Chapter 360: Chapter 359: Chinese Checkers

“Is that so…” Yan Daoxin stopped in his tracks, lowered his head to look at the handkerchief clutched in his hand, with a slightly troubled expression. He had originally planned to take that thing back for further study, but now hearing Zhu Yu’s words, he realized the potential danger, and scratched his head, “It really isn’t easy to hide this thing.

Chang’e Drunk turns gray-black like ink after being exposed to the sun, water can’t dissolve it, and it carries its own special scent… It looks like I’ll have to throw it into the outhouse!

But… It’s such a shame to turn something like this into ashes…”

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

Yan Daoxin glanced at him, slightly raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips, and nodded, patting his chest painfully: “Alright, got it, I’ll just head to the outhouse!”

Lu Qing escorted Yan Daoxin to the door, watched him go downstairs towards the outhouse, then closed the door again. Seeing Zhu Yu sitting at the table with her chin in her hands, her brows furrowed, he walked over and gently rubbed her brow twice: “What troubles my Chief Historian Yu so much?”

“On the day of the grand wedding, I thought Duke Yan was targeting you, but later I discovered someone set up a trap behind the scenes, trying to lure Jin Country’s farmers to plant flowers, neglecting the farmland, and when the harvest was poor, it would cause internal strife.

Originally, it was just an investigation into the Ghost Temple Case, but it turned into a discovery of Blazing Jade from foreign lands that should not have appeared in this world.

Soon after, General Cao’s nephew was framed, the real murderer being a carefully cultivated assassin.

Afterwards, ’evil spirits’ stirred up trouble in Situ Jing’s imperial guard camp, ending similarly with the assassin’s suicide.

And the scent I’ve smelled in many places inside and outside the palace…”

Zhu Yu murmured to Lu Qing: “I feel like I’m walking forward while holding onto a rope. I thought I’d find out soon what the rope was attached to, but the further I walk, the longer it gets… Now I feel that it’s getting darker around me, and the rope seems to have no end in sight…

This feeling really makes one unsettled inside.”

Zhu Yu felt extremely bewildered at this moment, like her heart was weighed down by a block of lead, heavy and oppressive, making it hard for her to breathe.

She never doubted her skills and abilities, whether in the past or in this world she now finds herself, and can be considered to have a record of accomplishments.

But in the past, no matter how complex or troublesome the bodies were, no matter how many tricks needed to be employed to confirm and test them, at the end of the day she was just an outsider, someone who only needed to provide professional methods and arrive at conclusions.

The feeling between being an outsider and being involved inside the events is profoundly different.

“This time, my view is quite different from yours,” Lu Qing said, not knowing if he was sincere in his thinking or merely trying to console Zhu Yu. He pulled Zhu Yu’s hand and held it in his own, “Though we can’t yet be sure who this rope is tied to, at this stage, we can see clearly where it ultimately leads, and the purpose seems not so hard to infer.

I ask you, the scent of Chang’e Drunk, does it resemble that of the skirt the old steward brought before?”

Zhu Yu was rather certain about this question, but after cautious thought, she nodded: “Indeed.”

“And is the scent on that skirt similar to what you smelled in Qingshui County?” Lu Qing asked again.

Zhu Yu was taken aback; the numerous events of these past days almost made her overlook the fragrance Dou Dajiang used to avenge the mute child in Qingshui County.

The reason she remembered the scent on the South Study Room and the little eunuch’s body was fundamentally because it originated from the seductive fragrance with Blazing Jade that Dou Dajiang used in Qingshui County!

Upon careful recollection, the seductive fragrance used by Dou Dajiang in the Ghost Temple was not exactly the same as what she had smelled in the palace, and the fragrance she smelled on Duke Yan before was also different from that on the fabric the old steward brought yesterday.

The scent on that fabric was far from the one of Chang’e Drunk.

Yet, these subtle variations allowed her to nearly miss the scent she had initially detected in the palace.

But now reminded by Lu Qing, Zhu Yu realized that for a long time, the various scents that left an impression on her, though varied, shared some underlying commonalities.

So doesn’t that mean…

She was instantly alarmed, feeling a chill down her spine.

Lu Qing saw her expression change, knowing that Zhu Yu had completely understood, so he asked, “Your nose is the most sensitive of all. From all the times you’ve encountered Lu Zhang, did you smell a similar scent on him?”

Zhu Yu remembered and shook her head: “No, the one time in the Capital, at General Cao’s Mansion where he and Duke Yan were together, it seemed his body was faintly tainted with it, but not much.

Then when I met him again outside the Shuo Country border, there wasn’t a trace of similar fragrance on him.”

Lu Qing lowered his gaze in contemplation: “Lu Zhang, from a young age, admired the style of scholars and literati, hoping one day to use his two feet to measure the vast landscape and illustrate the beautiful scenery along the way for posterity.

Even though this ambition was later crushed by Duke Yan, leading him to likely abandon it, for years he’s never been particularly interested in incense, instead preferring the scent of books, paper, and ink.

I remember he once spent a great deal to commission the most renowned fragrance shop in the Capital to concoct a scent imitating that of a Book Collection Pavilion, which accumulates many books, but such a scent can’t be created by incense, so it was abandoned.

He was thus mocked behind his back as a pretentious aesthete by the high-society circles in the Capital.

He himself might not know this, but I heard quite a bit from Yunyin Pavilion.”

“So the only reason he ever bore such a scent was from being close to Duke Yan or carrying it from entering the palace to meet the Emperor?” Zhu Yu understood what Lu Qing was implying, “So he’s not part of the scheme?”

“We’re all part of the scheme now; no one can escape,” Lu Qing corrected Zhu Yu with a smile, “It’s just clearer now that those who always thought of themselves as the controlling chess players are actually, just like everyone else, mere pieces on the board.”

Zhu Yu frowned, pondering for a moment, then laughed with a hint of sarcasm: “I initially thought we were facing a game of chess, a border between the Chu and Han, soldiers coming to block each general.

Now it seems it’s more like Chinese checkers.”

“Chinese checkers?” Lu Qing looked at her curiously. “What is that?”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep