Zhuang Mohan smiled slightly and said, "My framing of him today is a gamble on my seventy years of reputation. If I lose the bet, I will naturally accept the consequences. I just don't understand, that young Master Fan is truly like an immortal banished to earth in his poetry. If the princess had told her foreign minister earlier, I would never have humiliated myself."

The Eldest Princess sighed and said, "I didn't expect that child to have such a mad temperament beyond his poetic fame."

Zhuang Mohan closed his eyes, a look of regret appearing on his face. After a long while, he said slowly, "What I regret is not anything else, but that I have lived a life of clarity, only to do such an ugly thing in my old age. If that young Master Fan had not written three hundred poems of humanity in one night, perhaps the scholars and commoners of the world would truly believe that I, an old man, had accused young Master Fan of being a shameless plagiarist."

The old man opened his eyes, his gaze now calm and clear, and smiled, "So much the better."

"So much the better?" The Eldest Princess's bare feet gently slid along the edge of the soft couch, her red lips lightly bitten, and she said resentfully, "Great Scholar Zhuang, my mother has always respected your talent and virtue, which is why she invited you to live in the palace. I have done what I promised you. What about what you promised me? Could it be that you think the agreement between the two countries has been signed, and your dear brother is about to be welcomed back home, so Fan Xian can protect his reputation, and you, an old fox pretending to cherish talent, can feel at ease?"

Zhuang Mohan smiled and said, "A mistake is a mistake. I was concerned about my family, so I fell into the Eldest Princess's trap and came to Qing. My brother has killed countless people in the first half of his life. If the Eldest Princess wants to go back on her word, I have no choice but to return to Northern Qi and pray for him, hoping he can live comfortably in the Supervision Department's prison in your country."

The Eldest Princess smiled silently, "I sold Yan Bingyun to your student, the Emperor, so that you could exchange Xiao En back to Northern Qi. This deal is not between you and me, but between your Emperor and me. I have fulfilled my promise, but you have not done what you promised. Tonight in the hall, if you hadn't pretended to vomit blood and admit defeat, but had insisted that Fan Xian's poem was plagiarized, the outcome might have been different. So...Great Scholar Zhuang, after you return to your country, remember to give your Emperor student a message: Northern Qi owes my Guangxin Palace a favor."

Zhuang Mohan smiled and said, "Young Master Fan has great talent, and his poetic power is truly beyond human capability. I imagine the Eldest Princess can guess that this young Master Fan is probably a Celestial Vein Practitioner who has not appeared in the world for a long time. I am very curious, Qing has a Celestial Vein Practitioner, why are you not in a hurry to protect him, but instead want to get rid of him? Moreover, even if you accuse young Master Fan of plagiarism, what kind of harm can it do to him?"

The Eldest Princess said indifferently, "I have never believed in the nonsense of Celestial Vein Practitioners. Great Scholar Zhuang is well-versed in the classics and should know the words of the sages. If Fan Xian is some kind of Celestial Vein Practitioner, if his ability is only in writing poetry and lyrics, what good is it to the Qing Dynasty? As for why I want to deal with him, that is none of the old gentleman's business."

Zhuang Mohan risked his decades of supreme status in the eyes of the world's scholars to trample Fan Xian underfoot, all at the behest of the Eldest Princess. However, he did not know the complicated relationships in Qing's officialdom, nor did he know that the Eldest Princess and Fan Xian would soon become mother-in-law and son-in-law.

But Fan Xian knew why the Eldest Princess wanted to deal with him.

He knelt on the roof of the hall, his three fingers standing on the tiles feeling a little cold. Looking at the charming princess in her thirties below the Ming tiles, his eyes gradually turned cold. When Guo Baokun spoke in the hall, Fan Xian knew that the noble in the palace and this Zhuang Mohan had joined forces to drive him out of Kyoto.

The matter of plagiarism seemed like a trivial matter, but it involved the so-called "character." If he hadn't suddenly become poetic in the hall and shocked the officials, he was afraid that everyone would have believed Zhuang Mohan's words. If he became a literary thief, although he would not be punished, his career could be discussed later, but his marriage with Wan'er might be called off - the Empress Dowager hated this kind of thing the most, and the Eldest Princess certainly knew it better than him.

What made Fan Xian even more disheartened was that Xiao En, the former Northern Wei secret agent chief in the secret agreement between the two countries, was Zhuang Mohan's elder brother! In order to persuade Zhuang Mohan to come to Qing to suppress him, the Eldest Princess did not hesitate to sell Yan Bingyun, the head of the Qing Dynasty's secret service in Northern Qi and the son of a court official, to the enemy.

She was too bold! Acting so insidiously, how could the Emperor in the palace tolerate his own sister doing such a thing that harmed the national integrity!

The summer night breeze blew from the eaves of Guangxin Palace, allowing Fan Xian, who was frowning and peeping, to calm down a little. He knew that even if he heard these secrets, he could not use this matter to threaten the other party. She was the Emperor's sister and the Empress Dowager's most beloved youngest daughter. These two identities alone were enough to allow her to act recklessly in Qing and sell officials for personal gain.

Fan Xian looked at the woman's black hair on the couch below and felt disgusted for no reason.

This woman was not only crazy but also perverted.

At this point, Fan Xian seemed to see the whole picture of the conspiracy clearly. The agreement between the Eldest Princess and the Emperor of Northern Qi was to betray Yan Bingyun, the head of the Supervision Department's secret service who had been lurking in Northern Qi for four years, in exchange for Xiao En and Si Lili. The price offered by Northern Qi was to invite Zhuang Mohan, a master of the world, to the capital of Qing to ruin him through his words. At the same time, it could also use this matter to teach the Supervision Department system, which had never listened to the Eldest Princess's orders.

He didn't know what else was included in the agreement between her and the Emperor of Northern Qi. Fan Xian guessed that what the Eldest Princess gained from selling the head of Qing's secret service in Northern Qi must be more than just these, but something even more terrifying.

--Did the Emperor know what his own sister was doing?

He touched the hard key at his waist, and two cold lights flashed in his eyes. He formulated a response, adjusted his breathing in the night wind on the roof, and then began to retreat. The palace was too dangerous, and he didn't know how long his good luck would last.

Just as he got off the round pillar, he found two people holding palace lanterns walking slowly towards him at the end of the corridor. Fan Xian's heart tightened, and he carefully hid his body in the shadow of the pillar, moving his feet slightly as the lights approached, keeping his body and the shadow in the same area at all times.

He secretly prayed that this palace maid would be like the palace maid who had passed by him earlier and would not notice him.

The palace maid had already passed the big pillar, and Fan Xian had already moved to the other side of the pillar. Suddenly, the palace maid stopped. This palace maid seemed to have some status in Guangxin Palace. She said something softly to the little girl who was following her, and the little girl responded sweetly and left. The middle-aged palace maid stood waiting.

The distance between her and Fan Xian was only one wooden pillar.

Fan Xian carefully adjusted his breathing with true qi, gradually matching the breathing of the palace maid behind the corridor pillar. At the same time, he was somewhat relieved to hear that there was no change in the palace maid's breathing, and thought that she had just stopped here by chance, not that she had discovered him.

There was still a wooden pillar between the two.

Suddenly, a cold light flashed in Fan Xian's eyes, which were exposed outside the black cloth, and his whole body forcibly twisted a few inches to the left. This innate feeling of danger allowed him to escape a disaster!

In the position where his body had been, the sharp tip of a sword silently pierced through the wooden pillar!

Because the wooden pillar was too large, only a little bit of the sword tip came out. Cute and full of murderous aura, it told Fan Xian that if he hadn't twisted, the sword tip should have been in his waist bone at this time.

Fan Xian coldly bypassed the long pillar, like a loach, accurately locking his hand forward and pinching the middle-aged palace maid's left forearm, which was different from the reaction of ordinary martial artists. He didn't care about the other party's sword-drawing movement.

The effect was indeed very good. The palace maid failed to sneak attack and was afraid that the assassin would stop her from drawing her sword, so all her true qi was concentrated on her right arm, and the defense of her left arm was much weaker.

Like the sound of paper being torn apart, the palace maid drew the long sword from the wooden pillar and opened her mouth to call out!

Fan Xian's eyebrows narrowed, and the domineering true qi in his body poured into the other party's left arm! This palace maid actually had the strength of a seventh-rank, but she had never encountered such a strange true qi in an assassin's body. Her meridians felt a burst of stinging pain, as if countless small knives were scraping the tender tube wall. This pain caused the palace maid's chest to feel stuffy, and she actually swallowed the warning sound, making a strange light sound in her throat.

Fan Xian recognized at a glance that this palace maid was the one who welcomed him into Guangxin Palace, with very long eyebrows, which were very distinctive.

The palace maid's eyebrows twitched violently. She used the true qi in her body to try to fight him head-on, but how could she know that the true qi in the hand that was holding her arm suddenly became weak, causing all the true qi she had used to fall into the void. In a trance, she felt very uncomfortable. The whole person's body, also because of this sudden imbalance, the right side of her body seemed slightly stagnant.

At this lightning-fast moment, her right neck felt slightly numb, and then she immediately felt that her whole body was slightly stiff.

Fan Xian frowned and retracted two fingers from her neck, knowing that the poison on the needle could not really kill with blood. Immediately, he turned his right palm and imprinted it on the palace maid's abdomen, above the ribs.

With a muffled sound, the palace maid's chest collapsed, and blood flowed from her five senses. She died.