidered Uniform Guard had large numbers and were able to split up to summon physicians, buy medicine, and set up large pots to brew herbal remedies. Licorice detox soup was distributed bowl by bowl, and most of the poisoned refugees saw their symptoms subside and their conditions stabilize.
Zhu Helin finally breathed a sigh of relief. He then earnestly reassured the people, promising that the Ministry of Revenue would send a new batch of rice, and swore to thoroughly investigate the incident and punish all those involved, including officials. Only then did he leave the Relief Bureau amid the grateful cheers of the refugees.
Su Yan rode alongside the Crown Prince, both deep in thought along the way.
This time, Zhu Helin asked him, “What are you thinking about?”
Su Yan shook his head. “I can’t explain it just yet, but I have a bad feeling. Today’s incident is too strange. I fear it’s not just a case within a case—it’s a scheme within a scheme.”
Zhu Helin agreed. “I think something’s wrong too. Never mind the relief rice, just this bizarre stone pillar and the strange inscription on it, ‘Blade Edge Day Destroys the World’… ‘Zhao Destroys the World’… Do you know who I thought of? My second brother—Zhu Hezhao.”
Su Yan suddenly pulled his horse to a stop, looking at Zhu Helin with an indescribable expression.
Zhu Helin grew uneasy under his gaze. “What is it? I really can’t help making that connection.”
Su Yan moved his lips a few times but ultimately said in a low voice, “Your Highness, please take my advice. Destroy that pillar. And don’t ever bring up this matter again—especially in front of His Majesty.”
Zhu Helin was stunned. “Why? Besides, everyone present saw what happened. Even if I don’t mention it, do you think others won’t?”
“…It’s really not worth it, Young Master, truly.” Su Yan gripped his arm tightly. “Let me speak from the heart—this isn’t a case of using poison to fight poison; this is a fatal misstep! If you had asked for my advice beforehand, I would have firmly opposed it. This kind of scheme might work for the moment, but it can’t last a lifetime. It might deceive the world, but it won’t fool the Emperor.”
Zhu Helin finally realized what Su Yan was thinking and flew into a rage. “You think I arranged all this?”
Before Su Yan could respond, Zhu Helin lashed his horse hard with the whip and rode off in a cloud of dust.
Su Yan choked on the dust, raised his sleeve to cover his face, and muttered to himself, “Little Zhu doesn’t seem like the type to set up such a scheme… could it really not have been him? Then who was it…”
