Chapter 23
Chapter 23: Someone Poisoned It
Everyone stared at the tiny figure on the platform, frozen as if a spell had smacked them in the face.
Zheng Kun’s smugness cracked and shattered. The color drained from him until he looked ghost-white.
“Impossible!” he shrieked, voice breaking. “You—you must have memorized it beforehand!”
“Silence!” The headmaster’s tone was stern, though his eyes shone with astonishment. “This book is a lone copy. It was a gift from your father, and I only took it out of the secret room today. How could the Ninth Princess have known it beforehand?”
The proof slammed down like a hammer.
Zheng Kun staggered back, staring at Chu Tian Tian’s innocent face as shame swallowed him whole. His prized memory suddenly felt like a joke.
Cheers detonated from the crowd.
“Ninth Princess is incredible!” “Photographic memory!” “A real prodigy!” Students shouted her title like a battle cry.
Zheng Kun bowed deeply, voice dry and strained. “Ninth Princess… Zheng Kun is convinced. Earlier… I offended you.”
Then he fled as if the ground were on fire.
Chu Cheng Yan carried Tian Tian down from the platform, and she was immediately swarmed by excited students. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes curved into crescents.
Off to the side, Chu Jiao Jiao trembled with rage. “What are you so proud of? Just wait!”
Tian Tian’s first day at the academy ended in roaring applause—and she bounced back to the Cold Palace, desperate to share the good news with her mother.
But the moment she stepped into the courtyard, something felt wrong.
The familiar loneliness was still there, but the air was tight, strained—like a string pulled too hard.
Consort Li stood rigid beside the tiny vegetable patch, face pale. In her hand was a silver hairpin—its tip blackened. Her grip was so tight her knuckles looked ready to split.
“Mother?” Tian Tian hurried over, baby voice trembling. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong with the vegetables?”
Consort Li snapped back as if waking from a nightmare. The moment she saw her daughter, she yanked Tian Tian into her arms, still shaking.
“Sweetie… my Sweetie is back.” Her voice quivered with aftershock. “It’s fine. Mother is fine. It’s just…”
She pointed at the garden. Her voice dropped, turning cold enough to cut. “Someone tried to poison us.”
“At noon I went to pick vegetables. I tested them with the hairpin—black at once. This poison kills the moment it touches blood.”
Her eyes blazed. “They dared reach into the Cold Palace. Into the food we grow ourselves. They want us dead.”
Chu Tian Tian went pale. She clutched Consort Li’s sleeve, real fear filling her eyes.
“Poison… poison us?” she whispered. “Mother…”
Then she sniffled hard, tears trembling at the edge. “Tian Tian heard it. The vegetables are crying… they hurt, and they’re so scared. The bad guys are too bad!”
Consort Li’s heart nearly broke—and her fury surged hotter.
She crouched, met her daughter’s gaze, and spoke with steel certainty. “Sweetie, don’t be afraid. Mother is here. From this day forward, no one will touch a single hair on you. If gods block me, I kill gods. If buddhas block me, I kill buddhas.”
“Later, Mother will go to your Imperial Father. We will investigate. We will drag out that hidden snake and cut it into a thousand pieces.”
Chu Tian Tian nodded hard, gulping down her fear. “Mm! We’ll find Imperial Father! We’ll catch the bad guys!”
She glanced at the wilted seedlings and sighed like a tiny official. “It’s just a pity for the vegetables Mother worked so hard to grow…”
Consort Li’s gaze softened with pain. She stared at the patch like it was a small grave.
Then Chu Tian Tian’s eyes lit up, like a spark catching dry tinder.
“Mother!” She leaned in conspiratorially and dug into her Pocket Space with both hands. When she pulled her fists back out, she was holding several rough, unremarkable dirt-colored lumps that somehow carried a faint, strange sheen.
“Mother, we won’t grow vegetables anymore! We’ll grow this—potato!”
Her baby voice dropped into solemn seriousness. “These are Tian Tian’s treasure seeds. If we grow them right, we can harvest thousands of jin per mu. So many, so many commoners can eat their fill! It’s… it’s good for the country and the people. A huge, huge thing!”
Consort Li stared at her daughter’s small face—so earnest, so bright, so impossibly certain. The light in those clear eyes looked like it carried something bigger than either of them.
Her heart shook.
Her daughter wasn’t just holding seeds.
She might be holding hope—for them, and for Great Ning itself.
Consort Li drew a deep breath and accepted the heavy “potatoes” like she was taking on a thousand-jin burden. Fear and rage folded into something harder: resolve.
“Fine,” she said, voice steady. “Mother will listen to Sweetie. We’ll grow potato. Even if I risk my life, I’ll grow it.”
In the Palace of Eternal Longevity, the mood was the exact opposite.
Crash!
An exquisite enamel vase shattered across the floor.
Consort Xian’s chest heaved. Jealousy and hate twisted her face into something ugly.
“Useless! All useless!” she hissed. “You couldn’t even poison a bitch in the Cold Palace and that little brat!”
Her personal nanny didn’t dare breathe too loudly. “Your Ladyship, please calm down. No matter how favored the Ninth Princess is, she’s still just a princess. She can’t overturn the heavens.”
She leaned in gently, coaxing. “Why lower yourself to fight a little girl? Our true focus should be the Second Prince. When His Highness returns from his travels, with his talent and looks, pressing the Crown Prince down is what matters.”
“As for the Ninth Princess, Princess Ying Yue will have her own headache.”
Consort Xian forced her fury down, but her eyes stayed sharp with cold light. “I don’t care about that little disaster star. I care about Consort Li.”
The nanny smiled quickly. “Your Ladyship is overthinking. Consort Li is in the Cold Palace—that is an iron rule. Since the founding of the dynasty, what woman who entered the Cold Palace ever walked out alive and with dignity? She will rot there for the rest of her life. Your Ladyship is noble—why spare an ant in the mud a second glance?”
The words cooled Consort Xian’s fire, just a little.
She rubbed her brow, voice tired. “You’re right. I was too fixated. Cheng Yu—where is Cheng Yu’s letter? Where is he now? Did he say when he’ll return to the capital?”
The nanny hurriedly presented the letter. “Replying to Your Ladyship, His Highness’s letter just arrived. He has already passed Jiang Nan. His return will be next month.”
Back in the Cold Palace courtyard, sunlight spilled warm and gold.
“Mother, Mother!” Chu Tian Tian shouted, wearing a Little Grass hat and looking like a mud-smeared kitten. “The holes have to be deeper!”