The princess was stunned when she heard the news. He had just eaten with her, wasn't he all right? How could he have fainted in the blink of an eye?
She rushed over in a panic and found that the Grand Prince Consort was beyond help, with blood already flowing from his nose and mouth.
Thinking of a certain possibility, tears streamed down her face, and she asked the person beside her somewhat incoherently, "Why hasn't the doctor arrived yet?"
As her personal maid was about to go check, the doctor, carrying his medicine box, arrived in a flustered state. Upon seeing him, the doctor's face turned pale. He quickly took his pulse and found it to be extremely erratic, leaving him unsure where to begin.
Seeing his frantic actions, the Grand Princess was on the verge of collapse, saying, "Hurry and save him, what are you standing there for?"
Just then, the Grand Prince Consort suddenly sat up and vomited a large mouthful of fresh blood onto the edge of the bed. After he finished, he lay back down, stretched out his hand as if to say something to the Grand Princess, but his mouth opened and closed for a long time without uttering a sound. As the Grand Princess reached out to hold his hand, she found that it had already drooped powerlessly.
At that moment, the Grand Princess felt her heart stop. The doctor quickly stepped forward to check his pulse, and cold sweat broke out on his brow.
Looking at his state, the Grand Princess had a bad premonition and shouted, "Hurry and save him."
The doctor's lips trembled for a long time before he could finally speak, "The Prince Consort, the Prince Consort has passed away."
"I don't believe it. He was fine just now, how could he be gone in an instant?" Although the Grand Princess had seen his condition earlier and felt he might not recover, she immediately refuted it when the doctor truly said it.
The doctor dared not speak and stood aside cautiously. No matter how much the Grand Princess refused to admit it, she knew in her heart that the man who had troubled her for over a decade was truly gone.
After weeping bitterly for a while, she suddenly pulled herself together, her eyes red, and looked at the doctor, "How did he die?"
The doctor wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, saying with some shame, "I am shallow in my learning and cannot tell. However, the Grand Prince Consort's pulse was indeed abnormal, with a hidden feeling of poisoning."
Upon hearing this, the Grand Princess immediately ordered someone to go to the palace to report the tragic news to the Emperor. She also asked him to send some imperial physicians to investigate the Grand Prince Consort's cause of death, as she suspected it was not a natural one.
The Emperor was also shocked to receive this news and immediately dispatched the five best imperial physicians from the Imperial Academy to investigate.
Imperial physicians were, after all, imperial physicians. After listening to the doctor's description of the Grand Prince Consort's pulse at the time and studying his death for a while, they concluded that the Grand Prince Consort had eaten something that clashed with Yu Meng Shu. Upon returning to his bedroom and smelling the fragrance of Yu Meng Shu, these symptoms had appeared.
The Grand Princess was shocked to hear this. Could she herself be the culprit? He had an accident as soon as he returned to his room, and the leftovers were still in the kitchen, not yet disposed of.
A moment later, they went to the kitchen and inspected each item, finding no trace of Yu Mu Ye powder.
It was then that the Grand Princess realized the Yu Meng Shu plant in the Prince Consort's room posed such a great danger. It turned out that as long as he came into contact with Yu Mu Ye and then smelled the fragrance of Yu Meng Shu, it would be fatal.
This Yu Meng Shu plant had been there for several years and had never been touched. This indicated that the Grand Prince Consort must have come into contact with Yu Mu Ye outside in the morning. The Grand Princess quickly summoned everyone who had gone out with him and asked them to recount every single thing that had happened to the Grand Prince Consort from the moment he left the Princess's mansion.
At first, everything seemed normal until the Grand Prince Consort dismissed his servants and went to meet a man. Then he returned to the mansion for a meal and subsequently had an accident. Her intuition told her that something must have happened between him and that man, but who was that man? No one knew.
The Grand Princess quickly had someone draw a portrait of the Grand Prince Consort and distributed it to every household in the streets and alleys to inquire. Finally, someone saw him at an inn. When they found the inn, the man had already left.
Despite their searching, they could not find any trace of the man. They quickly asked those who had seen him to describe him, and the portrait artist drew quickly. Everyone who had seen him said it looked very much like him, but no one recognized him on the street.
This made everyone frown. Could he have disappeared into thin air?
In the following days, they found nothing. Thinking of the Grand Prince Consort's unexplained death and the murderer still at large, the Grand Princess was heartbroken. Sudan Novel Network.
Just as they were at a loss, they received a notification from the prefect, stating that someone had struck the drum of accusation, accusing Madam Zhou of murdering the Grand Prince Consort.
When the Grand Princess hurried to the hall, she saw a woman and a man kneeling in the hall. The man's attire bore some resemblance to the portrait she had commissioned, but not exactly.
The Grand Princess's thorough search for the man had recently been heard of by the prefect, who had even offered considerable assistance. The Emperor himself inquired about the progress daily. Unfortunately, there had been no progress for so long, and the prefect had faced the Emperor's increasingly grim expression with trepidation, praying for heaven to quickly help him find the murderer. Unexpectedly, it seemed to have worked, as someone had come to them.
As the Grand Princess took her seat, the prefect began the trial, "Who is before the court, whom do you accuse, and of what, speak quickly."
Wu Caiwei calmly stated, "This commoner, Leng Shui Xiang, accuses Madam Zhou of murdering the Prince Consort."
Then, she recounted the conversation she had overheard between the two in the room next to the inn that day.
"How can you be sure that the person with the Grand Prince Consort at the time was him? This does not match the portrait," the prefect said to her with a deep gaze.
Upon hearing this, Wu Caiwei immediately walked up to Madam Zhou, took out the makeup she had prepared, and lifted her chin, intending to raise her face.
Madam Zhou turned her head away, looking at her with intense hatred. She had been in her clutches for several days. In the beginning, she had pleaded with Leng Shui Xiang to let her go, but she was only met with humiliation. She knew that this time, it was over.
When this woman brought her to the hall, she understood her purpose. This was clearly personal vengeance. She didn't know when Leng Shui Xiang had come to the capital or when she had targeted her, only knowing that her affairs could not withstand scrutiny, and her fate would be dire.
Wu Caiwei gave her a cold smile, grabbed her chin, and this time, no matter how she struggled, she could not escape. With her other hand, she lightly manipulated her face a few times. The people around were immediately startled and stood up. It was the first time they had realized that with a slight movement of the eyebrows, the addition or subtraction of a few strokes on the face, and a slight adjustment to the eyes, a person's appearance could change drastically. At this moment, Madam Zhou was almost identical to the portrait.
This made the Grand Princess feel somewhat relieved, yet her heart was also very complicated. She hadn't expected that what the Grand Prince Consort had said was true; he had truly wanted to get rid of her and live a good life with her.