Cui Huaiyin's face hardened at once, and she stepped in front of her daughter to shield her. "What did I do? Should I have been the one poisoned? That poison was really put there by you! You tried to murder me!"
"Lady Liu! You are the one who poisoned everyone!"
Concubine Liu only darted a brief, terrified glance at Cui Huaiyin and Rongyao before hanging her head low. "No, I didn't do it. I want to see Master Zhu, I demand to see him!"
Cui Huaiyin stared at her intently. "Master Zhu? It was the food you made that he ate, and now he's been lying unconscious from the poison this whole time! What else can you possibly say for yourself?"
Concubine Liu blurted out in a panic, "Master Zhu... how could he have been poisoned?"
Cui Huaiyin did not waste another word on her, and immediately ordered people to search Concubine Liu's quarters.
The search party included not only servants from Madam Zhu and Zhu Wangbei's courtyards, but also the yamen officers who had come to make the arrest.
With so many people rummaging through the place, it did not take long for a yamen officer to find a packet of powder tucked under a jar in the small kitchen of Concubine Liu's residence.
The officer brought the powder over to the three doctors for examination. It did not take them long to confirm that the powder was exactly the same poison that had felled Madam Zhu and the scholar Zhu Wangbei.
Doctor Zhang glared at Concubine Liu, who was kneeling on the ground, with righteous fury. "You vicious woman! This drug is called One-Day Collapse. If someone takes a full dose, it can take their life in less than a day. How utterly cruel you are!"
Cui Huaiyin's face was streaked with tears. She pressed one hand to her chest, and pointed the other at Concubine Liu as she denounced her. "You sold yourself to bury your father, and I took pity on you and gave you silver. A few days after you arrived at this manor, you came to me and said you had fallen in love with my husband, and begged me to let you be his concubine. I even drank the concubine tea you offered, just asking that you stay dutiful and give my husband heirs. But now you have betrayed my kindness so horribly, and tried to wipe out the entire Zhu family!"
"Tell me! Who ordered you to harm my husband and my mother-in-law? I will make sure you and whoever is behind this pay with your lives!"
Concubine Liu's whole body trembled, and she kept her head bowed without a word. Then, as if suddenly remembering something, she jerked her head up to look at Cui Huaiyin, her face wild with frenzy. "I never meant to hurt them! The food was made for you! I never expected the poison to end up rotting in other people's stomachs!"
The moment those words left Concubine Liu's mouth, everyone present was stunned.
Concubine Liu had just admitted it herself? Did she not care if she lived or died?
So the poison had been intended for Madam Cui, but Madam Cui had unknowingly passed the food on to her husband and mother-in-law, which had indirectly led to Madam Zhu and Master Zhu being poisoned.
The truth of the matter was now out in the open.
Cui Huaiyin's voice tightened as she questioned her, "Why did you want to kill me? What on earth did I ever do to you to make you want to harm me so badly?"
Concubine Liu gave a cruel smirk, her eyes sweeping over the crowd before pausing for a moment on Rongyao's face in the distance, then turning back to Cui Huaiyin. "Because you deserved to die! You offended a noble person that you never should have crossed!"
"You will never find out the truth. You and your daughter will both end up in the afterlife to keep me company soon enough!"
Concubine Liu spoke loudly, every word clear to everyone's ears, but what she said left all the bystanders confused. No one expected that the next second, Concubine Liu would suddenly surge with strength, break free of the people holding her, and before anyone could react, lunge straight onto the blade that one of the yamen officers was holding.
"Ah! Someone's dead!" A sharp, shrill scream cut through the air.
Everyone was thrown into utter shock.
The yamen officer who had the knife forced into his hand by the suicide immediately dropped the weapon, stumbled backward in terror, and fell onto the ground.
He had clearly never seen a prisoner charge straight at a knife to kill herself before.
Cui Huaiyin felt a wave of nauseating churning in her throat. She quickly covered her daughter's eyes, and pulled the little girl into her arms to soothe her.
She did not notice that her daughter, upon seeing the gushing blood, had not shown any fear at all. Instead, her small face wore a faint, bright look of unmasked joy.
Concubine Liu was dead. She had crashed into the blade, blood spraying everywhere, and was killed instantly. Most people thought that she had seen the truth exposed, and had chosen to kill herself rather than be dragged to the prison to suffer torture.
But Rongyao quickly understood what had really happened. Concubine Liu must have been terrified of Noble Consort Chen. She knew that if Noble Consort Chen was angered, she would fly into a terrible rage, and kill countless people. The noble consort would never spare anyone who crossed her, or even their entire family. Concubine Liu must have been afraid that her own family would be dragged into the disaster too.
In just one day, the entire Zhu family was thrown into chaos, and everyone was on edge. The maids who swept the floors and the guards who patrolled the grounds could not bring themselves to focus on their work anymore.
After Concubine Liu killed herself, she had frightened not just the yamen officers who had come to make the arrest, but the three doctors as well. They were so spooked that their faces were as pale as sheets, and it took them a long moment to snap out of their shock and rush over to examine the blood-soaked body on the ground. By then, she was already long gone.
Cui Huaiyin ordered her maid Daoxiang to take Rongyao back to their quarters, while she stayed behind to see the three doctors and the yamen officers off.
The yamen officers had originally come just to arrest the suspect and interrogate her. They had only been at the manor a short while, and now the case had seemingly wrapped itself up, but a person had died right in front of their eyes. Their hearts were still pounding with fright, and they could only beg to take their leave. They asked Cui Huaiyin to make sure that if anyone came to ask about the incident, she would tell the truth that Lady Liu had seen her plot exposed and lunged onto the knife to take her own life, and that the yamen officers had nothing to do with her death.
Cui Huaiyin agreed wholeheartedly, reassuring the officers that if anyone came to inquire, she would order all her servants to tell the exact truth, and would never falsely accuse the government servants of any wrongdoing.
Only then did the yamen officers let out sighs of relief, and left the manor with pale faces.
Cui Huaiyin watched them go until their figures disappeared from sight. The moment she looked away, she nearly collapsed, and had to be supported by her maid Chenxiang who was by her side.
Chenxiang looked at her with deep concern. "Madam, do not grieve. That vicious woman Concubine Liu is dead now. Master Zhu... he will surely pull through this!"
Cui Huaiyin clutched Chenxiang's hand tightly. She stared blankly ahead for a long moment before she spoke. "Hurry, go check on Yaoyao. She must have been terrified by all this."
Chenxiang nodded. "Yes, Madam."
...
In the Hidden Grace Courtyard, Rongyao could not contain her overflowing joy.
Concubine Liu was dead. A well-deserved death. Every enemy that died was one less threat. Now that woman was gone, her mother would be safe, and Rongyao would never end up a fool like she had in her past life.
In her past life, Concubine Liu's poisoning plot had succeeded. She had killed Rongyao's mother. Zhu Wangbei had not only refused to dig into the truth of the matter, he had even covered for Concubine Liu, seized all of her mother's dowry for himself, and colluded with Noble Consort Chen to frame Rongyao's maternal grandfather's entire clan.
Rongyao had barely escaped with her life, and ended up trapped in the imperial palace, forced to wash the feet of her enemies every single day.
This life, everything would be different starting right now. She would never become that gullible, foolish girl ever again. She would study hard, practice her calligraphy every day, and grow into a sharp, intelligent person who would never be tricked by anyone.
But there were still so many questions lingering in her mind.
What had really happened seven years ago? Noble Consort Chen had said that she had replaced Rongyao's mother. How had that substitution happened? Why had neither her mother nor the Emperor noticed anything wrong?
And why had her mother married Zhu Wangbei, and believed so firmly that he was Rongyao's real father?
No matter what the answers turned out to be, everyone who had harmed her, her mother, and her maternal grandfather's family in her past life deserved to be punished.
"Something terrible has happened! Somebody come quick! Madam Zhu has stopped breathing!"
Her grandmother-in-law was dead?
Cui Huaiyin, who had been hurrying back and had not yet stepped through the gates of the Hidden Grace Courtyard, froze in her tracks.
That poison was so devastating, it had taken the old woman's life in the blink of an eye. A perfectly healthy person was gone just like that.
And Madam Zhu's death... had something to do with Yaoyao?
"Mother!"
Just as that thought crossed her mind, she heard the familiar, crisp, soft voice of her daughter coming from behind her. It was Rongyao. The little girl was trotting over on her short legs. Her round face was fair and glowing under her heavy layers of clothing, flushed a little pink from running in a hurry.
She ran up to Cui Huaiyin, grabbed her mother's hand with her small one, and looked up at her with her big, bright eyes. "Mother, is Grandmother really dead?"
The question sounded almost like she was hoping for a yes.
