Cheng Zi Ya gently set the porcelain bottle before Ding Feiyong. Its base met the tabletop with a soft click, unusually clear in the silent courtyard.
"This contains a peculiar poison."
Cheng Zi Ya stared at the bottle as though he were staring at a venomous snake. "Used alone, it leaves the victim no different from an ordinary person, except that they grow weaker by the day. Physicians generally diagnose it as a wasting illness."
He suddenly grinned, but his smile was as cold as the knife-edged winds of midwinter. "But combine it with a few other medicinal ingredients... say, the angelica root and prepared rehmannia in the Eight-Treasure Qi-Tonifying Decoction Old Chancellor Ding took for years, and its toxicity is unleashed. The poison travels with the blood and qi, gnawing at the bones and eating away the marrow day after day. It doesn't kill outright. It simply... boils a person's blood and qi dry, little by little."
Ding Feiyong turned deathly pale, his fingers clenching his sleeve.
"To test it," Cheng Zi Ya grabbed the wine jar, found it empty, and simply turned it upside down to catch the last few drops in his mouth before continuing, "I made a special trip to the condemned cells at the Court of Judicial Review and found a few prisoners scheduled for execution after autumn."
He wiped his mouth. "I forced them to swallow this poison."
Dead silence filled the courtyard. In the distance, a night watchman's clapper sounded, its muffled knocks seeming to strike their hearts.
"For the first month, they ate and slept normally, though their strength gradually faded. In the second month, they began coughing at night and sweating in their sleep. The physician still diagnosed wind-cold. In the third month..."
Cheng Zi Ya paused. "One of them got