Li Yu really didn’t know how well the task was progressing.
On one hand, the bandits came suddenly. He even disregarded everything midway and ran out. Although he did some basic disguise, if someone had discovered him, what was he supposed to do? But at that time, he didn’t have the attention to consider this.
On the other hand, the system didn’t give any notifications at all. According to Li Yu’s experience, this signified that the task was still progressing; so it shouldn’t have failed yet. The System had said before that if he failed a main mission, he’d turn into fish bones and fish dust. Right now, he can freely change between a human fish and fish human, and he was perfectly fine. No news was the best news.
Jing-wang hung the protection talisman around Li Yu’s neck again and then guarded him through the remaining few hours. Passing the time, Li Yu practically turned into an octopus and stuck closely to Jing-wang’s side. He had decided resolutely, even if God were outside, he still wouldn’t fall for it. Because Jing-wang’s punishment towards him was only rubbing him on the head, on the contrary, it made him even more embarrassed.
If it weren’t for him, Jing-wang would have definitely eliminated the bandits in one scoop. He held Jing-wang back here and made Jing-wang worried. Li Yu more or less wanted to make up for it.
“Oh right, your highness, don’t forget to investigate that strategist.” Li Yu eavesdropped plenty of information relating to the strategist from the bandits. Other than the masked face and unknown name, the fact that this strategist knew to use infants and a gold colored swaddling bundle as bait, really made him stand out from the other bandits. Li Yu just felt like this person most likely came targeting him and Jing-wang.
Everyone in the West Frontier all knew that Jing-wang recently had four sons. The gold colored swaddling clothes was something that Bao#1 used specifically. Normal families wouldn’t use this kind of color. If someone wanted to, they’d be able to find this out by asking around. The strategist must have made inquiries ahead of time.
Li Yu’s suspicions weren’t without reason. Jing-wang also had the same thought.
After this battle, the bandits were pretty much all exterminated. Jing-wang ordered the guards to thoroughly interrogate the few living bandits that remained behind in the hideout, wanting to have them confess the strategist’s identity.
This strategist gave him a strange feeling of familiarity.
The white powder that was thrown at him. Thinking his eyes were hit and then turning to attack his leg. This action seemed excessive, however, Jing-wang himself knew. To prepare for combat, he usually had a dagger hidden in his shoe for emergencies. This time, he also brought a dagger. However, because he was overwhelmed by bloodlust, he carelessly placed the dagger back into his sleeve instead; this was also the dagger that he used later to counterattack.
The place that the strategist was aiming at was where Jing-wang normally placed his dagger. Was the strategist attempting to prevent him from pulling out his dagger?
Regardless, the strategist definitely knew him somewhat. Otherwise they wouldn’t use infants as bait. However, how did they even know where he hid his dagger usually?
Other than this time, he only used the dagger out in public once. It was that time inside the palace when he was ambushed and then saved by Xiao Yu afterwards!
Because Jing-wang had fallen to trickery that time, it made him extremely cautious during close range combats. This was how he managed to avoid the smoke bomb in time, and even bested the strategist’s own scheme by pretending his eyes were hurt.
Furthermore, the strategist also used powder, which was a similar tactic used by the attacker from his memories. In addition to this, he was also aware that Jing-wang had a habit of carrying a dagger. Jing-wang had reason to believe that this strategist was the same person who attacked him before!
“Your highness, I accidentally saw a scar on the strategist’s hand, like he was bitten by an animal before…….”
Li Yu mentioned this fact. Although he didn’t know if it was related, it came to his mind so he said it.
When he mentioned this, Jing-wang immediately recalled the attacker in the palace… that day, he was holding his hand a lot, like it was injured.
Jing-wang carefully wrote down the things that happened on that day. Li Yu didn’t know that there’d be this kind of story behind Jing-wang’s eye injury back then.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
“Are you perhaps suspecting that the strategist is the same person that attacked you last time?” Li Yu pondered briefly and then asked.
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“Your highness, do you still remember, that day Gale and I also encountered a masked person. The one that poisoned the fish food…… he was bitten by Gale; it was also on the hand!”
When Li Yu said Gale’s name, Jing-wang clearly froze for a second before realizing that he was talking about his experiences as a fish; Gale was Ye QingHuan’s dog.
Suddenly hearing Xiao Yu saying another name affectionately, Jing-wang felt faintly uncomfortable. However, he very quickly turned his attention to the issue at hand.
Back then, the person who poisoned the fish food was bitten by Ye QingHuan’s dog. The strategist also had a scar from being bitten by an animal. This matched up completely.
The strategist really did come from the Imperial City. Furthermore, they had already encountered each other once a long time ago. This was the person who tried to poison fish, then turned around and attacked him.
“…… is it… the 2nd Prince?” Li Yu assumed.
When the masked man poisoned the fish food, the 2nd Prince was in the process of scheming against the ChengEn Palace Estate. He even ordered people to buy arsenic. Because of this, Jing-wang and Wang-gonggong were convinced that the person who tried to poison fish was sent by the 2nd Prince in order to vent his frustrations.
At that time, the 2nd Prince was indeed the most suspicious. However, the situation has changed by this point. Jing-wang dealt with the 2nd Prince, who became completely delirious. This huge power had collapsed already. So why would an accomplice of someone, who had given up the right to fight for the throne for a long time already, suddenly appear once more. Plus, this person was also the same masked attacker as before?
This didn’t make sense. Jing-wang had left people by the 2nd Prince’s side. He was very aware of Mu TianZhao(2)’s current status. The 2nd Prince definitely couldn’t continue causing trouble. Therefore, there was only one possibility. They had all made a wrong assumption back then. The person that poisoned the fish food wasn’t sent by the 2nd Prince. The 2nd Prince only ended up carrying the blame for this.
If it wasn’t the 2nd Prince, then it had to be the 3rd Prince or the 6th Prince.
If it were before, Jing-wang would have most likely considered the 3rd Prince. However, right now, the 3rd Prince was powerless to even defend himself. Someone had used the 3rd Prince’s name to exchange messages and info between the West Frontier and the Imperial City. The Emperor had discovered this and the 3rd Prince ended up getting in trouble.
This method of making the 3rd Prince take the blame, wasn’t it somewhat similar to what happened with the 2nd Prince?
After pondering for a long time, Jing-wang raised his brush and wrote a heavy “six” onto his paper, the ink passing through all the way to the bottom.
What Xiao Yu said before wasn’t wrong. Mu TianXiao(6) was actually his most formidable enemy.
And have already schemed against him for this long.
“So it was him……” Li Yu sighed softly. If all of this was done by the extremely calculating 6th Prince, everything would make sense.
The strategist was a subordinate of the 6th Prince. The only person who had free time to make trouble in the West Frontier right now was the 6th Prince.
Prior to this, the 6th Prince had hid behind the 3rd Prince’s back, and also had a 2nd Prince in front of them; the 6th Prince was able to act without anyone knowing. No one would ever think towards this unfavored transparent prince.
Now that the 6th Prince had gotten rid of the 3rd Prince, he has become the only adult Prince that remained in the Imperial City beside the Emperor. Although he was showing off his outstanding capabilities in court, he also placed himself out in the open.
There was no one blocking in front of him anymore.
Since Jing-wang discovered that the 6th Prince had a hand in all this, he didn’t need to be courteous anymore. One month later, the subordinate that remained behind in the Jing Estate at the Capital received a secret letter from Wang-gonggong.
The secret letter only had a sentence: Move him a bit.
Who this ‘him’ was, was explained through another method of communication. This was how the Jing Estate passed along secret messages.
These people were willing to risk life and limb for Jing-wang originally. Now that they were left to guard the enormous estate by themselves, they were extremely bored. Since the master gave an order, they immediately jumped up like they were pumped full of blood and started working.
Not long afterwards, the assistant from the Ministry of Works, Zheng Jing, sent up a complaint to the Emperor, accusing the 6th Prince of accepting bribery while he was responsible for renovating ZhongCui Palace and substituting the materials for shoddy goods.
Face color changed majorly, Mu TianXiao(6) flat out denied the accusation, saying he only completed the assignment following procedure.
Indignantly confronting the 6th Prince for his injustice, Zheng Jing pulled out ZhongCui Palace’s previous blueprint, saying that the 6th Prince had indeed renovated ZhongCui Palace. However, despite the outer appearance looking exactly the same as the original, in actuality, the wood used was inconsistent with the blueprint. Instead, the wood was a lower grade material, even the frames were made from this.
The Emperor was extremely astonished and immediately ordered people to take down ZhongCui Palace’s wooden frames to examine them. He found a dozen carpenters to verify all at once. The Emperor was afraid someone was making false accusations against the 6th Prince so he even personally selected each of the carpenters. However, all of these people said one thing unanimously. The wood material did not match the one on the original blueprint.
Actually, for the result to not match the blueprint, it’s not something that’s never happened before. Finding any good reason would explain it. However, what was unfortunate here was that the 6th Prince had reported to the Emperor and the Ministry of Revenue that he had used the best quality wood. Therefore, the account books had said one thing, the result was another. Where did the budget that went unaccounted for go?
The carpenters wouldn’t have mistaken what kind of wood material was used for renovation. Neither would the person overseeing the construction. The 6th Prince couldn’t explain this. Plus, the 6th Prince just got married a month ago. The preparation of a prince’s wedding ceremony usually fell to the task of the Ministry of Rites. The exception here was Jing-wang, who was at the West Frontier and also received the Emperor’s permission; therefore Jing-wang held his own wedding. The Ministry of Rites was in charge of all of the other prince’s weddings. There were regulations set in place for the process to be the same for all the princes. However, it’s said that when the 6th Prince sent his betrothal gifts, he privately added plenty of gifts to his fiancée– the main daughter of Marquis DingBei, all of which were packed up by Marquis DingBei into his daughter’s dowry and carried to the 6th Prince’s estate.
Marquis DingBei loved the show off and already let everyone know all about the gifts that his prince son-in-law had bestowed on them. Everyone had seen what the 6th Prince had sent. The silver and gold jewelry were the most inconspicuous. There were also pearls, agates, corals, jadeites, and ivory tusks, all coming in pairs, as well as countless ancient books and classic paintings. Meanwhile, during the Emperor’s birthday celebration, the 6th Prince has once claimed that he couldn’t even buy the Emperor anything presentable.
Then the question here was. In one year’s time, how did the 6th Prince amass such a fortune? According to a Prince’s salary plus a government official’s salary for completing assignments, it was definitely not enough to gather all of these. Plus, the 6th Prince’s birth mother was born a palace maid, her family impoverished. Otherwise, the 6th Prince wouldn’t have been in such a financial crisis before.
Either, he lied during the Emperor’s birthday celebration, which would be considered deceiving the ruler. Or, this money came from questionable sources.
Actually, there were officials who had questioned this before. However, the Emperor only had this one adult prince by his side. The 6th Prince’s position was rising overall; the officials really couldn’t afford offending the 6th Prince, who was extremely likely to inherit the throne.
Meanwhile, Zheng Jing also had obtained all of the evidence of bribery and thought carefully before daring to accuse the 6th Prince.
The assignment that the 6th Prince did in the Ministry of Works, Zheng Jing couldn’t be anymore familiar with. After learning that the wood material used to renovate ZhongCui Palace was not the same as the blueprint, yet the 6th Prince had never mentioned this before, Zheng Jing immediately guessed that something fishy was going on. He only needed a slight deduction to guess who’d benefit from doing this.
Zheng Jing had ordered people to follow the 6th Prince’s servant and discovered indirectly that while the 6th Prince was renovating ZhongCui Palace, he had ordered people to pawn off some mahogany boxes before. Zheng Jing came up with all sorts of plans to obtain these boxes. He discovered that they contained several heirlooms belonging to the Imperial Merchant responsible for selling the wood. With this, he learned where the 6th Prince’s money came from and knew it was all related.
Zheng Jing already obtained the receipt from the pawn shop as evidence, as well as the treasures that were pawned off. The Emperor questioned the 6th Prince. The 6th Prince insisted that his trusted aide did all this behind his back– pocketing money without his permission, lying to him while he was overseeing the renovation, substituting the material with shoddy goods. The 6th Prince claimed that he never suspected the aide out of trust. In any case, he pushed off the blame completely.
From the start to finish, the Emperor had a frosty expression on his face. He gazed at the 6th Prince. The 6th Prince felt like he was completely exposed in front of the Emperor’s frosty gaze. Clenching his jaw, the 6th Prince continued to feign innocence.
The Emperor finally accepted the 6th Prince’s explanation in the end.
However, because of all this, the Emperor dismissed all of the 6th Prince’s people and reassigned him new servants.
This was all something that happened later.
Li Yu finally lasted until the last minute of the “Protect the pet fish” task.
The long awaited system notification finally appeared. However, it didn’t announce the result of his task. Instead, it had him enter the system to check himself. This was not the same message that the shitty system usually gave, so it made Li Yu quite apprehensive.
He was really a bit scared that the mission had failed.
After giving Jing-wang a simple heads up, Li Yu immediately entered the system.
The step “Protect the pet fish” continued to be lit up under the main mission of “Postnatal care and protection.” Behind it, a small color changing square had appeared again indicating that the result was in the process of being judged.
So the result of this step also needed to be judged?
The system said: “This task originally depended on the tyrant to protect the pet fish. If people discovered the shape-changing pet fish, the mission would be considered a failure……”
Li Yu justified: But I did cover up and they didn’t actually see my true face. So it shouldn’t count as discovering right?
System said: “No it doesn’t. However, since two bandits did see your human fish form, but were murdered by the tyrant afterwards; this task can’t count as success nor failure. Therefore the result is now re-tabulated according to the tyrant’s actions throughout the task.”
Close call. Li Yu let out a breath of relief. Good thing, it didn’t directly count as failure. He had been judged several times before already. Jing-wang has always been steady and reliant. This time, there shouldn’t be any issues either.
Li Yu stared at the color changing square unblinkingly. Green was success. Red was failure. He remembered the square had turned rainbow once. What kind of color will it be this time?
The colors in the square changed quicker and quicker, quicker and quicker. At last, it stopped abruptly.
It was yellow.
Li Yu: “…….”
This was an unexpected color!
Recalling that thing that he and Jing-wing did during the mission, Li Yu couldn’t help cursing. Did this mean that the System felt he and Jing-wang were too lewd?
Ohh so it was his subordinate, I see. Yeah, otherwise it’d be pretty anticlimactic
Though I’m guessing he probably was involved in it himself, but pushed all the blame to his subordinates to clean his hands
thanks for the chapter!
Little yellow square—what could you possibly mean…hmm…
Thank You for the chapter ( ˘ ³˘)♥
I guess that’s what you get when you join the Glub Glub Club, Li Yu.