Bone

Chapter 99

Under the clear sky of the rising sun, the floating flowers in Liuhua Lake were crushed by the water flow, rotted into mud, and gradually sank to the bottom.

Fu Duanshui stood silently by the lake, silently looking at the National Teacher Pagoda, which had been burnt to nothing but a black and ash empty frame.

Only three days had passed since that night of shock, but he had already lost a lot of weight, his habitually cold face became a little more serious, and his eyes also became darker.

— but three days.

After a shocking change, the imperial court was in chaos, everyone was too busy to take care of themselves, and no one in the palace had time to pour old flowers into the Liuhua Lake. The lake became an ordinary pool of still water, and groups of koi could be seen roaming in it. Scattered or gathered, making circles of ripples, suddenly startled by the sound of approaching footsteps on the shore, they formed a group to avoid swimming.

——It was Ji Zhuoran who was already wearing a bright yellow brocade robe.

Seeing the figure of Fu Duanshui, Ji Zhuoran paused, took a jug of wine from the chief eunuch, and pushed him away with two rows of court ladies and eunuchs with lowered eyebrows behind him, and then walked over quickly, " I can't find you anywhere, guess you should be here—"

As if foreseeing that he would come, Fu Duanshui did not turn his head, but quietly looked at the crumbling tower of the national teacher, and interrupted him abruptly, "The matter of the national teacher is settled, and I should go back to the sect to receive the punishment." gone."

It was always him who cut off his words, and it was rare for him to interrupt him once. Ji Zhuoran was slightly taken aback, and then nodded after a long time, "...um."

He hesitated and said: "Then wait for people from all sects to come to the imperial capital..."

"The national teacher is dead, why are the sects here?" Fu Duanshui said in a cold and authentic tone, and walked into the ruins of the blackened tower, "The sect has never been involved in the affairs of the court. The court is still chaotic, the emperor Just worry about politics."

It was rare to hear him speak in such a cold tone, Ji Zhuoran was taken aback again, pursing his lips.

After the palace banquet that night, the sun and the moon changed to a new sky in the middle of the day.No one would have thought that nearly half of the people in the palace were ghosts of the national teacher, except for half of the officials who showed their original form in the palace that night, there were also concubines, maids, eunuchs and guards outside the palace—even his own confidant All hide one or two.

After such a change, people in the palace can only be said to be in chaos. Half of the officials who survived under the hands of the ghosts either returned to their hometowns or resigned due to illness. Only a dozen loyal and loyal officials are still willing to stay in the court...

If not, he would not be able to succeed the next day and come out to control the government——

Ji Zhuoran sighed softly, lowered his eyes slightly, his eyes fell on his bright yellow sleeves, and then raised his eyes to look at Fu Duanshui's back that was gradually submerged in the remnants of the tower, and followed slowly.

The tower was burned by thunder and fire, and there were only a few glazed tiles covering the top, and the sliver of sunlight reflected on Fu Duanshui from time to time, making it difficult to see the expression on his face.

In the remnants, there are wooden beams scattered all over the place, and gravel embers are everywhere. No matter how light the steps are, every step will still stir up countless smoke and dust, floating in the air like grains of gold powder.

While the broken gold was fluttering, he walked towards a casting furnace in the corner that fell from a height and hit the ground without looking sideways, and stood beside it.

- that night.

All the ghosts in the temple screamed suddenly and melted into pools of bloody mud, and the stagnant spiritual power returned to their control. The immortal friend surnamed Tan turned into light and rushed towards the National Teacher Tower almost instantly. And after he settled the people in the palace, when he rushed over in the last step, he only saw the blazing tower collapsed——

Pinching formulas, casting spells, diverting water... the spiritual light brought up rolling water waves from Liuhua Lake, mixed with floating flowers and poured down to cover it, dousing the clusters of flames.In the smoldering embers, he did not see the national teacher, Ye Jin chasing Ye Yunding, nor the Tan Qin couple... When his heart was sinking and he still had a little bit of luck, he was in the furnace. He found two spirit jades that had already faded, lying quietly among the ashes.

……

Fu Duanshui looked down at the casting furnace that had been scorched into black by the flames, and remained silent.

"I..." Ji Zhuoran stepped over the collapsed beams, approached carefully holding the jug, and said to him in a low voice: "I have planned to confer the titles of 'Shengxiu' and 'Xian' on the two Yexian family The title of "Xiu" will be given to the noble sect ten thousand taels of gold, thousands of fertile fields, hundreds of good horses, all kinds of... as compensation. And those two immortal families—"

Then Tan Qin and the two have not heard from each other since that night, and I am afraid that they were also destroyed by the fire...

There was no intention of responding to him, Fu Duanshui remained silent.

In the palace that night, not only was Qin Nianjiu not restricted by the spell of the national teacher, but also because of the revealing spell, he showed his true form with devilish energy in his body. .

——But he has no intention to track down their whereabouts right now.

Seeing that he was just silent, Ji Zhuoran sighed, "...you blame me? If I hadn't entrusted you to come—"

Without raising his eyes, Fu Duanshui interrupted him abruptly again, but mentioned another irrelevant matter, "In the past three days, apart from checking whether there are still ghosts in the palace and notifying the imperial capital In addition to cleaning up the filth inside and outside the house, and replying to the Zongmen, they also checked some palace affairs."

"..." Ji Zhuoran paused for breath, and his fingertips clinging to the flagon also tightened slightly, listening to him say in a leisurely manner: "——I visited the Eighth Prince at night."

Without looking at the expression on his face, Fu Duanshui said in a flat tone: "While he was fast asleep because of the talisman, I took off the cloth strips from his eyes, checked carefully, and found that the reason why he was blind was not due to the surgery. You can't curse secretly, but you are poisoned."

"..." Ji Zhuoran breathed out lightly, hugged his arms, and looked at him with a slight tilt of his head as if purely curious, "Oh? How could this be?"

"I'm also curious." Fu Duanshui still looked at the casting furnace, and said calmly: "So I simply woke up the eighth prince and forced him to ask him what he used to eat before he was blind."

Ji Zhuoran's eyelashes trembled slightly, the corners of his mouth slightly curved, and he shook his head disapprovingly, "The Eighth Emperor is timid and cowardly by nature, but he can't stand being scared."

"Indeed." Fu Duanshui nodded, "I just sounded a little harsher, and he answered everything exactly. He said that he used all the food that was always prepared in the mansion, and they had been checked one by one before use. Except Five days before his blindness, he once accepted a glass of wine from the crown prince at the palace banquet..."

After all, he finally turned his gaze away, but instead of looking at Ji Zhuoran, he landed on the flagon in his hand.

Catching his gaze, Ji Zhuoran pursed his lips lightly, and then lifted the lid of the pot in a very free and easy manner, pouring all the wine on the ground, "——Sacrifice to the four immortal families who died."

Fu Duanshui was slightly taken aback.

The wine dripped and fell, converging on the ground to form a small pool, breaking out the broken light leaking from between the tiles.

Looking down at the gleam of the wine in the pool, Ji Zhuoran sighed with a low smile, raised his hand to caress the mottled wooden beams that had collapsed, and said softly, "Royal people, how could you As good as it is, there has always been only the three words "unavoidable". Since ancient times, it is not uncommon for emperors and heirs to kill each other. Either I hurt you, or you hurt me. How many people are really close? —— Even My eighth brother, who is most loved by my father, but who is 'cowardly and unusable', pushed me into the water several times when I was young... If I hadn't had my mother and concubine to protect me in the early years, I am afraid I would not have survived to this day .In the final analysis, I am just a 'last resort'."

"After all..." He shook his head helplessly, and sighed softly, "I'm actually not born to be emperor."

He said every word sincerely, but Fu Duanshui just looked at him, the coldness in his eyes remained undiminished, "For the sake of the throne, can you mutilate your siblings?"

Ji Zhuoran shrugged slightly, and didn't answer him, but looked at him in the blink of an eye, and said with a smile: "It's useless to justify. I know that you are a dignified person, no matter how much I have difficulties, you can't tolerate your friend's behavior like this. Besides, you already have doubts about me, and even guessed that I was going to give you poisoned wine... You have already started to have a different intention, and it is hard to get over it. If you think about saying goodbye today, it will be difficult for us to be friends."

--Yes.

It's time to part.

It's useless to talk too much, Fu Duanshui took one last look at him, then looked away, and wanted to turn around——

From the corner of the eye, Ji Zhuoran's hand caressing the wooden beam suddenly twitched, as if being scratched by the wooden thorns on it, and he also heard him hiss in pain, and blood dripped from his palm one after another, falling into the Accumulated in the wine pools on the ground.

Perhaps it was due to the inertia he had developed over the years that his body actually overtook his brain and acted without authorization. He turned around and grabbed Ji Zhuoran's hand almost subconsciously, and was about to pinch out a Su Xin formula——

But suddenly he found that the spiritual power in his body had froze for a moment, and there was no spiritual energy to use.

It was Ji Zhuoran's soft and low voice that sounded like a sigh, "...you, the same little trick has been used eight hundred times, and you will always be fooled..."

The cracking pain in his heart was like burning, Fu Duanshui lowered his head in astonishment, and saw that the tip of a poisonous dagger had sunk into his chest——

The poison quenched on the dagger took away his mobility almost in the blink of an eye, causing him to kneel down on the ground in a state of weakness, with a mouthful of blood spurting from his mouth.

Numbness spread from his heart to his limbs one after another, Fu Kuanshui was impatiently trying to struggle, but his gaze suddenly froze, and he looked at the pool of wine on the ground in disbelief.

The blood he vomited just now splashed into the wine pool, and it was the same as the blood dripping from Ji Zhuoran's palm...

Melt together.

——In the distance, the sound of Shen Shi bell rang heavily.

While the bell was ringing, Ji Zhuoran saw the shock in his eyes, so he looked along his line of sight——after a while, he hooked the corners of his mouth reluctantly, "...this is wine, not water, and it is stained with black ash on the ground. , even if the blood of two ordinary people falls into it, it should be able to blend."

He paused for a while, then continued softly: "But if it's your blood and mine... it will blend in anyway."

"after all……

"The prince who was calculated by the national teacher to have the 'born emperor' was actually you..."

The sound of the bell ringing was exhausted, Ji Zhuoran looked down at Fu Duanshui whose blood color was fading, and said in a low voice, "You say you are a close friend, but you have a heart-to-heart relationship with me... but you never know your heart."

"Even more renounced with me."

I can't tell what kind of emotion is entrenched in my heart - it seems that a big rock has crashed to the ground, and it seems to be empty.He pursed his lips lightly, and said again after a while: "...If it wasn't for the so-called 'born emperor', maybe you and I could really become close friends?"

—— Born to be the emperor.

Since the national teacher came to the court, every time an emperor's heir was about to be born in the palace, he would test his fate, and then seal the letter with the result in a wooden box for the emperor to see.However, an emperor's heir was about to be born in the palace back then, and his mother and concubine, who was also pregnant, managed to learn the result calculated by the national teacher before the emperor—

Born to be emperor.

Needless to say later, she immediately sent someone to secretly replace the letter in the wooden box, rewriting the prince's fate as life-defying, forcing a scene of "the mad concubine fleeing", but then she was Knowing that the child not only did not die, but was actually accepted into the sect——

After a while of panic and palpitations, she quickly calmed down again, thinking that she has always been afraid of the national teacher, if one day she can use the power of the sect to wait for an opportunity to get rid of him, it would be great——

So then, he and he got acquainted.

——By the way, can it be called a "meeting by fate"?

With a soft sigh, Ji Zhuoran walked towards the person who had stopped breathing, bent down and half-kneeled, and lifted his head to his lap—for some reason, time seemed to be stretched extremely The hair is extremely soft, making his hands limp and weak, as if he can't breathe, but even a simple movement, he has difficulty doing it.

regret?Not really.

He is best at archery, so he understands the truth that there is no turning back when you shoot a bow.

only……

He exhaled lightly, and sighed in a low voice: "Recalling the ten years I have known you, it is really like a dream..."

But suddenly he heard a cold voice from behind him, "—how do you know that what you see before you is not a dream?"

In a trance, as if someone snapped his fingers, the person sleeping on his lap suddenly dispersed into clouds of light and mist, and the dagger that was originally inserted in the person's mouth also fell to the ground with a bang——

And what lingers in my ears is the lingering sound of Shen Zhong's sound!

Ji Zhuoran looked back in horror, and when he raised his eyes, he saw Tan Fengyue and Qin Nianjiu sitting on the empty wooden beams, supporting Fu Duanshui who had fallen into a coma like a dragged corpse, and they both looked at him coldly.

... What he saw just now were all illusions? !

In extreme astonishment, Ji Zhuoran could only lose his voice, "You..."

Too lazy to talk to this person, Tan Fengyue gave him a cool look, and then asked Qin Nianjiu, "How is he doing?"

Seeing Fu Duan's blood reappeared on the surface of the water, and his breathing eased, Qin Nianjiu's eyes flashed a look of disgust, and he unceremoniously threw him to Tan Fengyue, "The poison has been cured, we can go."

Tan Fengyue nodded slightly, raised his hand to grab his wrist, and grabbed Fu Duanshui with the other hand, but took the two of them away from this place in the blink of an eye.

Ji Zhuoran watched their figures suddenly disappear with chills all over his body, as if the national teacher's hoarse and ugly low laugh exploded in his ears——

"...The organs are exhausted, and the gains and losses are hard to come by."

"Dreams and bubbles turn into clouds of smoke—"