Chapter 41: Garlic White Meat (Part 16)
Ji Qiu froze for a moment, staring at the glistening pork hock held in Leng Yue's hand. She swallowed silently and stood respectfully with her hands at her sides. "Ji Qiu wouldn't dare."
Leng Yue brought the pork hock close to her nose and took a deep breath, examining it carefully as if deciding where to take the first bite. "Why wouldn't you dare? There's more in the pot. Come, we'll each have one. I happen to have some matters to discuss with you. We can talk while we eat."
Ji Qiu hesitated for a moment before taking a few steps closer, finally stopping beside the table. She still kept her fair, delicate hands properly at her sides. "What instructions does Madam have for me?"
"Sit."
Ji Qiu nodded slightly and carefully sat on the stool beside Leng Yue. "Thank you, Madam."
Leng Yue pulled the plate with the other pork hock in front of Ji Qiu. Her eyelashes fluttered like scissors as she smiled at the corners of her mouth. "Come, taste whether the seasoning is to your liking."
Ji Qiu was taken aback. She lowered her gaze to look at the pork hock before her - complete in color, aroma, and taste - and pressed her lips together. "Madam... Please just give your instructions. Ji Qiu will carry them out immediately."
"Haven't I just given them?" Leng Yue placed a pair of chopsticks on the table in front of Ji Qiu with measured force. "I'm just picky and want to know if this pork hock is too salty or too bland. If it doesn't suit my taste, I won't eat it."
Ji Qiu stared blankly for a moment, clenching her fingertips. Her originally soft voice tightened slightly. "Perhaps... perhaps I should call the chef for you."
Leng Yue put the pork hock in her hand back on the plate. The large hock hit the plate with a dull thud. "Why call the chef? Just take a bite and tell me. I won't blame you whether it's too salty or too bland. What are you afraid of?"
Ji Qiu stood up in panic, her pretty face nearly buried in her chest. "Please calm your anger, Madam! I... I don't eat... don't eat meat!"
"That's not right." Leng Yue raised an eyebrow, staring at Ji Qiu as she slowly wiped her hands. "I remember the day after our wedding, I roasted lamb in the residence. You ate quite a lot and were even secretly learning how to cook it... Are you afraid to eat meat, or are you afraid to eat this particular plate of meat?"
Ji Qiu was stunned. She looked up and met Leng Yue's terrifyingly cold gaze. Panicking, she turned and ran toward the door. Without even moving from her seat, Leng Yue casually grabbed the teacup beside her and threw it sideways. They heard Ji Qiu cry out in pain as she stumbled and fell solidly to the ground.
Leng Yue calmly picked up a second teacup, watching indifferently as Ji Qiu lay on the ground clutching her ankle, her body trembling with pain. "If you run again, this one will hit your spine, and you'll never take another step in your life."
Ji Qiu practically crawled to a wall, pressing her back against it and curling into a ball. She raised her eyes, filled with tears of pain, looking exactly like a frightened kitten as she trembled and watched Leng Yue. "Madam..."
"Madam?" Leng Yue played with the cup in her hand, leaning forward slightly to vigorously smell the plate of crystal sugar pork hocks again. "Why don't you call me 'customer' instead?"
Ji Qiu seemed not to understand Leng Yue's meaning, the pitiful expression on her face stiff with confusion."I was just at the Sparrow Nest Brothel last night," Leng Yue raised her hand, bringing her fingers—cleaned of grease but not of fragrance—to her nose for a deep inhale, then slowly exhaled. "I can detect the scent of such low-grade drugs even when they're mixed into mooncake fillings, let alone when they're drizzled on after baking."
After speaking unhurriedly, Leng Yue glanced at Ji Qiu, who had frozen in place, forgetting to maintain her pitiful act. "I'm very busy today. You'd better not cause trouble here. If you did it, explain it clearly in a few words. If you didn't, judging by how you tried to bolt earlier, you at least know something about it. You're aware of what our household does—don't make me use the interrogation methods from the prison cells on you. With your delicate skin and tender flesh, after going through that, even your own parents wouldn't recognize you."
Leng Yue's words were spoken lightly, but to Ji Qiu, paired with the piercing pain in her ankle, each syllable felt like a slap, making her instinctively shrink backward.
"You... you," Ji Qiu trembled against the wall for a long moment before taking several deep breaths. She lifted her head and glared at Leng Yue. "You may not know why I married the master, but I do!"
Leng Yue stiffened slightly, her fingers loosening so abruptly she nearly dropped the cup in her hand.
The pain in her ankle showed no sign of easing. Ji Qiu's voice still trembled, but a smug smile had already curled her lips. "The night you sent the master to plant cucumbers by the rockery, I saw what you were doing in the estate... Do you think the master would still want you if he knew?"
Leng Yue was startled.
The previous remark might have been a desperate bluff from Ji Qiu, but these words...
A cold sweat broke out on Leng Yue's back. She tightened her grip on the teacup, narrowed her phoenix eyes, and slowly rose to her feet. "Who are you?"
"You're scared, aren't you..." Fine beads of sweat from pain already dotted Ji Qiu's forehead, yet her triumphant expression grew more pronounced. Her slightly shrill voice quivered with suppressed excitement. "This dose of poison is just a reminder. I tolerate you doing your tasks here—do them obediently. Once you're done and achieve your goal, get lost wherever you came from... If you remain shameless, you'll die in a manner a hundred times more disgusting than that cat and those pond fish..."
Leng Yue stared in astonishment at this delicate beauty huddled pitifully at the base of the wall. After a moment of stunned silence, she asked in a low voice, "You killed Jing Yi's cat and koi?"
"Those creatures are just like you—not knowing their place, daring to touch the master's person. Shameless. Lowborn scum..."
Before Ji Qiu could finish, Leng Yue flicked her wrist. The second teacup flew out, striking Ji Qiu's smugly grinning face squarely. With a dull thud, Ji Qiu didn't even have time to cry out—she merely spat out a mouthful of blood and several teeth.
Leng Yue watched calmly as Ji Qiu clutched her face and curled into a trembling ball on the floor, then remarked faintly, "Brainless."
She walked over slowly, half-kneeling before Ji Qiu. Grabbing the bloodstained front of Ji Qiu's robe, she hauled her up from the ground and enunciated each word clearly: "I'll ask you one more time—who exactly are you?"One side of Ji Qiu’s face had swollen rapidly, her hair slightly disheveled. Her once lotus-like delicate face was now streaked with blood and tears, and the glare she directed at Leng Yue appeared even more ferocious because of it.
"You think you're so clever... That bedsheet, the ink dissolved beneath it... was blood... your filthy blood..."
Leng Yue frowned slightly, tightening her grip on Ji Qiu’s collar. Ji Qiu gasped for breath, unable to speak for a moment.
"Listen carefully to what I’m asking. Who are you?"
Seeing the anguish in Ji Qiu’s eyes and her trembling lips as if she were about to speak, Leng Yue loosened her grip slightly.
"I am the one Master cherishes most... Master has always been cautious. Last night, after finally taking the medicine, all that was left was to bring him out of the room..." The anguish in Ji Qiu’s eyes deepened, her hatred intensifying. "It’s all because of you, all because of you..."
Before she could finish, Leng Yue couldn’t help but demand sharply, "You drugged him?"
"No..." Ji Qiu forced a strained, insincere smile across her swollen face. "It was you... you were the one who fed it to him with your own hands..."
Leng Yue froze, suddenly recalling the bowl of honey-sweetened water.
Though she had prepared it herself, the honey jar had been brought by Ji Qiu.
Leng Yue abruptly remembered the expression on Jing Yi’s face last night when he took the first sip.
Jing Yi’s sense of smell was far keener than hers, and his palate far more discerning. If she hadn’t insisted that she had prepared the honey water herself, if she hadn’t forced him to finish it...
Leng Yue’s heart clenched, and her grip on Ji Qiu’s collar tightened again. "What kind of drug did you use?"
It definitely wasn’t the kind of drug she had put in the pork knuckle. If it had been, Jing Yi would never have reacted the way he did.
"Since you’ve been to the Sparrow Nest Brothel, you must know about Drunken World..."
Drunken World.
Leng Yue was so shocked she released Ji Qiu’s collar.
Drunken World was a drug even more despicable than the one she had used in the pork knuckle.
It was the substance used in brothels to discipline new girls. A small dose would induce a deep sleep for at least seven or eight hours, and even after waking, the victim would be left weak and powerless for two or three days. There was no antidote.
No wonder Jing Yi had resorted to cutting his own thigh...
What frightened Leng Yue wasn’t the drug’s effects.
The most terrifying part was that, by all accounts, Jing Yi should have been lying incapacitated in his room. How could he have gone to the Dali Temple?
"Where is he!"
Ji Qiu was startled by Leng Yue’s shout. The pity, anguish, and smugness on her face melted into confusion. "You... didn’t you hide him?"
Leng Yue silently drew a sharp breath.
Uncle Qi.
Leng Yue stuffed a handkerchief into Ji Qiu’s mouth and, on the charge of insubordination, ordered her locked in the woodshed. When she turned to find Uncle Qi, he was in the accounts room, frantically tapping away at an abacus. Seeing Leng Yue enter abruptly, he hastily set the abaside and stood up.
"Madam..." Uncle Qi cautiously studied Leng Yue’s expressionless face, his heart pounding, though he managed a strained smile. "Have you finished your meal?"
"Quite well," Leng Yue replied curtly, her eyes sweeping indifferently over the tidy accounts room. "Earlier, you told me Jing Yi went where?"
"Madam, the Master went to the Dali Temple."
"Before he left for the Dali Temple, did he give you any message for me or leave anything behind?"
Uncle Qi paused, then shook his head. "No... nothing at all.""How was the leg wound before he went out? Was it still bleeding? Did he complain about the pain?"
"This... this..." Uncle Qi hesitated for a long moment, unable to hold back any longer, and knelt down with his head bowed. "Please calm your anger, Madam! I... I didn't see where the master went... The gatekeeper came to say that the Ministry of Justice had sent people to move the coffin. I saw the master was still sleeping soundly, so I went out to attend to the Ministry of Justice people. After seeing them off and returning, the master was no longer in the room... But his official robe and boots were also gone. Other than going to the Dali Temple for work, when has he ever worn that outfit?"
Uncle Qi was telling the truth. She had noticed earlier that Jing Yi's official robe and boots were indeed not in the room. Jing Yi generally wouldn't wear his official uniform unless necessary.
Leng Yue made a trip to the Dali Temple, where everyone unanimously said: "When you find Lord Jing, please have him come to the Dali Temple immediately to work."
Leng Yue felt like she was going crazy.
If Leng Yue wanted to go crazy, Jing Yi wanted to even more.
He woke up groggily from a deep sleep, opening his eyes in a daze. In his blurry vision appeared a vaguely familiar woman, but not the one he most wanted to see.
Jing Yi was slightly stunned. As his vision cleared, he realized not only was the person not the one he most wanted to see, but even this room and this bed were not where he wanted to be.
This was a dilapidated place he had never been to before.
A broken roof, broken tables and chairs, a worn-out straw mat - the place was drafty from all sides, truly deserving of the name "broken."
Jing Yi clearly remembered what he had taken before falling unconscious, so he didn't even bother trying to move. He just quietly watched the person before him.
"Well... which establishment are you from?"
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