The White Tiger Duke's concubine and his fourth son, Dai Luoli, had encountered mountain bandits while out praying for blessings. Their carriage had been destroyed, and both had perished!
The terrible news seemed to sprout wings, swiftly spreading through every street and alley of Star Luo City.
The Duke's Mansion did everything it could to frame the incident as an accident. Zhu Man even presented herself to the public as utterly grief-stricken, claiming she had dispatched troops to eradicate the bandits nearby and swearing to avenge her sister and nephew.
Yet just as the news stirred up a storm, with everyone speculating and struggling to distinguish truth from falsehood, another undercurrent, far more explosive and shocking, began spreading wildly through Star Luo City's shadowy corners at an even greater speed.
An exceptionally clear recording had been copied countless times. Like an invisible plague, it quietly found its way into noble estates, restaurants, and teahouses, and even into the hands of some well-informed commoners.
The recording clearly captured how, in a room late at night, Duchess Zhu Man had laid out her vicious scheme to Dai Yueheng with a twisted expression and a ruthless tone: how she would use Dai Hao's orders to send Dai Youheng away, seize the opportunity to invite Bai Wanning and Dai Luoli back to Zhu Family territory to threaten and control Dai Youheng, and mercilessly crush and manipulate the last traces of hesitation in Dai Yueheng.
Every word and every venomous expression was like the sharpest of knives, shredding Zhu Man's disguise as a grieving mistress of the household and exposing the filthy, malicious truth beneath!
How was this some accidental encounter with mountain bandits? It was plainly a kidnapping and persecution plot, orchestrated from start to finish by the legal mother against the concubine's branch