The female Taoist was holding the bottom of the food box close to her nose, sniffing intently before shaking her head. She then extended the little finger of her right hand and lightly scraped at it. Li Yuangui opened his mouth to stop her—the writing on the bottom of the food box was already faint and blurred. Was she trying to destroy evidence by smudging it?
His mouth opened, then closed again. Chai Yingluo wasn’t the type to act recklessly, and if it came to an argument… Li Yuangui honestly admitted he couldn’t win against his niece either.
Chai Yingluo rubbed the little finger of her right hand against the bottom of the food box twice before handing it to Wei Shufen, who was seated behind her. Then, using the same fingertip, she lightly smeared the back of her left hand, raised it, and examined it under the lamplight from various angles before turning to ask Wei Shufen:
“A Fen, what kind of ink or dye does your mother use for her eyebrows at home?”
“Ah,” Wei Shufen hesitated for a moment. “Our household is frugal, so we just use ordinary soot ink… Oh, someone once gifted my mother some Shixing eyebrow stone, but she couldn’t bear to use it, saying she’d save it for my…”
She swallowed the next word before it could leave her lips, her face flushing as she lowered her head. But everyone in the room could tell from the shape of her mouth that she had nearly said “dowry,” and they couldn’t help but laugh—all while glancing at Li Yuangui.
This was truly an unexpected calamity…
Chai Yingluo smirked mischievously at Li Yuangui for a long while, seemingly struggling to suppress the urge to tease her uncle. Finally, she returned to the main topic:
“In my opinion, the words on this food box were written by a noblewoman.”
“A noblewoman wrote them?”
Li Yuangui was both shocked and delighted, eagerly seeking his niece’s insight: “Yingniang, how can you tell?”
The handwriting was clumsy and scattered, like a child’s scribbles. At a glance, Li Yuangui had assumed it was the work of a servant or lowly attendant—likely the same conclusion the Pei family (father and son) had reached back then, which was why they hadn’t pursued the writer’s identity with much effort. How could Chai Yingluo take one look and arrive at such a different judgment?
The female Taoist smiled at him. “Fourteenth Uncle, as well as the Pei family and all the high-ranking officials from the Dali Temple who handled the case back then, are all great men. Naturally, they wouldn’t recognize it. If Pei Lvshi had taken this item home for his wife to examine or presented it to the Empress in the palace, the writer might have been identified long ago.”
Her tone carried a hint of mockery, likely still resentful over yesterday’s remark that “women are not permitted in official offices.” Li Yuangui pretended not to notice and asked again, “How can you tell?”
“It’s simple. Ordinary charcoal or soot produces pure black marks, or at most grayish-black when faint. But the writing on this box has a bluish tint to the black. Over time, as the color faded, the deep blue became even more noticeable. The powder is also exceptionally fine, clinging easily to the skin but not as easily smudged.” Chai Yingluo raised her left hand to demonstrate. “This wasn’t scribbled with just any piece of charcoal. It was written with eyebrow ink—specifically, the rarest and most expensive ‘Persian spiral ink.’ During the height of the Sui dynasty, a single piece was worth ten gold coins, and Emperor Yang only bestowed it upon his most favored concubines with the loveliest brows.”
“Really?” Li Yuangui was skeptical. Could the female Taoist really deduce all that from just a smudge on her fingertip?
Chai Yingluo shot him a sideways glance. “Let me put it another way. If the writer didn’t use eyebrow ink, what else could they have used? Have you thought about that, Fourteenth Uncle?”
“Probably just some random charcoal or soot…” Such things weren’t hard to come by. Li Yuangui instinctively glanced at the charcoal stove in the corner of the room."Fourteenth Uncle, wake up! When Pei Ji was ordered to reinvestigate the Eastern Palace Poison Wine Case, what season was it?"
"Uh... summer and autumn of the ninth year of WuDe?"
Li Yuangui remembered that shortly after the Xuanwu Gate Incident, Pei Ji began reinvestigating the case. At that time, the families of the former Crown Prince and Prince Qi were still imprisoned within the Crown Prince's Palace, while the current Son of Heaven's family still resided in the original Prince of Qin's Manor at Hongyi Palace. The Xuanwu Gate Incident occurred in early June.
"You know it was summer and autumn," Chai Yingluo rolled her eyes. "There were no heating stoves indoors during summer and autumn, and prisoners were routinely denied candles. Food and water were delivered from outside—where would they get charcoal black? Unless it was those servants who could access the kitchens—and they were the first to be strictly interrogated, with nothing found."
This reasoning made sense. Li Yuangui considered that whoever wrote these eight characters must have known the inside story of the Eastern Palace Poison Wine Case. If this person was imprisoned in the courtyard at the time and shared quarters with others, trying to secretly write on the bottom of a food box while avoiding detection, eyebrow pigment from a makeup case would indeed be the easiest writing material to obtain.
After their discussion, the wooden food box had circulated among everyone in the room, and Yang Xinzhi handed it back to Li Yuangui. Looking closely, he indeed saw a distinct bluish-green tint within the eight blurred characters.
This grayish-black with a bluish hue was something he'd seen before in Great Peace Palace—some young concubines who liked following the "fashionable makeup" trends used this color to draw various eyebrow shapes. However, Li Yuangui never paid attention to such matters. Had Chai Yingluo not pointed it out, he might never have made the connection.
"One piece of snail ink costs ten gold coins. I've heard my mother mention it too," Wei Shufen suddenly spoke softly. "Why would the owner of such expensive eyebrow pigment use it for writing?"
"That's why I said the writer was a noblewoman," Chai Yingluo smiled faintly. "What she kept in her daily makeup case was that expensive snail ink. When the families of the Eldest Uncle and Fourth Uncle were escorted and imprisoned in the Crown Prince's Palace, there were explicit orders against mistreatment—they should have been allowed to bring personal clothing and cosmetics... After being confined, the writer couldn't—and wouldn't want to—find cheaper writing materials. Those accustomed to wealth don't care about such small expenses."
Following this logic, the writer's identity was practically revealed. Wei Shufen thought for a moment before asking further:
"But the handwriting is so poor. A noblewoman from a great family like Yang... would have studied reading and writing since childhood. Surely she wouldn't write so badly?"
Her naive question made Li Yuangui laugh involuntarily, and he answered without thinking:
"That's not difficult. If she intentionally wanted to remain anonymous, she could simply switch to writing with her left hand to produce such messy scrawl..."
Before he finished speaking, Wei Shufen's clear eyes met his. Their gazes connected briefly before quickly looking away. Li Yuangui immediately stopped talking.
But it was too late—the others burst into mocking laughter again, with Yang Xinzhi laughing the loudest.
Suppressing his irritation, Li Yuangui lowered his head to return the food box to the wooden chest, then picked up the golden pot to examine it closely.
#####Chapter Note: Regarding "snail ink" and other eyebrow makeup materials and tools of early Tang Dynasty, as well as the possible greenish-blue color effects they produced, reference was made to the chapter "Eyebrow Pigment" in Meng Hui's "Sixteen Sounds Among Flowers."
OpenNovel