The village chief was shocked upon hearing what Old Woodcutter Li said. The woman the soldiers were searching for was actually hidden in his house?! What should we do then? This man is no ordinary individual, and even Old Woodcutter Li’s son is dead!
The village chief took a moment to work up his courage before stepping forward, but before he could even say anything, the stern faced man in front of him spoke. “None of the villagers can leave, but the court will provide everything they need for now.”
Pei Qianhao then turned to look at Li Zhuang’s body. “Take the body to the coroner at the municipal court.”
Old Woodcutter Li was flustered. “Your Excellency, my son hasn’t done anything wrong. Would it be possible for the coroner to come to our house instead?”
Pei Qianhao then agreed. “That’s fine, but you’ll need to make a trip to the yamen in exchange.This Prince doesn’t believe what you said earlier.”
The villagers were shocked to hear Pei Qianhao address himself as ‘this Prince’. In Beimin, only Pei Qianhao and Xie Yun would refer to themselves like this. Based on the rumours that they had heard about the personality that these two nobles had, they could only assume that the one in front of them was Pei Qianhao!
If Prince Hao is personally searching for a lady, could it be that the one in question is… Princess Consort Hao? All the villagers then realised that it was Princess Consort Hao who was missing.
Old Woodcutter Li internally chided himself, How could I have thought of getting Princess Consort Hao to be my son’s wife!
Pei Qianhao looked at the villagers before instructing his men, “Cordon off the village and comb the vicinity. Check if there are any of her belongings in the area.”
“This subordinate obeys the order.”
The soldiers quickly made a perimeter around the village before taking Old Woodcutter Li away. Li Zhuang’s body was left in his house while one team of guards surrounded it, with another group spreading out to search the village. Within two hours, the guards found a tiny path leading from the village to the main road.
Squatting down, Pei Qianhao checked the ground closely. The men following him were confused until one of Su Xi-er’s subordinates from Nanzhao yelled, “Carriage tracks! They’re not deep, but there are certainly a lot of them. Judging from their depth, it was a normal size carriage, and it was moving rather quickly. There’s no carriages that would normally be leaving from the village at this hour, so these must belong to whoever abducted the Imperial Princess!”
This particular subordinate had verbalised everything Pei Qianhao was thinking, but his current frown was due to another question in his mind. Those who harboured ill intentions towards her are dead, so who could it be? It has to be someone who is well equipped to hide themselves, as well as being aware that Xi-er would be in a precarious situation around this time.
There weren’t many in this world who met those conditions, and one of them, Situ Li, was already a corpse being carted back to the palace. So who could it be…
Pei Qianhao’s eyes flashed at the sudden realisation. It has to be Yun Ruofeng. His body was never found after his supposed ‘death’.
How dare he do this to my woman! He must be tired of living!
The men could feel the atmosphere suddenly freeze up, and the night air made them all shiver. Eventually, one of the men from Beimin came forward to ask, “Prince Hao, who could it be?”
