CH 39

The more Ruan Jinghong thought about it, the more she felt that her guess was correct. If this was the case, wouldn't she be tied to the same camp as Wen Jin now?

Amnesiac, Murderer ally, and first time playing in a murder-mystery roleplay, Ruan Jinghong, expressed great pressure.

She looked at Jin Ziyi who was waiting for her answer, and tried her best to pull out a natural smile, "I had great team work with Teacher Wen just now, why don't we keep the original grouping unchanged."

Jin Ziyi, who was rejected by her sister, was a little disappointed, but she didn't take it too seriously. She turned her head and ran towards Huo Yitong, who had been staring at her side to watch the excitement.

"Okay, let's continue as a team."

Huo Yitong didn't care about Jin Ziyi thinking of coming to her after getting dumped, and walked to Princess Ruan's bedroom first, "Then hurry up, don't fight for the first and don't be the last."

These words seem to mean something.

Wen Jin, who was at the end, was not as anxious as the first two groups. She looked at the little thing with a worried face, and snorted, "You seem to be hesitant about choosing a partner just now."

"Not at all." Seeing that the other two groups had gone away, Ruan Jinghong leaned close to Wen Jin and said in a low voice, "Teacher Wen, I just figured it out, we are now on the same team."  

Wen Jin, "Huh?"

Ruan Jinghong saw that Wen Jin was unmoved, turned her back to her, showed the stick figure Hello Kitty on her palace costume, and said confidently: "This is your hidden mission, we are already in the same boat now, tell me, who do you want to frame next?"

Ruan Jinghong, who got the murderer's role for the first time, seemed eager to try.

Wen Jin looked at Ruan Jinghong's excited little face, with a very calm expression, "Since you already know, then cooperate with me and find a way to convict Huo Yitong."

Ruan Jinghong: Huh?

"However, in the current situation, shouldn't it be easier to frame Prince Yin or Concubine Yun? Grand Fu Huo seems the most innocent." Ruan Jinghong tilted her head, puzzled by this proposal.

"They are too stupid to have a sense of achievement when it comes to planting a plot, but they are very suitable for coaxing into an alliance. Let's go, let's also go to the room of the Princess of the Western Realm to see." Wen Jin's voice fell and naturally led Ruan Jinghong to the scene of evidence search.

Ruan Jinghong has always been full of trust in Wen Jin, and as she walked, she admired her deeply: She is indeed Teacher Wen. Playing games not only to win, but also to be challenged.

When Ruan Jinghong and Wen Jin arrived at the bedroom where the Princess of the Western Realm lived, Yin Xiang and Zhong Manyun had already been searching the room for a while.

Seeing two more people in the room, Yin Xiang and Zhong Manyun both looked a little embarrassed. After all, they had accused each other not long ago.

On the contrary, Wen Jin's face was rare and kind, and she took the initiative to break the deadlock. "You two don't need to be so nervous, I believe you are innocent. When I was searching for a diary with Huo Yitong in the imperial study before, I looked at her most suspiciously, but now there is no evidence. So, we can actually cooperate.

But I still think Ruan Jinghong is the most suspicious.

Zhong Manyun muttered to herself, but seeing Wen Jin's attitude of protecting the cub, she didn't speak out directly.

After all, she and Yin Xiang are the targets of everyone at this moment. Now that someone finally took the initiative to throw an olive branch, she has to take it whether she believes it or not.

Seeing that the wind was making the rudder the fastest, Yin Xiang immediately responded, "The advisor's words are reasonable, so let's grab Mrs. Huo's pigtails together now."

The corner of Wen Jin's mouth curled up slightly. Since the superficial peace has been reached, there is no need to say anything else for the time being. The key is to seize the time to find evidence.

As for Yin Xiang and Zhong Manyun, it doesn't matter whether they really believe in them now, as long as they don't cause trouble for the time being.

For a moment, the four people in the room were caught up in the race against time to search for evidence. The two groups of people each occupied a corner without interfering with each other.

Wen Jin chose to start with the corpse of the princess of the Western Realm on the couch.

This corpse is naturally a puppet made by the program group, and it is quite realistic. The hair is still wet, and a sword wound is on the body, but the face has been smashed by a blunt object, so it is difficult to distinguish clearly.

Ruan Jinghong took a breath when she saw this, "Drowning and using sharp and blunt weapons, what a hatred, the culprit was determined to kill the princess of the Western Realm."

Facing the corpse of a puppet, Wen Jin wasn't that emotional. She untied the corpse's clothes and carefully inspected the other's injuries.

Yin Xiang saw Wen Jin and Ruan Jinghong gathering around the bed of the deceased for a long time, and looked around curiously, but was seen by Ruan Jinghong, who blocked the body of the Princess of the Western Realm.

"Don't be rude, turn around."

Yin Xiang: ...

Thank you, I'm not interested in the body of a puppet.

Yin Xiang didn't look at the bed anymore, and came to his companion Zhong Manyun, just in time to see her holding a small box and hiding it under the cabinet.

This scene was also seen by Ruan Jinghong, who was staring at Yin Xiang's obstruction. She immediately asked, "Concubine Yun, what are you hiding under the cabinet?"

Wen Jin, who was investigating the corpse of the Western Realm Princess, turned her head and saw Zhong Manyun's nervous face. She took a few steps forward and found the small box that had been hidden under the cabinet and saw the same symbol on the bottom of the box as on Concubine Yun's palace dress.

"You gave this box to the princess of the Western Realm?"

Zhong Manyun has read her own script, so she naturally knows what is contained in it. In front of Wen Jin's powerful aura, she dare not lie, so she can only defend with a bitter face: "I really didn't kill the Princess of the Western Realm.”

Wen Jin opened the box and saw a few pieces of pastries inside, but it looked like some pieces had been taken away.  There is also a note on the pastry, which reads: slow poison.

Wen Jin: ...

Although I know that it is impossible for the program crew to really poison the cakes, this is too...simple and crude.

Wen Jin closed the box and expressed her speculation, "You were determined to ascend to the position of the main consort, but now that the Crown Prince is about to marry the Princess of the Western Realm, you see no hope for your future. So, with a malicious intention in mind, you used the name of visiting and giving gifts to hide the chronic poison in pastries, hoping to poison the princess without anyone noticing. Because these poisons are slow, you calculated that by the time the princess truly dies, these pastries would have long been gone, but you never expected the princess to die so suddenly."

Seeing that her script had been guessed by Wen Jin, Zhong Manyun dared not refute it completely. She could only admit the plot lightly, "I admit that I did put some bad things in these pastries, but eating them would at most affect the offspring. It's not fatal!"

"Whether it's fatal or not depends on the person. Anyway, the princess of the Western Realm is dead now, and there happens to be a poisonous pastry from you in her room." Wen Jin told the truth in a cool tone.

Seeing that the murderer's hat was about to be put on her head, Zhong Manyun said anxiously: "How did you find the body of the Princess of the Western Realm? Is fatal injury caused by poisoning? You said earlier that you suspected that the murderer was Grand Fu Huo, and you are willing to cooperate with us, are you serious?"

She subconsciously pulled Yin Xiang into her camp.

Seeing that her goal has been achieved, Wen Jin smiled harmlessly, "Whether you take it seriously depends on whether you are worthy or not."

Yin Xiang looked at his CP and knew that if she gets accused of being a murderer, he would not be able to escape being suspected of being an ally so he was very tactful, "Advisor, if you need our cooperation, please say so."

"Please turn over there now and look for something." Wen Jin stood at the door and pointed to the scene across. After Yin Xiang and Zhong Manyun left, Ruan Jinghong asked curiously, "Teacher Wen, is it reliable for you to entrust the task to my brother and sister-in-law? Why don't we go find it ourselves?"

"Don't worry, they must be reliable in order to clear themselves of suspicion." Wen Jin smiled calmly, "As for us, there are more important tasks right now, come and see."

As she spoke, she went to the corpse of the Princess of the Western Realm again, and untied the collar on the shoulders of the corpse for Ruan Jinghong to look at.

"There is a plum blossom mark on her shoulder. Does this have something to do with the cause of her death?" Ruan Jinghong's big eyes were full of innocence.

"It's hard to say whether it has something to do with her cause of death, but it must have something to do with her identity. Find a piece of paper and copy this pattern."

Isn't her identity the Princess of the Western Realm?

Ruan Jinghong was at a loss.

Wen Jin took the drawing of the plum blossoms and counted the time, "Hurry up, we still have two scenes to search."

The first scene they moved to was Chen Kingdom's criminal file room.

Ruan Jinghong looked at the sparse files on the shelf, and said strangely: "The Princess of the Western Realm has just been killed, so I'm afraid this case hasn't been recorded yet."

"Find out if there is a plum blossom pattern recorded, you just need to look at the pattern." Wen Jin flipped through each file while talking.

These dossiers look thick, but in fact they don't have a lot of content. She focused on searching for patterns, and flipped through them quite quickly.

"Found it!" Ruan Jinghong held a file, pointed to the big plum blossom pattern on it, and quickly read, "In the fifty-seventh year of Chen Kingdom, the queen suffered an attempted assassination in Kunning Palace*. The assassin was ambushed and a plum blossom mark was found on his body."

*Palace of Earthly Tranquility, one of the three main halls of the inner court of the Forbidden City, used to be a resting palace for the Queens and later became a worshiping place for shamans.

Source: https://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=7288969

This translation is originally posted on

https://love4baihe.blogspot.com

please read it there. and check out other stories too.

"There's also this one. In the sixty-first year of Chen Kingdom, the crown prince suffered an attempted assassination in the East Palace. The assassin was killed, and there was a plum blossom mark on his body."

"In the sixty-fifth year of Chen, the Empress Dowager suffered an attempted assassination in the Cining Palace* and the assassin had already been killed, with a plum blossom mark on her body."

*Palace of Compassion and Tranquility, where Empress Dowager lives.

Ruan Jinghong: ...

These plum blossom assassins are so obsessed with assassinating the royal family.

Hey, wait a minute, didn't the princess of the Western Realm also become an assassin, she came all the way to get married, just to assassinate me, Princess of Chen, what kind of grudge!

Wen Jin nodded, "Very well, bring all these files, and we will go to the next scene to collect evidence."

Wen Jin recalled seeing the marks on the map before, and remembered that there was another NPC that no one had visited until now.

At this point in the program, that NPC must have been waiting alone for a long time.

Wen Jin and Ruan Jinghong came to the Cold Palace*, where they found an old lady who was cleaning.

*Cold Palace is generic term for a remote palace,where concubines who have fallen from the Emperor's grace are confined until their death. Palace of the Great Brilliance is one of those.

She took out the drawing of plum blossoms from her lapel, and handed it to the old lady, "Hello, may I ask if you recognize this mark?"

The old lady glanced at the drawing in a dramatic way. She narrowed her eyes slightly, as if she was drowsy, "I'm old, my memory is not good, I can't remember anything now, I can't remember..."

Seeing her reaction like this, Wen Jin felt eight layers of certainty in her heart, "Then what wish does the old lady have, you might as well say it, we will try our best to fulfill it for you."

Wen Jin originally thought that the old lady would let them look for some more items. After all, this is a case-solving play.

As a result, when she heard the old lady's request, she couldn't help laughing in her heart: Director Wen really never forgets her original intention of doing a romance drama.