The eunuchs searched the Empress’s palace smoothly. Perhaps the Empress was over reckless or she failed to hide the poison in time.
Anyway, they discovered the poison in the Empress’s chamber and her trusted maids’ rooms in a short time.
As soon as the eunuchs presented the evidence to the Emperor, the Empress collapsed to the ground with a gloomy look in her eyes like a defeated cock.
“What else do you want to say?” The Emperor asked.
Even now, the Empress still refused to admit her guilt.
The Emperor, who had run out of his last bit of patience, stared at her as if staring at a dead person.
“No… even if the poison is mine, I’ve never thought of poisoning you, Your Majesty. We have been married for thirty years, during which I have a deep affection for you. Why do you only like that bitch?” The Empress said with sadness and jealousy in her tone.
She, who loved the wrong person in the wrong way, lost all her pleasure in this life.
Lin Mengya felt a little sorry for her.
But even so, it was not an excuse for the Empress to do whatever she liked in the imperial palace.
While the eunuchs searched the Empress’s palace, some of the Empress’s trusted maids and Yuanshu had been taken away.
With Yuanshu as an example, the eunuchs elicited a lot of things from them.
When their testimonies were placed on the Emperor’s desk, the Emperor found the Empress’s evil deeds were monstrous enough to incur the greatest popular indignation.
After leafing through the testimonies, the Emperor was so furious that he threw the document beside the Empress and her brother and said, “Good for you, the Empress and the First Miss of the Yao Family! What evil have you done in my imperial palace over the years?”
Even the Empress was looking at the Emperor, shivering with fear.
She felt fearful for the first time over the years.
Yao Zun wanted to say something, but Xin Luan kept staring at him with a relaxed look.
As long as he dared to say a word, Xin Luan would tell the Old Master of the Yao Family about it at once.
At that moment, Yao Zun felt indignant but didn’t dare to speak up.
“Come on! Deprive Yao Lu of her title and lock her up in the Linqiu Pavilion for the rest of her life,” the Emperor said.
The fate of the Empress, who was only the First Miss of the Yao Family now, had been decided.
Lin Mengya knew that the Emperor hated her so much that he wanted to kill her directly.
Nevertheless, considering the Yao Family and Wanyan Jing, he could only imprison the Empress for the rest of her life.
“Your Majesty! No! Don’t do this to me! Brother, please beg His Majesty not to do this to me! Your Majesty, no!” The Empress pleaded.
This plot ended up with the Empress’s being defeated.
However, her miserable and shrill cries were just the beginning of her punishment.
Watching his sister dragged away by force, Yao Zun showed a mixture of distress and rage on his face.
There was a sinister look in his eyes as he glanced at the Emperor who remained impassive.
“Yao Zun, is there anything else you want to say?” The Emperor asked.
Even after dealing with the Empress, the Emperor remained extremely indifferent, as if it were none of his business.
Meanwhile, Yao Zun, on the verge of flying into a rage, tried hard to suppress the urge to go all out against those who bullied his sister.
However, considering the presence of Xin Luan, the Grand Shaman and the Emperor, he eventually suppressed his indignation.
After excusing himself, he stormed out of the chamber.
“Well, all of you may leave now.” Madame Jingrou, who had kept quiet all this time, said, looking exhausted at this moment.
Despite the battle between her and the Empress over the years, she still felt a little empty when the Empress’s fate was sealed.
“Okay,” the palace servants said and left the Emperor’s chamber.
After leaving with the palace servants, Lin Mengya found a corner and secretly massaged her knees that ached after she knelt for a long time.
Baisu stood beside her and helped her massage her knees.
Lin Mengya was summoned early in the morning to state the case, and then she knelt and watched the show.
She was somehow quite speechless.
“Miss, are you upset?” Baisu asked.
Baisu, who knew her best, was keenly aware of her thoughts.
Lin Mengya shook her head gently. In fact, she was not upset, but just found that she had changed a lot.
In the past, she had no choice but to fight with those people in order to protect herself and her family members.
But now, she stirred up this huge trouble where she did not know how many people would get involved and killed.
She involuntarily grabbed the sachet containing the relic of Master Yunfang that seemed to make her inappropriately compassionate.
To obtain power, one had to fight with others, which would inevitably cause sacrifice and deaths.
It was too difficult to solve all problems without shedding a drop of blood.
She could not sell the cow and drink the milk. What was she thinking?
“The Empress brought this to herself. Miss, you don’t have to worry about it. In fact, if Ningqiu had not elicited in private that Madame Hui offered this insidious plan to the Empress, Madame Jingrou probably would have fallen into the trap,” Baisu said in a low voice.
At first, Ningqiu got this information through the gossip she collected during the morning exercises.
It was said that a distant relative of Madame Hui came to the imperial palace to visit her recently. Moreover, she secretly took her distant relative to the Empress’s palace, and no one knew what they had talked over.
Lin Mengya, who was alert, asked Xiaoyu and Baisu to try every means to find out more information.
It was only then that they learned the Empress was so vicious that she intended to get rid of Madame Jingrou without letting anyone realize.
After learning that, Lin Mengya and Xiaoyu had a discussion and decided that it was better to take the initiative to trap the Empress than to be trapped by her.
In fact, they had made a lot of preparations and deliberately showed plenty of slips in front of the members of the Linqiu Pavilion.
Yuanshu was skilled in poisoning, but no one in the world could play this kind of trick in front of Lin Mengya.
As long as someone passed by her, she would be able to detect if the person brought any poison.
After that, she discovered the poison in front of the Emperor and got the Empress involved in this.
The Empress brought all this to herself.
However, she actually had a lot of opportunities to retrieve the situation.
If she hadn’t instructed Yuanshu to poison the incense, if she hadn’t sent someone to kill Lin Mengya after the poisoning, all of this would not have happened.
However, the Empress fell into an irreversible situation step by step.
She deserved to end up like this.
“Well, I know. You may help Xiaoyu deal with the follow-up things. Release those people out of the imperial palace. We should spare their lives, as they are still useful to us,” Lin Mengya said.
In fact, they should pluck up the Empress’s force by the roots.
But the Empress’s force was intricately planted in the imperial palace, which made it difficult to pluck them up now.
Imprisoning the Empress was just part of their plan.
They needed to use these remnants of the Empress’s force to carry out the crucial part of their plan.
“Okay, Miss. Rest assured. Oh, yes, Young Master asked me to report to you that there are traces of the Candle Dragon Cult around the Eldest Prince, and the dual-pupiled man is from the Xin Family and may be a member of the Candle Dragon Cult,” Baisu said.
There was a subtle sparkle in Lin Mengya’s eyes. She just made a tentative guess, but unexpectedly, she guessed correctly.
She said, “Keep this secret for the time being. I have an intuition that Wanyan Jing is not that simple. Even if the Yao Family collapses, it may have little influence on him.”
As a matter of fact, Lin Mengya made this guess accidentally.
Everyone once believed that the Lieyun Empire was extremely exclusive, which made it impossible for the Candle Dragon Cult to infiltrate.
But Lin Mengya found it an exaggeration since she came here.
Indeed, in the Lieyun Empire, the successors of various families used their bloodlines to hand down things like venomous insects.
But it did not mean that the Candle Dragon Cult could not infiltrate.
The Candle Dragon Cult had a long history with its force intricately planted everywhere.
It was hard to say whether they would spend time recruiting a family here and making it their force.
If that was the case, the members of the Candle Dragon Cult became local citizens here instead of replacing other local citizens.
When Lin Mengya first met the dual-pupiled man, both the weird hypnotism he used and his faint scent, which was similar to that of those copper slaves, had aroused her suspicion.
She had to say that only the members of the Candle Dragon Cult liked playing this kind of crooked tricks.
Unexpectedly, the dual-pupiled man turned out to be a member of the Candle Dragon Cult.
But why did he fail to recognized her that day?
Since her last visit to the snow mountain, Lin Mengya had learned that she was now a hot target for the Candle Dragon Cult.
Now, she was confused by more doubts.
“I got it. By the way, before we left, Madame sent Ningqiu to tell you to have a good rest in the Fengyu Court in the next few days,” Baisu said.
Lin Mengya certainly knew what Madame Jingrou meant.
In fact, she should not have gotten involved in this matter.
Because of this, the Fengyu Court had been cordoned off, and no one was allowed to get in and out at will.
Nevertheless, she, who had pretended to be hypnotized, had to go to the empty courtyard every three days.
Now was not the time to foil their plot, so she had to continue pretending to be hypnotized.
What had happened this time would probably make her visit much riskier.
Her way of doing things personally was not always a good thing.
At least for now, she felt as if there were a knife above her head.
Checking the time, she found she would hear the bell again by tomorrow night at the latest.
She should think of a way to at least enable her to make a safe retreat.
Plenty of people got involved in this matter.
It was almost noon when Madame Jingrou came back from the Emperor’s chamber. By dinner time, there were almost one hundred people involved in this matter.
But there was one person who managed to stay out of this, and it was Madame Hui, the most formidable follower of the Empress.
She was quite smart.
Presumably afraid that she would be suspected once the plot was disclosed, she let the Empress get and use the poison personally.
Even if Baisu and the others secretly found out that she might be the one who offered the advice, they could not do anything to her without concrete evidence.
Moreover, a few days ago, she had gone to the Divine Witch Shrine in the outer capital city in the name of praying for blessings for the Empress.
In this way, she completely threw off suspicion and proved her innocence.
Lin Mengya’s eyes flickered as she heard the news. She seemed to have expected this.
