Chapter 22: This Is True Kingly Wisdom
At four o'clock that afternoon, inside the Iron Hand Estate.
People had been gradually filtering out from the courtyard. Su Xiao sat behind a desk, with dozens of parchment sheets spread out before him.
"So, you were the last person to see the young princess?"
Su Xiao set down the parchment in his hand and looked up at a maidservant kneeling before him.
"Yes, my lord."
The maidservant was visibly nervous, her breathing rapid, her heart rate soaring past 140 beats per minute. She was deliberately concealing something.
"Guards."
Su Xiao spoke. Two guards entered the room. He waved his hand, and the two guards looked somewhat bewildered, as did the kneeling maidservant.
"My lord, specifically how should we..."
One guard spoke in a low voice, his wording very cautious.
"Kill her."
"Huh?"
The two guards were stunned. The maidservant slumped to the ground.
"I... I only stole the princess's headdress. I, I don't deserve to die for that, sob..."
Clearly, the trivial matter the maidservant had been desperately hiding was this insignificant thing.
"Take her away."
Su Xiao rubbed his forehead. He had already gathered many similar useless leads.
"Then, my lord, should we..."
One guard made a throat-slitting gesture with his hand.
"Imprison her."
Su Xiao leaned back in his seat. This was the most troublesome task he had ever encountered, bar none. So far, he had found no clues whatsoever. The young princess seemed to have been killed by a 'ghost,' leaving no trace behind at the scene.
Just as Su Xiao was racking his brains, a royal guard pushed open the door.
"My lord, we have a lead."
A royal guard handed Su Xiao a wooden tube as thick as an arm. It bore the royal family's insignia, indicating the confidentiality of its contents.
Su Xiao opened the tube. A rolled-up parchment slid out. After reading its contents, the doubts in Su Xiao's mind suddenly cleared.
According to the investigation by the detective named 'Nonista Ford,' the killer of the young princess was none other than Legion Commander Karen.
Su Xiao had suspected Legion Commander Karen before, but the man's height and weapon differed significantly from the killer's.
Su Xiao still remembered the look in Legion Commander Karen's eyes before his death—a gaze filled with helplessness and anger.
From the detective's written account, Su Xiao understood what had happened. At the time of the incident, Legion Commander Karen had been standing bent over behind the young princess, using a hastily acquired weapon to pierce through her chest.
As for why the young princess hadn't screamed, it was because she had covered her own mouth, enduring the pain with all her might.
When Su Xiao read the line 'the young princess covered her own mouth,' his first thought was to bring that detective here, give him a chance to rephrase his words, and make him say it again to his face.
But after reading the detective's subsequent descriptions, Su Xiao abandoned that idea. This was a master of deductive reasoning.
What Su Xiao read next was that the thirteen-year-old young princess was actually pregnant! And even more absurdly, her mother was also pregnant. One had to know that the old king was already sixty-five years old, and his hardware was basically not up to the task.
A mother and daughter, both pregnant. Who were their lovers? Normally, the possibility of it being the same person was slim, but given the openness of this world, that possibility couldn't be ruled out. The 'information load' was too massive.
"So... that's how it is."
The thoughts in Su Xiao's mind suddenly became clear. This wasn't a murder at all. Someone had staged an elaborate play.
The young princess and the queen had deliberately died in the back garden. The young princess's death was to lure Su Xiao over, while the queen's poisoning was to buy time. They were both pawns. Legion Commander Karen, who died alongside them, was a victim. He had been forced to do it, and afterward, his family's bodies were found in a ditch, the whole family wiped out neatly.
A mother and daughter had used their lives to perform this play. The two most critical points were: first, the location of the play (the royal palace), and second, the timing of the play (the old king's banquet for all powerful ministers, wealthy merchants, princes, and princesses).
At such a time, with a royal member murdered in the palace's back garden, Su Xiao, as the Iron Hand, would have to arrive immediately. This would draw him away from the old king's side.
The enemy's main objective was already clear: to assassinate the old king and all the powerful ministers, wealthy merchants, princes, and princesses in the banquet hall.
If all these people died at once, the power structure of the Saint Sordin Kingdom would instantly collapse. The kingdom might even be destroyed because of it.
The moment he learned of the young princess's murder, the old king immediately issued an order: to send Kingdom Legion Commander Hestrite to the front lines at once. At this point, the old king had already vaguely sensed that something was wrong.
Hestrite had followed the old king for many years. He immediately understood the old king's intent. Therefore, after leaving the banquet hall, he didn't head straight for the front lines. Instead, using a secret order the old king had quietly given him, he summoned all the royal guards. The five royal guards waiting for Su Xiao at the banquet hall entrance earlier were just a small part of them.
After dispatching Hestrite, the old king's next move directly strangled the assassins' plan in the cradle: he sent Joe Valentine to seal off the royal capital and left a secret instruction that if he were to fall that day, the eldest prince would temporarily ascend the throne.
Joe Valentine wasn't really going to seal off the royal capital. He managed all the officials and knew their functions. He was going to prevent the collapse of the power system.
The old king's final, somewhat 'undignified' action—pouring out the poisoned wine in his own cup—had taken the assassins two years of meticulous planning to prepare. The king assassination plan had completely failed.
One had to admit, the old ginger is the spiciest. The old king not sitting at the head of the banquet table had already surprised the assassins. When he sat near Su Xiao and the others, he would only drink from the wine flasks that Su Xiao and Hestrite had already drunk from, because the old king knew that both were powerful individuals with terrifyingly keen senses for toxins. Moreover, his cup was the one Hestrite had used earlier.
This series of on-the-spot countermeasures by the old king left the assassins with no chance to strike. They couldn't openly attack the royal palace; otherwise, they wouldn't have 'sacrificed' that mother-daughter pair to divert Su Xiao's attention and lure him away.
Their window of opportunity was only a few minutes. But during those few minutes, the banquet hall was surrounded by hundreds of royal guards.
Although the old king, who had ruled the kingdom for over forty years, was just an ordinary man, he was not easy to kill. He was an old lion, one that even Su Xiao found somewhat formidable.
The person who orchestrated this was undoubtedly meticulous. Such people are usually proud, and therefore, they likely couldn't accept such a complete failure.
"This... old lion."
Su Xiao rested his elbows on the wooden table, his hands clasped together before his face.
At that moment, Su Xiao suddenly stood up with a whoosh. He had thought of a crucial point: when the old king announced the young princess's murder, the first person to speak was neither Hestrite nor Chief Executive Joe Valentine, but the Kingdom's Financial Officer, Rowan Harvey.
Before the old king could even give an order, Rowan Harvey whispered a few words in his ear. Then the old king told Rowan Harvey to leave and handle the aftermath of the confiscation.
Su Xiao now desperately wanted to know what Rowan Harvey had said at that time. Although the confiscation was important, and the young princess's murder might cause unrest in the capital, affecting the collection of Elvi Anthony's wealth, Rowan Harvey being the first to propose leaving the banquet hall was highly suspicious.
It felt like he was looking for a legitimate excuse to leave the banquet hall.
Although the young princess died at the hands of Legion Commander Karen, the true culprit was not him, but the mastermind behind the scenes. Su Xiao's mission objective was to find this mastermind.