Chapter 420

Jin Ling, Mingze Lane.

Zou Min'er was fed half a bowl of porridge by Jia Cong. The swallowing action pulled at the pain of the wound, and she could no longer swallow.

However, having been in a coma for two days, her body was extremely empty and weak. The porridge entering her stomach still allowed her body to get a great deal of relief.

Jia Cong supported Zou Min'er to lie down and rest, but suddenly his expression was somewhat tangled and embarrassed, with a look of wanting to speak but stopping.

Zou Min'er saw his appearance, blinked her bright eyes, and asked somewhat puzzled, "What's wrong with you?"

Jia Cong braced himself and said, "When Mr. Zhang left, he instructed that the wound medicine must be changed and re-bandaged every twelve hours to speed up the healing of the wound."

The first two times Jia Cong applied medicine and bandaged her, Zou Min'er was in a coma. Even if he did something more private and ambiguous, the other party was completely unaware, saving a lot of unnecessary trouble.

Now that Zou Min'er had woken up, he couldn't knock the other party unconscious and then undress her to change the medicine.

In fact, this kind of thing, regardless of whether the other party was unconscious or not, except for the benevolence of a physician, was a deviation from the norm for men and women who were not related to have private contact.

It was just that life was at stake, and Zou Min'er needed to deceive people and fake death to survive. There was no one else in this small courtyard except Jia Cong, and it seemed impossible to let others do it.

Zou Min'er's pretty face was fiery red, her brows furrowed slightly, and she stared at Jia Cong somewhat helplessly.

However, this behavior of Jia Cong's was not the first time, and it had probably long since broken the bottom line of a girl.

Zou Min'er looked at Jia Cong with a look that was quite fierce, but it seemed there was no other way....

The words in her mouth were weak, helpless, and soft: "Then you must be quick...." After finishing, she closed her eyes and dared not look again, as if she had made up her mind that what the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over.

Jia Cong took out the wound medicine, bandages, and other things left by Zhang Youpeng, went to the kitchen to boil water, and prepared boiled cotton cloth.

When everything was ready, he closed the doors and windows, gently lowered the bed curtains to block any dust, and cleaned his hands with the strong liquor he had bought early.

In later generations, when encountering such a severe knife wound, because of anti-inflammatory drugs, the risk of wound infection was reduced to a very low level.

In this era, there were no such things.

Some of Jia Cong's preparatory actions were guided by the famous physician Zhang Youpeng, and some were added by himself based on the knowledge of later generations.

On the night after Zou Min'er was severely wounded, she once had a low fever. Fortunately, Zhang Youpeng used gold needles to remove the evil energy and fed her medicine to bring down the fever.

At that time, in Jia Cong's view, having a fever after an injury was already an extremely dangerous thing.

If Zou Min'er was severely wounded and dying, and her body was feverish, the situation would be even more dangerous. If it weren't for Zhang Youpeng being present, but an ordinary quack, the consequences would be unimaginable.

Now that Zhang Youpeng was out, if she got an infection while Jia Cong was changing the medicine and bandaging, burying a hidden danger, there would be no one to call for help, so he dared not be the slightest bit careless.

He tirelessly did all the measures he could think of in his two lifetimes to prevent infection.

Zou Min'er saw Jia Cong busy with every detail and noticed that the light in the room suddenly dimmed, and her heart couldn't help but tense up.

……

Although her eyes were tightly closed, she clearly felt Jia Cong's body approaching and reaching out to undo the buttons of her undergarments one by one.

Although she knew what changing medicine was about, when it came to the moment, she was still shy and difficult to handle, and her body couldn't help but tense up.

By the time the undergarments were completely undone, revealing her snow-white chest and abdomen, her whole body was already trembling involuntarily, but she just bit her teeth tightly and refused to show weakness.

Zou Min'er's abnormal reaction made Jia Cong, who was originally calm, suddenly become full of romantic thoughts, and he was dazzled by the jade-like skin, undulating curves, and wonderful appearance in front of him, causing his hot blood to surge.

His fingers touched the silky skin, and he almost couldn't hold back. He forced himself to stabilize his mind, let Zou Min'er lie on her side, and slowly untied the bandages on her body.

He used a piece of boiled cotton cloth to remove the old medicine from the wound and carefully wiped and cleaned the slightly reddened skin around the wound.

Inside the bed curtains, Zou Min'er, lying on her side, endured the hidden pain caused by the pulling of the wound when the bandages were removed.

Because Jia Cong was dealing with the wound, his hands kept touching her skin, and she could feel his caution.

But every time their skin touched, it made her feel waves of soft trembling, so much so that she didn't even feel the pain of the wound anymore.

Inside the bed curtains, the two vaguely overlapping figures were filled with a strange, romantic, and ambiguous taste.

……

Jia Cong finished cleaning the wounds on Zou Min'er's chest, abdomen, and back, and took out the secret knife wound medicine left by Zhang Youpeng.

That secret knife wound medicine was a pitch-black paste. As soon as Jia Cong opened the medicine box, the pungent and strange medicinal smell permeated the room.

Jia Cong was somewhat familiar with this strange medicinal smell. When Zhang Youpeng treated Feng Shi's short finger, he used this kind of secret medicine.

When he first met Qu Hongxiu, in that cave on the deserted mountain, he applied medicine to the knife wound on Qu Hongxiu's back.

The medicine Qu Hongxiu carried with her, whether in shape, color, or smell, was very similar to Zhang Youpeng's secret medicine.

Even later, when Jia Cong was severely wounded by Jia She's whip, Qu Hongxiu also used that medicine to treat his wounds, and the effect was quite magical.

Jia Cong had also asked Qu Hongxiu about this, but Qu Hongxiu didn't know Zhang Youpeng at all, and her secret recipe for the medicine was passed down from the Qu family.

Traditional Chinese medicine has always been connected through hundreds of families. The medicinal efficacy of Chinese medicine pastes is similar, and the medicinal materials used are probably roughly the same, so it is reasonable for the shape and smell to be similar.

Jia Cong carefully applied the medicine paste that emitted a pungent smell to the wounds on Zou Min'er's chest, abdomen, and back.

When the paste touched the wound, Zou Min'er felt a piercing pain and broke out in a cold sweat.

He took cotton cloth to wipe away the sweat on Zou Min'er's body, used clean bandages to re-bandage the wounds on her body, and helped her put on her undergarments again.

Perhaps it was Jia Cong's unhindered intimate actions, or perhaps it was the severe pain of the ointment invading the wound, that made Zou Min'er's face flush red, her breath panting, and her head dizzy.

Jia Cong covered her with the thin quilt, hung up the bed curtains, and opened the window to let the cool air from the courtyard flow into the room.

When Jia Cong turned his head, he saw Zou Min'er looking at him blankly. Seeing him turn his head, she hurriedly turned her gaze away.

That night, worried that Zou Min'er's injury would have a relapse after changing the medicine, he spent the night on the rattan chair by her bed as usual.

……

Two days passed like this. Jia Cong fed Zou Min'er porridge, cleaned, applied medicine, and bandaged her every day. The original embarrassing, intimate, and ambiguous actions also became somewhat habitual.

When Zhang Youpeng returned after preparing the secret medicine, he found that Zou Min'er's injury had recovered even better than he had expected.

He handed the sufficient amount of external wound medicine he had prepared to Jia Cong. After taking Zou Min'er's pulse and diagnosing her, he determined that the knife wound was stable and prescribed decoction medicine for internal use.

With such internal and external attacks, and the combination of civil and martial arts, Zou Min'er's injury recovered even faster.

When Zou Min'er's injury eased, Jia Cong sneaked into the inner courtyard of Clear Sound Pavilion again and took away the secret documents and tokens hidden in the interlayer of the desk in Zou Min'er's room.

Also, according to Zou Min'er's suggestion, he went to the instrument room of Clear Sound Pavilion and took away her personal pipa.

Because of the well-known relationship between Jia Cong and Zou Min'er, the manager of the pavilion didn't stop him from taking the pipa, just thinking that the Count of Weiyuan was too sentimental and took Lady Zou's musical instrument as a memento.

That day, the pipa was not placed in Zou Min'er's room, but was stored in the instrument room of Clear Sound Pavilion. This was the custom of the ladies of Clear Sound Pavilion to store musical instruments.

Therefore, the female assassin searched Zou Min'er's room thoroughly that day, but didn't come into contact with this pipa.

……

When Jia Cong brought the things back to Mingze Lane, Zou Min'er removed the head of the pipa and took out a secret document from the interlayer and handed it to Jia Cong.

Jia Cong looked surprised. When he opened the document, it was actually the secret file of the Jin Ling Regional Military Commissioner Du Hengxin, and it had also been annotated with many words by Zou Min'er.

Zou Min'er said, "That day, in order to investigate Zhang Kangnian's background, you asked me to collect the secret files of military officers above Grade 4 in the Guard Army from the Central Vehicle Office's secret files.

But that didn't include Du Hengxin."

Jia Cong said, "That's because Du Hengxin is a noble Grade 2 Regional Military Commissioner and is Zhang Kangnian's superior. It's impossible for him to be under his jurisdiction, so he wasn't on the list of suspects."

Zou Min'er said, "My thoughts were the same as yours. I later collected his official files, not because I suspected him, but because of another matter.

Do you still remember the day you asked about the origin of the Jin Ling Du family?"

Jia Cong naturally remembered this matter and said, "Xin Chun Hao once bought a farmstead in the east of the city from the Jin Ling Zhen family. The former owner of this farmstead was the Jin Ling Du family.

I heard that the Du family had a great background in Jin Ling fifteen years ago, so I was a bit curious, and you grew up in Jin Ling, so I asked you."

When Zou Min'er heard this, she was slightly surprised. When Jia Cong asked her about the Du family, he didn't mention that the farmstead under his name came from the Du family. Could it be that she had thought wrong?

At that time, when Jia Cong asked her about the Du family, she suspected out of selfishness that Jia Cong's biological mother was related to the Du family.

So she used the power of the Central Vehicle Office to investigate the background of the Jin Ling Du family, and the result of the investigation was not only unexpected but also involved a lot.

Xu Qiniang advised Zou Min'er not to intervene in this matter again, so Zou Min'er never mentioned this matter to outsiders.

……

If it were before, she had many knots in her heart toward Jia Cong, and some things would be kept in her heart and not told to him.

But after that assassination at Clear Sound Pavilion, she walked through the gates of hell once. If it weren't for Jia Cong's timely rescue, she would have died long ago.

Moreover, Jia Cong's intimate care these past few days, almost doing all the most private things between men and women, had an indescribable impact on her heart.

Perhaps it was out of a woman's nature, and unknowingly, the hard barriers of the past gradually became weak and powerless, as if they were there or not.

And the Du family matter, according to the final investigation results of Xu Qiniang from Liuhe, Zou Min'er recalled it countless times afterwards and felt that her initial speculation was not without reason.

She felt she should let Jia Cong know about this matter. She thought for a while and told him the private thoughts in her heart that day without reservation.

"That day when you suddenly asked about the Jin Ling Du family, I thought your biological mother was surnamed Du and thought you suspected that your biological mother's background was related to the Du family.

So I had people from the Central Vehicle Office make inquiries and learned many secrets about the Du family back then."

When Jia Cong heard this, his heart jumped suddenly. When he asked Zou Min'er about the Jin Ling Du family that day, he didn't link his biological mother's background to the Jin Ling Du family.

After all, there were so many families surnamed Du in the world. It was impossible that just because they were surnamed Du, they were related to his biological mother Du Jinniang.

However, Zou Min'er's words stirred up his worries. That year, he cracked the Water Supervision Office case and submitted a strategy for building a firearm camp to Emperor Emperor Jia Zhao. Due to accumulated merits, his biological mother was posthumously granted a title.

From that time on, Jia Cong had curiosity about this biological mother he had never met and had spent some effort to inquire about his biological mother's background in the Love Shenjing.

But the only clue he could trace was that his biological mother Du Jinniang was once a famous courtesan at the Yunyan Building in the Love Shenjing.

Now the Yunyan Building is still there. Jia Cong once asked Jiang Liu to inquire about the old people in the Yunyan Building to find out his biological mother's origin.

But the result of the inquiry was strange.

The old people in the Yunyan Building who might have known Du Jinniang fifteen years ago couldn't be found now.

Although the girls in the brothel eat youth rice, fifteen years is enough for the girls in the building to change several batches.

If even the shop owner, the procuress, the assistants, and the miscellaneous servants were all changed cleanly, the matter would become somewhat weird.

It was just that there were quite a few brothels in the Love Shenjing. In the long time of more than ten years, the rise and fall, and the scattering of personnel were all common things in the city.

No one had ever linked the scattering of people related to his biological mother like Jia Cong.

So the things that Jia Cong felt weird were either not strange in others' cognition or they didn't realize the trickiness in it at all.

He also asked his wet nurse, Aunt Zhao, but even she didn't know his biological mother's origin.

And Aunt Zhao had been in the East Road Courtyard for more than ten years and knew everything about the courtyard very well.

According to her, even Jia She couldn't explain clearly what the origin of the woman he brought into the courtyard was back then.

In fact, it wouldn't be strange at all for such a situation to occur, because women bought into brothels wouldn't tell people about their family background, so as not to disgrace their family.

So it became increasingly difficult to inquire about the origin of a courtesan who had died fifteen years ago.

……

I don't know how Zou Min'er had a sudden whim back then and actually felt that his biological mother was related to the Jin Ling Du family.

Jia Cong said, "Although my biological mother was surnamed Du, she drifted to the Love Shenjing back then and has been dead for many years. Her origin cannot be verified.

When I asked you about the Jin Ling Du family, I didn't have this meaning."

When Zou Min'er heard this, she saw Jia Cong's brows furrowed slightly, with exploration and confusion in his eyes.

She thought of Jia Cong's strange life experience that had long been circulating. He had never seen his biological mother, so he must also be brooding over this. Thinking of these, her heart couldn't help but soften slightly.

It was just that she couldn't help him with this matter.

Zou Min'er told Jia Cong the story of the Du family that Xu Qiniang had inquired about from Liuhe that day.

Among the information Zou Min'er got, the part about the Du family being raided and exterminated by the imperial court for colluding with the Hidden Sect, Jia Cong had already learned from Qu Hongxiu's mouth.

However, the person who handled the Du family case in Jin Ling back then was actually the current Emperor Emperor Jia Zhao.

Moreover, the destruction of the Du family back then was actually related to the change of imperial power fifteen years ago, almost occurring before and after this matter, with the Retired Emperor abdicating and the current Emperor ascending the throne.

Even after the Du family was exterminated, the officials who handled the case didn't end well either.

These terrifying pieces of information were the first time Jia Cong had heard them.

He truly hadn't expected that the Du family, which only made him feel a bit curious back then, actually hid such deep and complex inside stories behind it.

What caught his attention the most was that, according to Zou Min'er's account, all the male descendants of the Du family were executed, and the female family members were sold or filled into the Music Office.

But because the documents and materials of these female family members were strangely burned or lost, the Love Shenjing and Jin Ling were thousands of miles apart, and they hadn't even had time to prepare files.

In the end, the detailed whereabouts of these Du family female members became a headless case.

The whole thing sounded like someone wanted to cover up some important information, including the officials who didn't end well and the Du family female members whose whereabouts were buried.

And his biological mother drifted into the brothel during a similar period, and her family background could not be verified. The two things that seemed to have no connection on the surface actually contained some kind of vague coincidence.

Jia Cong thought through these keys and couldn't help but feel a chill in his heart. Could it be that Zou Min'er's speculation, which had no basis back then, was really the truth of the matter...?

Zou Min'er saw Jia Cong's face suddenly change, but she didn't investigate Du Jinniang's identity like Jia Cong, so naturally, she didn't know what he was thinking at this moment.

She continued, "When the Du family was destroyed back then, not only were all the male descendants of the Du lineage, from the head of the family Du Hengchang downwards, executed, but even the collateral descendants of the Du family were implicated and convicted.

Only one Du family descendant not only escaped this extermination disaster but also stayed out of it, rose to prominence, and is still a high official in Jin Ling. It is truly unimaginable."

Jia Cong looked at the case document in his hand, and a chill seemed to rise from his heart, rushing straight to his crown, and he felt a chill for no reason.

He muttered to himself, "This Du family descendant who escaped the great disaster is the Jin Ling Regional Military Commissioner Du Hengxin!"

Zou Min'er said, "The Du family case back then, because it involved complex matters, seemed to have been intentionally covered up by the imperial court, and because too much time had passed, very few people knew the truth.

If you didn't know the name of the Du family head Du Hengchang, who would associate him with the Grade 2 Regional Military Commissioner with the highest military rank in Jin Ling?

Du Hengchang and Du Hengxin, you can see from their names that they are of the same clan and lineage.

The Jin Ling Regional Military Commissioner Du Hengxin is the collateral clan brother of the Du family head Du Hengchang, who was beheaded by the imperial court for colluding with the Hidden Sect back then." (End of chapter)