Zhu Zhanjun's offhand question struck Fang Bin right in the heart.
The blood in his veins seemed to freeze.
The Crown Prince was fainthearted at the sight of blood!
This information was an absolute East Palace secret!
Only a handful of people knew!
The assassin had chosen to fire a Repeating Crossbow at close range inside the study precisely to create a massive wound and a great deal of bloodshed.
The goal wasn't to kill the Crown Prince on the spot, but to... scare him to death!
Even if the matter was investigated afterward, they would only conclude that the Crown Prince had died from "terror and shock causing his qi and blood to attack his heart," rather than directly blame it on an assassination!
What a vicious and sinister scheme!
And he had actually been one of the people carrying it out!
Fang Bin felt the world spinning around him.
Only now did he understand: from the very beginning, Prince Han and Prince Zhao had treated him like a pawn they could discard as soon as they were done with him!
If the Crown Prince really died, then when Zhu Zhanjun investigated, the first to suffer would be him—the Minister of War who had provided the murder weapon and was also responsible for "arresting" the assassin!
"You... You're slandering me!"
Fang Bin's face was as pale as paper, but instinct for survival still drove him to protest at the top of his lungs.
"I don't know what you're talking about! What does the Crown Prince's attempted assassination have to do with me?"
"Oh? Is that so?"
Looking at his bluster, Zhu Zhanjun smiled even more cheerfully.
This was exactly what he wanted: to shatter the other man's psychological defenses, little by little.
He glanced at the system panel.
In