Elio’s Notes: Hi fellow readers! No updates tomorrow for all translations. We’ll be back the following day. Thanks for understanding!
When there was still some distance left before the back mountain, Mu Xueshi already saw clouds of black smoke slowly drifting upward. His heart burned with anxiety, and by the time he ran to the foot of the mountain, he nearly lost his breath.
“All of you, all of you stop! Don’t burn anything!” Mu Xueshi shouted as he ran upward.
Although the slope of the mountain was very gentle, Mu Xueshi had sprinted all the way here and had already used up a great deal of strength. Now, walking up step by step seemed much more difficult.
“All of you… stop… stop burning… hurry… put out the fire…”
In the end, it was a guard who had turned around while carrying a corpse who saw Mu Xueshi first. Still shouldering that corpse, he ran straight toward Mu Xueshi.
“Young Master Xue, why have you come to a place like this?”
Mu Xueshi bent at the waist, both hands propped on his knees, panting heavily nonstop. Only when his breathing finally connected again did he barely squeeze a few words from his mouth.
“Hurry… put out the fire…”
The guard looked astonished. “Put out the fire? Young Master Xue, are you saying to put out the fire?”
“Yes, hurry!”
Mu Xueshi roared with all his strength, his whole body giving off an intimidating presence.
That guard had probably never seen Mu Xueshi like this before. Frightened, he quickly ran up the mountain, shouting loudly as he ran, “Stop burning! Young Master Xue said to put out the fire!”
In an instant, all the guards gathered around the waste heap scattered, busily going to a small river on the rear mountain to fetch water and extinguish the fire.
By the time Mu Xueshi reached the top of the mountain, there was a scorched, foul smell everywhere. Mu Xueshi discovered that there were many corpses on the rear mountain, and he did not know how long they had been piled there. Now that the fire had been put out halfway through burning them, they looked extremely terrifying.
Thinking of his case, Mu Xueshi could no longer care about so much. He stepped over those scattered pieces of waste, one foot sinking deep and the next shallow, and walked inside, searching with his eyes for those bottles and jars.
“Young Master Xue, what are you looking for? We can help you find it. Hurry and come out of there.”
Mu Xueshi turned a deaf ear to the guards’ voices. He simply held a stick and picked through the waste heap, trying to find those small blue-and-white porcelain bottles.
The guards could not just stand there doing nothing either, so they all came over to help search. In an instant, all sorts of pots, bowls, ladles, and basins were turned out. Looking at the things placed before him and seeing that none of them were what he wanted, Mu Xueshi grew increasingly anxious.
“Young Master Xue, I saw them,” one guard suddenly called from not far away.
Mu Xueshi quickly walked toward him. When he arrived, he saw four or five bottles piled there, all small blue-and-white porcelain bottles, exactly the same as the ones he had placed inside the cabinet.
“These are the little bottles you cleaned out, right?”
“Yes, yes. Fortunately, they haven’t been burned yet.” The guard beside him said excitedly to Mu Xueshi.
Mu Xueshi crouched down. The instant he picked up those bottles, his hands trembled, because the bottles felt very light. Sure enough, the stoppers had already been burned away, and as for the fragrant dew inside, who knew where it had gone.
Mu Xueshi picked up every bottle and looked at them, but they were all the same.
“Wuwu…” Mu Xueshi dry-sobbed twice. No tears fell, but his heart felt just as miserable.
A clue he had finally managed to find was gone just like that…
“Young Master Xue…”
“You can keep burning. I’ll go first.” Mu Xueshi stood up dejectedly and walked out of the waste heap.
“Young Master Xue!”
Hearing someone call him, Mu Xueshi instinctively turned his head to look.
“Young Master Xue, in front.”
“Eh?”
“The person looking for you is in front.”
“Oh.”
Mu Xueshi mechanically turned his head and looked at the person who had come to find him.
Eunuch Tai’an was also drenched in sweat, panting so hard he could barely breathe as he said to Mu Xueshi, “Young Master Xue… don’t… don’t… look anymore. His Highness the Third Prince said… he has some there.”
“He has some? What does he have?” A faint trace of light appeared in Mu Xueshi’s dim eyes.
“He has… has…”
“Catch your breath first. Speak slowly.”
Eunuch Tai’an nodded. Only after his breathing steadied did he slowly say, “Just now, when I mentioned this matter to His Highness, he said he had stored away some of the things you brought back before. He does not know whether the thing you are looking for is among them.”
“Ah, ah! Why didn’t you tell me earlier? I’ve been looking through the trash heap for half an hour.” Both angry and delighted, Mu Xueshi tugged Eunuch Tai’an’s ear and gave him a solid punch.
Eunuch Tai’an winced in pain and said with a wronged expression, “His Highness only returned not long ago. As soon as this servant heard about it, I hurried over.”
Mu Xueshi let Eunuch Tai’an go and quickly ran toward Qingyun Palace.
“I really love you to death.” Mu Xueshi pinched that little bottle between his fingers, his eyes shining nonstop.
“You’re sure this is the fragrant dew I took out two months ago?”
The Third Prince nodded. “It is exactly that.”
Mu Xueshi could not help sighing. “You really are meticulous. You actually kept one portion of everything.”
There was not only fragrant dew in the room, but also the clothes Mu Xueshi had worn that day, his shoes… Even the mud on the soles of those shoes was still stuck there exactly as it had been.
“Great. Now I have to take it to test.”
Mu Xueshi had just been about to walk out when the Third Prince pulled him back.
“Do not experiment recklessly on your own. Find a servant to do it for you. You can just watch from the side.”
“Oh, it’s fine. With you here, I’m not afraid of anything.”
…
Mu Xueshi went to a low storage room and had the guards bring in a cat that had died not long ago, placing it on the ground. Then he scattered those medicinal ingredients over the cat’s body, and afterward, he sprinkled a great deal of fragrant dew around the cat.
The Third Prince pulled Mu Xueshi to a relatively far place to observe. After waiting for about the time it took to drink a cup of tea, the Third Prince sat patiently to the side, his eyes not even glancing in that direction. Mu Xueshi, however, could not restrain himself. He muttered back and forth for a long while, and when he finally discovered there was no reaction at all, his entire person became like a deflated ball.
“Could my deduction be wrong again?”
The Third Prince pulled the discouraged Mu Xueshi in front of himself and asked, “You think those two things alone can kill someone?”
Mu Xueshi nodded. “I think those two things can catch fire when they come into contact.”
The Third Prince laughed softly and said nothing, but his expression clearly showed that he did not agree with Mu Xueshi’s view.
“Hmph, don’t look down on me. Just wait.”
Mu Xueshi broke free from the Third Prince’s arms and ran toward the kitchen with those medicinal ingredients.
After a while, Mu Xueshi carried a bowl of medicinal soup back into the room. First, he glanced at the Third Prince, then carefully poured that bowl of medicinal soup over the cat’s body. Afterward, he threw away the bowl and walked back toward the Third Prince.
This was the final portion of medicine. If it did not succeed, then this idea would be completely shattered.
Mu Xueshi’s heart was clenched tight. One second felt as long as an hour, because the more time passed, the smaller the possibility that this idea was correct became.
Mu Xueshi also imitated the Third Prince and simply did not look in that direction at all, but he was doing it because he could not accept the cruel reality. After about the time it took for one incense stick to burn, Mu Xueshi had not smelled anything at all, nor had he sensed anything unusual. Unable to resist, he glanced over there, only to see that the cat was still lying there without any reaction.
Mu Xueshi flattened his mouth and buried his head in the Third Prince’s arms, feeling utterly embarrassed.
The Third Prince suddenly helped Mu Xueshi up and pulled him toward that place.
The moment Mu Xueshi saw the actual situation, he was stunned.
The cat indeed had not changed much, but its body was truly and unmistakably burning. This fire looked somewhat different from ordinary flames. Its color was darker and weaker, the tongues of flame very small. As it burned, there was almost no sound, and from farther away, one could not even see the flames on it.
Mu Xueshi remembered that yesterday’s smoke had been thick, and the tongues of fire had even leapt outside. Somewhat puzzled, he casually tore off a piece of cloth and threw it into the fire. Sure enough, the flames immediately grew fierce.
Mu Xueshi prodded the dead cat with a wooden stick and discovered that he could not move it. He also knocked on every part of its body and found it hard all over. What delighted Mu Xueshi even more was that when the cat burned, its body did not move at all. It seemed to be absorbed onto the ground, with no sign of curling up or deforming.
After roughly half an hour, the cat had been burned until only white bones remained, while the large dark mark left on the ground looked exactly like the shape of that cat lying there.
“That’s right, that’s right, this is it.” Mu Xueshi was so excited that his face flushed red.
Seeing the Third Prince silent at the side, Mu Xueshi smugly poked him twice and said, “Well? You have to admit it now.”
The Third Prince was indeed somewhat surprised. He had not expected that this case, full of doubts and tangled complications, would truly have a breakthrough point found through Mu Xueshi’s fussing about these past few days.
“I already know who the murderer is.” Mu Xueshi narrowed his eyes and said with an expression full of confidence, “That night, Grand Tutor Mu went to Madam’s room. Madam lured Grand Tutor Mu into personally brewing pregnancy-stabilizing soup for her, and Grand Tutor Mu was drunk, so he did not think anything of it and went to the kitchen to brew the soup. When he returned, Madam used the excuse that she could not hold it steadily and spilled all that soup over Grand Tutor Mu. Grand Tutor Mu planned to go back and change clothes, but when he reached the main hall, which had been covered in fragrant dew, the soup on his body reacted with the fragrant dew on the ground and ignited. Grand Tutor Mu then lay motionless on the ground until he burned to death.”
After saying this, Mu Xueshi looked at the Third Prince with an excited face, wanting him to praise him a little. In the end, the Third Prince’s brows were still tightly furrowed.
“You seem to have forgotten one person.”
“Who?”
“Ning Yue.”
When Mu Xueshi heard this name, it was as if he suddenly woke up. The great wave that had just risen in his heart slowly sank again.
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