"When Marquis Jing'an went to execute the entire Xu Family on the Late Emperor's orders, he happened to discover a Bandit Stronghold nearby. That was where Minister Liu was rescued!"
"I asked around everywhere and finally learned that the bandits included a child of the Bandit Chief. Apparently, that child had gone to Xu Family Village to play on the day it happened and escaped the disaster. The child should be twenty-seven or twenty-eight now."
"I found someone who used to play with that child in Xu Family Village, another orphan. He said he would help us find the child!"
Jing Wu reported what he had uncovered.
After finishing, he lowered his eyes. The Prince seemed to suspect that Marquis Jing'an had deliberately engineered the favor Minister Liu owed him.
As for Marquis Jing'an's outward obedience and secret defiance in sparing Xu Bo's family, they had known about that long ago.
Now they were looking for evidence to substantiate the charges against Marquis Jing'an: killing in defiance of an imperial decree, harboring criminals, and plotting Minister Liu's kidnapping.
Then the Xie family could be destroyed completely!
After hearing all this, Xia Siheng was fairly certain that Marquis Jing'an's kindness toward Minister Liu was, in all likelihood, a sham.
Twenty years ago-that was the very year the Late Emperor had bestowed the Death-Exemption Token upon Lady Susu.
How could he have known that he would be imprisoned more than a decade later, and prepared for that rainy day by making Minister Liu owe him a favor?
Because he had never been falsely accused in the first place!
He really had betrayed his country. Afraid the matter would come to light, he had prepared two fallback plans in advance: the Xu Family and the Liu Family.
If his crimes came to light