AUBTN -Chapter 129 This Powder…

An extremely tiny amount of Qianjiyin powder, due to the subtle friction and vibration, seeped out through the extremely fine needle-stitched seams of the sachet, clinging to the back of his hand and between his fingers.

Soon after, the powder inevitably mixed with the special sticky liquid from the flower petals on his fingertips.

“It doesn’t seem corrosive… nor is it some lethal poison that kills upon contact with blood…”

Tuoba Yun stared at the bit of crushed flower juice on his fingertips, his brows tightly knitted.

This seemed… to really be nothing more than a kind of pollen with a special stickiness?

Had he been overthinking things?

Just then, footsteps sounded outside the door.

Tuoba Yun immediately withdrew his hand, closed his eyes again, and adjusted his breathing, instantly returning to that half-dead, unconscious state.

“The Chief Governor ordered that this flower be thrown away. Don’t let it suffocate the Third Prince with its scent.”

Two guards pushed the door open and entered. One of them picked up the bouquet, now somewhat misshapen from being squeezed, and muttered,

“That Miss Yu… of all things to give as a gift, she picked these wildflowers. Sticky and messy.”

“Alright, just toss them out already. Stop talking.”

The two left with the bouquet and casually closed the door behind them.

In the darkness, Tuoba Yun opened his eyes again and looked at the now-empty bedside. A cold smile curled at the corner of his lips.

As expected—people of Great Wei were suspicious of everything.

It was nothing more than a bouquet of wildflowers. It seemed he had simply been overly wary.

He spread out his palm and examined it under the faint moonlight. Aside from a bit of stickiness, there was nothing unusual.

He took a handkerchief from his robes and carefully wiped his fingers clean before tucking the cloth back into the most concealed inner pocket.

Midnight.

The streets of the capital had long been under curfew and lay in complete silence.

Yet at a remote side gate of the Yu Garden, an inconspicuous figure slipped quietly inside.

It was a servant responsible for disposing of the courier station’s garbage. In his arms was an oil-paper bundle. He glanced nervously from side to side, only relaxing when he saw the agent who had come to receive him.

“Everything’s in here.”

The servant handed over the bundle and received a heavy silver ingot in return.

A moment later.

Inside Yu Garden, within a warm pavilion that Shen Jue had specially set aside—one filled with the scent of medicinal herbs—the lamps blazed brightly.

Su Hewan, dressed in simple everyday clothes with her hair casually tied up, wore a homemade, simple face mask. She was staring intently at several glass bottles arranged on the table before her.

Shen Jue, Lu Yan, and Yu Qing stood around her.

That bouquet of milk vetch flowers, now somewhat withered, lay quietly on the table.

On several petals were clear marks where they had been crushed.

“Right here.”

Su Hewan’s voice was calm and certain.

She picked up a pair of silver tweezers and carefully scraped off an extremely tiny amount of residue from the crushed petals—something mixed with flower juice and an unknown powder.

“Wanwan, will this really work?” Yu Qing twisted her fingers nervously.

“Did that green-tea guy really touch it?”

【Heavens, please let this not backfire! I risked overacting in that performance just to deliver it in there!】

Although Lu Yan said nothing, the fingers gripping the hilt of his blade tightened slightly as his gaze fixed on Su Hewan’s movements.

Su Hewan did not answer. Holding her breath in concentration, she slowly placed the tiny bit of residue from the tweezers into a glass test tube filled with a transparent liquid.

The liquid was a developing reagent she had concocted using special herbal extracts based on records from ancient texts.

Once it encountered a substance formed by Qianjiyin mixed with milk vetch pollen, it would produce a violent color-changing reaction.

At that moment, everyone’s breathing seemed to stop.

Drip.

The tiny bit of residue fell into the transparent liquid.

Just when Yu Qing was about to run out of breath from holding it in—

The originally clear liquid suddenly seemed as if some kind of magic had been injected into it, instantly beginning to churn.

Then, a bewitching, eerie, and intensely rich deep purple spread out like ink dripping into water, crazily diffusing through the liquid. In the blink of an eye, the entire bottle was dyed into a heart-stopping shade of purple!

Purple represented deadly poison—and it also represented the truth.

“It worked!”

Yu Qing was so excited she almost jumped up, but Lu Yan reacted quickly and pressed down on her shoulder.

Shen Jue stared at the bottle of purple liquid. The lazy look in his eyes instantly sharpened like a blade.

A cruel, icy curve appeared at the corner of his lips.

“Heh.”

Su Hewan slowly removed her mask and looked at the color inside the test tube.

She turned around and faced the three people behind her, speaking softly: “Qianji Yin. This kind of poison can only be accessed by core members of the Xifan royal family, and they must carry it on them at all times for emergencies. While Tuoba Yun was ‘unconscious,’ he not only had enough awareness to touch the bouquet, but he also left the Qianji Yin powder from his body on the flower petals.”

“This proves two things.”

Su Hewan raised two fingers.

“First—his coma was an act.”

“Second—the sachet in the Third Prince’s hand is the strongest piece of evidence.”

She paused, her eyes clear and bright as snow.

“The fish… has taken the bait.”

Lu Yan took a deep breath. “I’ll go arrest him right now and interrogate him!”

“Wait.”

Shen Jue raised a hand to stop him.

“Lord Lu, when catching a thief, you must catch the stolen goods; when catching adulterers, you must catch them in the act. If we go now, he’ll only say we framed him. After all, the flowers were delivered by Miss Yu.”

“Then what should we do? Just watch him keep acting?” Lu Yan gritted his teeth.

“Since he likes acting so much, we’ll accompany him in performing a grand play.”

Shen Jue slowly rotated the jade thumb ring on his hand. His voice was low and dangerous, carrying the calm confidence of someone in complete control.

“He wants Great Wei and Xifan to go to war so he can reap the fisherman’s profit… then we’ll give him that opportunity.”

The candlelight in the warm pavilion flickered.

Shen Jue tapped the table lightly with his fingertips. A trace of playful coldness flashed through his narrow phoenix eyes.

“Since this Third Prince loves acting so much, wouldn’t it be a shame if we didn’t cooperate with all his ‘painstaking efforts’?”

Su Hewan removed her gloves and sealed the poison sample away. A hint of disgust showed in her cool eyes.

“He calculated that the Second Prince is a reckless brute. He also calculated that Great Wei wouldn’t dare touch him at such a critical moment.”

“Then we’ll give him a big gift,” Lu Yan said coldly, his hand resting on the hilt of his embroidered-spring saber, the knuckles slightly whitening from the pressure. “Let him know that not just anyone can step onto Great Wei’s stage.”

Yu Qing listened from the side, her blood boiling with excitement and her eyes shining.

Yes! Time for a counterattack! Guys like that green-tea schemer deserve to get slapped in the face! I can’t wait to see him crash and burn. When that happens, I’m definitely going to sit in the front row to watch—maybe I’ll even throw a couple of rotten eggs at him!

Shen Jue glanced at the overly excited Yu Qing. The corner of his mouth twitched almost imperceptibly before he said calmly:

“Oh really? I wonder who it was earlier that wanted to go admire the desert scenery with him?”

Yu Qing’s smile froze on her face.

Su Hewan and Shen Jue couldn’t help laughing.

The next morning, at the relay station.

Third Prince Tuoba Yun finally struggled to open his eyes.