Free Web NovelChapter 577: Mount Pan Residence
“Did anyone get a look at his face?”
“He was masked.” Jiao Yu scratched hard at the floorboards. “At least he was shaped like a human.”
“The constables found fragments of a jar in the envoy’s room, with traces of blasting powder on the surface.” It went on, “I just had a look. The point of detonation was probably beside the bed, or underneath it.”
He Lingchuan let out a dry laugh. “They really wanted to blow me to pieces.”
Judging by the force of the explosion, if he had been asleep in bed at the time, no defensive array—no matter how impressive—would have done him much good.
Fushan Yue’s face darkened.
Just then, another guard came striding in to report, “Your Highness, one of the constables searching the scene has been poisoned!”
“What?” Fushan Yue was astonished. One bizarre turn after another tonight?
He bounded toward the scene in three long strides, Jiao Yu following close behind.
The poisoned constable had already been carried out. His whole body was convulsing, and green froth bubbled at the corners of his mouth.
Looking like that, no wonder the guards were certain it was poison.
The physician assigned to the post station, the same one who had only just been treating He Lingchuan and the others, came hurrying over with his medicine case to attend to the constable. It was turning into a very busy night for him.
Fushan Yue had no time to watch the treatment. With a light leap, he was back up on the second floor.
He Lingchuan’s room had lost two of its four walls to the blast. The beams and pillars had partially collapsed, and the furniture and furnishings were in utter ruin, much of it scorched black. The smell of burning and charred smoke stung the nose.
Just as Jiao Yu had said, bits of broken crockery could indeed be found here and there in the corners.
Two constables still remained on site, but after seeing their companion carried away, neither dared touch or pick anything up with their bare hands. They only prodded debris around with the tips of their weapons.
Fushan Yue asked, “How did he get poisoned?”
“He was searching the room. Then, without warning, he just collapsed!”
“What places did he touch?”
The constables pointed them out one by one.
Fushan Yue crouched down and inspected them personally.
One of the constables hurried to warn him. “Your Highness, be careful! There may still be poison!”
Fushan Yue gave a contemptuous snort.
As if a ba would fear poison.
He was no novice himself. After circling the room once, he narrowed his attention to the table, chairs, and screen.
Those objects had all been blasted badly, though they had escaped the worst of the fire. The screen had suffered the most, with half of it burned away.
Fushan Yue leaned over the edge of the ruined room and called down to the physician below, “Test this area. See whether there’s poison here.”
The physician was far more careful than he was. He dripped various liquids onto the objects and even blew a cloud of gray smoke over them.
The tabletop and chair surfaces gradually turned pale blue.
“Found it!”
“So they poisoned the room first, then set off an explosion?” Fushan Yue straightened slowly. “Whoever did this meant business.” Was that to make sure He Xiao wouldn’t survive?
This no longer felt like someone merely trying to give the Crown Prince of Chiyan a warning. It felt more like blood-deep hatred.
The Cen Family? The Zhongsun Family? Or the hidden power behind the elixir of youth case?
Fushan Yue’s eyes narrowed as he looked toward the east. Dawn was only two hours or so away. Tomorrow would certainly be very lively.
In the guest room across the corridor, He Lingchuan coughed again and drank a little water.
The Soul-Stealing Mirror in his robes sounded incredulous. “You’re this ruthless even with yourself?”
There were other people nearby, so He Lingchuan did not answer. He merely swallowed another pill, closed his eyes, and began circulating his qi to nourish and stabilize his injuries.
Fushan Yue’s guards quickly sealed off the entire row of rooms. Even Jiao Yu stretched itself out across the doorway, keeping others from disturbing the envoy.
People moved in and out of the post station without pause. Footsteps came and went, and voices rose and fell everywhere.
The government office was clearly not idle. ƒreewebηoveℓ.com
But none of that concerned He Lingchuan now.
By daybreak, the news that the crown prince of a vassal monster state had suffered an attack at the post station would spread through Lingxu City faster than fire through dry grass.
* * *
The following morning, Fushan Yue was summoned by the Monster Emperor again.
Two audiences in ten days, this was an honor indeed.
It was nearly midday by the time he returned to the post station.
The explosion the previous night had been loud enough to shake the skies. Most of the damage at the blast site had already been cleared away, but a building charred black could not be repaired in a single morning. The crowd that had gathered upon hearing the news still stood three layers deep outside, watching the government office at work while offering their own small comments in low voices. It was practically a mass public sightseeing and chatting event.
Gatherings like this were breeding grounds for rumors, and the officials were doing their best to disperse them, driving people off three or five times over. However, a crowd was like a flock of geese. When you chase them away, they scatter, but once you grow tired, they gather yet again.
Fushan Yue made half a circuit of the post station, yet found not only He Lingchuan gone, but even Jiao Yu missing. “Where are they?”
The guard left behind hurried to answer. “Your Highness, He Xiao said this place wasn’t safe anymore, so he moved to the Mount Pan Residence.”
“Pan—” Fushan Yue began blankly, then in the next instant remembered with a jolt that he had once given He Lingchuan a deed to a house at the foot of Mount Pan in the Main City District. He broke into a grin and said, “That sly bastard. Pack our things. We’re going there too!”
With his guards crowding around him front and back, he forced his way out through the onlookers and rode hard toward Mount Pan, leaving whichever spies had followed behind to choke on dust.
Barely thirty minutes later, Fushan Yue arrived.
The residence had once belonged to him, so he knew it well. He passed through the halls and rooms looking for He Lingchuan. He found that the man had already settled in thoroughly. He was stretched out in the rear garden, lounging in the sun, with a jug of fine wine and two cups on a low wooden table at his side.
The tiger Jiao Yu lay sprawled over an artificial rock, dozing with narrowed eyes, a little of its tongue was even hanging out without it realizing.
One man and one tiger, both of them looked scandalously at ease. There was not a trace left of the filthy, bedraggled state they had been in the night before.
At Fushan Yue’s arrival, the tiger jumped down to greet him. As for He Lingchuan, he merely cracked one eye open, glanced at Fushan Yue, then turned his head back and continued sunning himself.
Fushan Yue dropped into another reclining chair. “I was hauled off to Cloud Firmament Hall first thing this morning, while you’ve been living in comfort.”
“I’m an injured man; I should move little and focus on rest,” replied He Lingchuan as he poured Fushan Yue a cup of wine. “Everyone in this house knows what’s what. The moment I produced the deed, they let me move right in.”
Back when they came down from Mount Fengmo, Fushan Yue had sought a truce and handed over the deed to this residence.
Fushan Yue took the cup, sipped, then leaned back with a long exhalation.
Only after entering Lingxu City did He Lingchuan truly understand what a residence in the Main City District meant.
This foremost city in all the world had enjoyed nearly six hundred years of prosperity, and its property prices had long since risen into the heavens. The cost per square meter in the Main City District was enough to buy an entire small house in Yuan’s capital.
An ordinary person could struggle for a lifetime and still not earn the right to place even a single bed here.
The saying that the poor had no place even to stand an awl upright was no exaggeration here.
Which meant that no one living in the Main City District was ordinary. On the little hills scattered everywhere through the district stood villas and mountain residences, each set amidst quiet spiritual clarity while overlooking the bustling human world below, all pursuing that grand ideal of great seclusion amid the marketplace. Behind every such residence, there was usually some tale of fabulous wealth.
As for the floating island overhead—
Well, that had little to do with being rich.
People lived in the sky there to make sure you understood the difference between you and them.
They were the clouds. You were the mud.
If all you had was a little money, then you deserved to squat on the ground, mouth hanging open, staring up at the sky.
Still, He Lingchuan was delighted simply to have found a place where he could squat in Lingxu City at all.
The city’s commercial and residential districts were largely separate. The closer one got to the center, the larger the residences became, and the quieter the surroundings.
And so He Lingchuan had very quickly found his new home at the edge of the main city.
For once, Fushan Yue had not exaggerated. This residence really was only a small house occupying a bit over 3,300 square meters.
Most of that area was taken up by the garden, leaving relatively little for the house itself. In this place, cramped little courtyards and oversized houses were the mark of the poor. Put such a layout here, and people would laugh themselves to death.
In the Main City District, the gardens attached to great residences were usually no less than 11,000 square meters. The buildings themselves typically occupied no more than twenty percent of the total grounds.
Two or three estates together could divide up an entire small hill.
Of course, to outsiders, this was still technically part of the Crown Prince of Chiyan’s holdings.
The house was already over a hundred years old and had undergone four major renovations during that time. It was refined without being ostentatious. Though the grounds were comparatively small, it still had pavilions, waterscapes, springs, and ornamental rockery, and the furnishings were tasteful as well, all of which was very much to He Lingchuan’s liking.
Fushan Yue told him that because the Fushan Family seldom used the place, little real thought had gone into its most recent rebuild. Other grand residences in the Main City District, by contrast, placed meticulous attention on everything, from each brick and tile in the structure to every flower and tree in the garden, down to every meal laid out on a daily table.
The standards formed over six hundred years were what the people here called taste.
An outsider could hardly imagine them, much less imitate them.
“There’s a raised terrace in the side courtyard. Meat tastes incredible roasted there.” Fushan Yue pointed it out for him. “Have the cook buy a couple of yellow-beaked geese from the west shoal. Tonight we’ll roast them and drink.” freeweɓnovēl.coɱ
“We?” He Lingchuan shot him a sidelong look. “The mighty Crown Prince of Chiyan has nowhere to stay in Lingxu City, so he has to move in with me?”
“I could stay there.” Fushan Yue pointed casually toward the floating island in the sky, as if to remind him that he still had both status and means. “But access to the Upper City is tightly controlled, which makes it far less convenient than the ground. Besides, houses in the Lower City are cheaper and larger, so plenty of officials keep residences here.” Seeing that He Lingchuan remained unmoved, he added in an apparently offhand way, “Besides, you’ll be safer living with me.”
Both men understood that point perfectly well. He Lingchuan yielded at once, but he still added, “You pay for the wine and meat.”
Fushan Yue was no longer the shield he had been before, but half a shield was still better than none.
If He Lingchuan had to face the storms of Lingxu City entirely on his own, he would have turned and run without a second thought.
There were only six or seven empty rooms in the house, far too few to accommodate the seventy to eighty guards Fushan Yue had brought, so they had to make do at the post station. Fushan Yue himself moved in with Jiao Yu and two personal attendants.
“Last night’s incident greatly shocked both the Lord Emperor and the imperial court,” Fushan Yue said lazily. “Before court deliberations this morning, the Lord Emperor specifically summoned me, asked about the details of the attack, and offered words of reassurance. He said the matter would be investigated to the bottom.”
“His tone was much better than a few days ago.” An attack at the post station! With something that unbelievable happening, even the Lord Emperor had to express concern to the injured Crown Prince of Chiyan. “On my way back, a whole crowd of officials and nobles came hurrying to offer their sympathies.”
“You’re the victim, after all.” He Lingchuan rubbed at his temples. “At dawn, heaps of people were already arriving at the post station with gifts. That’s why I fled here in the first place.”
Most of the morning, the post station had been clamorous. He was injured, and the noise made it impossible to rest.
Fushan Yue then took out a small box and handed it to him. “You rendered meritorious service in investigating the Baishajue case, and last night you nearly lost your life. The Lord Emperor ordered State Preceptor Shuang Ye to provide you with a Jade Restoration Pill. He said that if your injuries are light, it will heal them at once; if severe, it will at least turn them toward recovery.”
“State Preceptor Shuang Ye?” He Lingchuan paused, then accepted the box.
