“You’re a poison manipulator?” The differently-sized-eyed pygmy cried out. He abruptly unclenched his palm and discharged a black smoke at Qiao Mu.
“You dare to harm others with just this level of poison manipulation?” Qiao Mu shouted sternly and flashed quickly to evade his poison smoke.
The pygmy’s eyes glinted with a cruel light as he cackled in laughter. “You’re still too green, Little Miss. You think that you can avoid my poison smoke just by evading it? From the moment I released the poison smoke, the air in this area had already been saturated by its poison fog, hahaha.”
The pygmy was only halfway through his spiel when he suddenly clutched his chest and widened his eyes in horror.
He suddenly rolled onto the ground, and his entire body started convulsing. A layer of frost rapidly coated his face and limbs, freezing even his eyebrows. His lips quivered incessantly, but he was unable to speak and could only gaze at her in horror.
“You’re dying.” Qiao Mu spoke icily as a dazzling dagger appeared in her hand. “Why don’t you guess, how many bloody holes do I have to poke in your body for you to identify the mastermind?”
The pygmy’s originally grotesque face had completely contorted by this time, and he glowered at Qiao Mu as his jaws chattered from fighting one another.
“Are you baffled by why you got poisoned?” Qiao Mu patted the pygmy’s face twice with her dagger, her lips curling up into an icy curve. “You can go and ask the King of Hell.”
“Spit it out. In which stinky gutter is Shuntian Prefecture’s Liu Yizhi hiding in?”
“Ah!” Two more bloody holes appeared on the pygmy’s body in his moment of hesitation.
His entire body convulsing, he stared wide-eyed as this she-devil lifted him up like a bag of garbage and carried him into the rear court.
There, countless small and thin cocoons hung on one of its walls, trembling and swaying gently.
“It seems like you’ve made quite a breakthrough in nurturing these poison-tailed butterflies. What do you say if I feed you to them?” Qiao Mu spoke icily, her eyes devoid of warmth.
“D-don’t, I-I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you.” The pygmy was horrified and spoke with quivering lips, “T-The person who’s been contacting me all this time is Sir Qiu San. I-I only know that he’s hiding inside Beilan City’s Beilan Fortification, which isn’t that far from the capital. As for the concrete address, I-I really don’t know!”
“Qiu San?” Qiao Mu recalled the familiar voice she heard conspiring with Qin Guilu that night and had an epiphany. “Is he Liu Yizhi’s attendant?”
“Right, right.” The pygmy said in a quavering voice, “Sir Qiu San has been very aggravated. He said that Northern Mo’s crown prince’s actions these few years have been pushing Shuntian Prefecture’s people to their deaths, and that we needed to counterattack.”
“That means, Qin Guilu is indeed colluding with your Shuntian Prefecture.” Qiao Mu’s eyes instantly frosted over.
“Qin Guilu has been v-very cautious. He and the Shuntian Prefecture don’t communicate using letters. If M-Miss wants to charge him with conspiring with the Shuntian Prefecture to murder His Highness the Crown Prince, it’ll p-probably be very difficult.”
“Qin Guilu conspired to murder a kingdom’s heir apparent just for a mere pill recipe.” Qiao Mu pulled out her dagger from the pygmy’s body and said coldly, “The Qin Estate has come to its end.”
“Crack!” The dagger flew out and stabbed into the wall. Immediately, the entire wall’s cocoons burst open with a series of bangs, and a swarm of black poison-tailed butterflies flew over. They congregated into a dense mass and enveloped the pygmy neatly.
The pygmy howled miserably from inside the poison-tailed butterfly swarm. “W-Why? I already told you everything, ah, ah, ah!!”
“I don’t think I said that I would spare your life after you confess honestly.” Qiao Mu replied apathetically. The moment she turned around, she gazed coldly at the black figure that had dropped down from the sky.
After a little less than an hour, Qiao Mu smoothly returned to the Qin Estate. She slipped into Qin Guilu’s study and as expected, ended up empty-handed. Qin Guilu, this sly old fox, had long wiped out all his traces…
She returned to her room and lay down to sleep, fully dressed. She indistinctly saw Second Qin’s figure pacing back and forth outside, wanting to knock on the door. Yet, he seemed to have thought better of it when he saw that she had extinguished the lamp.
She was a bit overwhelmed after being tormented for the entire day. Thus, she fell into a deep sleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.