Chapter 167

Chapter 167

“Damn it, I’ve really been having terrible luck lately! The gambling house got shut down, I keep losing, and Deputy Commander Zhang gave me a good scolding a couple of days ago. I’d better go pray at a temple tomorrow.”

Moonlight streamed through a wide-open window into the dilapidated main hall. Several men dressed as guards sat in a circle on the floor, with a scattered deck of leaf cards between them.

One of the guards grumbled as he pulled out some money. He slapped several small pieces of silver onto the floor in protest, only for the others to divide them up and pocket them.

The man sitting across from him gathered up the money and stuffed it into his pocket. “If you ask me, you must have offended something.”

After a person suffered bad luck too many times, people easily began blaming ghosts and spirits.

If some unnatural thing had latched onto you, bad luck was only the beginning. What people feared most was attracting disaster and suffering some bloody calamity.

The guard clearly looked down on that explanation. He curled his lip and said, “I haven’t offended anyone. I don’t believe in that nonsense.”

The guard across from him continued, “Then aren’t you afraid of offending the Former Crown Prince by bringing us here?”

Everyone present knew that the Former Crown Prince had died a gruesome death.

Ever since the Eastern Palace had been sealed off, there had been rumors that “the wronged spirit refuses to depart.” People hardly dared go near the place even in broad daylight.

If the gambling house they usually visited hadn’t been shut down, and if Deputy Commander Zhang hadn’t recently begun cracking down so severely on guards gambling together, with anyone caught receiving a sound beating, none of them would have been bold enough to brave this unlucky place just to play.

Someone beside them immediately joined in. “What’s there to fear? He didn’t die inside the Eastern Palace.”

Some of the men had followed Prince Zhenbei all the way from Liangzhou. Others had originally been recruited after surrendering in the Capital City, while still others had only joined the Imperial Guard within the past two years.

Naturally, the newer recruits knew little about those past events. But those who had taken part in the Palace Coup remembered them vividly.

Someone sighed. “That Crown Prince met a truly gruesome end. His corpse was hung from the city wall, then tossed into a mass grave wrapped in nothing more than a random straw mat. No memorial tablet was set up for him, and who knows where his wandering ghost ended up.”

It was merely a casual sigh of emotion.

After all, the Heir Apparent who had once stood high above the clouds had fallen in a single day, becoming a traitorous rebel in the eyes of the world. Even after death, he had been denied peace. How could that not make people sigh with regret?

But the guard who had lost the money shook his head with a grave, secretive expression. After letting out a long breath, he said, “That may not be the case.”

There was still a little wine left at the bottom of one of the jars on the floor. He picked it up and tilted his head back, draining it. The smell of alcohol spread among them.

They had already drunk quite a bit before starting their game. After swallowing another mouthful of fiery liquor, their heads began to swim.

With their minds hazy and their vanity taking over, they started bragging without a care for the consequences.

“Want to know the secret?” the guard asked with a mysterious laugh.

The others could tell there was more to his words. The newer recruits in particular could no longer restrain their curiosity and immediately began pressing him.

“What secret? Hurry up and tell us!”

“Exactly. Stop keeping us in suspense!”

After being bombarded with questions, the guard stopped holding back. Taking advantage of the alcohol, he began recounting that little-known secret from the past.

“Back then, I followed Prince Zhenbei here from Liangzhou. After the Palace Coup, I was assigned to transport the dead bodies to the mass grave. We’d just dumped off a cartload when I suddenly had to relieve myself, so I found a patch of grass nearby. When I came back out, guess what I saw?”

His pause after the rhetorical question left everyone exasperated. They all began shouting at him to continue.

The guard recalled what had happened that year.

The moon was hidden, the wind was strong, and corpses lay everywhere. The stench of rotting bodies permeated the entire mass grave.

Under the dim light of the moon, which was half-hidden behind dark clouds, a figure dressed in white rummaged continuously through the pile of corpses, searching for something.

The guards, whose minds had been drowsy with fatigue, instantly sobered up. Terrified, they hid behind a tree without daring to make a sound, their faces deathly pale as they watched the man in white pull out the corpse they had just dragged there, still dressed in the Crown Prince’s python-embroidered robe, and haul it onto a cart.

“I saw someone take away the Former Crown Prince’s corpse,” one of them said.

The others immediately erupted in an uproar.

“What? Who was it?”

“Who would have the nerve to do something like that?”

The guard recalled the man’s face beneath the pale moonlight.

As an old soldier who had come from Liangzhou, how could he possibly fail to recognize that person?

But having blurted out this story while drunk was already a slip of the tongue. There was no way he would reveal that person’s name as well.

“Forget it, forget it. I’m not saying anything else. But I’m warning you all: pretend you never heard this. Don’t tell anyone!”

He had kept this matter buried very deeply; he had never even told his family. He did not know whether he had simply had too much to drink that day or whether the string of misfortunes he had suffered recently had left him so despondent that he desperately needed something to restore his authority and save face. Either way, he had ended up telling them.

Naturally, the other guards refused to let him stop just when the story had reached its most crucial point.

They pestered and cajoled him for a long while, but when it became clear that he still would not give in, they finally stopped pressing him, though they were deeply dissatisfied.

Even so, they were unwilling to remain in the Eastern Palace any longer.

Seeing that it was getting late, they gathered their belongings and walked toward the entrance one after another, preparing to return to camp.

The guard at the front yawned and leisurely pushed open the door.

At the entrance, a pair of dark, frigid eyes slowly turned toward him.

His hand froze in mid-motion.

A bone-chilling sensation spread through all four limbs.

“Your Majesty!”

Panicked cries came from behind him.

One after another, knees struck the ground.

The guard who had opened the door felt every hair on his body stand on end. Cold sweat instantly soaked his back. With a thud, he fell to his knees and knocked his head heavily against the ground.

“This subordinate pays his respects to Your Majesty.”

His voice was filled with terror and panic.

Wei Yi stared at the men before him. The cold, oppressive force radiating from his entire body was almost tangible, lowering the temperature of the air by several degrees.

Han Xu tightened his grip on the hilt of his blade. He had naturally heard everything they had said earlier, and a wave of tension rose in his heart.

After Sheng Zhaoning left the capital, he had not known where she had gone.

But after hearing these words, he already had a suspicion…

Wei Yi stood outside the door, his black eyes suppressing a powerful gloom.

His cold, heavy gaze swept downward and settled without a trace of warmth on the guard’s head. A possibility so horrifying it could drive a person mad slowly took shape in his mind.

“Repeat everything you were just saying,” Wei Yi ordered.

The men kneeling on the ground trembled, their heads lowered. None of them dared to speak.

The one kneeling at the very front was shaking especially violently, like a sieve. Cold sweat dripped from his forehead, splattering into several drops when it hit the ground.

Wei Yi angrily barked, “Speak!”

The guard’s vision went black with fright, and he nearly collapsed. How could he dare hide anything any longer? He immediately said, “This subordinate deserves death! After, after the Palace Coup that year, someone… someone took the Former Crown Prince’s remains from the mass graveyard…”

Wei Yi clenched his fists so tightly that his knuckles whitened. His sharp gaze fixed on the guard.

“Who?”

He had asked the most crucial question.

By now, the guard was utterly terrified. How could he possibly dare conceal anything?

Thinking of that face from his memories, he stammered, “It was… Divine Doctor Zhou.”