My father ordered me to kill the emperor, but His Majesty bestowed a princess upon me instead.

The phrase "His Majesty already knows" has been used in the palace for many years. I used it too. The first time I entered the Censorate, a eunuch said, "His Majesty already knows," and everyone in the room automatically bowed slightly. Back then, no one asked: Know what? When did His Majesty know? Who heard it with their own ears? Now they've started asking.

It's annoying. But it's also very useful. Before the late Empress received the third dose for the second time, the "Imperial Knowledge" document passed through three people. Feng Xi relayed the route. Wei Zhi recorded the time. Zhao Qi received the imperial edict in the pharmacy. The problem is, Feng happy had been dead for eleven years, Wei Zhi had appeared at least twice, and Zhao Qi had been trapped in the dead person's position even earlier.

If we only look at the names, this line of inquiry will never end. We'll check who received the imperial copper pipe that day. The copper pipe isn't valuable, but we have to register it because we're afraid someone might use it to eavesdrop. On the seventh day of the eighth month of the fourteenth year of Chengxi, the register reads: "One imperial communication pipe borrowed from Changning Palace, borrower: Feng happy."

The return section was empty. A copper pipe, never returned. Eleven years later, it was finally more useful than the names of three dead men. It wasn't in the old artifact storehouse. Nor in Changning Palace. Finally, half of it was found hidden in a secret passage in the former Empress's sleeping quarters. The other half had been sawed off.

The inside of the copper tube was coated with a thick layer of medicinal oil. The physician explained that the oil wasn't for treating illness, but for soothing the throat. It was only used by people who spoke for long periods. Upon seeing this, Zhaoyue immediately said, "Your Majesty doesn't need this." Even when the late Empress had a sore throat during her illness, she only drank warm water and disliked the taste of the medicinal oil.

So this pipe was used by others for a long time afterward. Ah-he stood beside him, watching for a long time. "A sound chamber," he said. "Where is the sound chamber?" "Behind the old wall." We dismantled the partition wall, and sure enough, there was another narrow room behind it, only big enough for one person to sit in.

There were no windows. A stool. A kettle. Two copper holes in the wall. One led to the inner palace of Changning Palace. The other to the Imperial Records Room. Ah Liu went in and sat for a while, then came out with a green face. "Young Master." "What's wrong?" "I heard people walking inside, but I don't know which way they came from."

"So?" "I won't do it a second time." Dozens of practice sheets were still pressed against the corner. They were all short phrases: "Understood." "Approved." "Do as instructed." "We'll discuss it again tomorrow." "Do not disturb." The last sheet had only one sentence: "Treatment will proceed as planned." The handwriting wasn't that of the emperor.

The paper came from the Imperial Records Office. I looked at Ah-He. "You've practiced?" He shook his head. "That generation wasn't me." "Can you tell who it is?" "No." "Why?" "The awakened certificates don't see each other." It's always like this. After people are separated, they don't even know each other.

Only one spot remained. On the day the late Empress announced the discontinuation of the medication, Zhaoyue delivered the discontinuation order to the pharmacy, which signed for it. That evening, someone in the imperial chamber spoke in the Emperor's ailing voice, saying, "The treatment will continue as planned." The record room simply noted, "The Emperor is aware of this."

The next day, the third dose continued. The emperor stared at the practice paper. "Where was I that night?" Du Cheng flipped through the old duty file. "Discussing border provisions at the Western Garden." "Did you return to Changning Palace?" "Not after 7 PM." "Who can prove it?" "Eleven years ago, not enough living evidence."

The emperor did not have anyone fill in the blanks. He only wrote: "There is currently no evidence to prove that Xiao Jingheng himself issued the oral edict to continue the third dose that night. Nor can we conclude that he absolutely did not say it. At least one thing is certain. The words that came from the sound chamber that night are insufficient to constitute an imperial edict."

It was even less enough to override the "stop" order already left by the late Empress. "Then who administered the second dose?" Xiao Lingyi asked. No one knew. But for the first time, we narrowed down the question. It wasn't "who killed the late Empress." Rather: who allowed the second and third doses to enter after she said stop?

Bai Zhi re-examined the old records of the acupuncture box. The third dose was prepared in three tubes in total. The first tube was explicitly approved by the late Empress. The pharmacy's records for the second and third tubes stated "for continued use before the Emperor." If the imperial edict could not be upheld, these two tubes would lose their most important source of authorization.

"Where's the medicine?" I asked. "Destroyed long ago." "Where's the box?" "An abandoned medicine cabinet." "Who checked it?" Bai Zhi didn't answer. Because there were five pinholes on the examination record. He Xiu. Or someone who followed He Xiu's rules. That night, we sent He Xiu a question sheet.

I only ask three things. Where is the third injection kit? What did she witness firsthand? What did she only hear about from others?

The reply arrived the next morning. He Xiu's first sentence read: "The needle case is genuine." The second sentence was written much later: "The medicine is not." The Emperor finished reading and looked up. "Open the cabinet," I said. "Narrow the scope first." His eye twitched. "Shen An."

"Your Majesty, I am here." "You're really annoying right now." "I know." "Knowing but not changing?" I thought for a moment. "This can be written into Your Majesty's living record later." The Emperor threw a pen at me. I dodged it. Ah Liu whispered outside the door, "He's perfectly lucid."

This time, the emperor heard it.

The old medicine cabinet was buried in the backyard of the Imperial Medical Academy. Calling it a cabinet was a stretch; it was more like a stone well. Every month, discarded needles, broken bowls, incomplete prescriptions, and empty medicine tubes were thrown in, then covered with a layer of lime. The layer from eleven years ago was on the third layer. This time, the emperor's document for opening the cabinet was written very narrowly.

Open only the third level. Only search for the needle box, needle sheath, and medicine tubes related to the late Empress's third dose of medicine in the fourteenth year of the Chengxi reign. Leave the upper and lower levels untouched. The Imperial Medical Academy, the Censorate, the Court of Imperial Clan Affairs, and former palace maids of the late Empress each stand on one side. After reading the document, A-Liu whispered to me, "Is His Majesty particularly afraid of writing even a single extra word now?"

"Afraid we'd ask." "Weren't you afraid before?" "Fewer people asked before." Before opening the cabinet, Bai Zhi had someone take rubbings of all the lime cracks on all four sides. It wasn't unnecessary. Once something like this has been buried for ten years and moved, it's impossible to prove where it originally was.

Over three hundred pieces of junk were found on the third floor. There were eight black boxes and three ebony boxes. Only one truly matched He Xiu's description. The copper clasp on the right side was missing a tooth. There were five pinholes on the bottom. The three layers of wax seal were still intact. "The box is genuine," Bai Zhi said.

The emperor asked, "Where is the medicine?" "Open it first." There was no medicine in the box. Three needle sheaths. Three empty medicine tubes. Several pieces of dried blood-soaked cloth. One of the needle sheaths still had half a broken needle sealed inside. The four physicians each took a piece of powder from the tube opening, none of them consulting the others' conclusions first.

The first dose was similar to the original third dose: refreshing, analgesic, and with a small amount of cardioprotective agent. The second and third doses contained an additional bluish-black powder. Three people identified it as *Wu Teng* (乌藤). One person thought it was also mixed with *Qing Mai* (青脉). More troublesome was that the cardioprotective agent in the latter two doses was almost gone.

"Could it kill someone?" the emperor asked. Liu Shen didn't answer immediately. "Judging from the residue alone, we can't say the entire dose. The late empress was suffering from high fever, blood loss, and palpitations at the time. If the black vine had worsened her condition and they had gone to protect her heart, the risk would have been very high." "How high?" "She might have woken up, or her heart might have stopped first."

The five pinholes, which looked like they nailed the baseboard in place, actually only pierced the lacquer, not the wood. There was a thin, almost invisible groove on the side. Bai Zhi used a thin knife to pry it open, and the entire baseboard slid out from the side. The sealing wax remained intact. Ah Liu stared in disbelief.

"This works?" "The people who used to inspect boxes would assume the bottom couldn't be opened if there were five holes," Bai Zhi said. "Who decided on five holes?" No one answered. A very thin prescription label was pressed into the bottom layer of the box. The original prescription was on the front. The back had been scraped twice.

First layer of alterations: Add a small amount of black vine, retain the heart-protecting effect. Second layer: Increase the intensity of black vine, add green veins, remove the heart-protecting effect. The handwriting on the two layers is not by the same person. The first layer is closer to Qiao Su's style. The second layer resembles the handwriting of Wang's Pharmacy. Bai Zhi separately copied the three characters "remove heart-protecting effect".

The Emperor stared at it for a long time. "Who is Qiao Su?" He Xiu's second reply arrived just then. Qiao Su was the daughter of a herbalist in Qingzhou. She was missing the distal phalanx of her right index finger. Her left shin was injured by a cart in childhood. In the twelfth year of the Chengxi reign, she entered the Wang family's pharmacy. In the fourteenth year of the Chengxi reign, she was forced to use Zhou Qiming's name and was responsible for verifying the third dose of medicine administered to the late Empress.

The conditions for returning the name: hand over the revised page, and no further verification of living persons is permitted. Qiao Su herself has long since disappeared. However, a female skeleton was found behind the well in Qingfeng South Granary. Her right index finger was missing. Her left shin was previously broken. There was also a small silver patch in her teeth. Her younger brother, Qiao Mu, was still alive. Two days later, Qiao Mu arrived in Beijing.

We didn't let him identify "his sister's bones." We just let him say what he remembered first: his left leg was run over by a car when he was little; his right index finger was broken when he was cutting medicine; and he chipped a tooth when he was sixteen and had it repaired with silver on the inside of his second upper right tooth. All three wounds are now healed.

Qiao Mu squatted in front of the skeleton for a long time. Finally, he only said, "It's her." Bai Zhi asked, "Are you sure?" "I can't recognize the face," he said. "This tooth, I accompanied her to get it fixed." The identity was written as highly confirmed. It wasn't written as absolute. When Qiao Mu saw "participated in the late Empress's third dose" on her old page, his face changed instantly.

"Did she harm the Empress?" "Still under investigation." "If she did, will her name be returned?" "Yes." "Why?" Bai Zhi said, "What she did is another matter. A name isn't a prize." Qiao Mu remained silent for a long time, then wrote a sentence at the very bottom of the name return page.

Qiao Su is my sister. After writing it down, he didn't plead for his sister. He only asked, "Can she be buried at home?" "After the bone marrow examination, it's up to the family to decide." "Even if she's a criminal?" "Even if she's a criminal, she's still a family." After saying this, Xiao Lingyi turned away.

I knew she was thinking of her mother. That night, He Xiu herself was brought to the capital. When she saw Qiao Suye, she only said, "She modified the first dose." The emperor asked, "Why did she modify it?" "The original prescription wouldn't wake him." "Who made him wake up?"

"The late Empress herself." Zhaoyue took out the old pages. The late Empress had explicitly requested to wake up once. Only once. Qiao Su, on Fan Ji's advice, added a very small amount of black vine to protect her heart. After this dose, the late Empress woke up, handed over the nineteen children's loose pages, saw Zhao Ning, and then said personally: Stop.

The outer hall was so quiet that only the tinkling of the lamp wick could be heard. "What about the second dose?" I asked. He Xiu shook her head. "Not Qiao Su." "Who changed it?" "Zhou Guan." This name was being used for the first time. A former pharmacist at the Wang family pharmacy. He had long borrowed Zhao Qi's pharmacy position.

She could write the imperial physician's name. She also knew how to prescribe medicine for a dead person. He Xiu looked at the emperor. "Her Majesty said to stop." She paused. "The second dose was still administered." "Who allowed it?" Xiao Lingyi asked. He Xiu didn't look at her. "It was written in the account book back then; the Emperor already knew."

"And now?" "Now I don't know." This time, no one filled in the gaps for her. But the letter on the table from eleven years ago was clear enough. The late Empress had said to stop. What truly needed explaining was never whether she still wanted to live. It was why someone, after hearing it, didn't stop.