The First Venerable of the Prosperous Age

After everyone had settled the sweet cakes in a safe place, they gathered around them again.

Seeing that Chang'an was staring at the stove next to the board, the dirty water in the noodles had not been washed away, and a feather was floating lightly on the black oily surface. It was covered with black dirt, and it could be vaguely seen that the feather was originally golden.

"This is... a golden pheasant?" Wen Ying exclaimed in surprise.

"It's Ah Jin, a golden parrot that repeats what the customers say to urge us to order our food..."

Lu Xiaosan's thoughts started again, "Yes, this parrot is the fourth one that can freely enter and leave the kitchen."

Wen Ying asked curiously, "Could the murderer have used parrots to poison them? Although they are all golden, parrots are still parrots, not golden pheasants, and they wouldn't carry poison... Besides, even if the murderer really did use parrots, how did they do it?"

Fu Rou pondered, "They are all gold. If they were switched..." Fu Rou shook her head again, "Impossible. If they were switched, it would definitely be discovered."

Fu Rou then asked Chang An, "On the day of Qixi Festival, did A Jin do anything unusual?"

Chang'an suddenly seemed to remember something, nodded, and said seriously, "During the Qixi Festival, there were feathers it had scattered all over the kitchen. Thinking about it now, it really is strange..."

“Yes, now that you mention it, I remember it too, but I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time…” Lu Xiaosan echoed.

"Why are there so many feathers?" Fu Rou pondered, then slowly said, "Could it be...?"

She then asked Wen Ying, "Miss Wen, you said that the poison of the Golden Poison comes from the feathers of the Golden Poison Bird."

"Yes, but these... are parrot feathers." Wen Ying exclaimed in surprise again, "Could these be feathers of a golden pheasant...?"

Looking at the feathers floating on the pool, Fu Rou smiled slightly, "That makes some sense."

Seeing her confident expression, it seemed she already had a plan in mind.

Lu Xiaosan relaxed and asked lazily, "What do you mean? Could it be that the parrot has become a spirit and is using poison feathers to poison us?"

Fu Rou looked at Lu Xiaosan with her charming eyes and said, "You're really smart." Then her gaze became flirtatious and swept over Lu Xiaosan.

An ordinary man, when teased by a woman with such a beautiful and delicate body, would surely have his blood boil and his eyes light up; even a boy or child would lower his head in shyness.

The young monk, however, looked on with disdain. "According to you, Ah Jin has really become a spirit." He then reached out to recall the prayer beads.

Seeing that he wanted to recall the stinking Buddhist beads, Chang'an quickly interrupted, "No... Brother, let's continue listening to Sister Furou."

Fu Rou chuckled softly, "He's right, this parrot is carrying the feathers of a poison bird to poison someone."

"You think that since they're all gold, you can insert some poisonous feathers of the golden pheasant into the parrot's body?" Wen Ying said.

Fu Rou nodded. "What fell off wasn't A Jin's feathers, but the feathers of the Golden Poison Bird. Although it's a guess, it's the best explanation for why A Jin lost so many feathers for no reason."

Chang'an nodded. "Now that you mention it, so the kitchen was filled with poisonous feathers...no wonder..."

Wen Ying looked up with her bright eyes and asked, "But didn't you notice the parrot's unusual behavior at the time?"

Chang'an slowly said, "On that day of Qixi Festival, the kitchen staff were busy preparing dishes and wine, and had no time to notice whether A Jin had shed more feathers than the day before."

"But...but the feathers have all drifted into the wine...haven't you noticed anything unusual yet?" Wen Ying asked.

"No, now that I think about it, Akin started shedding its feathers quite early; on the first day, it was only one or two."

“The next day, one or two more pieces would appear. This subtle change happened day after day, from falling off to the floor, then to the stove, and finally to the wine… This extremely slight change made us overlook the original anomaly,” Lu Xiaosan said.

"Yes, only sudden qualitative changes attract people's attention, while people take the gradual shift from quantitative to qualitative change for granted..."

Chang'an's eyes dimmed again, and he continued, "Besides, we won't reject this jar of wine just because a feather fell into it..."

Fu Rou looked at Chang'an with admiration, "Not bad, at such a young age you already know how to make a fortune."

Wen Ying looked troubled. "But... I still find it hard to believe. How could it be such a coincidence... that the feather just happened to land in the wine..."

Fu Rou nodded and continued, "This is also the most illogical part. Although the feather of the poisonous bird is said to produce deadly poison with just a single slit in the wine, the wine in the kitchen is clearly sealed and unopened. How could the feather have gotten in?"

“No, the wine had already been opened by then,” Chang’an said.

"What?" Fu Rou exclaimed in surprise.

"Aaaaaahh ...

The three were startled by the sound. Fu Rou said, "You all take Tian Gao back to her room to rest first. I'll go check on her."

Before they could answer, Fu Rou left the kitchen and headed towards the direction from which the sound came.

The sound was coming from a room on the second floor. The entire second floor was in chaos, with all the girls gathered in front of one of the rooms, and the sound was coming from there.

With a slightly worried feeling, Fu Rou arrived at the door. "This...this is Peach Heart's room."

When the girls saw Fu Rou arrive, they all surrounded her, dressed in colorful clothes.

A girl cried out, "Sister Furou...Taoxin...she...she's dead..."

"This...is too...too sudden...she was perfectly fine this morning..."

"Yes... so many things have happened since the original poster left, it's too... too scary."

Fu Rou's heart skipped a beat, and she subconsciously thought of the poison of the golden poison bird.

But she couldn't spread the worry, so she could only gently comfort them, "Don't worry, it's not as scary as you think..." Fu Rou comforted the girls like an older sister.

Upon entering the room, I saw several girls who were usually close to Tao Xin crying in front of the bed.

Fu Rou went up and patted them on the shoulder, offering some words of comfort.

Only then did she see: the heart-shaped face on the bed was completely black, streaks of blood covered her wide-open eyes, and black blood was flowing from the corners of her open mouth. Her pretty face was filled with pain, and a beautiful flower had withered away.

Fu Rou frowned and asked, "Tell me, what happened to her?"

The girl next to her rubbed her eyes and cried, "When we were entertaining guests this morning, Peach Heart was fine. But after lunch, she said her stomach was a little upset and she needed to go back to her room to be careful."

"I just wanted to get her a cup of hot water, but who would have thought... in such a short time... she'd become like this... Waaaaah..."

Fu Rou felt a surge of anger, and then she saw that Tao Xin's legs were half-exposed, the bed was in disarray, and there were four bloodstains on her forehead.

Her hands, clasped on the sheets, were stained with blood under her nails. Clearly, she had scratched her forehead because she couldn't bear the pain.

How much pain did she endure in such a short time...?

"Indeed... he died from the poison." Fu Rou continued in a low voice, "The poison of the Golden Poison Bird..."

"Poisoning? But we ate the same food as her, so why is only Peach Heart Sister affected?" The girl next to her asked, head down, looking bewildered.

Fu Rou bit her lip, filled with regret. "That clown was right, we can't delay any longer..."

Outside the door…

"It's you! Why are you still alive?"

"I knew it, I could smell that stench from so far away."

"Stay away from Peach Heart Sister's corpse."

Fu Rou came outside the room and found the girls covering their noses and attacking Lu Xiaosan, who was leaning against the railing.

He had a lazy expression, completely unconcerned about the girls' exasperation, and even seemed a little smug.

Wen Ying, standing in front of him, was full of vigilance, protecting Lu Xiaosan behind her like a mother protecting her child.

Lu Xiaosan pulled Wen Ying back and said with a smile, "It's okay, they wouldn't dare to do anything to me."

"Miss Wen, come quickly and see if Miss Tao Xin has been poisoned by poison?" Fu Rou asked loudly, ignoring their argument.

After Fu Rou spoke, the girls dared not say anything more.

So Wen Ying followed Fu Rou into the house. The girls outside covered their noses, glared at Lu Xiao San a few times, and then followed the two of them into the house.

Lu Xiaosan, finding it troublesome, waited outside the door.

But then he noticed that two courtesans from the Immortal Pavilion, Lianxue and Yulei, were also standing outside the door with him, both looking at him with meaningful expressions.