The First Venerable of the Prosperous Age

Fu Rou forced a smile and sat down next to Wen Ying, making a "shh" gesture and whispering, "Miss Wen, please speak more quietly about the murderer."

Seeing that Lu Xiaosan was still standing there blankly, she pulled him down to sit beside her.

Inside this magnificent and unparalleled building, two stunning beauties were accompanying a smelly and filthy young monk, a sight that filled the powerful and wealthy within with envy.

Fu Rou asked cautiously, "Where does Miss Wen intend to begin her investigation?"

Wen Ying took out a small needle from her bosom and said softly, "I need to make a small cut on your forehead, sister. Don't worry, it won't leave a scar."

"And this way we'll know whether my sister has been poisoned or not, but I don't know if she'll be willing..."

Fu Rou lowered her head slightly and said seriously, "Miss Wen is a noble person of the Three Venerable Palace. There is no need to be so polite to me. If you need anything, just give the order."

Lu Xiaosan wondered, "This guy was so arrogant just now, why is he being so polite to the little golden retriever now?"

He asked in confusion, and Ermei then told him about the token.

"What are these Three Palaces? Your Prince of the Immortal Pavilion doesn't even respect them, yet he bows and scrapes before a token of the Three Palaces? What? Are these Three Palaces more powerful than the Imperial Palace?"

Fu Rou ignored her and instead smiled as she moved closer to Wen Ying, her face full of provocation.

Wen Ying then took a needle and, with a serious expression, lightly traced a thin red line on Fu Rou's forehead, leaving a very fine cut.

"Just bear with it a little longer." Wen Ying pressed her finger against the wound again.

Seeing the blood flowing from the wound, Fu Rou couldn't help but frown slightly.

Soon after, wisps of black smoke began to emerge from the bloody wound.

Wen Ying and Lu Xiaosan were both surprised. "Just as I thought."

Fu Rou asked, "Am I poisoned too? It seems the person who poisoned me has quite the ambition."

After speaking, she tilted her beautiful eyes to the side, looking thoughtful.

"Don't worry, this poison can't even kill me, let alone you," Lu Xiaosan couldn't help but say.

“No, this poison is definitely deadly,” Wen Ying said.

She then laughed and said, "In this way, I can confirm that this poison is the Golden Poison, which comes from the feathers of the Golden Poison bird."

"This golden pheasant is born in the wilderness and has always eaten only highly poisonous creatures such as venomous snakes and scorpions."

"Once the toxins of the golden pheasant enter the human body, they will gradually accumulate under the hair roots, and when they reach a certain level, they will cause the person to die from the poison."

Wen Ying looked at Lu Xiaosan's bald head again, "If there are no hair roots, the toxins will not accumulate, but will directly manifest."

"But the poison at this time will not be fatal. It will only cause immediate abdominal pain. After a period of time, the toxins will dissipate naturally because there is nowhere for them to accumulate in the body."

Lu Xiaosan shrugged and said, "Since that's the case, let's call everyone else at the table and test them one by one. Whoever isn't poisoned is the one who did it."

Fu Rou quickly said, "No, what if the person who poisoned us has the antidote and deliberately gets poisoned? Wouldn't we be alerting them if we acted rashly?" Wen Ying nodded in agreement.

"Then what do you think we should do?"

Lu Xiaosan slumped onto the table again. "Hey, it's strange, I was the only one who drank that poisonous chicken soup, but you guys got poisoned too. How strange."

After a moment of contemplation, Fu Rou wondered, "Could it be that the poison wasn't in the chicken soup?"

"Could you tell me about what happened on the table back then?" Wen Ying asked.

After listening to Fu Rou's explanation, Wen Ying pondered, "The poison of the poison bird has a delayed effect; it takes some time for the silver needle to change color after it comes into contact with the poison. Therefore, it must be that there was poison in a dish before the chicken soup."

“Alcohol! All I ate that night was alcohol,” Fu Rou said.

“And everyone at the table drank alcohol, so…including Little Beauty, wouldn’t everyone be poisoned…” Lu Xiaosan said.

The atmosphere grew cold and desolate. The thought that everyone in the building had been poisoned sent a chill down the spines of the three of them.

Wen Ying then asked, "If it was alcohol, when did the murderer administer it?"

"The wine was delivered fresh from the palace that day and has been sealed and stored in the kitchen ever since. Apart from the three of them, no one else has ever been in the kitchen."

Lu Xiaosan said with a wry smile, "What? You still think that one of the three of us poisoned him?"

"You say you didn't poison it, so what's the evidence? One side's story alone isn't enough to clear your name," Fu Rou said arrogantly.

"Could it be that the wine was poisoned before we entered the building?" Wen Ying asked again.

"Impossible. The wine at Zhexianlou has always come from royal channels. It's almost impossible for anyone to tamper with it."

“Furthermore, I always inspect the wine before it is brought in,” Fu Rou said.

“Then… the only way is that the poison was put in the kitchen…” Fu Rou said.

"So... the murderer is insisting that it's one of the three of us, right?" Lu Xiaosan said angrily, "We had no motive..."

"It seems like we're the ones with the most motive," Lu Xiaosan thought awkwardly, not daring to say anything more.

Fu Rou looked at him bowing his head and giving in, and couldn't help but smile mischievously. "Don't be so sad. Maybe you were used and poisoned unintentionally."

"So, the murderer might have had accomplices," Wen Ying asked.

"It cannot be ruled out that one of the three may have unintentionally become an accomplice of the murderer."

"I know it wasn't me, and I believe it...it wasn't Little Beauty either!" Lu Xiaosan said without much confidence, because he knew that Chang'an had indeed come into contact with a lot of people during that time, and he might have been taken advantage of.

Fu Rou ruthlessly interrupted his fantasy, "Why not him? If you killed us, you two could escape. Besides, he usually interacts with the other girls in the building the most. He's so young, he's the most likely to be manipulated. Compared to the quiet and reserved Tian Gao, I'm more inclined to believe that he's being used."

Lu Xiaosan was speechless upon hearing this, but he still refused to believe that his little brother would become an accomplice of evildoers.

Seeing Lu Xiaosan's unwilling expression, Fu Rou sighed and said, "Don't be so quick to get emotional. What I'm saying is just speculation. Actually, compared to Xiao Mei, I'm more inclined to think of Liu Rao."

Both were puzzled and asked in unison, "Why?"

"First of all, she was the one who did the poison test. Although she always does poison tests before meals, this time, she seemed to be trying to mislead us into thinking that the poison was in the chicken soup, which is very suspicious."

Wen Ying nodded. "And then?"

Fu Rou's face darkened, and her words became even more somber, "Furthermore, and most importantly: she has the strongest motive."

"What's the motive?"

"Before, Liu Rao was the top courtesan at the Immortal Pavilion, but everything changed after the Pavilion Master brought Lianxue and Yu Lei to the Immortal Pavilion."

"Liu Rao began to fade, while Lian Xue Yu Lei was just beginning to bloom. From that time on, Liu Rao had been harboring resentment towards the two of them."

Fu Rou sighed softly, "Time is a merciless butcher's knife. No one can escape the fate of growing old, and replacement is inevitable. Liu Rao's title as the top courtesan was handed over to her sisters just like that."

“She has harbored a grudge against the two sisters ever since, so I would say she might be the one with the most motive.”

"Then we'll just call her over and ask her, and we'll know," Lu Xiaosan said, his words both stingy and arrogant.

"Without absolute evidence, how could she possibly admit it?"

"How did she manage to poison the wine, and where did she get the poison from? We need to know these things."

“And she also drank alcohol, so does she have the antidote? Besides, these are all just guesses. If she isn’t the murderer, wouldn’t that just create more problems?” Fu Rou said.

"Then, in your opinion, how did she do it?" Wen Ying asked.

After thinking for a while, Fu Rou said, "If you ask me, she must have used some method to get Xiao Mei to accidentally poison the wine so that she could use him to kill us silently."

"He only had a grudge against two people, yet he wanted to kill everyone. How vicious..." Wen Ying muttered, pouting.

"Impossible! I still don't believe that Little Beauty could be that stupid!" Lu Xiaosan said through gritted teeth.

Fu Rou smiled gently, "I don't quite believe it either, which is why I'm taking you to find him and ask him for clarification."