A Second Trip to the Palace

"Hey, hey, hey! You lot, lighten up with your hands and feet! Can't you see he's wounded?" Liu Jiashan barked at his subordinates with a stern face.

And you still know I'm wounded, huh?! Xiao Fan had no strength left to even complain.

"Enough. Let's go." Liu Jiashan took out a strip of black cloth and handed it to Xiao Fan.

Xiao Fan skillfully blindfolded himself with the black cloth, then was carried out of the Armament Hall by two Black-Clad Guards...

That familiar smell again... that familiar place...

Only this time, Xiao Fan was not tied to a chair with ropes. He was merely blindfolded.

Liu Jiashan removed the black cloth from Xiao Fan's face. "All right. Tell me what happened."

"Sir, what I'm about to tell you is terrifying. You mustn't be afraid." Xiao Fan blinked his large eyes, his expression grave.

Liu Jiashan gave a slight nod. "I am an B-rank Black-Clad Guard. I won't be afraid."

"In Hidden Valley on Great Azure Mountain, there's a patch of white mist that kills people! Not only is the terrain inside bizarre, there are corpse ghouls as well..."

The more Liu Jiashan listened, the more baffled he became. Raising a hand, he said, "Wait a moment... killer white mist? And corpse ghouls? Let me sort this out..."

Liu Jiashan's head was about to split. Why is it that every time I interrogate this kid, the information I get is this absurd...

"We'll discuss Hidden Valley later. First, tell me about the assassination on Everpeace Street!"

The Shadow Pivot Court had eyes and ears throughout the city. The matter of Wu Xiong being beaten up by Xiao Fan and thrown outside the Court of the Commandant of Justice tonight had already reached the Shadow Pivot Court.

Liu Jiashan felt this matter was likely connected to Xiao Wu, so he intended to straighten out the clues from the beginning.

"It happened like this..." Xiao Fan had been hoping to bring this matter to the Shadow Pivot Court's attention, so he simply laid everything out in full detail!

The man who had impersonated Xiao Wu to kill him was Wu Xiong, but Wu Xiong was clearly nothing more than cannon fodder. The Qin Family stood behind him, pulling the strings.

It would not be easy to move against the Qin Family. He would need to borrow the Shadow Pivot Court's strength.

In the dim, cramped room, the candle flame flickered...

With his hands behind his back, Liu Jiashan paced back and forth. "That's not right. Qin Han is Qin Hui's son, and Qin Hui, as the Deputy Grand Secretary, holds immense power and status. Why would he target your Xiao Family?"

"I don't know either!" Xiao Fan honestly voiced his confusion. He too was utterly in the dark about the reason behind all this.

After a moment's thought, Liu Jiashan said, "Could it be... that your father once had a grievance with Qin Hui?"

"Mm... I truly don't know about matters between the older generation. But even if my father and the Qin Family once had some feud, there's no need for them to strike with such viciousness, is there?"

Xiao Fan continued his analysis. "Think about it, sir. My father is merely a gold-ranked instructor at Great Liang's Armament Hall, while Qin Hui is an esteemed Grand Secretary. If he wanted to harm us, would he need to resort to these underhanded dealings that cannot bear the light of day?"

Just as Xiao Fan had said, what confused him most about this whole affair was that, with the Qin Family's influence, they had ten thousand ways to deal with his family. There was no need to use such lowly, disgraceful methods.

Whether they succeeded was one thing; if things went wrong, they might end up covered in filth themselves...

"Indeed. Qin Hui is a man of deep schemes; this does not seem like his style... Then there is one other possibility: this entire matter was Qin Han's doing alone, not Qin Hui's orders?"

Liu Jiashan felt Xiao Fan's words made sense. He knew the working styles of several major court ministers very well. A man capable of becoming a Grand Secretary could not possibly handle matters so rashly.

"I've suspected that as well, sir, but it makes no sense. I've never even met Qin Han... My father has no dealings with that wastrel either. Why would he do this?" Xiao Fan said.

Liu Jiashan scratched his messy hair. "So be it. Tomorrow, we will summon Qin Han for questioning. Now tell me about Hidden Valley on Great Azure Mountain."

"It went like this..."

Afterward, Xiao Fan described his experiences that night in full detail. Naturally, as usual, he omitted every detail that was inconvenient to reveal...

For instance, he told them everything about entering the white mist, saving his father, and then getting lost afterward, including the Baleful Intent-stained Miao saber he had acquired.

Up to this point, it was all the truth...

But starting from the Daoist temple within the mist, he did not mention a single word. He concealed the entire Soul-Capturing Porcelain incident.

The matter involved far too much—an evil artifact of the third rank, remnants of the former dynasty. The more one tried to unravel it, the more tangled it became, so he simply said nothing!

As for how he had led his father out of the mist, that was easy enough to explain...

"Just when I had lost all hope, for some reason, the white mist dispersed on its own!"

Possessed by the spirit of a master actor, Xiao Fan seamlessly and naturally displayed a tangle of emotions: shock, relief, fear, and the joy of surviving a catastrophe!

The reason he could perform so vividly was, at its root, the simple technique of "telling the truth."

All those emotions were genuinely what he felt at that very moment. There was no need for much pretense; as for where those emotions truly came from, that was not important...

Liu Jiashan was an old hand himself. From the smallest expressions and movements, he could judge whether someone was lying.

At first glance, the young man before him brimmed with heroic spirit and innocent sincerity. So honest... so sunny... How could he possibly lie?

Yet Liu Jiashan's instincts told him that beneath this boy's harmless, next-door-big-brother appearance, who knew how much dirty water he had hidden in his belly... in short, he was black-bellied...

Still, Liu Jiashan did not dislike black-bellied youths like Xiao Fan. On the contrary, he rather admired them. As for why... perhaps it was because they were much alike.

This time, Liu Jiashan did not call in an examining magistrate from the Inspectorate to dig to the root of the matter. It seemed he deliberately intended to leave Xiao Fan some room to "lie."

"This is your statement. See if there are any omissions. If there are no problems, you can leave your seal and go." Liu Jiashan placed the interrogation record before Xiao Fan, then brought over an ink pad for him to stamp it.

Eh? Why was this interrogation so easy this time? Could there be some trick hidden behind it? Poison in the ink pad? Xiao Fan froze for a moment, countless thoughts instantly rising in his mind.

Liu Jiashan saw through Xiao Fan's thoughts at a glance. His abyss-like eyes stared into Xiao Fan's, and the corner of his mouth curled upward. "You're quite the suspicious one, kid. If there's no ghost in your heart, what are you afraid of?"

Who would have thought Xiao Fan remained perfectly calm, keeping the look of astonishment on his face. "I remembered Your Excellency's interrogation methods from last time and found them a little hard to adapt to. I was merely confused for a moment."

"Mm... sound reasoning, fitting expression—you truly are excellent material for the Black-Clad Guard! So, how about it? Do you want to become one of my Gray-Clads?" Liu Jiashan had not forgotten his original intention.

Without another word, Xiao Fan pressed his mark onto the record. "I only want to take my father home."

"You can leave, but that doesn't mean your father can... Still, don't worry. Our Shadow Pivot Court is a legitimate government office, not a bandits' den! We'll take good care of the wounded."

As the saying went, the more one lacked something, the more one emphasized it... Government-backed bandits, nailed on the coffin. Xiao Fan grumbled silently.

Xiao Fan rose to his feet. "Since Your Excellency has said so, I can only trust you. I ask that you take good care of my father."

"Provided he doesn't lie." Liu Jiashan smiled faintly, once again revealing that devilish grin.

Xiao Fan was not worried that his father would lie. That hulking martial brute simply could not tell a lie... What he feared was this bunch of bandits using torture to extract a confession and beating him into admitting guilt!

For now, Xiao Fan had no better way to take his father away. He could only choose to trust this chicken-head... Though this guy was a scheming old bastard, he still had some bottom line when it came to getting things done.

Before leaving, Xiao Fan asked curiously, "Your Excellency, you knocked an Iron Bone Realm martial artist down with one punch earlier. Could it be that you are also a ranked martial artist?"

The reason he asked was because it seemed far too miraculous. He could not sense any powerful martial aura from Liu Jiashan at all, so how had he managed to instantly defeat Duan Yifei with a single punch?

"Want to know?" Liu Jiashan smiled and winked at Xiao Fan... Those annoyingly smug eyes seemed to say: If you want to know, become my Gray-Clad, and I'll tell you!