The Culinary Chronicles of the Court Physician: The Disgraced Princess Consumes Poison to Create Medicine
“— Don’t touch her, she is mine.”
Cradled in his arms, which felt more like a robbery than a rescue, Fei Ling Huiren felt the tense thread of her nerves loosen. Stumbling, she clung to Zhenjian.
The bees surrounded the emperor, constantly threatening as if ready to strike at any moment. The emperor glared first at Zhen and then at the bees, his brow furrowing.
“You are a Feng Shui master—no, a poison master?”
“Wrong. I am Zhen.”
Zhen chuckled wickedly, flicking the beads on his waist with the tip of his boot. The sound of the beads reverberated sharply. The emperor, who had been staring at the beads with the qilin pattern, widened his eyes and turned pale.
“Your son, dropped into the bottom of the ravine.”
A storm blew in, and the snow grew fiercer. A mass of clouds charged with purple lightning twisted like a whirlpool. The dark blizzard whipped Zhenjian’s hair around. The fine ice on his taut cheeks cracked, freezing his eyelashes. In the frost, his violet eyes darkened even more.
“When we first met, when you were appointed by the imperial Feng Shui master, I had introduced myself. But in the end, you never realized who I was.”
A snake entwined around Zhenjian’s sword, baring its fangs and releasing poison. From the tip of the blade, a deadly, bluish poison dripped.
The emperor furrowed his brows and sighed heavily.
“I see, so you were the one from back then—poison.”
“Poison, huh?”
Zhen tilted his head back, laughing. It was a laugh without heat, one filled with disappointment, as if he had realized there was never any hope to begin with. But in an instant, he dropped the smile.
“Fei Ling Huiren…”
His stiff fingers brushed her wet cheek.
She had been crying unconsciously. It wasn’t because Zhenjian was pitiful, but simply because the tears couldn’t help but fall. In the blizzard, her tears froze at the edges as they fell.
“Fei Ling Huiren, you said that you control poison with medicine, but there are poisons that can only be controlled by more poison.”
With the poison-laden sword raised, Zhenjian tried to strike the emperor. In a panic, Fei Ling reached out to grab his sleeve with her numbed fingers. Before Zhenjian even had time to look back, dark clouds burned purple and cracked.
It was a lightning strike.
For a moment, Fei Ling doubted reality. Could such misfortune, such calamity, really happen? This was a disaster that shouldn’t have occurred.
The lightning struck the emperor’s head—
As if pierced by the spear of the heavens, the emperor died instantly.
The thunder shook the ground.
A terrible resonance filled the air, reminiscent of the roar of the heavens. Was it anger? Resentment? The reverberating sound seemed to devour everything, and with it, silence fell like a curtain.
As smoke rose, the emperor collapsed backward.
“Heaven… poison.”
Fei Ling called out, her voice trailing behind.
The worst had compounded, leading to an irreversible disaster—just as if fate itself had been poisoned.
Ah, unmistakably, this was…
The calamity of heavenly poison.
