The Secret Chamber of the Card Game

When I came out of the cell, the watchman outside was beating the gong to tell the time. It was already past two o'clock in the morning.

Yu Hanjiang asked everyone to go back to rest, and he and Xiao Lou also went back to the room.

After a tiring day, they finally returned home. The maid Pinger had been waiting for them and brought them two basins of hot water, and they washed one after another.Before going to bed, Xiao Lou took the external ointment prepared by Liu Qiao, asked Yu Hanjiang to take off his coat, and applied medicine to the wound on his back.

Although the toxins from the wound had been completely eliminated, Xiao Lou really felt distressed seeing the hideous and terrifying scar across the man's strong back.

He dipped the medicine on his fingertips, gently applied it on the scar, and asked softly, "Does it still hurt?"

Applying cold ointment to the hot wound was extremely comfortable, not to mention Xiao Lou's slender and soft fingers, being caressed by him on the back and applying the medicine thoughtfully, Yu Hanjiang felt as comfortable as if his hair had been patted down.

Even though the wound still hurts, my heart is warm.

He whispered, "It doesn't hurt anymore, Mrs. Hard Work."

Xiao Lou blushed slightly: "There are no outsiders, so don't call me that."

Yu Hanjiang said seriously: "If Ping'er hears it, it's hard to explain."

Xiao Lou didn't bother with him about these details, and carefully changed the dressing and bandaged his wound, and the two fell asleep together.

Yu Hanjiang just realized that he likes Xiao Lou the day before yesterday, and he slept in the same bed with Xiao Lou. He felt uncomfortable, and he still maintained the "statue" posture and dared not move at all, for fear of bumping into Xiao Lou accidentally.

Seeing him sleeping on his back, Xiao Lou immediately said, "You hurt your back, don't sleep on your back, it won't heal well if you press on the wound."

Yu Hanjiang obediently said "Yes", turned sideways, facing Xiao Lousleeping.

Xiao Lou could feel his gaze cast on his face, the night was very quiet, being watched by him at such a close distance, Xiao Lou's heart beat like a drum, so he had to talk about the case to divert his attention: "You said just now, the murderer is not yet Are you sure, do you think Lin Shaobo is not the murderer?"

Yu Hanjiang said: "If it was him, this case would be too simple. Liu Qiao witnessed the date of the Fourth Miss and Lin Shaobo, and the letter from the Eldest Miss to the Ninth Princess also mentioned the two people's affair. I personally confirmed that the two of them would be bumped into by the eldest sister in private, that Lin Shaobo had a motive for the murder and a time to commit the crime, and the clues are very clear...but after careful consideration, many things are not right."

Xiao Lou listened carefully: "What's wrong?"

Yu Hanjiang analyzed in a low voice: "First of all, where did Lin Shaobo get the poison? We searched Miss Si's house, and none of the poisonous herbs mentioned by Liu Qiao have been touched, which proves that the poison was not prepared by Miss Si If Miss Four and Lin Shaobo jointly committed the crime, it would have been premeditated and the poison prepared in advance, it would not make sense, if they had premeditated, they would not meet today to attract suspicion."

Xiao Lou nodded in agreement: "I think so too. The source of the poison is neither Miss Fourth nor Young Master Lin. Therefore, these two people who seem to be the most suspicious actually don't have the tools to commit the crime. We haven't found it yet. Toxin, the maid said that the eldest lady had never eaten in the house, I suspect that the eldest lady was poisoned face to face in the yard."

Yu Hanjiang said: "Well, you have had an autopsy, and there was no sign of struggle before she died. Obviously, she did not resist when she ate the poisonous food. The person who can make her eat the poisonous food in person should be Missy Someone she is familiar with, otherwise she would not eat what the other party gave her."

Yu Hanjiang paused, and then said: "Also, we were assassinated after we came to Jiangzhou, and assassins appeared on the prince's birthday. I think this assassin organization is not an interference item of the case, but has a direct relationship with the case."

Reminiscent of the map I took in the study in Kyoto at that time, why is there four countries in this world, Qi, Chu, Yan, and Zhao?If it's just a simple house fight and murder, wouldn't it be all right as long as there is one Qi country?

Such a complex background is definitely not just for decoration.

Xiao Lou's eyes lit up suddenly: "Could it be that the death of the eldest lady has nothing to do with love killing at all, but because she accidentally witnessed something she shouldn't know in the palace and was silenced?"

Yu Hanjiang nodded: "Very likely."

He paused, then suddenly said: "Do you remember a detail that Qu Wanyue mentioned—the ninth princess is the youngest daughter of the former emperor. When the ninth princess met the eighth prince last night, she called him brother eighth?"

Xiao Lou thought about it carefully, and immediately reacted: "Yes, His Majesty is called Wangye Huangshu, and the ninth princess is called Huangxiong, which means that His Majesty is the nephew of Jiugongzhu, and Ninth Princess is the youngest daughter of the late emperor. The relationship between the emperor is not father and son, but grandparents?"

Yu Hanjiang also deduced from this point that things were not simple.

In the world of secret rooms, in many cases, particularly clear clues are likely to be distracting items.And some details that are easy to be ignored may be the real clues - the harem battle that the nine princesses gave Qu Wanyue gossip, and the seniority of the nine princesses, the eighth prince, the first emperor, and the emperor may be hinting at something .

The throne is usually passed on to the sons. Why did the first emperor let the Eighth Prince not pass the throne on to his grandson?

Yu Hanjiang has seen His Majesty today, the one on the dragon chair is very young, about 20 years old, and the Eighth Prince is over 40 years old, even if the Eighth Prince ignores political affairs and is not the material to be an emperor, does the former Emperor have no other sons? Yet?

The princess is ranked ninth, which means there are seven princes and daughters before the Eighth Prince. Where are those people?

Thinking of this, Xiao Lou suddenly said: "In history, there was a coup d'état in the Ming Dynasty. Zhu Yuanzhang's fourth prince, Zhu Di, overthrew the regime of his nephew Zhu Yunqi under the banner of 'the Qing emperor's side'. Zhu Yuanzhang initially appointed his eldest son Zhu Biao as the prince. It's a pity that the crown prince died young, so he let his grandson Zhu Yunqi inherit the throne. His son Zhu Di refused to accept it, and after Zhu Yunwen came to power, he launched a mutiny and became emperor himself, that is, the Emperor Yongle."

Hearing Xiao Lou's words, Yu Hanjiang's heart suddenly brightened!

The mutiny in the Ming Dynasty is quite famous in history. Zhu Yuanzhang skipped his son and made his grandson his heir.

Yu Hanjiang frowned and said, "At that time, Zhu Yuanzhang also skipped over other princes and directly appointed the emperor's grandson as the heir. Zhao Guo rebelled, Zhao Guo's envoy was accidentally bumped into by the eldest lady when he was plotting with him in the palace, and he directly killed his daughter to silence him?"

If this speculation is true, many clues can be connected in series.

Zhao Guo happened to be here today, and the second lady said that the prince of Zhao Guo gave a congratulatory gift to his future father-in-law, and sent someone from the Ministry of Rites to exchange some details of the wedding.Long Sen said that Zhao's envoy had entered the palace, but left without attending the dinner.

If Zhao Guo's envoy entered the palace in the afternoon to plot something with the prince, and happened to be bumped into by the eldest lady who was out for a walk, it is very possible that the prince would find a way to kill his daughter to silence him.

Moreover, the Eighth Prince's attitude today is indeed a bit strange. He took the initiative to ask Yu Hanjiang to investigate the case, and he was very cooperative.

Maybe, he sent the assassins who assassinated Yu Hanjiang, and the assassins who assassinated him were probably just acting. At that time, the assassins suddenly flew towards him, and the prince didn't panic at all, he acted too calmly... as if he had expected it.

The nephew has become the emperor, can he really be reconciled as an uncle?

Yu Hanjiang recalled that when he talked about His Majesty with the prince, the prince only cared about His Majesty's daily life and didn't ask about any court affairs. It seemed that he was an idle prince who didn't care about political affairs... But what if he was keeping a low profile?

Yu Hanjiang and Xiao Lou looked at each other, and both felt that the possibility of the Eighth Prince's rebellion and murder of his daughter was much higher than the possibility of Lin Shaobo and Qi Yiwei's affair being exposed and murdering the elder sister.

***

The next day, Yu Hanjiang went directly to the Yamen after waking up.He had ordered last night to arrest the suspect Lin Shaobo throughout the city.However, after one night, there was still no news about Lin Shaobo.

He went to Lin's house to investigate, and Father Lin said that yesterday the prince's birthday party was supposed to go in person, but the Lin family happened to be unable to leave because of something, so he asked Lin Shaobo to go to congratulate him as a representative.

Father Lin was puzzled and said: "My son hasn't returned all night. I sent someone to the palace to look for him early this morning. The palace said that he had left long ago. Now you are coming to ask me about his whereabouts. I don't know where he is. Where is it, what's going on here?"

At this moment, Mrs. Lin came over in a hurry and whispered in his ear: "I went out today, and I heard from neighbors that last night, the eldest lady of the palace hanged herself!"

Father Lin's eyes widened: "What?"

All the guests present at the time heard about Qi Yiyao's suicide. The news spread very fast, and it was only a matter of time before the Lin family knew about it.It's just that the rumors outside are that "Miss is committing suicide", and that she was "murdered" only Yu Hanjiang and the people in the palace know about it. The prince ordered everyone to keep their mouths shut, and no one dared to speak nonsense.

Lin's father realized that the eldest lady might have been provoked by her son to hang herself, and angrily slapped the table: "Where is Shaobo?! Don't tell the servants to look for it right away! Maybe this bastard sneaked into the brothel again. , find him for me, turn over all the brothels in Jiangzhou City and find him!"

Mrs. Lin retreated tremblingly, and the Lin family was in a commotion early in the morning.

After Yu Hanjiang came out of the Lin residence, his brows became more and more wrinkled.

At that time, he also suspected that Lin Shaobo was hiding in a certain brothel, so last night, he asked the Jiangzhou magistrates to search for brothels. Besides Tianxiang Tower, they also searched for Baihualou, Fengyaxuan, Zuixianlou... …

The entire brothel in Jiangzhou was searched by the officials, but there was still no trace of Lin Shaobo.

He is a son of a rich family, and he doesn't know how to do light work. Even if he escapes over the wall from the backyard of the palace, he can't disappear without a trace.

The bad premonition in his heart became stronger and stronger, Yu Hanjiang called Xiao Lou, and strode to the gate of the palace.

Long Sen, the gatekeeper, saw them and let them go.

The other nursing homes were not surprised to see Mrs. Yu leading his wife to handle the case. Anyway, everyone had seen the situation where Mrs. Yu and his wife jointly handled the case last night—it's not easy for a wife who can do an autopsy.

Yu Hanjiang and Xiao Lou walked into the palace, and the Eighth Prince greeted him immediately.

So many things happened at yesterday's banquet, the prince, who has always been handsome, looked a little haggard, and asked in a hoarse voice: "Master Yu, do you have any clues about Yiyao's murder?"

Yu Hanjiang said indifferently: "The most suspected person in Missy's death is her fiancé Lin Shaobo, but I have almost searched the entire Jiangzhou City, but I can't find Lin Shaobo's shadow. I have a bold My guess is that Lin Shaobo is still in the palace."

The prince couldn't believe it: "The palace? This prince asked the guards to search the entire palace last night, but he didn't see Young Master Lin."

Yu Hanjiang thought carefully about the distribution map of the palace—it is impossible to hide people in the front yard, but in the backyard, there are rockery, woods, and lakes. It is difficult to find people hiding at night, especially the lotus pond near the rockery. The size of a football field.

Yu Hanjiang suddenly said: "Go to the pond and have a look!"

The prince was slightly taken aback, and quickly followed Lord Shangyu's footsteps.

As soon as everyone came to the pond, they heard a scream not far away: "Ah!"

Yu Hanjiang walked over quickly, only to see two maids with pale faces, pointing tremblingly at the floating objects in the pond not far away, and said: "Pond, there is a person floating in the pond!" "Okay, it seems to be a corpse!"

The prince's expression changed: "Catch it quickly!"

Several nursing homes immediately went forward to salvage, and after a while, they hurriedly fished up a corpse and put it on the shore.

After soaking in the pond overnight, the corpse was already swollen, the facial features were distorted, the skin was dehydrated and wrinkled, and the people around were so disgusted that they turned around and vomited.

With a calm expression, Xiao Lou went to the corpse and knelt down to examine it carefully.

The corpse was an adult man, wearing dark blue clothes, with a blue headband tied around his messy hair, and an emerald ring on his finger...

Yu Hanjiang took a deep breath and said in a low voice, "It's Lin Shaobo."