The Imperial Guards behind him immediately gripped the hilts of their swords.
The kitchen atmosphere turned tense in an instant.
Gu Shen's hand trembled, spilling some of the powder from his spoon onto the stove.
He looked at Little Fuzi with an innocent expression. "Eunuch, this is salt. My mother is frail and can't drink bitter medicine straight. The doctor said that adding a little salt would balance the medicine's properties and give her some strength."
Salt?
Little Fuzi narrowed his eyes and walked over.
He dipped his little finger into the white powder on the stove and touched it to the tip of his tongue.
Sure enough, it was salty.
Just ordinary coarse salt.
Little Fuzi's face flushed, then paled. He felt he might have made a fuss over nothing.
"Cough." He gave a dry cough to hide his embarrassment. "All right. Hurry up."
"Yes, yes." Gu Shen hurriedly sprinkled the remaining salt into the medicine pot, then covered it and let it simmer over a low flame.
Nothing else out of the ordinary happened.
Little Fuzi's taut nerves finally relaxed a little.
Maybe... I really was overthinking it?
Little did he know that, at the very moment he had shouted to stop Gu Shen and Gu Shen's "hand had trembled," the silver needle hidden in Gu Shen's sleeve—coated with a colorless, odorless liquid—had already darted through the steam above the medicine pot beneath the cover of his wide sleeve.
When heated, the liquid instantly turned into an invisible, odorless gas and mingled with the steam rising from the medicine.
That little bit of salt had only been a pretext to draw his attention.
A quarter of an hour later, the medicine was ready.
Gu Shen poured it into a bowl, blew on it, and carried it over to