Chapter 318 - Gu Shao’s Scheme (2)

Song Yixiao’s words were proved to be true.

A few days later, the Qiu Family’s only heir, Qiu Zhiyin, died in his room!

The cause of his death was poisoning.

Because Qiu Zhiyin didn’t go out recently, he had limited access to people in Qiu Family’s mansion. Therefore, Jingzhao Municipality quickly identified the murderer, Liu Wu, daughter of Liu Zhong, an old servant of the Liu Family.

Liu Wu didn’t stay close to serve Qiu Zhiyin. The reason she was able to poison him was that she had known the siblings of Liu Family very well when she was a slave in Liu Family’s mansion as a child. Later, after Liu Zhong had gained his credit, his family was released from slavery and moved out of Liu Family’s mansion, but they still worked for the Liu Family.

When the Liu Family suffered the misfortune, they were no longer slaves of the Liu Family, so they were not implicated too much.

Soon afterwards, Qiu Zhiyin contacted them privately, and they were grateful and still considered him as their master. Liu Wu was only 16 years old and Qiu Zhiyin was only a year older than her. One was at a great age and beautiful and the other was young and handsome. During the process of getting along, they had affections.

Although it was impossible for Qiu Zhiyin to marry Liu Wu as his official wife, he promised to give her a title.

No one would know that the situation changed suddenly. Emperor Xianjia personally gave Qiu Zhiyin and Gu Tongxu a marriage. Everyone who could correctly judge the situation knew that whether the future of the Qiu Family would be assured depended on the daughter-in-law’s grandfather! In this situation, Qiu Zhiyin was afraid of offending his wife and not getting much help from the Gu Family in the future, so he decided to draw a clear line with Liu Wu.

“Liu Wu has given him everything, and now Qiu Zhiyin says he doesn’t want her anymore. How can she swallow up this anger?” Xie Yiren squeezed out time to visit Song Yixiao, and told her the event that the whole imperial capital was watching, “But Qiu Zhiyin was unlucky enough. If he had met a person with a softer temperament, the girl would have died on her own! But what Liu Wu wanted was to take this revenge before she died. So although she cried for a while, she finally chose to obey him and promised to never let Miss Gu know about what had happened between them.”

Saying this, she snickered, “This kind of playful and lustful man is just stupid! Although Liu Wu was a maid in the early days, her father was able to get the whole family off the registry, so it is clear that he is a capable man among the subordinates! The daughter of such a man is nominally a maid, but how can she suffer? The treatment that ordinary people gain may not be better than she does. Later, when she regained her status as a member of a normal family, she lived in her own house, and her family bought her a little maid to serve her. Although she was not quite a young lady, she was at least living a comfortable life, so how could she not hate him after such a great loss? But Qiu Zhiyin was just wishful thinking that Liu Wu wouldn’t dare and wouldn’t want to make things difficult for him!”

Song Yixiao smiled and asked, “Then what happened? How did Liu Wu poison him? I heard you say that Qiu Zhiyin died in the Qiu Family’s mansion, right?”

“Qiu Zhiyin only thought that Liu Wu had stopped messing with him, so when Liu Wu said that she would finally make him a snack that he loved, he agreed.” Xie Yiren revealed a touch of mockery, “What Liu Wu made for him were crispy desserts that didn’t need to be warmed up when he ate them, and according to her later confession, she said that she was afraid that Qiu Zhiyin would agree in front of her, but when they got cold later, he would be too lazy to ask the kitchen to heat them up, and would simply throw them away or reward them to other subordinates.”

She sighed as she said, “Liu Wu is also really scheming. Not only did she make crispy desserts, but she made only two pieces, telling Qiu Zhiyin that she wished him and Miss Gu love each other till the end and that they would grow old together. In fact, she was afraid that if she made too many, Qiu Zhiyin wouldn’t be able to finish them all by himself and would reward the subordinates with the rest. It wouldn’t matter if someone who had nothing to do with this was killed, but it would be awful if a flaw was found so that Qiu Zhiyin wasn’t poisoned to death!”

After Qiu Zhiyin took the desserts back to Qiu Family’s mansion, for various reasons, he did not eat them right away. Only after several days did he remember it. It was cold in twelfth lunar month at this time, the desserts originally would not have gone bad easily. He also thought of Liu Wu’s saying with her teary eyes that this was her last time to make desserts for him, so he put them in his mouth with emotions.

“Maybe he only understood it after he put them in his mouth. By saying that it was the last time she made him desserts, she didn’t mean that they would never see each other again, but that she intended to kill him.” Saying this, Xie Yiren sighed again, “The most pitiful and innocent person is Miss Gu, who has come a long way to prepare for her marriage in the imperial capital. It’s been just a few days. Her fiance has died first! There’s no idea how this thing will end up. I hope that Prime Minister Gu will love his granddaughter and not let her be widowed.”

Song Yixiao heard this, smiled lightly and said, “His Majesty personally made the match. Now that something has gone wrong. How can His Majesty not care? Even if Prime Minister Gu doesn’t mention it, I don’t think the Empress Dowager and His Majesty will let Prime Minister Gu down!”

Setting Qiu Zhiyin up this time was certainly Gu Shao’s scheme, but the death of Qiu Zhiyin was definitely the wish of the Empress Dowager and the emperor!

The two of them, no matter whether they knew the inside story or not, wanted to use the marriage to make Gu Shao watch over the Qiu Family in the future, so how could they let Gu Tongxu be widowed?

So Song Yixiao was not worried at all about Gu Tongxu’s future.

Xie Yiren didn’t know the inside story. She had only met Gu Tongxu on one occasion, and because of Song Yixiao, she had not spoken much to her at all. Her concerns about Gu Tongxu mentioned at this moment were just casual. Although she could squeeze time out, she was still overwhelmed with issues around the New Year. So after she asked about the situation of Song Yixiao’s pregnancy, she excused herself.

Several days after she left, the case of Qiu Zhiyin’s death was officially closed by Jingzhao Municipality, and of course, Liu Wu’s family did not end well. A few subordinates, who served Qiu Zhiyin in the Qiu Family’s mansion, were sold far away by Qiu Shuxia and his wife by the reason for not taking good care of their child.

Whether they were sold far away or just disappeared was not known.

Afterwards, Madam Jiang, the wife of Qiu Shuxia, went to the palace and cried to the Empress Dowager, “I have been an unfortunate woman. I have been married to the Qiu Family for decades, but I have never been able to give birth to an heir for my husband. Finally, we got a son. Even though he was not of the Qiu Family’s posterity, he could still continue the family’s reputation for us. Who would know that he died so suddenly? My husband and I are already not in our prime of life. What should we do in the future? How will we explain to the ancestors of the Qiu Family in heaven after I die?”

Madam Jiang cried as she said, causing the Empress Dowager to cry as well. Yuguo and the others became anxious and rushed to comfort her. Among the voices, someone proposed that the Qiu Family could adopt another son.

Qiu Shuxia was the only master of the Qiu Family, and as long as he agreed to the adoption, there would be no problem. Madam Jiang came to complain with tears to the Empress Dowager, only in order to show her respect to the Empress Dowager.

Of course, the point was that she wanted the marriage between the Qiu Family and Gu Family to go ahead.

The Empress Dowager agreed to the marriage between the two families matched by Emperor Xianjia, originally for the sake of the Qiu Family. She would not refuse to do so.

So, just before New Year’s Eve, the Qiu Family once again adopted a son!

This time, it was Madam Jiang’s biological nephew, originally named Jiang Zong. His surname was changed to Qiu after the adoption. Qiu Shuxia renamed him Qiu Cihua.

Qiu Cihua was a handsome boy, prettier than Qiu Zhiyin. Qiu Shuxia and his wife chose him from among the sons in Jiang Family because of his impressive appearance.

He had always been strict with himself and was a filial son. He was also very dedicated to his studies. He was only eighteen years old this year and was already preparing to take the imperial examination. His achievements were nothing compared with those talents like Su Shaoge, but he was an excellent young man among the ordinary people.

Therefore, not only Qiu Shuxia and his wife were satisfied with this new adopted son, but at the New Year’s Eve banquet, when the Empress Dowager asked if Gu Tongxu could marry Qiu Cihua, Gu Shao also nodded readily.

Since Gu Shao had agreed, with the happy atmosphere in the first lunar month, on the third day of the first lunar month, Emperor Xianjia issued another decree. By the reason that the old Prime Minister worked hard for the country and the weak lady was innocent, the emperor granted the marriage of Qiu Cihua and Gu Tongxu.

When Song Yixiao heard about this, she smiled lightly but also had a kind of unreal feeling. In her previous life, when she was about to escape from the tough life, she was given a blow full of shame and malice. And that was the man who let her die unjustly at the age of sixteen. Who could have imagined that in this life, the two of them had not even met each other but he died in this sudden way without honor?

She didn’t believe at all that Liu Wu was the real culprit, and didn’t even quite believe that she had an affair with Qiu Zhiyin. Qiu Zhiyin had been very driven after he was adopted to the Qiu Family. As the son of an official’s family, how could he not understand the importance of the union marriage?

And he was not Qiu Shuxia’s own son and was not even the heir chosen by Qiu Shuxia himself. Only because of the political exchange did he continue the master’s privileged career. The adoption was known by the whole court and the commonalty at that time. The secret couldn’t be hidden while talking about the matching. If he did not restrict his behaviors and make an effort to improve himself, how would he be able to marry a respected wife of good birth?

The most possible reason was that the Empress Dowager, for the sake of the Qiu Family, did not want Qiu Shuxia to have the reputation of betraying promise and justice. Therefore, she deliberately chose such a scapegoat, so that Qiu Zhiyin’s death could not be blamed on Qiu Shuxia!

Of course, Liu Wu’s family was not necessarily innocent either. In all probability, this family was indeed working for Qiu Zhiyin, even for his liaison with Liu Zhijin. This was the reason why they were chosen as the “murderers”. So they were distained and silenced.

“You’ve really got it.” Song Yixiao’s previous bleeding had made both Grand Princess Jinguo and Jian Xubai very nervous. As for these social engagements around the Spring Festival, Great Princess Jinguo had personally gone to the palace and asked the Empress Dowager to give her allowance to let Song Yixiao stay in the mansion and rest for her pregnancy, and not attend any of the banquets neither in the palace nor in somewhere else, so as to avoid any accidents.

So on the fourth day of the first lunar month, she and Jian Xubai were supposed to visit the elders, but Xie Yiren and his husband came early in the morning, saying that they were afraid that she would be tired.

Xu Xishi was naturally welcomed by Jian Xubai at the front. And Xie Yiren went into the back hall to talk to Song Yixiao.

After a few words of congratulations on the New Year, Xie Yiren said, “The Empress Dowager and His Majesty have really not given Miss Gu a hard time. I haven’t met with the heir of the Qiu Family, but my husband says that he is really handsome. The most important thing is that he was originally the nephew of Aunt’s maternal family, and Uncle and Aunt often visited him while he was growing up, and knew much about him. Since he was chosen for the succession among those nephews, obviously he was a good person, and would never cause trouble like the affair of Liu Wu. Miss Gu’s marriage to him is much better than to the former one!”

Song Yixiao surely would not explain the inside story to her sister-in-law, smiling at the words and she said, “That’s true.”

“After all, her fiance died. I saw that Miss Gu at the palace banquet before the Spring Festival. She had lost a lot of weight and was not as well behaved as she was at the birthday banquet of County Lady Jinghui. She kept silent for the whole banquet. I couldn’t tell you how pitiful she looked!” Xie Yiren added with emotion, “I wonder if she is better now?”

“I’m sure she’ll be able to get over it with the comfort of Prime Minister Gu. After all, she’s never met Qiu Zhiyin. It’s only the order of her elders.” Song Yixiao smiled and said, “Isn’t this one also the order of the elders? Moreover, Miss Gu came to the north first. Her parents are the eldest son and daughter-in-law, so they can’t get away for the time being. They will have to come to the imperial capital after the Spring Festival to take care of Miss Gu’s wedding. At that time, they will surely comfort her!”

Xie Yiren thought about it and agreed. Then she started to talk about something else. Song Yixiao was chatting with her, but in her heart, she was thinking, “It is really of Prime Minister Gu. Not only has he replaced his prospective grandson-in-law, whom he doesn’t like, but he has also put his granddaughter in a sympathetic position. It’s much easier for her to fit in with the rest of us!”

Gu Tongxu was born and raised up in Hongzhou. She was completely an outsider to the imperial capital.

Those noble madams and ladies didn’t despise her, but it was normal to have antiforeign sentiment, even if she didn’t have conflicts with anyone. But after her grandfather Gu Shao’s scheme, there were many people like Xie Yiren who felt that Miss Gu was so unfortunate and pitiful. With people thinking this way, the collision and estrangement would naturally decrease.

Although sympathy and pity were condescending, they were the easiest emotions to bridge the gap and bring people closer together.

Who would refuse the girl with her gesture of humility and desire to befriend the others?