Boom!
The entire training ground erupted in an instant. Every servant and guard turned deathly pale with fright, and swathes of them dropped to their knees with a chorus of thuds!
The steel saber in Xiao Yuxuan's hand clattered to the ground, the viciousness on his face instantly turning to mingled shock and fury. "Wh-what?! Someone dared use poison to harm my third sister inside the residence?! Who did it?! Zhang Kui! Investigate this for me!!"
Cold sweat poured down guard instructor Zhang Kui's forehead like rain. Taking the bamboo splinter in both hands, he dropped to one knee and roared, "I failed in my duties! I will seal off the front and rear courtyards and conduct a thorough investigation at once! I won't overlook a single spider's thread or horse's track!"
"Investigate! Peel back every layer and investigate! If I catch whichever ungrateful beast in this household did this, I'll use iron hooks to skin him alive and turn him into a human sky lantern!!" Xiao Yuxuan roared, beside himself with rage.
Su Wanqing stood quietly to one side. The moment she handed over the bamboo splinter, her cool sidelong gaze swept seemingly casually over the kneeling guards, stopping precisely on a young outer-courtyard guard with his head lowered in the back row-the soles of his boots and his cuffs were stained with the damp black mud unique to the rear courtyard's medicinal garden, and his hands, hidden tightly inside his sleeves, were trembling faintly.
Not only that, while everyone was reeling from the plot involving "Itching Ant Grass," Su Wanqing's gaze shifted slightly downward, settling on the bluestone slab five paces in front of the stone table, where a forceful stamp had left a web of cracks.
Her right index finger tapped lightly three times against the spine of the ancient book in her hand.
The cracks ran three fen deep, the force had been concentrated in the forefoot, and a single stride had covered two zhang, followed by forcibly hauling a thousand-jin horse to a halt in mid-gallop...
Such explosive bodily strength and such a solid lower-body foundation were beyond not only an unranked good-for-nothing groom, but even the vast majority of the early-stage Bright Force guards present!
She gave Chen Xuan, who was still curled up on the rubble pretending to be pitiful, a long look, but ultimately exposed nothing.
Meanwhile, Xiao Ling'er, having straightened her clothes, walked over to the bamboo splinter. The shame and anger she had felt at being held by Chen Xuan had been completely replaced by a bone-deep chill and fury. Staring at the poisoned splinter in Instructor Zhang's palm, her pretty face turned livid. "Very good... someone actually dared use such despicable methods to take my life here in the Marquis of Zhenbei's Residence?!"
"Not necessarily to take your life outright." Su Wanqing withdrew her gaze from Chen Xuan and spoke evenly. "The dose of Itching Ant Grass was calculated very precisely. Falling onto the level ground of this training ground would, at most, have broken your limbs or disfigured you. But the poisoner probably didn't anticipate that Treading Snow would charge straight toward the narrow stone bridge in the rear garden today."
Broken limbs! Disfigurement!
For a proud seventeen-year-old girl, this was a hundred times more vicious than killing her!
Xiao Ling'er's body swayed, her face frighteningly pale. She abruptly turned her head, her gaze passing over the furious Xiao Yuxuan and fixing on Chen Xuan a few paces away, covered in dirt, blood at the corner of his mouth, and both hands a mangled mess of flesh and blood.
If this groom she had called a "lowly slave" hadn't risked his life charging out to seize the reins, if this slave hadn't spread his arms to catch her when her strength failed... she would probably already have been a cold corpse at the bottom of the icy lake, her head split and bloodied!
But... why had he been so fast when he charged out? Even Instructor Zhang, with his An Jin cultivation, hadn't made it in time. How had a horse feeder managed it?
Xiao Ling'er clenched her teeth and walked toward Chen Xuan step by step, carrying her snakebone whip. Looking down at him, she spoke in a taut voice as cold as ice. "Hey, lowly slave, stop playing dead. Stand up and speak to me!"
"Y-yes, Third Young Lady..."
Clutching the spot on his lower back where Xiao Yuxuan had kicked him, Chen Xuan grimaced and shakily climbed to his feet, lowering his head to his chest.
Xiao Ling'er narrowed her almond-shaped eyes and stared fixedly at the top of his head, demanding each word distinctly, "Answer me. When Treading Snow went mad and charged off, even Instructor Zhang couldn't catch up. You're a groom who hasn't even crossed the threshold of the 'Boulder Art,' so how did you catch it in the blink of an eye just now?! Tell the truth! If you dare utter so much as half a lie, I'll whip you to death right now!"
Whoosh!
Every gaze on the training ground-including Xiao Yuxuan, who had just picked up his saber, the kneeling Instructor Zhang, and the heir's wife Su Wanqing nearby-instantly focused on Chen Xuan alone!
Liu San was hiding by the side gate, clutching his swollen face and praying frantically to himself. Investigate him! This little bastard must be hiding some sinister martial art. Hurry up and behead him as a spy!
Chen Xuan's heart pounded, several possible explanations flashing through his mind like lightning-
Admit I was born with divine strength, or that I suddenly gained enlightenment in the "Boulder Art"? No! I only just fooled Zhao De this morning with that "cripple's foot slipped" excuse. If I admit I know martial arts now, Zhao De and Xiao Yuxuan will immediately follow the vine to the melon and investigate how I came back from the dead!
In a man-eating place like this residence, the cleverer and more capable you appear under a master's interrogation, the faster you die! Only by trampling myself into the dust and using the most absurd, most lowly, most contemptible stupid excuse can I completely dispel these nobles' suspicions!
With that thought, Chen Xuan dropped to his knees again with a thud. Raising his face, covered in dust and blood, he answered in a trembling voice thick with tears, his lips quivering:
"T-to answer the Third Young Lady... I truly don't know how I ran so fast just now... I was standing beside the stone table wiping it down, only four or five paces from the horse track. The moment I saw you were about to crash onto the stone bridge, my head buzzed and went completely blank. My legs wouldn't obey me at all, and I just lunged out..."
At this point, as though recalling something utterly shameful from his past, he swallowed hard and buried his head even lower. "If I have to say why those two strides were quicker than an ordinary person's... it was because my adoptive father died suddenly when I was twelve. After my stepmother ran off with the family property, I spent half a year begging in town... that winter, I had nothing to eat and was almost starving to death, so every day I crouched outside the butcher's back door and fought a dozen or so stray dogs in town for meaty bones... those dogs were vicious. If I was half a step too slow, not only would I miss the bone, they'd tear a chunk of flesh from my calf too... these legs of mine were trained purely by fighting for food with stray dogs chasing me, just to stay alive back then!"
Fighting stray dogs for bones to eat!
The moment those words left his mouth, the entire training ground fell into an exceedingly peculiar silence.
Beside him, Xiao Yuxuan had still been gripping his saber's hilt, hoping to find something to use against Chen Xuan. At these words, an expression of utter disgust instantly crossed his face, and he spat hard onto the ground. "Pah! I thought he was someone hiding his abilities, but he's just a beggar who fought stray dogs for food! What fucking rotten luck!"