The painted jade cup remained on the table, sitting undisturbed beneath the warm glow of the lanterns.
“I am suddenly not thirsty,” she said quietly.
Standing beside her table, Xu Wenqian didn’t miss a beat.
His dark eyes flicked from her face down to the untouched cup, then back to her eyes again.
He had caught her sudden, rigid pause three inches from her lips—the exact micro-reaction of someone who had just sniffed out a trap.
He didn’t know what she had detected.
To the naked eye and normal human senses, the spiced plum wine looked entirely harmless.
But the complete shift in her posture was enough to tell him everything.
“A pity,” Xu Wenqian murmured smoothly, his tone laced with polite indifference.
“The imperial vintners pride themselves on the spiced winter wine. Though, perhaps Her Highness simply prefers a different flavor profile.”
“I prefer things that don’t leave a bitter lingering aftertaste,” Rulan replied, giving him a flat look.
“An admirable preference,” Xu Wenqian said, taking a slow sip from his own porcelain cup.
“Though in this court, one often has to develop a tolerance for bitterness.”
Rulan offered a faint smile.
“I prefer to eliminate the source of the bitterness instead.”
Rather than causing a scene or exposing the servant immediately, Rulan reached out and picked up a different, clean cup of ordinary tea that Lian’er had poured earlier.
She took a tiny, deliberate sip.
Then, she began her performance.
She let her eyelids flutter slightly, allowing a faint, subtle tremor to touch her right hand.
She leaned a fraction of her weight against the carved wooden armrest, as though her head had suddenly grown heavy.
She leaned toward her maid and whispered loudly enough for nearby servants to hear: “Lian’er… I think the wine is affecting me. My head feels… strangely light.”
Instantly, Rulan’s eyes, hidden beneath her lowered lashes, tracked the area.
Standing near the marble pillar, Xiao Cui’s head snapped up.
If Xiao Cui were a rogue assassin acting on her own, her immediate reaction to hearing the princess complain of sudden dizziness would have been a subtle slump of relief or a quiet smirk of victory.
Instead, Xiao Cui’s face drained of what little color it had left.
Pure, unadulterated panic swept across her features.
Her breath caught violently in her throat.
And then came the tell.
Xiao Cui didn’t look at Rulan to verify her physical collapse.
She didn’t look at the poisoned jade cup sitting on the table.
Her eyes darted frantically across the crowded banquet hall, landing directly on a table located in the upper-tier seating area—where the high-ranking officials and senior noble families sat.
Rulan’s internal radar locked onto the exact angle of Xiao Cui’s gaze.
‘She isn’t looking to see if her target is dead’, Rulan noted, her brain dissecting the behavior instantly.
‘She’s looking to see if her master is watching.’
A quiet step echoed beside her table as Xu Wenqian moved slightly closer, blocking the line of sight between Rulan and the surrounding ministers.
He tilted his head down, his posture relaxed, looking for all the world like a attentive courtier engaging in polite idle chatter with a princess.
“Your Highness,” Xu Wenqian murmured, his voice dropping to a low, smooth purr that barely carried past her shoulder, “is a remarkably convincing actress.”
Rulan didn’t break character.
She kept her posture slightly relaxed against the chair, though her eyes narrowed as she looked up at him.
“Of course you don’t,” Xu Wenqian replied effortlessly.
A soft, light chuckle escaped his lips—a sound purely designed for any curious observers nearby to assume they were sharing a harmless joke.
“And I suppose the sudden tremors in your fingers were merely a sudden chill in the air.”
“The drafts in this garden are notoriously sharp,” Rulan said dryly.
“Surely a man who spends all his time buried in cabinet archives would know about cold winds.”
“I am quite familiar with cold winds, Princess,” Xu Wenqian said, his dark eyes sparkling with a dangerous light.
“Particularly the ones that blow through this garden tonight.”
He lowered his hand, his long sleeve brushing lightly against the edge of her table near the jade cup.
“The wine has a strange undertone beneath the spices,” Xu Wenqian murmured.
“Something bitter. Medicinal.”
Rulan’s fingers twitched beneath her silk sleeve.
He smelled it too.
Or at least, he knew enough about poisons to identify the aromatic signature.
This was their first true exchange—a quiet, dangerous trade of mutual information in the middle of a brightly lit room filled with music and laughter.
Neither of them trusted the other.
Neither was willing to lay their full hand on the table.
Yet both now knew that the other was playing a far deeper game than anyone else in the room realized.
“Grand Secretary Xu seems exceptionally knowledgeable about ‘medicine’,” Rulan remarked softly, keeping her expression completely calm.
“Do they teach botany in the Imperial Secretariat, or is that merely a personal hobby?”
“In my line of work, Your Highness, knowing what goes into a cup is just as important as knowing who holds the flagon,” Xu Wenqian replied smoothly.
Rulan took a slow breath, deciding to test the waters further.
She straightened her posture, shedding her fake dizzy demeanor in an instant, and gestured casually to a passing palace servant.
“Take this cup away,” Rulan ordered, pointing directly at the untouched, poisoned jade cup.
“It has grown cold.”
The junior servant bowed hastily, picked up the tray containing the jade cup, and carried it back toward the servant prep stations at the side of the hall.
Rulan’s eyes immediately sought out Xiao Cui once more.
If Xiao Cui had been the mastermind behind the hit, seeing the untouched poisoned cup being cleared away would have triggered frustration—the annoyance of a failed attempt.
Instead, Xiao Cui looked as though she had just seen a ghost.
Her hands began to shake violently against her apron.
Her posture collapsed into rigid, terrified trembling.
‘She isn’t afraid because the princess lived’, Rulan realized, her mind laying out the psychological profile of the servant.
‘She’s terrified because the cup is coming back full.
She failed her assignment, and now she has to report that failure.’
Xiao Cui wasn’t a cold-blooded killer.
She was a pawn being squeezed by a vice grip.
Xu Wenqian followed Rulan’s gaze, watching the trembling maid vanish into the kitchen corridors.
“Whatever you smelled in that cup,” Xu Wenqian said, stepping half a pace closer to Rulan’s table, his voice barely a breath against the ambient zither music, “do not announce it to the court.”
Rulan tilted her head, looking up at him with cool, calculating eyes.
“And why should I hold my tongue? Someone just tried to poison my drink.” This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
“Because,” Xu Wenqian answered, his dark eyes locking onto hers with absolute, unwavering intensity, “if the person responsible knows you detected it, the next attempt won’t come in a cup.”
The words hung between them, heavy and sharp.
It was a warning—and a remarkably pragmatic one.
An enemy who thinks their poison failed due to pure luck or a missed opportunity will simply try the same subtle method again later, giving the target time and predictability.
But an enemy who realizes their target can smell chemical compounds through heavy spices will abandon subtle methods entirely in favor of an arrow, a blade, or a sudden, brutal tragic ‘accident’.
Rulan studied Xu Wenqian’s face.
He stood there in his unadorned navy robes, looking every bit the refined, calm scholar.
Yet beneath that elegant exterior was a mind that understood the art of assassination with terrifying clarity.
It was a cold, efficient style of thinking that felt unnervingly familiar to her.
It was the mindset of someone who had spent a very long time calculating threat vectors in an environment where mistakes meant death.
“You speak as though you’ve seen this happen before, Grand Secretary,” Rulan murmured, her voice dripping with subtle insinuation.
“I have seen many foolish people die in this court, Your Highness,” Xu Wenqian replied effortlessly, stepping back.
“It would be a shame if the Fourth Princess joined their ranks just as her conversations were becoming… interesting.”
He bowed with flawless, imperial etiquette, his posture the very picture of respect.
“I shall leave Your Highness to enjoy the rest of the evening,” Xu Wenqian said smoothly.
“Do try to stay warm. The drafts tonight really are quite severe.”
Without waiting for a dismissal, he turned and walked gracefully back toward the grand secretariat table, his dark navy robes swaying with his steps.
Rulan watched his retreating back until he disappeared into the crowd of chatting officials.
‘Xu Wenqian’, she thought, her fingers tapping a quiet rhythm against her wooden saucer.
‘You know far too much about assassination games for a man who claims to only manage imperial paperwork.’
“Y-Your Highness?” Lian’er whispered nervously from behind her shoulder, bringing a small plate of soft, honeyed bean-paste cakes to the table.
“Are you feeling alright? Should I call the imperial physician?”
“I’m fine,” Rulan said smoothly.
She picked up a honeyed cake with her fingers, taking a generous, satisfied bite.
The rich, sweet paste dissolved on her tongue—a stark, comforting contrast to the bitter undertones of the poisoned wine she had narrowly avoided.
Across the garden hall, near the shadow of the rear pillars, Xiao Cui was ducking out through a side curtain, her head bowed low, her footsteps hurried and erratic.
She was slipping away from her assigned post before the feast had even concluded.
Lian’er noticed Rulan’s gaze tracking the maid.
“Is… is something wrong with Xiao Cui?”
“Lian’er,” Rulan said calmly, taking another bite of her dessert.
“Yes, Your Highness?”
“Find out where Xiao Cui sleeps tonight.”
Lian’er’s face paled instantly.
She swallowed hard, her eyes wide with sudden terror.
“Y-Your Highness? Are you… are you going to have her punished?”
Rulan chewed slowly, swallowed, and wiped a small smear of sugar from the corner of her lip with her thumb.
She looked at her maid with a calm, unbothered expression.
“I’m not going to kill her.”
She paused, her grey eyes glinting under the lantern light with the cold, methodical focus of a predator tracking a trail of blood.
“I want to know who she’s afraid of.”