Chapter 125: Villainous Deeds
Having come and gone from the Imperial Palace since childhood, Yue Tang was still very familiar with the routes between the various palaces.
She chose a path that avoided being discovered by Mu Shuyun to reach the Imperial Garden, and she arrived slightly ahead, found a spot to hide, and only then did the latter just arrive.
This was the small garden closest to Yongfu Palace; through the gaps in the window on the wall, one could see Shen Yizhu tending to several pots of orchids with two palace maids.
The girl wore plain clothes and a plain skirt, her long hair casually pinned up behind her head, situated among the staggered raw wood, and with her elegant demeanor, the scene was very pleasing to the eye.
A slight noise came from the other side of the garden gate ahead, and Mu Shuyun also stopped; she stood under the wall and peered inside through the window.
Yue Tang had practiced martial arts since childhood and had good eyesight; through the leaves, she could clearly see her tightly clenched cheeks.
As the daughter of the Grand Tutor’s Mansion, secretly using poison was nothing more than inner quarters intrigue.
Her choice to act in the Imperial Palace meant that no matter how bold she was, the things she could do were limited.
The pastries from the imperial kitchen were certainly just a pretext, the purpose being to stall Shen Yizhu to prevent her from suddenly returning to her room and disrupting the plan.
At this moment, that plate of pastries that had been sprinkled with dirt was still placed on the stone table; Mu Shuyun, who had been lured in by Shen Yizhu eating the pastries, frowned, which indirectly confirmed that Yue Tang’s guess was correct.
“Cai Xia, take the pastries back to the room; I’ll pack up here and then go back.”
Just as things were at a standstill, Shen Yizhu spoke thus.
Hearing this, Mu Shuyun immediately glanced at the maid behind her, gave her a look, and then retreated to a distance.
The maid nodded and turned to leave.
Yue Tang looked around and told the guard following behind to stay, then hiked up her skirt and chased after the maid.
The maid arrived under the wall on the other side, where surprisingly a little eunuch was waiting there holding a small sack.
The maid said something to him unbeknownst, and soon the two parted. One followed the path back to the original place, while the eunuch who stayed quietly slipped to the corner and opened the sack.
Two bluish-green little snakes darted out quickly and slithered along the wall corner into the bushes!
Seeing this, Yue Tang already understood.
Mu Shuyun had made two preparations.
She was also guarding against the possibility that the plate of pastries might not achieve the goal of stalling Shen Yizhu, so she had arranged for someone else here.
Looking again at the eunuch, he waited until the sounds from under the bushes grew farther away, then immediately rolled the sack into a bundle and quickly darted into another passageway.
Yue Tang had followed Hua Lin to learn medical skill for three years to pass the time; how could she not recognize the toxicity of these two snakes?
Mu Shuyun’s running dog wanted to escape under her eyelid, but it would be difficult!
It happened quickly: she leaped forward in a few steps, grabbed the back of the eunuch’s neck, knocked him out with a hand chop, then picked him up, followed the original path back under the wall, and threw both him and the sack to the guard waiting for her.
“Hang him under the cart carrying the boxes for the monthly stipend; take him out later!”
The guard was from the Imperial Guard; he would know what to do.
The guard had just shouldered the sack and left when a scream came from under that wall corner!
Shen Yizhu, who had just been holding a pot of orchids, let her hand slip, and the flower pot nearly fell.
“What happened?” Shen Yizhu looked toward the source of the sound.
Another eunuch hurried in from outside the door: “Miss Shen, just now two snakes were discovered under the wall corner; we’re surrounding and capturing them, please don’t move, Miss Shen!”
Shen Yizhu paused: “How could there be snakes in this big winter? And the garden is tended every day—did you see them with your own eyes?”
“We saw them with our own eyes! Two emerald-green venomous snakes! In any case, please don’t move first, Miss, and retreat to the pavilion to wait!”
The eunuch was very anxious. Clearly, if the snakes injured her, they would all be in trouble.
Shen Yizhu frowned tightly and had no choice but to retreat to the pavilion.
“Princess!” Ye Chuang returned.
Yue Tang patted her clothes, watched him come up, and heard him say: “As you guessed, that eunuch Ruan Fu brought carpenters from the Directorate of Imperial Manufactures on the pretext of routine inspection of the house doors and windows, and took the chance to go into the room!”
“Did you see what he did?”
“We saw. She took a doll and threw it under the corner of the room facing Zichen Hall.”
Yue Tang sneered coldly: “I thought they were going to put pills in the tea!”
The ways to ruin a woman were actually far more numerous than those to ruin a man.
However, Mu Shuyun’s choice of this superstitious method must have been carefully considered.
The old monk’s one prophecy had made the Emperor stay away from Imperial Palace life for ten years. It had also made her, at a young age, stay in Bie Ye.
If the Shen Family side was tainted with witchcraft and sorcery attempting to harm the Emperor, there would always be people who believed it.
She turned back to look at Shen Yizhu in the pavilion and fell into contemplation.
The conflict of interest between the Shen Family faction and the Emperor was known to the world; if the Emperor could muster the determination to go along with it, even if Shen Yizhu didn’t die, she absolutely could not be made Empress.
So at this moment, Mu Shuyun had probably already sent someone to inform the Emperor.
As long as that doll was found, Shen Yizhu could no longer stay in the Imperial Palace. Empress Dowager Shen could no longer seek help from Prince Duan’s Mansion.
Just a moment ago, Yu Shan had told her that the Former Emperor and Prince Duan had been at it for over an hour before Empress Dowager Shen rushed over.
When she arrived, Prince Duan had just died. And not long after that, even the two palace servants who had served the Former Emperor died unexpectedly in the Imperial Mausoleum.
Everything was so coincidental.
And the Shen clan happened to be a beneficiary in the struggle for imperial power.
Yue Tang turned back to glance at Shen Yizhu again, drew a silk scarf from her sleeve, then casually picked a few balsam flowers, squeezed out the juice, and wrote two words on the silk scarf: return to room.
Then she wrapped the silk scarf around a stone and threw it toward the pavilion.
“Let’s go!”
She waved back and quickly retreated along the original path.
The stone smacked against the pillar with a bang; Shen Yizhu, who was deep in thought, was startled.
“Miss, there are words on the silk scarf!”
Shen Yizhu abruptly stood up, took the handkerchief and looked; her expression changed instantly. She quickly scanned the surroundings, then pursed her lips and strode quickly toward her residence.
For convenience, she lived in Wanhua Hall behind Yongfu Palace.
When she rushed to the hall gate, she ran right into the eunuch Ruan Fu from Zichen Hall leading the workers from the Directorate of Imperial Manufactures out.
She stopped: “Why are you here?”
Ruan Fu suppressed the panic on his face: “In response to Miss Shen, I brought the craftsmen to check if the doors and windows need repair…”
“This Wanhua Palace was built together with Yongfu Palace, and there is a routine time every year for inspection and repair; why have you suddenly come?”
Ruan Fu hurriedly pulled a document from his sleeve: “We were instructed by the Ministry of Works.”
Shen Yizhu looked at the large seal on the document and frowned. Then she returned the document, passed them, and went back to her room.
She circled around inside the room, seeing nothing amiss at all.
Everything was exactly the same as when she left.
“Miss, there’s a doll here.”
The maid walked to the corner to put away her cape, let out an ah, and picked up a three-inch-long cloth doll from the ground.
Shen Yizhu’s face changed; she took it in hand and looked, and her two hands immediately began to tremble!
The doll had the Emperor’s birthdate written on it, and the neck was outlined in red with cinnabar, which at first glance looked like a streak of blood!
Shen Yizhu gripped it tightly with five fingers; after her chest heaved, her other hand lifted up and unfolded the silk scarf in her hand.
“Come here!”
She suddenly said in a deep voice: “Quickly go see if they’ve caught those two snakes? And send people to check around to see who has passed by!”
At the same time, by the passageway leading to Zichen Hall, Mu Shuyun was waiting for the Emperor’s arrival.
Yue Tang preventing her from becoming Empress was no big deal; she would also prevent Shen Yizhu from taking that position.
Killing someone in the Imperial Palace was unrealistic.
But if Shen Yizhu was convicted, tainted with the charge of cursing the Emperor, she could no longer smoothly become the mistress of the central palace no matter what.
If Mu Shuyun’s reputation was ruined, Shen Yizhu shouldn’t think of coming out clean.
The Shen Family still wanted to win over Yue Tang, and then borrow Yue Tang’s closeness to Yan Bei to help Shen Yizhu ascend—dream on!
She pulled her cloak tighter; her face was as gloomy as the sky.
At that moment, Ruan Fu, who should have been at Wanhua Palace, came running from afar!
“Eldest Young Lady, bad news, Miss Shen has returned to her room!”
Mu Shuyun straightened up: “How do you handle things? How could you not even stop one person?!”
“I don’t know what happened; the snakes were clearly released, and we scared her not to leave the garden, but she still rushed out risking it, and she even seemed to suspect me!”
Ruan Fu wiped the sweat from his forehead; his face was also pale.
Mu Shuyun’s heart surged with waves.
This plan of hers hadn’t mobilized a large force; it was just stalling Shen Yizhu in the garden while having someone plant evidence in her room on the other side.
Such a simple matter posed no difficulty at all, yet they still messed it up!
How did Shen Yizhu notice?
The most dangerous part of the entire plan was snakes appearing in the garden tended daily, but even if Shen Yizhu noticed something off, she couldn’t immediately think there was a problem in the room.
Who leaked the wind?
She shifted her gaze back to Ruan Fu’s face.
Ruan Fu shuddered: “Eldest Young Lady…”
Mu Shuyun tugged at the corner of her mouth. “All for nothing.”
“It was my incompetence…”
“Don’t say that.” She said, “You go back first. Don’t reveal a single word to outsiders.”
Ruan Fu nodded in panic.
Mu Shuyun glanced at the maid again: “You see Eunuch Ruan off.”
The maid acknowledged and followed behind Ruan Fu.
After just two steps, she suddenly reached out, locked her arm around Ruan Fu’s neck, held a vermilion pill in her other hand, and while he opened his mouth, pried it in and stuffed it!
Ruan Fu’s eyes widened in disbelief, but before he could speak, he was already collapsing to the ground with nosebleed gushing out.
“Out of the palace!”
After all, she wasn’t someone who did this often; Mu Shuyun looked at the corpse on the ground, retreated two steps, and when she turned to walk toward the palace gate, her face paled by three degrees.
……
Yue Tang and Ye Chuang arrived under the palace gate, where the guards were already watching over more than a dozen carts piled full of boxes waiting for them.
All the boxes were sealed with seals from the Imperial Household Department.
With more than a dozen carts, no one would think there was a sack hidden among them.
After smoothly exiting, Yue Tang quickly boarded her own horse carriage, then said to Ye Chuang: “Have the others drive the carts back.
“Pick someone to go to Prince Jingyang’s Mansion to tell the Prince that I’m waiting for him here; have him come immediately and take me to see the Imperial Guards commander captured that night!”
Empress Dowager Shen had a problem.
Shen Li suddenly starting to investigate the alley matter also had a problem.
How could she let Shen Yizhu fall victim to a scheme?
If she fell victim to a scheme, Empress Dowager Shen couldn’t come seeking Prince Duan’s Mansion.
Yue Tang needed her to come seeking!
