The Deposed Crown Prince had Three Lifelong Regrets - Chapter 27

Chapter 27

Su Wushuang cursed for a long time but couldn’t make any sense. Her voice was always muffled because her mouth was blocked, but she continued to struggle relentlessly.

However, Li Qinghuai completely ignored her. She squatted down, tightly grasped Lu Fengmian’s wrist, and pressed her hands together to prevent her from making any other moves.

“She wasn’t possessed. Don’t worry.”

In truth, Li Qinghuai was already weak, and gripping someone required even less strength. Yet, the other person didn’t struggle, sparing her any effort, obediently submitting to her control.

This was certainly due to her recovered identity, but it didn’t lessen her pleasure.

“Does anyone know about the women abduction case that happened in Jizhou more than ten years ago, where Wang family’s pregnant second wife went to visit relatives near Tuo Liang Mountain and never returned?”

“The missing woman was named Song Zhe.”

Lu Fengmian looked around. Apart from the black-clad men lying crisscrossed, she didn’t see any other strange things. The monster had left. She naturally didn’t understand the conversation between the two, knowing she had missed a clue, and had to wait patiently.

A sharp-witted guard ran to her side and whispered.

Su Wushuang and Song Zhe were originally family, but after their biological father ruined the family wealth by smoking opium, their mother fled to escape the beatings. The two were adopted by different families and had their surnames changed.

The elder sister, Song Zhe, was beautiful and married into a wealthy family in the county as a concubine. Her first child was a boy but was born mentally slow. When she was pregnant with her second child, she went to the Bailin Chan Temple to have her fortune told. The abbot said she was also carrying a boy, but the pulse was unstable and the auspicious star was dim, foretelling disaster.

The method to ward off the calamity was for her to return to her hometown for a short stay during the pregnancy.

“So?” Lu Fengmian understood most of it.

“So, the fortune teller was actually a demon Daoist who intended to murder her for wealth!” Lu Fengmian quickly interjected.

But the guard who rushed to report the situation just shook his head. “Who harmed her has not been fully investigated yet, but this person’s methods were sophisticated.”

“It allowed Song Zhe to vaguely sense something strange before her death, yet she couldn’t pinpoint what was wrong, constantly feeling suspicious and talking nonsense. When she finally died, everyone believed she was taken by the Cave God to be his bride.”

“A ghost marriage carried Song Zhe’s coffin into the canyon. Her husband’s family sent people to search several times but were turned away. Finally, her husband hired over ten strong men to personally retrieve the coffin, only to find that Song Zhe’s corpse had long vanished.”

“Not long after, Su Wushuang suddenly started acting crazy. She claimed her sister had sent her a dream, saying someone had harmed Song Zhe and was using her body and the child in her belly to refine a ferocious corpse. This commotion lasted for two or three months, causing widespread panic.”

“Finally, even her brother-in-law’s family couldn’t tolerate it anymore and wanted her to stop.”

After that day, no one in the village ever saw Su Wushuang again. She was only ten years old at the time.

Lu Fengmian was silent for a long time, then repeated the question she had asked earlier: “Is your Highness well?”

The guard was choked up again, respectfully answering with the same evasive language: “Esteemed Lady, please rest assured. Her Highness is well, but she is reluctant to see people. Although Her Highness is of noble birth, she is not so delicate as to be unable to recover.”

Su Wushuang, bound by the hemp rope, desperately twisted. Veins bulged on her neck, and her entire face turned from red to purple from holding her breath.

Shao Cheng opportunely cut in, jumping excitedly, “Is, is she possessed?”

“That’s pretty crazy. She bites anyone she sees. A bite like that would cause a huge splatter of blood and take half a person’s life, wouldn’t it?”

A hundred thoughts spun in his mind. He guessed that Zhao Pan’er was probably not her real name and should have a prominent identity, but he never considered the possibility of her being from the royal family.

The panic had not yet subsided. Mo Xianghao watched everything unfold intently, with unspoken grievances in her heart.

“I never thought that Pan’er, with her beauty and kindness, would be calmer than a Bodhisattva statue. The Mysterious Lady statue embedded in the wall bears five or six parts resemblance to you.”

Her voice was loud and exaggerated. From the letter sent by the Elder Princess, she guessed that Pan’er was either the Crown Prince Wenchang herself or a relative. But others dared not think in that direction.

The letter contained half of a jade pendant, only instructing her to cooperate with Wenchang a few months later and oppose whatever Wenchang proposed.

Mo Xianghao was bold. She had only seen Wenchang once or twice, and Wenchang’s disguise prevented her from recognizing her. However, seeing the Jinyiwei, she grew suspicious, and upon closer examination of Zhao Pan’er’s face, she noticed a four or five parts resemblance.

After deliberation and comparison with Lu You’s change in attitude, the identity of the person became self-evident.

She dared to guess, but others did not.

Everyone knew that the deposed Crown Prince was still confined, and her recent trip to guard the imperial tomb was a secret that ordinary people could not possibly know.

It was absolutely impossible for her to suddenly appear here. Unless she was planning a rebellion, but the probability of success was too low. Or perhaps it was a private decree from the Emperor, commissioning her to do something.

At this point, Mo Xianghao vaguely felt that her father’s assent to the Elder Princess’s letter was a wise choice.

The Emperor might be indifferent, but he genuinely had a doting affection for Li Qinghuai. The Emperor and Empress had a deep marital bond, and Wenchang resembled the Empress the most. It was not impossible for him to grant her some privileges in secret.

Li Qinghuai accepted this sarcastic remark. Exuding an inherent aura of coldness, her hands stained with others’ blood, she remained as steady as Mount Tai.

After a long while, seeing that people were starting to ponder the remark, she staggered step by step, pushed away the guard supporting her, and walked toward the statue. Her bloodied hand stroked the statue’s cheek.

It was hard to imagine such a lifelike sculpture placed in a half-collapsed temple.

The statue sat cross-legged, the lower body pitted with holes, and the face and clothing were covered in dirt. However, the facial features were delicate and gentle, and the sorrow in the expression was tangible, truly a work of unparalleled craftsmanship.

In an instant, the scene seemed to transform. A crowd of mortals surrounded the temple, harboring ill intentions, wanting to push the divine into the mud.

Li Qinghuai let out a low laugh in her throat. Just as others thought she was about to confess, her face suddenly changed.

She abruptly hugged the statue and shouted loudly, “Wow! I can’t believe I was complimented! Do we really look alike?”

“The statue is so beautiful, I love it! Am I really that pretty too? Hahahaha.”

She began to feign madness and idiocy. The others were already accustomed to it, but the few who knew the inside story frowned.

The statue lowered its gaze, full of mercy. And the statue, which gained value because of Li Qinghuai, now looked down upon her with pity.

“We have been hiding here for a long time. At most, in five or six days, the officials will have searched the entire mountain, and then we will all have to live in prison.”

Li Qinghuai turned around, shedding her obsession and madness. She frowned and expressed genuine concern.

Lu Fengmian didn’t understand what she was trying to pretend. Her behavior was so abnormal that it was hard not to suspect she had run away privately. In a few days, she would incur wrath and be immediately demoted to commoner status.

But this was also impossible. If she hadn’t reached the end of her rope, why would she court death like this?

If she hadn’t forgotten, and their relationship was closer, she would certainly stop this farce. But now she was afraid, fearing the complex relationship that was hard to sort out, tentatively testing each other’s boundaries as if walking on thin ice.

After all, she didn’t know why the other woman had come. Since she hadn’t been informed in advance, she probably wasn’t qualified to ask.

She didn’t dare expose the identity and ruin Wenchang’s plan, but she couldn’t help but want to save her some face.

“Pan’er, take it easy.” Lu Fengmian stepped forward to grab her, hoping she would stop making a spectacle of herself.

She expected the person to dodge, but unexpectedly, Li Qinghuai obediently took a few steps closer, leaning docilely against her.

Her identity had never been explicitly revealed. The Jinyiwei incident was not explained to them. Hearing talk of going to prison, some people inevitably lost their patience.

“What is going on? Officials, please give us a clear explanation! We followed the Flying Fish Robe to get here!”

Shouts erupted all around, but Li Qinghuai had no intention of responding. She stared intently at Lu Fengmian, looking like a large, utterly wronged cat.

Her dark hair was slightly curled, but her hair was also naturally coarse. It would only curl if she combed it into a bun before letting it fully dry after every wash.

Lu Fengmian was both amused and exasperated. Although she knew the two had a good relationship before, she never imagined it was this good.

The Zhao and Lu families were willing to serve Her Highness. Naturally, they could be considered her own people.

If her ally gave her some preferential treatment, she accepted it without a guilty conscience. If the Crown Prince were to succeed in the future, getting this kind of casual intimacy would be nearly impossible.

Since the two principals offered no explanation, the man surnamed Mo felt like his punches were landing on cotton. His anger was released, but he still felt unsatisfied. Although he withdrew his aggressive posture, he was unwilling to offer help. Only Jiang Nan was left racking her brain and struggling to appease everyone.

Meanwhile, two drops of murky tears streamed from Su Wushuang’s eyes. Her entire body trembled constantly, and her whites of her eyes rolled up.

In just two seconds, she lost all vitality, as if she had stopped breathing.

Lu Fengmian’s heart was itching. She was desperate to know everything, yet she knew that with the Crown Prince present, there were things she should and should not ask. This was the Crown Prince’s plan, and anyone who knew her plan could potentially ruin it. For safety’s sake, it was best not to ask or listen.

Yet, just as she swallowed her doubt, a strange “sizzle” sound emanated from Su Wushuang’s mouth, as if there was a separate fire burning inside her body.

The person opened her mouth as if to vomit. Just as guessed, Su Wushuang suddenly spat out a pool of bloody water. The color of the blood was very concentrated, as if it were melted heart. It spread across the ground, and countless rice-sized black spots were visible within it.

Lu Fengmian had already reacted, pulling Li Qinghuai back repeatedly.

“It’s a corpse gu,” Lu Fengmian’s eyes widened, and her hands trembled imperceptibly. Before she could even move herself, she pushed the person she was protecting further and further back.

Li Qinghuai grasped the situation clearly. She naturally took a few steps forward, holding Lu Fengmian’s wrist, and patted her arm in reassurance, signaling that everything would be fine.

“To avenge her kin, Su Wushuang went astray, learning the methods of corpse gu to control the living. She ultimately suffered a backlash, dying in the ruined temple.”

“Evil is met with evil.”

At this moment, Su Wushuang decayed at a visible rate. Her face turned bluish-purple, her lips were covered with white foam, and her eyeballs bulged, appearing ready to burst.

Before Lu Fengmian could clearly discern it, the blue color on the person’s face intensified instantly, and her skin swelled with pimple-sized bumps. It seemed as if countless small insects were wriggling beneath the thin skin.

This half-dead person suddenly opened her mouth wide again, bending over to vomit a second pool of black blood onto the ground. And indeed, something was wriggling inside the black blood.

This completely ruined her appearance.

While Lu Fengmian frowned, the ghostly figure, having vomited two mouthfuls of blood, suddenly erupted with greater strength. She straightened her back erratically, roaring in agony toward the sky, as if trying to break free from some constraint.

In less than two seconds, she collapsed to the ground, utterly silent.

Her back was facing up, and her face was pressed to the ground. She was unequivocally dead.

The wind blew, the clouds rolled, and the moonlight flickered. The humidity in the wind was heavy, but the bonfire could no longer be suppressed by mere dampness.

She did not know that Li Qinghuai’s intentions were extremely deep, calculating everything; nor was she aware of the mood in which the Jinyiwei rushed to the rescue after a single firework; even less did she know that her own fate was originally set to be death, but someone else had become her scapegoat.

She only knew that too many injustices in the world were caused by these demon Daoists.

If Su Wushuang was involved in the conspiracy, that would be a heinous crime of kinslaying, and her disgust would intensify.

But she was not involved.

It takes at least seven or eight hours, and often five or six days, for a person’s soul to completely leave the body. If it happens too quickly, the soul is easily damaged and cannot enter the cycle of six reincarnations. To put it bluntly, it will soon dissipate.

Such a tragic state usually only occurs when one practices evil Dao and suffers a backlash.

Thus, Su Wushuang, the evil practitioner of the ghost Dao, quickly had her upper body soul emerge. However, the lower half could not be shed for a while, no matter how much she jerked.

At this moment, the throng of people was no longer important in Lu Fengmian’s eyes.

She simply squatted down, covering her snowy-white cloth shoes, gazing at the dirty shoes lying quietly in the pool of blood. After a long hesitation, she took the silver bell from her waist, bit her lip, and tentatively called out to the chaotic soul, “Why did you die here?”

The soul looked blankly in the direction of the sound.

“I, I don’t know…” The soul’s head ached faintly at the sound of the bell, and her face crumpled like a walnut. “I just wanted to save my sister. I just wanted to save her. I beg you to help me. I can help you with things. I can do anything.”

“I can learn anything…”

The answer was beyond Lu Fengmian’s expectation.

The “Four Directions Silver Bell” had limited ability to interrogate souls. Ordinary souls survived for seven days before sliding into decay, and during this time, the still-chaotic souls could not lie to it. But the souls of those who practiced such evil methods were likely not so easy to deal with.

She needed time to deliberate on what was the most important question to ask, and how to use the most subtle language to obtain the most information.

After all, while souls couldn’t give false information, they could feign ignorance to mislead.

She had to be extremely careful not to let the soul become alert.

Lu Fengmian’s direct questioning had already put the soul on guard, but the soul seemed eager to tell her something.

With no time to think of a subtle approach, she decided to be a gambler, getting straight to the point: “How did your sister Song Zhe die? How did you begin practicing the evil Dao? And how did you plan to save your sister?”