Hearing Xi Weilan’s words, the people hiding beneath the tables all twitched in disbelief. They had truly underestimated the destructive power of this Little King Yama.
The assassins were nearly all dead. The few who remained had been subdued, yet some people still refused to come out from under the tables—especially Sixth Lu.
Zheng Xinran crawled out from beneath a table and glanced at the two injured Lu brothers, who had already fainted. She then called out, “Sixth Lu, your two brothers are about to die. Aren’t you coming out to save them?”
Only then did Sixth Lu come to his senses. He still had two injured brothers to worry about! He hurriedly pulled the young boy beside him out from under the table.
“Is there a physician here? Is there a physician anywhere in the theater?” Sixth Lu shouted as he looked around.
His shouts caused the theater to descend into chaos once more.
The child who had been gagged was finally freed and began wailing loudly. Those who had been trampled in the panic lay on the ground, groaning in pain, while the families who had narrowly escaped danger gathered together and sobbed. The scene was even more chaotic than it had been during the assassination attempt.
Xi Qingyue swept her gaze across the disorderly theater. She pointed out several theater workers and ordered Mu Jin and the others to seize them. They were all people from the Guangling Pavilion who had been planning to escape, so their arrest was entirely justified.
She glanced at the injured spectators. None of their wounds were life-threatening, and she had no intention of treating them. Besides, Lu Jinshuang had already sent someone to summon a physician.
The most seriously injured were the members of the Lu family. Like Xi Qingyue, they had been sitting in the front row, closest to the stage, and had been struck by hidden weapons.
Removing the weapons would have been effortless for her, but her methods were far too strange. Moreover, she could not yet tell whether the Lu family were friends or foes, so she had no intention of helping them on her own initiative.
She took Xi Weilan by the hand and was about to leave the theater when Zheng Xinran approached.
Leading her younger siblings, Zheng Xinran walked over and bowed solemnly to Xi Qingyue. “This commoner thanks the Commandery Princess for saving our lives! We will certainly prepare a generous gift and visit your residence to offer our thanks.”
Xi Qingyue gave her a faint smile. “There’s no need to be so polite. These people came for us, so it was only right that I intervened.”
The moment he heard this, Sixth Lu’s insides twisted with regret. Earlier, he had mocked the Zheng family for currying favor with the Commandery Princess and called it shameless. Yet in the blink of an eye, the Zheng family had gained her protection.
Was this retribution?
If his family learned what had happened today, he would surely be punished according to family law.
Zheng Xinran smiled and bowed once more before leaving the theater with her younger siblings. She had to hurry home and report everything that had happened to her family. The two Commandery Princesses could be befriended, but they absolutely could not be offended. The consequences were more than they could afford to bear.
Several commoners also came forward to thank Xi Qingyue. Regardless of who the assassins had been targeting, they had been operating in this theater for years—it was not as though they had appeared only today. Some families had even lost children in this theater before, and they now suspected that the theater’s staff had been responsible.
With the assassins dead or injured, they hoped Xi Qingyue would be able to extract some clues from them.
Xi Qingyue, Lu Jinshuang, and the others took the captured assassins toward the docks. They intended to interrogate them personally rather than hand them over to the authorities.
As they were leaving, Sixth Lu suddenly gritted his teeth and wrapped his arms around Xi Weilan’s leg, bursting into tears.
“Commandery Princess, you’re a magnanimous person—please don’t hold my earlier behavior against me! Show mercy and save my brothers! They’re barely clinging to life!”
Seeing that both his brothers had fainted, he assumed their injuries were severe. He wanted Xi Qingyue to send her martial guards to carry his brothers home for treatment. However, his instincts told him that Xi Qingyue was not someone to provoke and was especially prone to holding grudges.
He was also afraid of Xi Weilan, but for the sake of his brothers, he forced himself to take the risk.
Combined with the way he had addressed her earlier, the sight made everyone still in the theater want to laugh. Asking a three-year-old child to be magnanimous was bizarre enough, but Sixth Lu was hardly a child himself.
Xi Weilan looked down at her small body, then up at Sixth Lu’s large frame. She was no adult, and she certainly did not possess an adult’s magnanimity. Besides, Sixth Lu was not a child either.
Xi Qingyue frowned. She stepped forward, picked up Xi Weilan, and kicked Sixth Lu away.
“What do you mean, they’re about to die? They’ve merely fainted. The physician will be here soon. Stop shouting and frightening my little sister.”
Hearing this, Sixth Lu was overjoyed. He chuckled foolishly. “They’re not dead? That’s good. That’s good.”
Xi Qingyue paid him no further attention. She had seen what Sixth Lu had done just now, but since he had harbored no murderous intent, she had not struck him down. Otherwise, he would already have been a corpse.
With a cold expression, she carried Xi Weilan out of the theater.
By the time the county magistrate’s men arrived, the only people left in the theater were the corpses of several assassins and the injured spectators resting there.
The county magistrate wiped the sweat from his forehead, his heart pounding with alarm. He was the magistrate of Liucheng, and this theater had operated in the city for years without trouble. Would today’s incident cause people to suspect him?
He was terrified. He feared that Xi Qingyue might do exactly what she had done in Yongfu City and storm into the county office, killing everyone in her path.
He shouted, “Investigate! Investigate thoroughly! Search every person and every object connected to this theater!”
He did not dare demand the return of the captured assassins for interrogation, but he could investigate other matters. It was better than simply waiting helplessly.
By then, Xi Qingyue had already returned to the yacht. The captured assassins had been bound hand and foot and thrown onto the large ship. She had decided to leave them in the sun for a while and let their heads clear.
She even took out several bags of fine salt and handed them to the guards, ordering them to sprinkle the salt over the assassins’ wounds, leave their clothes open, and let them bake in the sunlight.
Mu Jin felt a pang of distress when she saw the fine salt being carried away. “Commandery Princess, sprinkling this salt on them is such a waste! Coarse salt would do just as well.”
She could immediately tell how exceptional the salt was. Even the imperial palace did not possess salt this pure. It was the finest quality available.
Only then did Xi Qingyue remember that the salt in this world was not yet so refined. She immediately searched through her spatial storage and brought out some coarse salt.
“Here. Use this instead.”
She was so accustomed to using fine salt that the moment she thought of salt, she had taken it out instinctively. Most of the coarse salt in her storage space had been picked up from other places, and she had never used it.
Mu Jin happily carried away the coarse salt, leaving the sisters on the yacht.
On the large ship, Lu Jinshuang stared silently at the bound assassins for a long while. The first person who came to mind was her elder brother, Prince Kang.
Prince Kang’s fief, Xuanzhou, was located in this region of Jiangnan. There could be no one else behind this.
“Princess, the scene will be somewhat unpleasant later. You should leave for now,” Mu Jin said as she came over to replace the fine salt.
Lu Jinshuang was not bothered by such trivial matters, but there was indeed no need for her to remain there. The assassins would not confess immediately after being captured. It would be a waste of time to interrogate them before they had been worn down.
She nodded and returned to the yacht.
Seeing her tightly knitted brows, Xi Weilan tilted her head back and asked, “Sister Jinshuang, what’s wrong?”
Lu Jinshuang sighed. “I understand now why Ninth Sister sent me to Jiangnan. Perhaps she wanted me to see the people’s true circumstances here.”
She picked Xi Weilan up and carried her to the sofa, where she sat down. Her expression softened considerably.
As she gazed at the adorable little girl drinking milk tea in front of her, Lu Jinshuang felt baffled. This little creature was more enthusiastic than anyone else when it came to killing people. Just how had she been raised?
Thinking of this, Lu Jinshuang looked toward Xi Qingyue. She was only eight years old herself. Who had taught her?
