Zhong Li Jing raised an eyebrow at her. Xiao Nanhui hedged a little before speaking: “I know you can obtain the relic. But this poison is genuinely strange. I can see that Young Master Hao is working from a medicinal formula that has been handed down through his family, and that may not guarantee full recovery in every case. Look how badly Zou Sifang suffered — if, hypothetically speaking, the treatment doesn’t work, you’d be risking your life.”
She didn’t know herself why she had blurted all that out. This man knew her true identity, and was possibly a threat — but she simply felt that no one should take a human life so lightly.
Hao Bai beside her was uncharacteristically silent, yet he was, in effect, agreeing with what Xiao Nanhui had said.
A moment of quiet settled over the room. Zhong Li Jing gave Xiao Nanhui a look with something different in it, and only after a pause did he withdraw it: “When Brother Yao went to pluck the flower today, I did not see you treating your life as particularly precious. Why speak of it now?”
Xiao Nanhui was left with nothing to say. Without paying her any further attention, he reached toward the plain-looking box.
The copper clasp clicked open. The lid let out a faint creak as it lifted.
Xiao Nanhui held her breath — nothing happened.
Inside the box, a square jade seal lay perfectly still, white and radiant.
A jade seal — it was genuinely a jade seal.
Zhong Li Jing’s pale hand lifted the jade seal and turned it over once between his fingers.
“It seems we are, after all, one step behind.”
Xiao Nanhui stared, somewhat at a loss: “One step behind in what?”
Hao Bai leaned his cheek on his hand — he seemed unsurprised — and added: “One step behind someone else in getting our hands on this box.”
Xiao Nanhui stared hard at the flawless piece of jade in the other man’s hand, unable to look away: “You mean — this is—”
Zhong Li Jing’s tone remained even, betraying no trace of dismay at being outmaneuvered.
“Correct. This one is a fake.”
Xiao Nanhui snatched up the box from the stone block and turned it over in her hands, examining it from every angle: “Impossible! I took it directly from Zou Sifang’s hands myself. From that moment until Ding Weixiang came to find me — I never once let go of this box—” The thought of everything she had been through for this little box made her face crumble with distress. Unless—
“Unless the jade seal that Zou Sifang handed me in the first place was already a fake!”
Xiao Nanhui was stunned by her own conclusion. So Old Mister Zou still hadn’t thought things through after all — he had been hiding his own private agenda all along, and they had very nearly been played for fools.
Zhong Li Jing, however, turned to look at Hao Bai, who had been drifting slightly into his own thoughts. “And what does Young Master Hao think?”
Hao Bai seemed not to have expected to be called on, and answered vaguely: “With so many people around at the ceremony, something like this could have happened in any number of ways.”
“I am not asking how the switch was made. I am asking whether you also believe this seal to be a counterfeit.” Zhong Li Jing paused, and then lowered his gaze. “In any case, looking at things now — Young Master Hao knew this from the very start.”
Hao Bai startled, then realized he had walked into that, and thought it over. Deciding that saying it outright would cause less suspicion than staying silent, he spoke up.
“I did know the jade seal was not this form, which is why the moment the box was opened, I could tell this one was a fake.”
As those words landed in Xiao Nanhui’s ears, they sounded distinctly like someone claiming to see something that no one ought to have been able to see. “You’re so young — even your great-great-grandfather may never have laid eyes on that jade seal, let alone you.”
That familiar look of conflicted struggle appeared on Hao Bai’s face again: “It’s a long story. I have never seen the actual object in person, but someone in my family’s earlier generations did, and I have seen a written description of the jade seal’s appearance — and several of the details don’t match what we see here, so—”
An ancestor of his had seen it? But he was a traveling jianghu physician. Why would a traveling physician’s ancestor have ever seen the imperial jade seal?
Xiao Nanhui was just finding this rather peculiar when a sound came from the doorway. Ding Weixiang stepped inside, followed by another figure — Bolao had returned.
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