“You’re making assumptions again,” Fu Shen said, “According to your reasoning, White Dew already existed but was kept hidden, and later, due to some opportunity, it became popular in the Jing Chu region and was used by the Pure Yang Taoist to harm people. If White Dew was so profitable, why didn’t they bring it out earlier to make a fortune, and instead be so principled as to only use it after I was injured?”
“It’s not an assumption,” Yan Xiaohan shook his head and reminded, “Jing Yuan, don’t forget the identity of the mastermind we originally suspected.”
If it weren’t for deep hatred and unbearable circumstances, how could they turn their blades from external enemies towards those who protected their homeland with their flesh and blood?
Fu Shen might never commit such a betrayal, but it was possible for the old members of the Northern Yan cavalry.
Yan Xiaohan guessed he was feeling uncomfortable and wrapped his arm around his shoulder. Fu Shen pondered for a moment and said, “I still have one confusion: if White Dew appeared in the south earlier than the north, then this opportunity was not my injury, but something before that.”
Yan Xiaohan furrowed his brow and murmured, “Last summer… what event could have affected the south?”
The two exchanged a glance, and the same impressive scene flashed simultaneously in their minds.
Yan Xiaohan: “Last June, we had an argument during the morning court and were both fined half a year’s salary by His Majesty.”
Fu Shen continued, “It was because the court wanted to send military supervisors to the border regions, and some sycophants said the Flying Dragon Guard would be most suitable.”
The past seemed both distant and near.
Who could have imagined that the pair of enemies who once fought so fiercely in the court, almost wanting to beat each other with their writing tablets, would now be intimately nestled by a campfire in a dilapidated temple?
Having experienced a near-death ordeal, the woman no longer had any attachment to Xishan Village and would answer any question, spilling all the village’s secrets completely.
The man thrown into the river was named Tian Cheng, and the woman was surnamed Ou, a married-in woman from another village.
