Joy of Life - V1C18
Prologue: Nice Guys Finish Last
1- A Child of the Tanmai
2- The Truman Show
3- The Legacy Book
4- Studies and Ghost Stories
5- The Noctural Visitor
6- Master Wu Zhu
7- Master Fei Jie
8- One Year Later...
9- Grandmasters and Divine Temple
10- Overpowering Bàdào Zhenqi
11- The Sea Salt Merchant
12- Farewell for now, Master Fei Jie
13- Mail Order and Newspapers
14- It Hurts Like Hell!
15- Housekeeper Zhou
16- Ay-ya-ya-yaaa
17- The Three Goals
18- The Attempted Poisoning
19- The Assassin
20- Clean Up After Yourself!
Chapter 18
The Attempted Poisoning
Seeing that the young master had come to the kitchen, the servants quickly stood up and offered him a stool. “Younger Master, are you still hungry? Do you want to eat something?” one of them asked with a smile.
Fan Xian smiled and said, “This congee was delicious.”
The chef beside him laughed, “I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“Yes, the peanuts were quite fresh. When were they bought?” Fan Xian nodded enthusiastically and asked carefully.
“We bought them this morning, so they were fresh.”
“Oh, right. Did any outsiders enter the kitchen today?”
“Old Ha, who normally delivers food, was ill. His nephew came instead.”
“All right then. I should get going.” Fan Xian took a piece of meat from the plate the chef offered. He ate it and, smiling bashfully, said, “Don’t tell the Old Mistress I came down here to pilfer food.”
After Fan Xian left, the servants started discussing him. They praised the Count’s illegitimate son for lacking aristocratic vices, though they noted his eating habits were somewhat unusual.
The servants stood ready for his arrival, anticipating his return for lunch. The Old Mistress was seated in an old wooden armchair, her eyes half-lidded as though she were drowsy.
“Young Master has returned!” shouted a male servant, prompting everyone to spring into action to set the table. Fan Xian and the Old Mistress faced each other at a large dining table adorned with an array of dishes.
However, there was something peculiar about the scene. Instead of retreating to the back courtyard to have their meal, the idle servants watched Fan Xian intently as he handled his chopsticks. A few of the younger servant girls appeared to be salivating quietly, their hunger evident.
This was an unspoken rule at the Count’s villa: as per Fan Xian’s strict expectations and the Old Mistress’s acceptance, the other servants were forbidden to eat until he had personally sampled and approved each dish.
The servants often wondered why the usually gentle Young Master Fan insisted on such an unreasonable custom. There had been an incident when Dong’er, the servant closest to him, had tasted her food before he did. She was swiftly expelled from the villa by an enraged Fan Xian. Following that, everyone realized that the young master had a more demanding aristocratic side than they had thought.
When Dong’er left in tears, the Old Mistress simply watched her go without uttering a word.
The villa was enveloped in silence, broken only by Fan Xian’s chewing and sipping of soup. The servants stood obediently by his side, arms at their sides. In typical noble households, leftover food that the master didn’t consume was always sent to the servants’ quarters as a reward, so Fan Xian took only small portions of each dish, picking lightly at the food with his chopsticks.
He ate slowly and deliberately, his thin lips parting and closing like beams of light. Meanwhile, the Old Mistress gently stroked a statue, whispering a silent prayer.
After what felt like an eternity, Fan Xian finally sampled each dish, a sweet laugh escaping him as his eyes sparkled brightly. He pointed to a plate of congee[i] and remarked to one of the servants, “This one is excellent.”
A sigh of relief swept through the servant girls as they began to fill their bowls with rice. The other servants could finally make their way to the back courtyard, but one servant returned from the kitchen with the remaining congee, placing it in front of Fan Xian.
“Please, enjoy them, nǎi nai.”
Fan Xian stood, saluted the Old Mistress, and graciously accepted the bowl with both hands, then placed it before her. He enthusiastically added more congee to his bowl, munching away with a look of sheer delight. On his youthful face, that smile seemed oddly unsettling, as if he had discovered something he had long sought after.
For some inexplicable reason, the servant girls nearby shuddered at the sight of the twelve-year-old boy’s grin, recalling the heavy slap that Housekeeper Zhou had received that morning.
“I’m going to my room to finish my meal,” Fan Xian announced to the servants before taking the remaining bowl of congee with him to his room in the side courtyard. Although it was somewhat impolite to leave before his elder had finished eating, the Old Mistress made no comment.
In his bedroom, he took some emetic powder before poking his fingers down his throat. After a while of digging, he finally vomited the remnants of his meal. Immediately, he took several pills from the drawer and washed them down with water. He circulated his Zhenqi through his body and found no issues, which eased his mind. He then looked at the congee in his bowl. With a bitter smile, he emptied them into the chamber pot behind his bed. It had been poisoned with Ginkgo fruit. The Overwatch Council's spies frequently used it for assassinations.
Ginkgo fruits were striking, small, yellow-orange ones found along the eastern coast. While their flowers produce an unpleasant smell, roasting the nuts imparts a chestnut-like flavor. However, both their raw seeds and pulp are highly toxic, similar to poison.
When fruit pulp was mixed with food, the dish generally did not change color and retained its normal smell. In fact, it often enhanced the dish's fragrance. Once inside the body, the poison quickly took effect, causing symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, confusion, and convulsions, usually beginning 1 to 12 hours after ingestion. Children were particularly vulnerable to ginkgo seed poisoning. These symptoms closely resembled those of infection, making it difficult to determine the cause of death with certainty.
As the genius student of Master Fei Jie, the inventor of this poison in the Overwatch Council, Fan Xian immediately detected a slightly bitter taste in the congee. The murderer was quite clever, for he knew how to mix the Ginkgo fruit pulp with congee.
Fan Xian left the Old Mistress in a hurry to purge the poison to keep her from being frightened. Now, he suddenly felt scared when he considered that if it had been some fast-acting poison instead of Ginkgo, he’d already be dead.
Fan Xian always took his teacher’s advice to be attentive to his diet. He worried that his aunt in the capital might strike a vicious blow. That’s why he had to cause such an odd scene while eating just now. To keep the servants safe from poison, he requested that he taste each dish before anybody else could begin eating.
Though Fan Xian believed his own life was more important than anybody else’s, he wasn’t willing to have innocent people die for him.
“Young Master has returned!” shouted a male servant, prompting everyone to spring into action to set the table. Fan Xian and the Old Mistress faced each other at a large dining table adorned with an array of dishes.
However, there was something peculiar about the scene. Instead of retreating to the back courtyard to have their meal, the idle servants watched Fan Xian intently as he handled his chopsticks. A few of the younger servant girls appeared to be salivating quietly, their hunger evident.
This was an unspoken rule at the Count’s villa: as per Fan Xian’s strict expectations and the Old Mistress’s acceptance, the other servants were forbidden to eat until he had personally sampled and approved each dish.
The servants often wondered why the usually gentle Young Master Fan insisted on such an unreasonable custom. There had been an incident when Dong’er, the servant closest to him, had tasted her food before he did. She was swiftly expelled from the villa by an enraged Fan Xian. Following that, everyone realized that the young master had a more demanding aristocratic side than they had thought.
When Dong’er left in tears, the Old Mistress simply watched her go without uttering a word.
The villa was enveloped in silence, broken only by Fan Xian’s chewing and sipping of soup. The servants stood obediently by his side, arms at their sides. In typical noble households, leftover food that the master didn’t consume was always sent to the servants’ quarters as a reward, so Fan Xian took only small portions of each dish, picking lightly at the food with his chopsticks.
He ate slowly and deliberately, his thin lips parting and closing like beams of light. Meanwhile, the Old Mistress gently stroked a statue, whispering a silent prayer.
After what felt like an eternity, Fan Xian finally sampled each dish, a sweet laugh escaping him as his eyes sparkled brightly. He pointed to a plate of congee[i] and remarked to one of the servants, “This one is excellent.”
A sigh of relief swept through the servant girls as they began to fill their bowls with rice. The other servants could finally make their way to the back courtyard, but one servant returned from the kitchen with the remaining congee, placing it in front of Fan Xian.
“Please, enjoy them, nǎi nai.”
Fan Xian stood, saluted the Old Mistress, and graciously accepted the bowl with both hands, then placed it before her. He enthusiastically added more congee to his bowl, munching away with a look of sheer delight. On his youthful face, that smile seemed oddly unsettling, as if he had discovered something he had long sought after.
For some inexplicable reason, the servant girls nearby shuddered at the sight of the twelve-year-old boy’s grin, recalling the heavy slap that Housekeeper Zhou had received that morning.
“I’m going to my room to finish my meal,” Fan Xian announced to the servants before taking the remaining bowl of congee with him to his room in the side courtyard. Although it was somewhat impolite to leave before his elder had finished eating, the Old Mistress made no comment.
In his bedroom, he took some emetic powder before poking his fingers down his throat. After a while of digging, he finally vomited the remnants of his meal. Immediately, he took several pills from the drawer and washed them down with water. He circulated his Zhenqi through his body and found no issues, which eased his mind. He then looked at the congee in his bowl. With a bitter smile, he emptied them into the chamber pot behind his bed. It had been poisoned with Ginkgo fruit. The Overwatch Council's spies frequently used it for assassinations.
Ginkgo fruits were striking, small, yellow-orange ones found along the eastern coast. While their flowers produce an unpleasant smell, roasting the nuts imparts a chestnut-like flavor. However, both their raw seeds and pulp are highly toxic, similar to poison.
When fruit pulp was mixed with food, the dish generally did not change color and retained its normal smell. In fact, it often enhanced the dish's fragrance. Once inside the body, the poison quickly took effect, causing symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, confusion, and convulsions, usually beginning 1 to 12 hours after ingestion. Children were particularly vulnerable to ginkgo seed poisoning. These symptoms closely resembled those of infection, making it difficult to determine the cause of death with certainty.
As the genius student of Master Fei Jie, the inventor of this poison in the Overwatch Council, Fan Xian immediately detected a slightly bitter taste in the congee. The murderer was quite clever, for he knew how to mix the Ginkgo fruit pulp with congee.
Fan Xian left the Old Mistress in a hurry to purge the poison to keep her from being frightened. Now, he suddenly felt scared when he considered that if it had been some fast-acting poison instead of Ginkgo, he’d already be dead.
Fan Xian always took his teacher’s advice to be attentive to his diet. He worried that his aunt in the capital might strike a vicious blow. That’s why he had to cause such an odd scene while eating just now. To keep the servants safe from poison, he requested that he taste each dish before anybody else could begin eating.
Though Fan Xian believed his own life was more important than anybody else’s, he wasn’t willing to have innocent people die for him.
•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••
Seeing that the young master had come to the kitchen, the servants quickly stood up and offered him a stool. “Younger Master, are you still hungry? Do you want to eat something?” one of them asked with a smile.
Fan Xian smiled and said, “This congee was delicious.”
The chef beside him laughed, “I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“Yes, the peanuts were quite fresh. When were they bought?” Fan Xian nodded enthusiastically and asked carefully.
“We bought them this morning, so they were fresh.”
“Oh, right. Did any outsiders enter the kitchen today?”
“Old Ha, who normally delivers food, was ill. His nephew came instead.”
“All right then. I should get going.” Fan Xian took a piece of meat from the plate the chef offered. He ate it and, smiling bashfully, said, “Don’t tell the Old Mistress I came down here to pilfer food.”
After Fan Xian left, the servants started discussing him. They praised the Count’s illegitimate son for lacking aristocratic vices, though they noted his eating habits were somewhat unusual.
[i] Congee is a savory Asian rice porridge made by boiling rice in a large amount of water or broth until it breaks down into a thick, creamy consistency. It is a versatile comfort food, commonly eaten for breakfast or by the ill, and is frequently topped with soy sauce, ginger, peanuts, or fried dough (youtiao).
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