Qi Yu slept for two full days. The imperial physician said the poison had been cleared, but his body was weak and needed time to recover slowly. Qi Ling sat beside the bed, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a cloth. The boy's face was still very pale, his lips cracked. Occasionally, he frowned in his sleep, murmured "Father" indistinctly, then fell quiet again.
Qi Ling set the cloth beside the copper basin. He stood, straightened his cuffs, and walked out of the bedchamber. His men stood beneath the corridor outside; Xie Chen, Gu Hengsheng, and Sun Qiwen were all there.
"Everything is ready." Xie Chen handed him a list. Qi Ling took it and glanced over it. It listed every member of the Sun Family and the Zhou Family who held office at court, held a military rank, or managed money and grain in the provinces, without a single omission. After reading it, he handed it back to Xie Chen. "Arrest everyone on the list. Not one of them is to escape."
When the Sun Family estate was searched and confiscated, the old matriarch was sitting in the prayer room, counting her Buddhist prayer beads. At the sound of the courtyard gate being smashed open, her fingers paused briefly, then continued moving over the beads. In the study, the imperial guards found a thick stack of ledgers recording dealings with the Southern Borderlands. They listed the medicinal herbs brought in from the Southern Borderlands over the years, and heartbreak grass was plainly among them. When the ledgers were packed into a wooden chest and carried onto a carriage, the old matriarch finally put down her Buddhist prayer beads. She rose, walked to the prayer room doorway, and watched the imperial guards rummaging through chests and cupboards in the