That straightforward statement abruptly froze Zhenzhen's thoughts. This was a more difficult problem than managing farmlands or taverns. She stared blankly for a long while, gradually feeling her face burn hotter than the sun's rays, yet still unable to think of a proper response. Then she noticed Zhao Ai had closed his eyes and stopped speaking, unsure whether he had fallen asleep or lost consciousness. A sudden unease gripped her. She gently patted his face, calling "Second Brother," but Zhao Ai showed no awareness, remaining completely still. Zhenzhen grew increasingly frantic. She pinched his philtrum, but still couldn't rouse him. Remembering the scene of Crown Prince Zhuang Wen's final moments, that heavy sorrow surged toward her like an ink-black tidal wave. For a moment, the world spun, and her heart ached as if about to split open.
She knelt beside Zhao Ai, holding his hand, weeping silently. Under extreme anguish, she slowly bent forward until her forehead touched his chest—and there she heard his heartbeat. Immediately pressing her ear closer, she felt his heart still beating steadily, neither hurried nor slow. She quickly wiped away her tears, forcefully suppressing all discomfort, and struggled to stand up. Stumbling through the uneven ground, she hurried toward the embankment with all her might.
Climbing onto the embankment, she scanned the surroundings for a long time before finally spotting an oxcart loaded with wheat ears appearing at one end. She waved both hands toward the cart, and as it drew nearer, she called out loudly, urging the driver to hasten the ox to approach her. She explained to the farmer driving the cart about Zhao Ai's poisoning. The farmer immediately followed her into the wheat field, carried Zhao Ai on his back, and placed him on the oxcart. Seeing the oxcart moved too slowly to return to the city in time, Zhenzhen asked the farmer to drive to Innkeeper Gong's tavern instead. She mounted her horse, led Zhao Ai's horse, and followed behind the oxcart.
Already suffering from an intense headache and having pushed herself to this point, she was utterly exhausted. Drowsy and dazed, she slumped over the horse's back, letting it walk slowly. Fortunately, the horse had been with her for several months and was quite intelligent. Knowing to follow the oxcart on its own, it safely carried her all the way to the Gong family tavern.
Innkeeper Gong was startled at the sight of them and quickly called for assistants to help Zhao Ai and Zhenzhen upstairs to rest, not forgetting to generously reward the farmer driving the cart.
After hearing Zhenzhen's account, Innkeeper Gong said, "The weather is warm now, just the time when snakes emerge from hibernation. The fields around here have been left fallow for a long time, so it's indeed possible for venomous snakes to appear. Fortunately, there's a snake catcher living nearby. He usually catches snakes, raises them to extract venom, and knows many remedies for snake venom. I'll send someone to fetch him right away."
The snake catcher was named Luo Shihua, claiming to be sixty years old this year. Yet he was robust, with a ruddy complexion and scarcely any white hair. After examining Zhao Ai's injury and asking Zhenzhen about the incident and the snake's appearance, he concluded, "It should be a many-banded krait, one of the most venomous snakes. Fortunately, you promptly sucked out much of the poisoned blood. Although he's unconscious now, he can still be saved."
He cleaned Zhao Ai's wound, took several herbs like barbed skullcap, purslane, and paniculate swallowwort from his medicine chest, crushed them, applied the paste to the wound, and bandaged it. He then took some medicinal powder and asked Innkeeper Gong to immediately fetch water for Zhao Ai to take it. He also gave a small amount of the powder to Zhenzhen, asking her to take it as well.
After taking the medicine and resting for a while, Zhenzhen gradually felt the dizziness and nausea were not as severe as before. However, Zhao Ai still hadn't regained consciousness, and she couldn't help showing worry. Seeing this, Luo Shihua comforted her, "Please set your mind at ease, madam. My medicine is very effective against snake venom. Besides, Prince Wei is young and should be fine. He'll wake up after sleeping a few more hours."He prepared another dose of medicine and asked Shopkeeper Gong to first take it for decoction, instructing him to have Prince Wei drink it upon waking. Then, he picked up his brush and wrote a prescription for Zhenzhen, advising her to have Prince Wei take the medicine according to it in the following days. Zhenzhen accepted the prescription and asked if she also needed to continue taking medicine. Luo Shihua smiled and said, "Madam, after taking this dose, you are fine and need not take more. This snake venom is said to be lethal upon contact with blood, but it can only kill if the snake bites through the skin and the venom enters the bloodstream. Madam only had contact with the venom in your mouth and were not bitten by a snake, so it is not life-threatening."
"So, snake venom only causes poisoning when it encounters blood?" Zhenzhen asked in surprise. "Then why did I experience symptoms like dizziness, nausea, and weakness in my limbs?"
Luo Shihua countered, "Does Madam have any mouth sores or tongue ulcers?"
Zhenzhen was taken aback, then realized that due to her busy schedule at the tavern recently, she had been sleep-deprived and had irregular meals, leading to internal heat and a small, grain-sized mouth sore.
Seeing Zhenzhen admit to it, Luo Shihua continued, "If Madam were in good health, with no ulcers in your mouth, esophagus, or stomach, and no bleeding from your lips or gums, even swallowing snake venom would hardly cause poisoning. The dizziness and nausea you felt earlier were due to a small amount of venom dissolving into your bloodstream through the mouth sore, which triggered these symptoms."
Zhenzhen pondered for a moment, then asked, "If someone frequently suffers from stomach pain, does that mean they have ulcers in their stomach? If they consume food contaminated with snake venom, would they be poisoned?"
"Very likely," Luo Shihua said. "Frequent stomach pain is often due to damage to the stomach lining. In such cases, snake venom entering the stomach from the esophagus would come into contact with blood and cause poisoning."
Zhenzhen remained silent for a long while before asking him, "Shopkeeper Gong mentioned that you make a living by catching snakes, raising them, and extracting their venom. So, can snake venom be extracted from a snake's mouth and used for other purposes?"
Luo Shihua replied, "Yes. Extracting snake venom is not difficult. You hold the snake by its neck, place a small porcelain dish into its mouth to make it bite, and venom will flow out. Afterward, when you remove the dish and the venom dries, it solidifies into dried snake venom."
With that, he rummaged through his medicine chest for a moment, took out a small porcelain bottle, and opened it for Zhenzhen to see. "Look, this is dried snake venom."
Zhenzhen took it and saw that the bottle contained crystals resembling granulated sugar or salt grains. They gathered together in a very pale yellow hue, though individually the crystals appeared nearly colorless.
"Extracting snake venom isn't difficult, but it is time-consuming," Luo Shihua said with a smile. "Don't underestimate this small amount of venom—it takes extracting venom over a thousand times to accumulate this much."
"So..." Zhenzhen's hand holding the porcelain bottle trembled slightly. "If just a tiny bit of this dried snake venom is added to food and consumed by someone with stomach damage, would it be equivalent to being poisoned by dozens of snakes?"
"More or less," Luo Shihua said. "However, snake venom is not entirely without its uses. If a person has no injuries in their mouth, esophagus, or stomach, consuming a small amount of snake venom can stop bleeding, relieve pain, and treat certain illnesses... By the way, there was an esteemed eunuch in the palace named Cheng Yuan, who was favored by the late emperor and the Empress Dowager. A few years ago, he suffered from headaches due to blood stasis, and it is said he was cured using snake venom. When this news spread among the people, the price of snake venom doubled..."
At this point, he noticed that Zhenzhen seemed distracted and pale, so he asked with concern, "Madam, are you still feeling unwell?"
Zhenzhen shook her head, forced a smile, and said, "I'm fine." Then she continued to ask him, "Snake venom must be very fishy, right? Is it difficult to swallow as medicine?"Luo Shihua replied, "It does have a slight fishy smell, but the medicinal dosage is extremely small. If placed in the mouth and quickly swallowed with water, one hardly notices the fishiness. Alternatively, dissolving it in soup or water, the strong flavors of food and drink can mask its odor."
Before he took his leave, Zhenzhen posed one final question: "Can snake venom be detected with a silver needle?"
Luo Shihua immediately dismissed the idea: "A silver needle can only detect arsenic poisoning; it shows no reaction to snake venom."
Zhenzhen recalled the symptoms of Zhao Ai's poisoning and felt they closely resembled those of Crown Prince Zhuang Wen in his final moments—both experienced nausea, vomiting, dizziness, weakness in the limbs, and muscle numbness. However, Zhao Ai's condition progressed more slowly, while the Crown Prince's poisoning was rapid. If the Crown Prince had been poisoned with snake venom through food, many of the questions that had previously puzzled her would find answers: the Crown Prince had stomach damage, so even if he had eaten the same food as her, only he succumbed to the poisoning, while she merely fainted without serious harm... At that time, the only possible minor skin abrasions she could have had were on her lips or the mucous membranes of her mouth. Snake venom is elusive; afterward, even if the imperial physicians tested for poison in the Crown Prince's mouth and vomit, they would likely find nothing conclusive. Silver needles were ineffective, and even if small animals were made to taste the vomit, they probably wouldn't be poisoned...
If this were the case, the poisoner was truly sinister... Zhenzhen felt a chill run down her spine. This person was intimately familiar with the Crown Prince's physical condition, thus "administering poison tailored to his symptoms," making it impossible for the imperial physicians to detect any clues and shifting the blame onto her... Could it be Cheng Yuan? He understood the properties of snake venom and would certainly know how to use it. At that time, the Crown Prince was investigating matters related to Madam Ju. If Cheng Yuan had sensed something and feared his actions would be exposed, he might have had a motive to harm the Crown Prince. But was this motive strong enough for him to take such a reckless risk, daring to poison the heir to the throne? If it were him, how could he have poisoned the Crown Prince's food and drink right under her watch? Even if the dosage was minimal, her sense of taste was keen—would she not have detected that faint fishy odor?
Zhenzhen repeatedly recalled every dish the Crown Prince had consumed that day, even suspecting whether the Songjiang perch might have been poisoned with snake venom. But she had personally selected that fish from a tank of live ones, and it had been lively and active, showing no signs of poisoning at all. No matter how much she pondered, she could find no suspicious points. Her head began to ache faintly again, so she had to temporarily set aside the question and went to check on Zhao Ai's condition.
Shopkeeper Gong had prepared separate rooms on the second floor for Zhao Ai and Zhenzhen to rest, but Zhenzhen, worried about Zhao Ai's injuries, remained in his room, silently sitting guard. From time to time, she checked his complexion and felt his temperature. At night, noticing that Zhao Ai's forehead felt somewhat feverish, she fetched warm water to wipe his head and palms, hoping to cool him down. However, Zhao Ai frowned tightly, shifting restlessly, and began to mutter in his sleep. Zhenzhen stopped her actions and softly comforted him, but Zhao Ai grew increasingly agitated. He kept calling out "Zhenzhen" while sitting up nervously, his hands flailing as if trying to grasp something.
Zhenzhen reached out to hold his hand, telling him, "I'm here." But Zhao Ai seemed not to hear, shaking off her hand and still calling her name as he stretched his arms forward, panting as he tried to rise.
Seeing that his voice and movements were growing more intense, his emotions in turmoil with no sign of regaining consciousness, Zhenzhen wrapped her arms around his shoulders, gently patting his back, and repeatedly called out, "Second Brother, wake up! I'm here!"He was still struggling, on the verge of breaking free from her grasp. Zhenzhen dared not loosen her hold, and seeing his head turning restlessly, his face full of agitation, she acted on impulse—embracing him tightly, she pressed her lips to his forehead, hoping that in this gesture of maternal comfort, he might find peace.
He indeed grew still. When she gradually released him and drew back slightly, he opened his bewildered eyes and stared at her in the flickering candlelight for a long moment, then tentatively called out in disbelief, “Zhenzhen?”
“Yes,” she replied with a smile. “It’s me.”
Seeing the lingering doubt in his expression, which held a touch of childishness, Zhenzhen couldn’t help but stroke his fever-flushed cheek. Gazing at him tenderly, she affirmed once more, “It’s me.”
He was fully awake now. Lowering his gaze in brief contemplation, he suddenly asked with a hint of melancholy, “Am I dreaming, or are you?”
Zhenzhen was taken aback, unsure of what he meant.
“You’re being so gentle with me—did you mistake me for someone else again?” Seeing her apparent astonishment, he smiled sadly, gently lifting her chin with his fingers. Closing his eyes, he pressed a light kiss to her lips, then withdrew, opening his eyes to reveal the sorrow he had long kept hidden, shimmering like water in his gaze.
This late-night solitude in the bedroom, the tenderness lingering on their lips—it all felt familiar. Suddenly, Zhenzhen remembered a dream from long ago… the night she first brewed plum wine, when she dreamed of the Crown Prince she yearned for, coming to see her once more… Her mind reeled as she stared at Zhao Ai and whispered, “That night… was it you?”
Zhao Ai turned his head slightly without a word, kissed her again, and gazed deeply into her eyes. “It was me,” he answered.
Zhenzhen shrank back in confusion, recalling her own impropriety that night, his inevitable pain, and his long-lasting, seemingly unaffected concealment of it all. Shame, guilt, and sorrow intertwined within her, leaving her momentarily unable to face him.
But Zhao Ai grasped her wrist, preventing her from retreating further.
“If I were to die today, would you weep for me?” he asked.
She did not answer, but her eyes remained fixed on him, unwavering. After a moment, a single clear tear fell from the corner of her right eye, glimmering briefly before vanishing into the shadows of the night.
He sighed softly, pulling her into his embrace and holding her silently for a long while. Then, in a low voice by her ear, he murmured, “Zhenzhen, the day fades swiftly, life is fleeting—I hope we will not become each other’s regret.”
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