Discuss with you

Chapter 359 Checkers
"I see..." Yan Daoxin stopped and looked down at the handkerchief he was holding. His expression was a little conflicted. He probably originally planned to take it back and study it further, but after hearing Zhu Yu's words, he realized that there was indeed such a hidden danger. He scratched his head and said, "Then this thing is really hard to hide."

After Chang'e saw the sun, it turned as black as ink, and water couldn't dissolve it. It also carried its own peculiar smell... It looks like I can only throw it into the outhouse!
But... it's such a waste to have obtained something like this, it would be a shame to just turn it to ashes..."

“There will be other opportunities,” Lu Qing said to him.

Yan Daoxin glanced at him, raised her eyebrows slightly, pursed her lips and nodded, patting her chest with a pained expression: "Alright, I know, I'll go to the toilet now!"

Lu Qing escorted Yan Daoxin to the door, watched him go downstairs to the outhouse, and then closed the door again. Seeing Zhu Yu sitting at the table with her chin resting on her hand and her brows furrowed, Lu Qing went over and gently rubbed her brows twice: "Why is my Chief Secretary Yu so worried?"

"On the day of your wedding, I thought it was Duke Yan targeting you, but later I found out that someone was setting a trap to lure the farmers of Jin Kingdom to plant flowers and plants and abandon the farmland, so that when the harvest was bad, it would cause internal strife."

What started as an investigation into the Ghost Temple case has unexpectedly led to the discovery of Chiyu, a being from a foreign land who should not have appeared in the world.

Immediately afterwards, General Cao's nephew was framed, and the real murderer was a carefully trained assassin.

Later, evil spirits were again active in Situ Jing's Imperial Guard camp, which also ended with the suicide of the soldiers.

And the fragrance I've smelled many times, both inside and outside the palace..."

Zhu Yu murmured to Lu Qing, "I feel like I'm walking along a rope. I thought I'd find out what the rope was tied to before I got very far, but I'm getting further and further away... Now, it feels like it's getting darker and darker, and I still can't seem to find the end of the rope..."

This feeling is really unsettling.

Zhu Yu felt extremely bewildered at this moment, as if a lead weight was pressing down on his heart, making it heavy, suffocating, and hard to breathe.

She never doubted her own abilities and skills, whether in the past or in this new world, and her achievements are still verifiable.

But in the past, no matter how complicated or difficult the corpse was, no matter what kind of methods were needed to confirm and examine it, she was ultimately just an outsider, someone who only needed to provide professional methods and draw conclusions from the sidelines.

The difference between being an outsider and being involved is enormous.

“This time, my opinion is a little different from yours.” Lu Qing didn’t know if he genuinely thought so or if he wanted to comfort Zhu Yu. He took Zhu Yu’s hand and held it in his own. “Although we can’t be sure who this rope is tied to right now, it’s clear where this rope will ultimately lead now that we’ve reached this point. And its purpose doesn’t seem hard to guess.”

"Tell me," I said, "the fragrance of that Chang'e's intoxication is indeed similar to the dress the old steward brought earlier, isn't it?"

Zhu Yu was quite certain about the matter, but out of caution, she thought about it for a moment before nodding: "That's right."

"Does the fragrance on that dress have any similarity to the one I smelled in Qingshui County before?" Lu Qing asked again.

Zhu Yu was stunned for a moment. She had experienced so much lately that she almost forgot about the incense that Dou Dajiang used to help the little mute girl get revenge in Qingshui County.

The reason she remembered the Southern Study and the fragrance on that young eunuch was ultimately because it came from the incense with the scent of burning jade that Dou Dajiang had used in Qingshui County! Upon careful recollection, the incense that Dou Dajiang used in the Ghost Temple was not exactly the same as the one she had smelled in the palace, and the fragrance she had smelled on the Duke of Yan was also different from the one on the fabric that the old steward had brought yesterday.

The fragrance on the fabric was indistinguishable from the scent of Chang'e's Intoxication.

It was these subtle changes, each one almost the exact same, that made her nearly forget the fragrance she had smelled in the palace.

However, now that Lu Qing has reminded him, Zhu Yu has realized that although the various scents that have left an impression on him over the years have all changed, they are all based on the same principle and have some common thread.

Wouldn't that mean...

Her expression hardened, and she felt a chill run down her spine.

Seeing that Zhu Yu's expression had changed, Lu Qing knew that she had finally understood, so he asked again, "Your nose is the most sensitive. In all the times you've met Lu Zhang, have you ever smelled a similar scent on him?"

Zhu Yu recalled for a moment and shook his head: "No, before, in the capital, on the day when General Cao visited him at his residence, he was with the Duke of Yan, and it seemed that he had a faint trace of it on him, but it wasn't serious."

The next time I encountered him near the outskirts of Shuo Kingdom, he didn't have any similar fragrance at all.

Lu Qing lowered his eyes and pondered: "Lu Zhang has admired the style of literati since childhood. He once hoped that one day he could measure the great rivers and mountains of the world with his own two feet, and draw out the beautiful scenery along the way to be passed down for generations."

Although the idea was later extinguished by the Duke of Yan, and he probably gave up on it long ago, he has never been particularly interested in incense over the years. Instead, he prefers to pursue the fragrance of books, paper, and ink.

I remember he once spent a lot of money to hire the most famous spice shop in the capital to create a scent that only exists in a library filled with many books, but that kind of scent cannot be created by spices, so he had to give up in the end.

As a result, he was secretly admired by the elite families in the capital for his refined tastes.

He himself probably didn't know about this, but I heard quite a bit about it from Yunyin Pavilion.

"So, the reason he had that illness was because of his close relationship with the Duke of Yan, or because he picked it up when he went to the palace to meet the emperor?" Zhu Yu understood what Lu Qing meant by this. "He wasn't involved?"

“We’re all in the game now, and no one can escape.” Lu Qing smiled as he corrected Zhu Yu. “It just seems that some people have always considered themselves to be the players in control of the situation, but in reality, we’re all the same, just pieces on this chessboard.”

Zhu Yu frowned and pondered for a moment, then smiled somewhat sarcastically: "I originally thought that what we were facing was a game of chess, with the Chu River and Han Border, where soldiers would come and generals would defend."

Now it seems more like a game of checkers.

"Checkers?" Lu Qing looked at her curiously. "What is this?"