Xiao Nanhui still had not moved. The person she was waiting for had not yet left.
Another incense stick’s worth of time passed, and the sky went fully dark. At last, a figure in official dark robes emerged from the main hall, exchanged a few low words with the night-watch personal guards, and then departed in haste.
Lu Songping truly had his nerve. The body of King Kang was barely cold, and he had already moved into the detached palace under the guise of a supervisory garrison — utterly brazen about it. The palace these days was stripped of King Kang’s own palace guards and filled instead with Lu Songping’s personal guards, all dressed in green.
And yet now, apparently, even he could not remain in the detached palace. Xiao Nanhui curved her lips.
She had told Bolao to stir up some commotion in order to lure this tiger out of the mountain — and from the looks of it, it had worked.
Xiao Nanhui removed her shoes and boots and vaulted down from the wall, keeping her landing as quiet as possible, then crept along the base of the wall and worked her way deeper into the detached palace.
The carefully tended flowers and plants, left without care, had already begun to wither and fade in just over a month. The entire detached palace breathed an aura of decay.
The unpleasant memory of her nighttime infiltration of the Zou Mansion in Huozhou was still fresh in her mind, and Xiao Nanhui now carried a slight psychological shadow from it — yet she still had to steel herself and press on.
Investigating the situation of the Bai Family sounded simple enough but was in reality harder than scaling the heavens. With the chaos in Bijiang, and without even a single thread to pull on, one could spend a year or two and still not uncover anything genuinely useful.
The death of King Kang was deeply suspicious, and she simply did not believe the Bai Family had no hand in it. But the Bai Family was no fool — Tongcheng was still Tiancheng territory, after all, and they would never act so openly. Still, with a careful investigation, catching hold of a loose thread or two should be possible.
Her requirements were not high. So long as there was a trail to follow, she wasn’t worried about being unable to find her way to the Bai Family’s stronghold.
The most pressing matter right now was to find someone directly involved and get a clear account of what had happened.
The maids and eunuchs who had been on duty the day of the assassination had been mostly put to death already. Only a handful with particular circumstances had been spared. Among them was the younger brother of Lan Shi, King Kang’s most favored concubine.
This Lan Shi, riding on the glory of her favored status, had managed to install her younger brother inside the palace as a servant. After three to five years of working his way up, he had risen to the position of Deputy Superintendent — but before he could even enjoy the comfort of his position, King Kang met with disaster.
After the incident, Lu Songping’s people took over the palace’s affairs. In the process of investigating the servants who had been on duty inside and out that day, Lan Shi employed means unknown and somehow managed to preserve her brother’s life.
Spared from death but not from punishment, the ill-fated Deputy Superintendent Lan received thirty strokes of the rod and was locked away in Shunxin Pavilion, where no one was paying him any attention.
Xiao Nanhui, however, felt certain that if he had been on duty that day, he must know something.
She had gone to considerable lengths to dig out this piece of information, and now she used the cover of night to make her way toward Shunxin Pavilion.
Shunxin Pavilion had originally been used to discipline palace maids who had committed offenses. The lower floor had no staircase, only a retractable rope ladder with a hatch that could be opened and closed. The rooms where prisoners were held were on the top floor. Though the structure was only three stories high, for palace maids who had grown up within the detached palace walls, it was a height from which escape was impossible.
Of course, Xiao Nanhui did not fall into that category.
Thanks to her experience climbing the Piaoxiao Tower in Huozhou, she reached the third-floor air vent using hands and feet together in no more than half a cup of tea’s worth of time.
Several wooden boards were nailed around the narrow air vent. Xiao Nanhui looked around and saw no sign of anyone, then kicked the boards loose with one foot and slipped her way into the attic.
In the darkness, a single pair of wide, terrified eyes stared fixedly at her.
He seemed to want to cry out, but having gone so long without speaking, he could only produce a hoarse, barely audible rasp when he opened his mouth.
After a bout of violent coughing, he finally pushed out half a sentence: “Are you here to kill me?”
Xiao Nanhui looked around and found a flat spot where she settled down cross-legged. “That depends entirely on how you conduct yourself in a moment.”
Another silence followed. After quite some time, a response drifted back.
“What do you want to ask?”
“On the day King Kang was assassinated, were you on duty in the main hall?”
Across the dark and murky space, Xiao Nanhui could clearly feel the figure huddled in that corner flinch.
“I — I didn’t see anything.”
Xiao Nanhui frowned. “I haven’t even asked yet — what’s your hurry? Who were the guests present at the banquet that day?”
“So many people—”
“Obviously. I’m asking you who, specifically.”
Xiao Nanhui suspected the man had suffered some kind of mental shock — his answers were all over the place.
Still, years of serving as an attendant had made the reporting of details second nature, and Deputy Superintendent Lan rattled off names with a fluency that put even the most seasoned menu-reciting waiters at a teahouse to shame.
Xiao Nanhui listened quietly for a while, then suddenly interrupted: “Wait — miscellaneous attendants: Ah Kuang and fifteen others. Who is this Ah Kuang? Why would a miscellaneous attendant be permitted into the main hall? And how can anyone have the surname ‘Ah’?”
“Ah Kuang is one of the old fixtures of the palace. His real name is quite a mouthful, so King Kang granted him the name Ah Kuang. Although he held the position of miscellaneous attendant, he was deeply trusted by King Kang. Whenever there was a banquet at the palace, he would be responsible for one or two of the performance acts. He had some connections in the martial world and the underworld, and was always able to track down novel and unusual entertainment to earn favor.”
Xiao Nanhui finally caught the scent of something: “If they’re performers from the civilian world, their identities should have been thoroughly verified. Yet you didn’t report their specific names just now — is that kind of oversight something Lu Songping doesn’t care about?”
Deputy Superintendent Lan let out a laugh that was almost vindictive. “King Kang didn’t like him — so what could the Governor do? Not even a match for some lowly miscellaneous attendant.” He then seemed to recall something, and the laugh vanished. “As it turned out, he actually came out of it with his life — right at the critical moment, he somehow never made it into the hall.”
“Hold on.” Xiao Nanhui’s expression shifted, and she leaned forward. “Are you saying that Lu Songping was actually at the detached palace that day?”
“That’s right. King Kang’s banquet that day had not originally extended an invitation to him — yet somehow he arrived uninvited. I heard an attendant outside the hall announce his name, but after quite some time there was no sign of him entering. I thought something had gone wrong and was about to step out to check when, in the main hall — it just—”
His voice suddenly caught. The two eyes on that gaunt, haggard face stretched even wider. His shackled hands trembled as they clutched at his head.
It was then that Xiao Nanhui noticed — two fingers on his right hand were missing.
The wound appeared to have shriveled and blackened, looking as though the fingers had been cut away.
For some reason, as Xiao Nanhui looked at the wound, she felt a strange sense of familiarity.
She was about to press further with her questions when without warning the light around her dimmed, and a shadow materialized at the window behind her, blocking out half the moonlight.
A cold sweat broke out across Xiao Nanhui’s back in an instant.
Breath contained without a trace. Movement without a sound. A genuine master of internal martial arts.
“What person of such elegant taste would choose this moonless, wind-swept night to come and share old times with Deputy Superintendent Lan?”
Xiao Nanhui turned her face halfway and looked back. The newcomer stood with the light behind them, their features a mass of shadow.
But she recognized that voice.
Just an hour ago, she had heard with her own ears this person instruct their subordinates that they were leaving the palace.
It was the voice of Jizhou’s Governor, Lu Songping.
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