After saving the Empress, I became the top scholar in the imperial examination.

"We've found...we've found Ning Baixuan..."

After the announcement, a eunuch wearing a red-tasseled hat and dark blue clothes rushed into the emperor's bedroom and shouted the announcement at the top of his lungs.

The woman in the wheelchair suddenly turned her head, and her arms, which were resting on the armrests, involuntarily exerted some force, causing the nanmu wood armrests to creak.

Her eyes reddened slightly, and she spoke in a short, abrupt voice before the emperor:

"Where?"

With a thud, the pale-faced eunuch hurriedly knelt down, kowtowing repeatedly, his voice trembling as he said:

"I...I report to the Emperor, I report to the Princess Consort, Ning...Ning...Bai Xuan...he...he's dead!"

The news came out of the eunuch's mouth in an extremely sudden way.

The woman in the wheelchair suddenly turned deathly pale, and the maid who was pushing the wheelchair opened her mouth wide and her body turned ice-cold in an instant.

Grand Councilor Ortai turned around, raised his eyebrows, and angrily said:

"Stop talking nonsense!"

"Didn't those traitors from the Heavenly Principle Sect break into Prince Duan's residence and kidnap him? How could he suddenly die?"

The deputy chief eunuch, wearing a fifth-rank official hat with a peacock feather, whose position in the inner court was actually quite high, cried out in a trembling voice:

"Your Majesty, I sent men to search around the Prince Duan's residence, following the bloodstains and carriage tracks. They escaped in a carriage. After turning into Tongjia Hutong, they headed south towards Zhengyang Gate..."

…………

"The carriage that picked me up from Prince Duan's residence took back the clothes I had changed out of?"

"Yes. Lord Lu's clothes were burned. We gave the leader's clothes to someone else, and had her and the coachman go back to Tongjia Hutong from that restaurant, and then to Zhengyangmen... They will spill the water you and Lord Lu used to wash your wounds in the carriage on the road. Even the greyhounds won't be able to tell the difference, and they will just be led to Zhengyangmen."

"...How did they escape?"

"An experienced horse knows the way; the coachman will jump out of the carriage when we pass Shijia Alley. She, now dressed as the cult leader, will continue to pretend to drive. At this point, she will deliberately attract the attention of some soldiers, and after they catch up, she will continue running towards the moat west of Zhengyang Gate..."

"Upon reaching the moat, she would smash the wine in the carriage and set it on fire. When the soldiers caught up, she would fight them for a while, then let the fire burn her clothes, and finally, she and the carriage would fall into the moat… She wore fire-resistant cloth on the inside of her clothes, so it wouldn't catch fire immediately…"

"She's a good swimmer; she can dive upstream and use the cover of night to reach the shore... We've tried it to prevent any mishaps..."

After changing into a Taoist robe, tying his hair up and hiding it in his hat, shaving his sideburns and applying powder to disguise himself, Ning Nan asked Xu Xiyin some questions.

Upon hearing the plan devised by the other party and Master Lu, he frowned and said:

How could the soldiers chasing "me" believe that "I" am dead?

Even if the person who was willing to impersonate him was a suicide soldier, willing to die in his place and fall into the water.

But this won't work either.

At such times, Emperor Yongzheng and the Qing court would certainly demand to see the person alive or dead.

Unless the body is seen, one will never conclude that the person is dead.

Even if they found the body, if the face was disfigured, they would most likely assume that he had faked his death and escaped. They would not open the city gate, but would first clear out the Tianli Sect and then continue searching.

Xu Xiyin said:

"At the bottom of that river, we had placed a corpse that resembled the cult leader beforehand, with burns on its face. We also nailed an iron chain to one of the corpse's feet underwater. Inside the carriage, we nailed in many iron bars to increase its weight."

"After the carriage falls in, it will land around the corpse, roughly creating the illusion that the corpse was underwater and crushed by the carriage..."

"Underwater visibility is poor. Even the best swimmers can only touch the carriage and the bodies when they go into the water to search and salvage. They can hardly pull them up..."

Ning Nan frowned and said:

"If we can't retrieve it, neither Yongzheng nor Mu Shu will believe I'm dead."

"What the cult leader says is absolutely right."

Xu Xiyin nodded in agreement:

"Therefore... we must leave the capital before the body is completely recovered."

Xu Xiyin's voice was somewhat uneasy. For some reason, Su Su was unable to enter the Prince Duan's mansion, so she handed their plan over to the sect leader.

She is not the cult leader, after all.

There was no way for one person to single-handedly manage to evacuate the entire Southern Kingdom delegation of several hundred people from the capital overnight.

If she and Chen San hadn't made such a grave mistake by not informing the leader that the Left Protector was actually the Third Prince of the Qing Dynasty, the leader wouldn't have ended up alone without escaping.

She admitted that her knowledge was limited, but if the cult leader didn't fake his death, it would be extremely difficult for her to escape.

This plan was hastily devised. Although the old cult leader praised her highly, he didn't know how the new cult leader would evaluate her.

Ning Nan shook his head and said, "Yongzheng would not open the city gates before the bodies were recovered."

Upon hearing this, Xu Xiyin realized that the cult leader might not yet know a certain piece of news, so she quickly said:

"Today is different... Today... Today at Mao Shi (5-7 AM), Fuchengmen in the west will open..."

"Fuchengmen?" He frowned.

"The birth mother of the Seventeenth Princess... Consort Nian... passed away a few days ago... Today is the day her coffin will be laid to rest at Dinghui Temple outside Fuchengmen."

Consort Nian… Ning Nan’s expression froze for a moment, then he realized something, and his pupils suddenly shrank… The princess’s birth mother?

Xu Xiyin said:

The old leader told his subordinates, "Don't worry, given Yinzhen's character, even if Ning Baixuan is suspected of being submerged in the water and his body hasn't been recovered, or even if Ning Baixuan escapes into the inner city, he still won't delay the mourning period for Consort Nian. Otherwise," the old leader smiled and continued, "he wouldn't be Yinzhen."

The old leader also said: "Yinzhen's younger brothers are all alive... He is most afraid of people laughing at him..."

…………

"Father,"

Tang Caifeng, sitting in her wheelchair, said with a deathly pale face:

"Daughter-in-law...daughter-in-law wants to go see him now, to see if my ungrateful, disloyal younger brother is alive or dead...at dawn...before dawn, daughter-in-law will definitely put on her formal attire and go to Changchun Garden to fulfill her filial duty to Consort Dunsu on behalf of Prince Duan..."

Father, at the hour of Mao (5-7 AM)... at the hour of Mao, the coffin of the Imperial Noble Consort Dunsu will be carried out of the city.

After being stabbed in the chest by a damned old eunuch, Yongzheng's lips lost their color, but his mind became increasingly clear and sharp.

He neither agreed nor disagreed with his daughter-in-law's words, only saying:

"Has Ning Baixuan's body been recovered?"

"Your Majesty!" the kneeling eunuch said, "This servant has already sent men to retrieve the body and has found it. The moat is too deep. This servant has arranged for bamboo poles to be erected there and is preparing ropes."

Ortai bowed and said:

"Your Majesty, I propose that we first shut off the sluice gates of the moat outside the city to prevent the river from carrying the corpses."

"Yes." Yongzheng nodded.

Ortai immediately accepted the order and strode out to give the command outside the door.

Su Peisheng hesitated for a moment, then said, "Your Majesty, preparations at Changchun Garden are complete... It depends on Your Majesty..."

He originally intended to say, "Let's see if Your Majesty wishes to postpone this for a while, until the Heavenly Principle Sect traitors are completely eradicated and Ning Baixuan's body is recovered to verify his identity."

But after glancing at the Emperor's somewhat cold gaze, the fourth-rank chief eunuch naturally changed his tune:

"Should we issue an imperial edict stating that all the villains have been eliminated, and that Prince Yunti, Prince Yuntang, Prince Yi, and other princes and ministers should rest assured in sending off the coffin of Imperial Noble Consort Dunsu?"