abnabooks Chapter 2319 The Man Behind the Scenes
Chapter 2319 The Man Behind the Scenes
Chapter 2319 The Man Behind the Scenes
"You must not only endure this pain, but also learn to enjoy it!" She breathed slightly, licked the blood from her lips, and her eyes shone with a burning light that chilled the leader to the bone.
This woman must have gone mad long ago.
“Even if you crush every inch of my veins, gouge out my eyes, cut off my nose, and sever my limbs, you still won’t get any information you want if I don’t want to talk! When your master is unhappy, how much better will your fate be than mine?” She revealed a sinister smile. “I may not be able to see, but I can wait for you in the depths of the Netherworld. You won’t make me wait too long, will you?”
The leader remained silent for a few moments before saying, "Once you see me, you won't be able to return to the Heavenly Palace."
This "I" is, of course, not him personally.
"You make it sound like you're planning to let me go back." Mei Wuniang chuckled. "If you don't show your face, all this great intelligence will go down the drain."
Her ultimate goal has always been to get the person behind the scenes to take charge.
The leader then said to the executioner, "Put it away and come with me."
The latter stopped the torture, put away his tools, and followed the leader out.
Mei Wu Niang took a deep breath, trying to regain her composure.
She has only taken a small step; the real battles are yet to come!
She still has a life-saving charm, but whether it will work depends on who uses it.
She wouldn't act until she saw the benefits; she had to find the mastermind behind these thugs.
The group of people outside still stood upright, completely surrounding the guest room.
After a dozen or so breaths, one person finally stepped across the threshold, hands behind his back.
He was in his forties, with a handsome face and an elegant long robe.
When Mei Wuniang saw him, she was extremely surprised: "Grand Preceptor!"
She never expected to meet Nie Xiaolou, the current Grand Preceptor of Qing Palace, here!
Nie Xiaolou was also a frequent visitor to Xushan. Tong Yiyi followed Zeng Guzi to various public occasions and had seen him at least ten times, and had served him tea and drinks several times.
Of course, she could pretend not to know her, but that wouldn't make much difference.
Nie Xiaolou sat down first, and gently pointed to the chair opposite him with his folding fan: "Sit."
No one touched Mei Wu Niang, but she felt as if she was being held down by a pair of invisible hands and forced to sit down!
Touching the wound brought another wave of excruciating pain.
She gritted her teeth and endured it.
"Grand Preceptor, what's going on?" Mei Wu Niang sighed, "I never expected it to be you."
Didn't expect that? Nie Xiaolou smiled.
“I also thought that you survived because you were unaware of the truth, and that the Heavenly Palace used you as bait.” Nie Xiaolou said calmly, “I also had someone investigate your background, and it was clear and clean, with no suspicious points.”
Mei Wu Niang felt a chill in her heart. When did the Imperial Preceptor of Qing Palace begin to suspect her?
Once targeted by this kind of person, no spy will have a good ending.
Fortunately, the information Cang Yan produced was so solid that it managed to deceive the discerning eyes of the Imperial Preceptor of the Azure Palace.
Back then, she passed the background check at Tiangong in the same way.
“However, a few years ago, I mastered a nearly lost and obscure supernatural power called ‘Heavenly Eye’,” Nie Xiaolou said slowly. “This supernatural power is nothing special; it can only see a person’s birth date and time without you having to tell it. In the medieval period, some sorcerers used it to harm or deceive people.”
Mei Wu Niang's heart skipped a beat. Could Nie Xiao Lou also see her?
“Yes, I can tell your birth date and time at a glance.” Nie Xiaolou seemed to hear her thoughts. “Those few times, you stood behind Zeng Gu Zi with utmost respect, not daring to raise your head, and I didn’t investigate further. It wasn’t until Huang Mingsheng mistakenly killed the Prince of Yu on the front lines that I heard your name again, and that’s when I did some calculations—”
"It turns out that you are actually three or four years older than you are now, and you were already over the age limit when you were selected for the Heavenly Palace. But there is no flaw in your background for entering the palace."
“Grand Preceptor, your words are baseless. To slander the people of the Heavenly Palace, you need written evidence.” Mei Wu Niang pursed her lips and said quietly, “Even if you insist on your opinion, I don’t believe you don’t know that not all the maids selected for the Heavenly Palace are sixteen or seventeen years old.”
The practice of falsely reporting one's age to enter the Heavenly Palace is not widespread, but it is certainly not uncommon. Mei Wu Niang alone knows of several such cases.
Even those in the Heavenly Palace might be unaware, but as long as no one exposes or reports it, they'll just turn a blind eye. What difference does it make if the selected maids are a year or two older? Would the gods really care?
“Later I looked into your information more closely, and the more I read, the more interesting it became.” Nie Xiaolou laughed. “The impression you received in the Heavenly Palace was that you were gentle and straightforward, without any scheming. Even Zeng Guizi, who was always considered difficult to please, liked you. That’s understandable, Zeng Guizi had been in that corrupt environment for a long time and didn’t like those girls who were more cunning than sponges.”
Having spent most of her life in the Heavenly Palace, Zeng Guizi had seen countless scheming women, and just looking at them was exhausting. In comparison, she preferred more down-to-earth girls, because down-to-earth girls were less likely to harm others.
“But the five people who offended you in total, including two maids, a guard, a lamplighter, and even Huang Shiqin, an official in the royal court and the Fengti Colonel, all met with death or demotion.” Nie Xiaolou continued, “Thanks to you, Huang Shiqin is now just a low-ranking official.”
It was this incident that caught his attention.
Mei Wu Niang bit her lip: "That maid was dealt with by Aunt Zeng because she did a bad job and angered the gods. As for the change of Commandant Huang, it has nothing to do with me. If he hadn't been so arrogant in the bustling city, how could he have offended the Minister of Agriculture?"
"Yes, on the surface, their fates were all self-inflicted," Nie Xiaolou said solemnly. "But if you delve deeper, each of their past paths intersected with yours. In the shortest case, it was only two or three months, and in the longest, it was a year before they ran into trouble. Tell me, how could it all be such a coincidence?"
Mei Wu Niang pouted but didn't say anything.
“The Heavenly Palace and Zeng Gu Zi were blind to your own abilities, and they never suspected you before. If the Heavenly Palace hadn’t used you as bait this time, I wouldn’t have come looking for you.” Nie Xiaolou smiled slightly. “Now that I think about it, either your methods were really clever, or you had external help. Neither of these things should have been done by the naive and straightforward ‘Tong Yiyi’.”
Just as Nie Xiaolou finished speaking, a guard entered from outside, carrying a small box in his hands: "Sir, there's something fishy about her earrings."
"Oh?"
The guard opened the box, inside which was a pearl earring.
When Mei Wu Niang saw it, she knew that her worst fears had come true.
The guard was also holding another pearl earring in his hand:
"These are real pearls, but the ones in the box are not."
He lit the lamp, lifted the pearl in the box and held it up to the light, saying, "Look."
On the surface, this bead looks no different from others of its kind; but when you shine a strong light on it, it seems that there is something inside.
(End of this chapter)