Aoyama

Chapter 381 Death with a Rod
Princess Yongchun was trapped here for decades, and eventually left Jingyang Palace in her own way.

The nuns of Jingyang Palace stood with their hands at their sides, silently watching Princess Yongchun's retreating figure, her words echoing in their ears, their faces also showing sorrow.

Among these women, only a minority, like Du Miao and Liu Pin'e, entered the palace for their own mistakes. Most were implicated because their fathers or brothers were convicted of crimes. They were forcibly sent to the palace by their fathers and brothers when they were young, and after their fathers and brothers were convicted and exiled, they could only wait to die in Jingyang Palace.

Every year, 40% of the people in Jingyang Palace die from cold and hunger, and 20% die from hanging.

Those who survived, even if they didn't go insane, were pretty much dead.

The Imperial Palace Supervisor frowned and immediately prepared to leave with his men: "Xuanzhen, it was you who secretly reported that someone was hiding witchcraft artifacts, which is why I led my men here to search. Now the situation is different from what you reported, and it is beyond repair. I will report what happened here to the Grand Chancellor for his decision."

Seeing that he was about to be abandoned, Xuanzhen simply used his whisk to press down on the shoulder of the Divine Palace Supervisor, bending half of his body: "Superior Supervisor, you want to run away with shit still on your butt?"

The Imperial Palace Supervisor winced in pain in his shoulder and roared, "How dare you, you vixen!"

Xuanzhen stepped forward and whispered, "Coward. I finally understand why that poisonous minister kept you stuck in the cold, desolate office of the Divine Palace for over ten years. The Imperial Concubine said she would help you plan your transfer to the Saltworks as supervisor, and she will definitely do it. Things haven't reached a dead end yet, so don't be so quick to switch sides. The witchcraft artifacts were brought in by your eunuch; do you think you can get away with it?"

The Imperial Palace Supervisor growled, "I have my own methods. You'd better worry about your own life first."

Xuanzhen sneered: "Once the arrow is released, there's no turning back. Now that we have all the evidence, we just need to kill Bai Li and Zhu Lingyun here with sticks. With no one to testify, what happens here afterwards will still be up to you and me to decide."

The Imperial Palace Supervisor turned to the nun of Jingyang Palace: "With so many people watching, can you really shut them all up?"

Xuanzhen glanced sideways at the female Taoist priest: "If they truly had guts, would they have been imprisoned for decades? Those with backbone would have hanged themselves long ago. Rest assured, if I can suppress them for thirty years, I can suppress them for another thirty. Once this is accomplished, the fact that Bai Li threw the yin-yang divination nine times at the First Silkworm Altar today will be a result of the Empress instigating witchcraft... How could the Ning Dynasty have an Empress who uses witchcraft?"

"Coke Chicken..."

"The Imperial Concubine has already sent people to keep Mengji in Kaifeng Prefecture; he cannot come to the capital."

The Imperial Palace Supervisor lowered his head and pondered.

Xuanzhen urged, "Make a decision quickly, and end this matter before Kunning Palace discovers it!"

When the Imperial Palace Supervisor looked up again, his face was already fierce: "Men, drag Zhu Lingyun and Zhu Baili to the courtyard and beat them to death."

Zhu Lingyun stepped back: "Xuanzhen, say something! Tell him..."

Xuanzhen held his whisk and said casually, "You have a witchcraft artifact hidden in your sleeve. You must have conspired with Zhu Baili to use witchcraft and poison."

Zhu Lingyun was terrified: "Xuanzhen, you've crossed the river and burned the bridge!"

A voice sounded behind her: "Fool, she never intended for you to live in the first place."

Zhu Lingyun suddenly turned her head and looked towards the corner of the back hall, where she saw Bai Li speaking.

Xuanzhen narrowed his eyes.

Bai Li's tears gathered at her chin and fell drop by drop, only to turn into white smoke in the air. She raised her hand to wipe away the tears from the corners of her eyes, and the tears also turned into white smoke in her palm, condensing into a lotus flower that appeared and disappeared above her head.

Bai Li continued, “Lingyun, what did they promise you? Help you leave the palace? But as long as you are alive, there is always the danger of this being exposed. Only when you are dead can they sleep soundly. From the beginning, only Xuanzhen was able to leave, which is why she dared to be so unscrupulous.”

As he spoke, Xuanzhen rushed forward and hurled his whisk at the white carp.

The female Taoist priests closed their eyes, unable to bear watching any longer, but instead of hearing the white carp's wailing, they heard Xuanzhen's soft exclamation.

Everyone opened their eyes again and saw that Bai Li was holding the whisk firmly in his left hand, and the domineering and surging whisk did not harm him in the slightest.

Xuanzhen's expression changed slightly: "What path do you cultivate?"

Bai Li did not answer, but simply raised her left hand and suddenly clenched her five fingers into a fist.

The next moment, all the hairpins on the female Taoist priests' heads suddenly detached from their hair buns and shot towards Xuanzhen like flying needles. In an instant, the hair of the female Taoist priests and eunuchs fell into disarray, and dozens of hairpins came whistling towards them.

Xuanzhen had no choice but to release her whisk and retreat. The hairpin collided where she had been standing, the silver and the wooden ones twisting and breaking together before falling to the ground.

"Innate?" Xuanzhen was taken aback: "What path did you cultivate? How did you leap to the peak of the Innate realm in such a short time?"

Little did she know that when Bai Li severed her desires, she had already reached the acquired stage; now, by severing her hatred, she had already entered the innate stage.

This is the supreme state of detachment from emotions, the way of the supreme.

The Imperial Palace Supervisor was about to turn and leave again.

Xuanzhen turned to the Divine Palace Supervisor and whispered, "She's only at the Innate Realm. She's just advanced to the Innate Realm, her cultivation is unstable, and she'll soon be exhausted. We can kill her!"

The Imperial Palace Supervisor angrily retorted, "You're only at the Innate Realm!"

Xuanzhen said sternly, "With so many people here, we can wear her down to death. If you don't kill her, you will die."

Just as the Imperial Palace Supervisor was hesitating, Bai Li threw the whisk on the ground, and it jingled along with the hairpin.

She raised her hand again, and clenched her fist once more.

Suddenly, the lanterns in the hands of the eunuchs in the back hall were released and pushed towards Xuanzhen.

Xuanzhen flew into the courtyard, and the lanterns inside the house were smashed into empty air.

She looked up, but Bai Li showed no disappointment; her eyes were calm.

The candlelight inside the lantern burned away the paper and bamboo strips, and the flames quickly spread, igniting a raging fire. The flames reached the windows, instantly reducing the white paper windows to ashes, and the firelight shot into the sky within the Forbidden City.

The Imperial Palace Supervisor cried out, "Oh no! She's going to make a big fuss about this!"

The female Taoist priests fled from the back hall. Xuanzhen stared at Baili, intending to kill her when she escaped, but Baili stood quietly in front of the raging fire, watching her.

As the sea of ​​fire swept towards the white carp, the white carp suddenly opened her clenched fist, and the flames were dispersed and swirled around her, as if transforming into a yin-yang symbol with her at its center.

Bai Li calmly said, "If you want to kill me, come in yourself."

Just then, the voice of Jie Fanwei came from outside Jingyang Palace: "Fire has broken out! Quickly, fetch the water bags!"

The Imperial Palace Supervisor finally couldn't contain himself any longer. He led the little eunuch and turned to run out of Jingyang Palace. As he ran, he kept pressing the black gauze hat on his head, looking extremely disheveled.

Xuanzhen sneered, "You're hopeless."

Standing amidst the sea of ​​fire, Bai Li softly asked, "Xuanzhen, in whose heart does the demon reside?"

"Who doesn't have demons in their heart? It's not your place to judge me," Xuanzhen said, giving Baili one last deep look before leaving everyone behind and heading towards Jingguanzhai.

As Xuanzhen passed the statues of the Three Pure Ones in the main hall, he looked up at the majestic and seated Dao Ancestor, swept over the offerings on the offering table, and then walked into the depths of the main hall.

She arrived at her residence and opened the closet.

On the empty first shelf of the cabinet, there was a faded red ribbon and three feet of white silk.

Xuanzhen tied the red ribbon she wore when she entered the palace at the age of eighteen into her gray hair, and took out three feet of white silk from the cabinet, threw it onto the roof beam and tied a knot.

She took out a white porcelain bottle from her bosom, inside which was the reward she had received in exchange for the lives of Zhu Lingyun and others: regardless of whether the matter succeeded or not today, someone would help her fake her death and escape.

She was going to "die." That's why she dared to frame someone, and that's why she didn't care if things were exposed. As for the lives of the eunuchs in the Divine Palace Bureau, and the lives of everyone in Jingyang Palace, she didn't care.

Xuanzhen pulled out the stopper from the porcelain bottle and drank the clear liquid inside in one gulp.

She stood on the small table of the embroidered couch, put the white silk around her neck with both hands, and kicked the table off the couch.

Xuanzhen hung from the roof beam without struggling. She looked at the calligraphy hanging opposite her, which read "Observe emptiness as emptiness" from the "Chang Qing Jing Jing" (a Buddhist scripture).

Xuanzhen pondered slowly, what exactly is emptiness? However, what emptiness is seems unimportant now; to live, even if it's dirty, one must still live; to go out, even if it's dirty, one must still go out.

Just then, she felt something flowing from her eyes, like tears or blood. She tried to raise her hand to wipe it away, but she couldn't lift it.

Blood and tears streamed down her cheeks, staining the white silk ribbon red.

It turns out this wasn't a drug to fake death and escape, but a real poison.

Xuanzhen gave a silent, bitter laugh. She didn't want anyone else to live, and no one wanted her to live either; it was all a lie.

She was so eager to get out that she no longer wanted to distinguish between truth and falsehood.

It's fake if it's fake.

Freed.

……

……

Xuanzhen left, and Baili walked out of the back hall.

She saw Jie Fanwei and a young eunuch carrying buckets of water and running into Jingyang Palace, pouring buckets of water onto the fire, but the fire was too big to be extinguished.

Bai Li brushed past the fire-fighting guards, picked up Princess Yongchun's body, and walked away.

Zhu Lingyun stood beside her, trying her best to explain: "Sister, Xuanzhen forced me to do it..."

Bai Li turned to stare at her, and Zhu Lingyun, seeing her deep gaze, involuntarily stepped back.

“Lingyun, I gave you three chances. The first time you became Xuanyun, the second time you helped Xuanzhen burn my Qingci, and the third time you helped Xuanzhen testify and framed me for the witchcraft incident.”

Zhu Lingyun looked terrified: "No, no, no..."

Bai Li ignored her and went to the gate of Jingyang Palace on his own, where he sat down on the stone steps with Princess Yongchun in his arms.

People kept rushing into Jingyang Palace past her and then rushing out again. She didn't look back even once more, as if the raging fire and cries for help were no longer connected to her.

Just then, a figure swept across the palace wall, leaping across the wall between Yonghe Palace and Jingyang Palace in a single step. This figure seemed to have been hiding in Yonghe Palace all along.

Bai Li looked up and saw a thin, small figure wearing a wooden mask, like a monkey, lightly landing in the backyard of Jingyang Palace.

The Jiefanwei shouted in unison: "Master Baohou."

A woman's voice came from Bao Hou's throat: "Get out of the way!"

In an instant, he raised his sleeve and brushed it across his face, transforming the wooden mask into a white face mask. The mask was lightly powdered with lead powder, and the lips were dotted with coral glaze. He painted transparent water patterns on his left cheek, with fine silver lines embedded in the center, as if a snake were swimming across his face.

The Snake Fairy Weeps for the Pearl.

The monkey opened its mouth, and suddenly a huge wave surged out, extinguishing the fire in Jingyang Palace in an instant.

Before Jiefanwei could thank him, Baohou raised his sleeve and wiped his face again, changing back into his wooden mask. He leaped onto the palace wall, arriving and departing in a hurry, bounding towards Jiefanlou.

As Bai Li watched the other person's departing figure, she suddenly heard footsteps approaching from afar.

She turned her head and saw the Empress running towards her, lifting her wide skirt, followed by Aunt Yuan Jin and palace maids.

The Empress came to Bai Li, knelt down and hugged her: "It's good that you're alright, it's good that you're alright."

Yuan Jin gave a wink to the maid beside her, and two maids immediately entered Jingyang Palace. A moment later, they reported: "Your Majesty, the fire has been extinguished by Lord Baohou. Xuanzhen hanged himself and is no longer alive."

The Empress looked down at the white carp: "What has happened here?"

Bai Li was silent for a moment: "Consort Xue bribed Xuanzhen to accuse me of using witchcraft to cast the divination blocks nine times..."

Before he could finish speaking, footsteps echoed along the palace path.

The Empress whispered to Yuan Jin, "Twist Xuanzhen's neck."

Yuan Jin entered Jingyang Palace, and only then did the Empress turn her head to look at him.

Between the dark red palace walls, dozens of guards carrying palace lanterns came forward. Each of them carried a young eunuch who had fainted. The one in the lead wore a bright red python robe, with a blue python slithering from his back to his chest.

Wu Xiu.

Behind Wu Xiu, Lin Chaoqing carried the unconscious Imperial Palace Supervisor.

Wu Xiu bowed before the Empress and said, “Your Majesty, I have investigated and found that Xuanzhen and Zhu Lingyun, the two stewards of Jingyang Palace, were jealous of Zhu Baili. Therefore, they lied to the Director of the Divine Palace Administration, claiming that someone was secretly possessing witchcraft artifacts, thus framing him. The Director of the Divine Palace Administration is responsible for negligence, and I will immediately send him to the Imperial Prison.”

The Empress stood up and looked directly at Wu Xiu: "No wonder they acted so recklessly; it turns out they have a powerful figure backing them up."

Wu Xiu bowed even lower: "Who is the important person Your Majesty is referring to? If there is any evidence, this eunuch will go and arrest him immediately."

After a long silence, the Empress smiled and said, "No need, I have my own plans. This Jingyang Palace is no longer suitable for living. From today onwards, Zhu Baili will move to my Kunning Palace."

Wu Xiu straightened up and said sincerely, "Your Majesty, you mustn't. Zhu Baili is the daughter of a disgraced official. She is here in Jingyang Palace to cultivate and atone for her father's sins, as ordered by His Majesty. How can she leave? Besides, only the rear hall of Jingyang Palace was burned down. The main hall, Jingguanzhai, and Gujianzhai are unaffected. She can live in Jingguanzhai and take charge of all matters in Jingyang Palace."

The Empress stared intently at Wu Xiu, but Wu Xiu did not look away at all. Yuan Jin came out of Jingyang Palace and stood behind the Empress, staring straight at Wu Xiu, but Wu Xiu still did not look away.

Suddenly, Bai Li said softly, "Your Majesty, I will stay in Jingyang Palace. If you wish to see me, please send a maid to find me."

Wu Xiu laughed: "Very good. There is one more thing. Zhu Lingyun was also involved in the framing. How does Your Majesty intend to deal with her?"

The Empress looked at Bai Li and said softly, "She is your sister, it's up to you to decide."

Yuan Jin whispered to the Empress, "Your Majesty, Zhu Lingyun cannot be allowed to live. What if the Princess is too soft-hearted..."

The Empress said calmly, "It's alright. How can a delicate flower bloom in the mud?"

Everyone waited for Bai Li to make a decision. Bai Li slowly stood up and stood quietly in the night breeze, pondering for a long time. It was as if she wanted to cut off every bit of weakness in herself and learn how to live well in this turbid world, to live until the day they met again.

Wu Xiu looked at the white carp: "How do you decide?"

The white carp stood in the wind, looking at the night sky: "Let him be beaten to death."

(End of this chapter)