It's night, with bright candles like beans and thousands of stars.
Yunqi grasped a small piece of red gold stone with two fingers. The golden light was shining and dazzling, as if it absorbed all the sunlight during the day and only released its ultimate light at night.
Mo Yan drank two large bowls of water to moisten his dry throat caused by the fast horse. He wiped his mouth and said, "Your Majesty, where do you think this thing was found? Hey, my subordinates have visited all the gold shops in Shang County. I didn’t find out, but it was just a coincidence that I caught a guy with a snake head and a rat tail.”
In addition to making a living in serious shops, there is also an unpopular black market where goods or dirty money are traded that are not allowed by the government.
The so-called black market is not really an open street. It is usually a privately agreed time for transactions, and the location is usually a black workshop underground.
The man Mo Yan caught was a pickpocket. He touched a gold bracelet in a house and hurriedly took action, so Mo Yan saw him and the man gesturing in code in a dark alley.
I really wouldn't understand it if it were someone else. Fortunately, Mo Yan had been in the market for more than a year because of a certain task. He had seen a lot of different religions and was more or less familiar with some shady business.
Mo Yan pointed at the gold nugget and said: "This is the only amount left. The other goods have been sold out. Prince, do you think it's something from the mine?"
Yun Qi put the red gold stone on the table, turned around and asked, "Did you alert the enemy?"
"Where is it? I bought it with real money. Prince, please remember to pay me the bill later."
Yun Qi grabbed the jade bone fan and threw it at it. Mo Yan took two steps back and caught it quickly with quick eyes and hands.
Lu Anran said from the side: "Just a piece of red gold stone cannot explain the problem."
"Since you've pulled the tail, there's no reason why you can't find the head." A flash of light flashed through Yun Qirumo's deep eyes, and he curled his lips and said with a playful smile: "But I have done so much, what use does it have to Nangong Zhi and the others?"
Mo Yan was reluctant, "No, the prince wants to give up the credit."
Yun Qi took out the jade bone fan in Mo Yan's hand and opened it a few times gracefully. The ink hair was flying like willows in the evening wind, adding a touch of uninhibited frivolity to the night, "I need to argue with them about this little credit." ?”
"What's beautiful in the forest will be destroyed by the wind." Lu Anran understood Yun Qi's concerns and said calmly: "As long as the case is solved, it doesn't have to be brought to the criminal justice department."
Yun Qi snapped his fingers and said, "Mo Yan, you are secretly making connections. Make sure that the people sent by Yu Fangjing happen to find out and find the origin of the gold nugget."
Mo Yan looked at the sky. He had just come back and was about to go out. Before leaving, he never forgot to say: "Your Majesty, I will pay the bill..."
"If this is done, I will reward you three times."
"Okay."
Yunqi turned around and sat down. He glanced at the red gold stone with his peripheral vision and sighed: "It's hard not to be excited by a large gold mine."
Lu Anran reminded quietly: "Isn't it the king's land under Pu Tian?"
Yun Qi put his forehead with one hand and said lazily: "The Zhou family's copper mine is not far from that location. Could it be that the Zhou family discovered the gold mine, which caused some people in the dark to covet it and join forces with the Zhou family to destroy the family?"
Lu Anran remembered something, "Before the prince wiped out the cottage, the heads of Panlong Village and Golden Snake Gate suddenly disappeared overnight with their capable men."
"That's right." Yun Qi closed the fan and clapped it in the palm of his hand, tapped the handrail with his fingers, his eyes moved slightly, and the stars were flowing inside, "If you have a gold mine, why should you be the leader of a bandit village? You are just looking for an opportunity to clear your name and change your identity. , maybe another 'richest man in Diqiu'."
Lu Anran couldn't figure it out, "Steward Zhou is alone and has no children. What does he want?"
"The most difficult thing to suspect is the human heart. You have to ask why for everything. It's so tiring."
"There is also Miss Zhou. If Xiufang didn't misunderstand her, or if she wasn't being mysterious, is it possible that she is not dead?"
Yun Qi sneered: "Then Butler Zhou realized his conscience and planned to help Zhou Pei to fight back?" He tapped her forehead with a jade bone fan, "Have you read too many dramas?"
Lu Anran shook her head. She couldn't explain it, but she always felt that there were too many contradictory things here, but she lacked a reasonable line to connect them.
As the night deepened, mosquitoes kept flying after the lights. Even though he wore a medicine pack to disperse them, there were still small bugs with no eyes that bumped into him. After a while, Lu Anran felt a bag on the back of his hand.
She scratched twice, then raised her head to meet Yunqi's interested gaze, with a trace of confusion flashing in her eyes.
"It's so funny. The mosquito fainted after staring at your face. Could it be that he was intoxicated by your beauty?"
Lu Anran thought he was talking nonsense, Yunqi reached out to grab it from her shoulder and handed it to her eyes, "See for yourself?"
"She must have been dizzy after smelling the medicinal fragrance."
The lantern on the tree flickered, and the orange light illuminated the right side of Lu Anran's face like a flash of flirtatious red light. Yunqi narrowed his eyes and leaned over, "Huh?"
Lu Anran tilted his head unnaturally, "There are many mosquitoes, I'll go back to the room first."
"Wait a minute." Yunqi pinched Lu Anran's chin with two fingers and leaned over to take a closer look. "Is it an illusion? I just saw something strange on your face."
With his face uncovered, Lu Anran could feel Yunqi's gentle breath spraying on his skin. This weak wind made people feel hotter than the summer night itself.
She avoided looking and said softly: "I was born with a disability and am naturally strange."
"This birthmark of yours is unusual. Are you really not poisoned? Why don't you try bleeding some blood?"
It was originally a casual remark, but Lu Anran lowered her eyelids and fell silent.
Yun Qi raised an eyebrow, "Have you really tried it?"
"It's not me, it's the old man." Lu Anran didn't remember how long she had known the old man at that time. He suddenly became interested in the birthmark on her face, and when she wasn't paying attention, he pricked the skin with a silver needle and took a few drops of blood.
Yun raised his thumb and pressed on an undulating meridian. It was like looking down at the mountains from the sky. They were uneven, twisting the corners of his eyes and mouth, and pulling them into strange arcs.
Such a touch was intimate and numb. Lu Anran's eyelashes trembled, and later she realized that the distance between the two of them was too close.
"Don't move." Yun Qi held her down, the moonlight shone on his clear face, his eyes were quiet and deep, reflecting the heart-warming waves, "Let me see clearly."
Lu Anran suddenly realized that his heart seemed to be bound by a net, not only his breathing, but also his eyes were fixed in place.
Yunqi seemed to take it seriously, "I have never seen such a special birthmark."
Obviously he didn't say anything ambiguous, but the current situation was more ambiguous than any words.
Seen from a distance, the two figures almost overlap, like vines entwined, making it impossible to tell the difference between you and me.
Guanyue jumped into the courtyard, wishing to blind her eyes, silently shouting in her heart——
"Why me again? Why is it me every time?!!!"
Yun Qi let go naturally, and Lu Anran also sat down calmly. Guan Yue felt inexplicably that he was the only one in the world who was embarrassed.
Guanyue touched her nose, lowered her head and said in a low voice: "Reporting to the Crown Prince, there is news from Lu Taotao that Butler Zhou is out tonight."
According to Housekeeper Zhou's schedule, going out at this hour is obviously not in line with common sense.
"Where have you gone?"
"The incense shop."
Yun Qi chuckled: "When I buy incense and candles in the middle of the night, do the Zhou family want to build a palace underground?"
Guanyue came back to ask for instructions, continued to follow secretly, or simply arrested someone for interrogation.
"Let's go and take a look before we talk."
Guan Yue was surprised, "Is the Crown Prince going in person?"
Yun Qi half-covered his face with a jade bone fan, revealed a pair of eyes and looked at Lu Anran meaningfully, "Divert your attention, so as not to toss and turn in bed."
Lu Anran looked at him calmly, and then moved away naturally, as if the person whose heart was racing up and down was not her.
Guanyue covered her heart and turned around silently. Is this something he can listen to and watch?
—
The incense and candle shop was even quieter at night. On the dark and empty long street, the wind picked up the discarded paper pages, and when they reached the mid-air, they fell quietly as if they had lost their strength.
The watchman knocked on the hammer, and the sound echoed far and near in the deserted streets and alleys.
The dark night adds fear to people, especially the white lanterns swinging in the wind at the door, like will-o'-the-wisps in the underworld.
In the eerie atmosphere of complete silence, a yawn sounded, and the condensed stagnation dissipated in an instant, and the smoke of human beings was forcefully squeezed into it.
Lu Taotao was lying on the edge of the roof, resting his chin on his folded arms, and yawned boredly again. A few tears came out of the corners of his eyes, and he hummed: "The smelly clouds are rising, and in the end I won't be able to dig out any treasures." , see if I don’t kill you.”
"Who are you cutting?"
A voice came over like a ghost, and the frightened Lu Taotao almost rolled off the roof.
"Yunqi, you are sick. You wear white in the middle of the night. If you don't want to be a human being, you have to be a ghost?" Lu Taotao jumped up and cursed.
Yunqi squinted, Guanyue covered Lu Taotao's mouth and dragged him back, "Be quiet, little ancestor, we are keeping an eye on him now."
This location was chosen very well, as you can have an unobstructed view of the incense and candle shop, but from the perspective of the shop, you cannot see this side.
The candlelight dimly reflected two figures through the window. No voice could be heard, but judging from their bodies, the two seemed to have had a dispute, arguing fiercely about something.
"The other one is a woman?" Yun Qi lifted up his robe and squatted down, staring at the window, and said, "What did he do today, and who was talking to him?"
Lu Taotao rolled his eyes: "I didn't know where to go. That woman was there from the beginning. She never showed up anyway." As for Housekeeper Zhou's one-day schedule, "It's not the same as usual..."
As he said something, he thought of something, "Oh, by the way, he came to the incense shop in the morning and picked up a box of Chongshanfang cakes when he went back. But he came back with a food box in the evening, so it was for the ghosts to eat in the middle of the night."
At this time, the two people in the incense and candle shop seemed to have finished arguing and became quiet, and then unexpectedly extinguished the candles.
Yun Qi and the others waited for a while but Butler Zhou didn't come out. He gestured to Guanyue, and Guanyue quietly used Qinggong to leap down. They listened close to the window for a while, then quietly opened a crack to look around.
Not long after, Guanyue flew back and said with a complicated expression: "Your Majesty, there is no one inside."
Yun Qi's eyes turned slightly, his black eyes were filled with sparkle, he put the tip of his tongue against his chin, and smiled lowly, "It seems that he really saw a ghost."
