Returning after a three-year escape from death, the tyrant has turned evil.

Chapter 277 The Fan Has a Problem

Her hand was forcibly grabbed by Jiang Lanye, rendering her unable to move, so she had no choice but to give up.

Song Yi's brows remained furrowed. She felt that her current state had slightly affected her memory and made her mentally sluggish.

As if shrouded in a layer of fog, she tried desperately to clear it, but no matter what she did, she couldn't escape this fog.

Jiang Lanye placed a kiss on her smooth forehead and said softly, "Alright, don't force yourself if you can't figure it out. I will definitely find a way to find that poison."

Song Yi nodded dejectedly.

She picked up the book on the table, and even though she couldn't remember the contents of the previous pages, she stubbornly insisted on starting from the folded pages and reading onwards.

Seeing this, Jiang Lanye gently stroked her head, his eyes swirling with emotion.

That palace maid died so easily; it was truly too good for her.

If we can arrest her and bring her to the Department of Strict Punishment, she will surely reveal the real culprit under severe torture.

Song Yi became sleepy again after a short while. A palace maid brought in the prepared medicine to help with pregnancy. After drinking it, she became drowsy again and sat on Jiang Lanye's lap, nodding repeatedly.

Jiang Lanye immediately grabbed her chin: "Don't sleep yet, hold on a little longer, okay?"

The first two times, Song Yi lost her memory of what happened before she fell asleep after waking up, which made Jiang Lanye very uneasy.

At the very least, preventing her from sleeping should be the right thing to do.

Song Yi barely managed to wake up, straining to keep her eyes open. She simply reached out and pulled her eyelids shut with both hands, her voice muffled: "Jiang Lanye, if I fall asleep again, just wake me up."

Do you think I would hit you?

She smiled and said, "No, not at all."

She got off Jiang Lanye: "Or I'll walk around a couple of times. Sitting still makes me sleepier. I can use this time to think carefully about the suspicious things I've come into contact with."

Jiang Lanye watched her for a while and found that she walked steadily, walking around the hall again and again without any strange reactions, so he was finally able to relax.

He had just turned his gaze to the memorial when he lost all interest in reading it.

What exactly is a chronic poison?
After a while, Song Yi's footsteps suddenly stopped.

Jiang Lanye frowned, then suddenly looked up and saw her standing there blankly, swaying slightly, clearly about to fall at any moment.

He abruptly put down his pen, and without even getting up to walk around the table, he stepped directly onto the memorial he had just read, braced himself against the edge of the table with one hand, and quickly flipped it over.

Jiang Lanye rushed over and caught her just as she was about to fall, his voice tight: "What's wrong?"

Song Yi slumped weakly against him, saying, "I'm so tired, I want to sleep for a while."

Jiang Lanye's face was grim.

He hadn't expected that keeping Song Yi from sleeping would almost cause her to fall into a deep sleep.

"Song Yi, wake up and look at me."

Song Yi opened her eyes and looked at Jiang Lanye. She found his eyes filled with worry and wanted to say a few words of comfort, but her own mind was in a mess and she couldn't even organize her thoughts.

Jiang Lanye helped her sit on a stool nearby. Song Yi said in a low voice, "After walking around twice, it's a bit hot."

He immediately got up and went to find the fan that Song Yi had just used.

The moment Jiang Lanye held the fan in his hand, he froze. A fan?

He took it and asked in a deep voice, "Did you take this fan with you when you went out yesterday?"

Song Yi was taken aback, and the confusion she had felt earlier vanished in an instant: "I remember now."

"what?"

"Yesterday I used this fan to fan myself, and then, by the lake, I sat on a stone bench and while fanning myself, I could faintly smell a fragrance. I always thought it was the fragrance of lotus flowers."

Jiang Lanye carefully examined the round fan.

In summer, everyone has a fan in their hand; it's the most common thing. So for a moment, no one thought that the problem might lie with the fan.

Jiang Lanye tentatively sniffed it, and sure enough, there was a faint fragrance.

However, it was normal for the fans of the imperial concubines to have a fragrance.

He placed the fan on the table and immediately ordered someone to bring the two imperial physicians back.

The two imperial physicians had only been gone a short while when, unexpectedly, something suspicious was discovered so quickly at Qingliang Palace.

Xi Chun followed them inside and saw that the problem was with the round fan, and immediately felt a little guilty.

This fan was the one she held in her hand yesterday—an umbrella and a round fan—but she hadn't thought about it in any particular way.

The imperial physician carefully took the fan, sniffed it under his nose, his expression somewhat solemn, and then handed it to the imperial physician next to him.

After both of them smelled it, they both said that the fragrance was neither floral nor the scent of cosmetics, and that it was very strange.

Song Yi was now completely jolted awake and offered a conjecture:
"Is it possible that... you see this fan is double-sided, with different patterns on each side? At first, I thought it was a single-sided double embroidery, but now it seems to be made of double-layered fabric, meaning there might be something mixed in between."

The imperial physician immediately took out a silver needle from his medicine box, examined it carefully for a moment, and then suddenly used the silver needle to pry open the fan-shaped interlayer.

Immediately afterwards, he pinched out a few almost invisible brown powder particles between his fingertips.

Song Yi gasped, while Jiang Lanye's expression turned unusually cold.

The imperial physician examined the fan carefully for a long time, his expression grave: "Your Majesty, this is a mixture of datura pollen and cnidium monnieri, dried and then hidden in the silk lining. Summer is already hot, and with the heat rising, this fan, when gently waved by someone, will become even hotter."

He made a fanning motion, "and the medicinal properties slowly seep out. This thing has a faint, pleasant fragrance, so Your Highness can smell a strange odor."

"This substance is not fatal, but prolonged exposure can cause drowsiness and forgetfulness. Pregnant women should not be exposed to it for extended periods." The words abruptly ended.

Xichun was already kneeling on the ground: "Your Majesty, this fan was given by the Imperial Household Department. All the palaces have them. I never thought that such a small fan would be poisoned. If I had known, I would never have let Your Highness touch this fan yesterday."

Song Yi immediately helped her up: "Xichun, this is not your fault. We are in the open, while the malicious ones are in the dark. It's impossible to guard against them all. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes."

Xi Chun looked at Song Yi with some unease, lowered her eyes and said softly, "Fortunately, it was discovered in time. I don't even want to think about what would have happened if this fan had been with Your Highness for so long."

Jiang Lanye's face was gloomy: "What a fine thing it is that the Imperial Household Department took this out. I hereby issue an imperial decree that all palace servants responsible for making and embroidering these round fans should be sent to the Department of Strict Punishments."

"Yes."

The fan was temporarily handed over to the imperial physician to take back. Song Yi was only a little over a month pregnant, so she couldn't just take medicine casually. They could only wait a few days for her body to expel the slow-acting toxins, and then she would be fine.

(End of this chapter)