Prince! The political conspiracy is not a play, the show is real

When the song ended, all the dancers on the stage gathered in front of the stage and saluted the audience, who all cheered.

Xia Yanhong walked from behind the scenes to the front of the stage, carrying a flower basket. She said with a smile, "Thank you all for coming to my Spring Breeze Tower tonight. To show your gratitude, I've prepared some sachets made from the same batch of red spider lilies that Miss Anjingshuang used in her performance. They're for you all to keep as a souvenir."

As soon as these words were spoken, the audience rushed forward, vying to share the sachet in Xia Yanhong's hand, and the scene suddenly became chaotic.

Suddenly, a shrill scream came from the crowd, and a column of blood nearly three feet high gushed out from the huge crowd, and blood foam splashed on everyone's face.

All this was seen more clearly through the window of the box on the second floor. For a moment, Tao Yao's mind was almost blank, and she had no time to think about the nearly ten thousand possibilities.

"stop looking."

Chu Huanjun had approached Tao Yao at some point and blocked her view with his folding fan.

But Tao Yao inexplicably had a foreboding premonition, intensifying with her increasingly intense and erratic heartbeat. Hastily, she knocked away Chu Huanjun's fan, her eyes searching for the spot where the blood had spurted.

There, the crowd was gradually dispersing, and there was clearly a person lying on the ground.

The man fell in a pool of blood, with a broken glazed tile stuck in his chest, as if it had hit a vital part. He struggled for a few times before dying and never moved again.

Blood continued to flow out from under his body, spreading onto the newly replaced carpet in Chunfeng Tower tonight, and turned into a huge, ghostly red spider lily.

Tao Yao couldn't believe her eyes. The person lying on the ground was Zhou Yan.

Why is this happening?

Originally, she was going to follow her parents' orders and the matchmaker's words and marry this man as a concubine the next day.

But today, he died. Everything was beyond her expectations, yet it seemed as if everything was going as she wished.

But at this moment, Tao Yao seemed unable to think about the right and wrong of the choices.

What would she do if Zhou Yan died?

What to do next?

Tao Yao's mind was filled with the question "why?" But how could she possibly find the answer? She slumped against the wall, nearly dizzy, not daring to look at the window again. Across the table, Chu Huanjun remained as impassive as ever. His indifference seemed especially terrifying tonight.

He coldly comforted her, asking her not to look at it anymore, not to think about it anymore. But how could that be possible?

She couldn't even believe whether what was happening before her eyes was real or fake.

So, Tao Yao tried her best to make her voice sound less trembling, and asked calmly, "Was all this your arrangement?"

Chu Huanjun rubbed his brows, and the mist of tea on the table made Tao Yao unable to see the expression on his face.

"I can't explain this to you clearly right now. Just treat yourself as an outsider."

Tao Yao could not understand what Chu Huanjun said. The man she was going to marry tomorrow died suddenly in front of her, and she didn't know how to stay out of it.

Even if she wanted to, could she?

If all this was a trap set by Chu Huanjun, and he was the one who lured her into it, but now he was saying something to ask her to keep herself out, wasn't this a contradiction?

"With Zhou Yan dead, there will definitely be a storm. If you return to Shi Mansion now, you will probably be at the center of the storm."

Chu Huanjun stood up and closed the window, blocking out the chaotic screams outside. The box fell into silence in an instant.

"I have a villa on the outskirts of the city. I can put you there to avoid the limelight for a while."

As if everything had been planned in advance, he carefully instructed her on the next steps. All this made Tao Yao increasingly suspicious.

She interrupted him with a trembling voice: "But why should I hide from the limelight? It wasn't me who killed Zhou Yan."

Her face, which had been pale just now, now turned red again, and it was obvious that she was very scared.

Chu Huanjun patted her shoulder in a comforting gesture and said, "You are of course innocent, but people's words are scary. Do you still remember Zhou Yan's wives and concubines? They are not easy to deal with. The best thing to do now is to hide away."

Tao Yao couldn't calm down. Even if she thought of thousands of possibilities in her mind, she couldn't filter out the most likely one.

No matter which possibility it was, it all pointed to Chu Huanjun and the tragic ending she had once anticipated.

"Why did you plan to kill Zhou Yan?" Tao Yao asked.

In order to seize the imperial power, for the country and the people, and to gradually complete the grand cause built by his ambitions.

Tao Yao would never dare to simply define the cause and effect of this matter as Chu Huanjun killing her in order to prevent her from marrying Zhou Yan.

Chu Huanjun is a meticulous person, and nothing he does can possibly be a sudden idea that happens overnight.

Just like now, he could calmly witness Zhou Yan's death and fluently tell her about his future plans. It was as if he was simply playing a chess game that had been planned long ago, making each move one by one, with the predetermined pieces falling into their pre-determined positions.

Everything is in order.

"You'll know later." Chu Huanjun answered her.

"I've made up my mind. I want to go back to Shi Mansion." Tao Yao said.

She finished her words, and was met with a long silence.

Unfortunately, Tao Yao was the "unusual move" in this game of chess that Chu Huanjun had not expected.

Chu Huanjun thought Tao Yao would scream and cry, begging him to save her from this dire situation. But she was unusually calm and composed, even though she was frightened to the point of losing half her soul.

"Think it over carefully." Chu Huanjun warned her again in a cold voice, "When you go back, you will not only have to face your father, but also Zhou Yan's wives and concubines. If you are unlucky, you may even end up in jail."

"But I am innocent. Why should an innocent person hide?"

She was so impatient that she contradicted him without thinking. If it weren't for him, she wouldn't be in this predicament now.

A terrifying and tragic thought gradually became clear in Tao Yao's mind - if it was really Chu Huanjun who wanted to kill Zhou Yan, he would never be able to bear the blame, and the most likely scapegoat at the moment would be herself.

If this was also a step in Chu Huanjun's plan, how could she obey his arrangements and get deeper into this dead end step by step?

Since there is a dead end in front of me, instead of taking a detour and delaying, it would be better to rush forward and die headfirst.

"Have you figured it out?"

Chu Huanjun's patience is limited, he has other things to do.

"Ah."

Tao Yao nodded and handed back the peach blossom lantern Chu Huanjun had given her on Lantern Street. She said, "I hope we will have nothing to do with each other from now on... I wish you good luck."

After saying that, she turned around and pushed the door open and left, leaving Chu Huanjun alone in the box in a daze.

Chu Huanjun rubbed the long wick of the peach blossom lantern in his hand, and felt an inexplicable sense of anxiety in his heart.

It seemed as if an emotion that shouldn't have existed arose at this moment. It was like a small snake coiled in his heart, biting him right on the tip of his heart without any warning - the pain was so small that it was almost insignificant, and it didn't hurt at all, but it made him uncomfortable from head to toe.

He originally wanted to implement this plan slowly and complete it in an orderly manner, but now it seems that he has to move forward at a faster pace.

"Ah, so annoying."

Chu Huanjun couldn't help but punch the peach blossom lantern, smashing it to pieces, and stormed out in frustration. After a while, he returned to the box, picked up the scattered wisps, and stowed them away neatly in his pocket.

The waiter who was about to clean up the tea accidentally heard a cold snort from someone in the box.

"There will be plenty of time to settle accounts later."