After consecutively sneezing a few times, Pei Qingfeng rubbed his nose and turned around to ask, “Are you secretly cursing at me?”

When the guard heard it, cold sweat dripped from his forehead almost instantly as he responded, “How can that be possible? This subordinate does not dare to curse my lord...”

“That’s more like it.” After Pei Qingfeng responded, he returned to his thoughts.

The guard was silently rejoicing about how his expression didn’t change. If he really became shocked when Pei Qingfeng questioned him just a moment ago, he was definitely going to be scolded again. Then again, wasn’t his lord’s reaction a little too quick? Before he could even finish cursing, Pei Qingfeng had already sneezed a few times.

Pei Qingfeng naturally didn’t know of his guard’s opinion of him. He was thinking of what he had to do next in order to help Bai Luochu.

Bai Luochu had just returned to the residence and there was no way she could say that she was staying in the First Prince’s residence for the past few days. For an unmarried young lady to reside in an adult male’s residence, even if nothing happened between them, it still wouldn’t be nice when rumors started to spread. Furthermore, as the stories became more and more exaggerated, no one knew what the consequences would be. This was the capital city where saliva could drown a person.

Since this was the case, Bai Luochu couldn’t possibly reveal the fact that she had the First Prince as a backer. Right now, she was working alone. Now that she had returned to the general's residence, she was probably going to be in for a hard time.

What could he do? The best way would be for him to play the role of her backer. This way, he would be able to sell her a favor and obtain an opportunity to get close to her. It was a plan that could kill two birds with one stone and it was truly brilliant.

What reason can I use to enter the general’s residence without getting chased out?

After a long time, Pei Qingfeng seemed to have thought of something and said, “Has Divine Physician Bai’s treatment for the Empress Dowager ended?”

When the guard saw that Pei Qingfeng was in contemplation, he became distracted as well. Now that Pei Qingfeng addressed him suddenly, he was completely shocked. After listening to Pei Qingfeng’s question, he thought about it for a moment before replying, “According to what this subordinate knows, the treatment that Divine Physician Bai is offering to the Empress Dowager has yet to end. Is there a problem?”

“You don’t have to bother about this. I, your Lord, have my own plans.” Pei Qingfeng finished speaking and gave the guard an enigmatic smile.

The guard didn’t continue asking since his master wasn’t going to tell him anything, why should he embarrass himself? This guard originally thought there was nothing else to do but he heard Pei Qingfeng speaking again.

“Help me tidy up. Later on, we will go to the general's residence to liven things up a little.”

Liven things up a little? Did the general's residence do anything to offend Master?

Pei Qingfeng seemed to have guessed the guard’s thoughts and simply explained, “Don’t worry, I’m not talking about the current general’s residence. There’s nothing to do there anyway. We’re going to the former general’s residence!”

“That general's residence has already fallen into a state of decline. Why does my lord want to go there? It is better not to bring back any bad luck.” That guard frowned and couldn’t understand Pei Qingfeng’s actions.

“You’ll know when we get there.” Pei Qingfeng didn’t say too much and indicated for the guard to push him back to the room and help tidy up his attire.

...

On the other side, the moment Bai Luochu returned to the general's residence, she immediately got busy with her preparations.

Firstly, she opened up the medicinal ingredients and sorted them out carefully. She then used the poison formula that she wrote down to concoct a set of poison. She then retrieved the simple poison tempering tools she used in the First Prince's residence and prepared to temper the poison. Right now, Bai Luochu could already use her spirit qi to extract the most useful essence from the herbs.

Bai Luochu closed her eyes and circulated the spirit qi in her body. A short moment later, spirit qi oozed out from her palm. Opening her eyes, Bai Luochu covered the ingredients she wanted to refine with her palm. When the spirit qi started to wrap the medicinal ingredients up tightly, Bai Luochu raised her hand and obtained complete control over the ingredients. Without a single mistake, the medicinal ingredients gradually shrunk when being refined by the spirit qi. Those portions that were deemed useless had already turned into ash and scattered in the air. Finally, the only thing left in Bai Luochu’s palm was a drop of pure and limpid liquid that didn’t contain much impurities.

When Bai Luochu saw that the medicinal ingredients had been refined, she used her spirit qi to store the drop of medicinal fluid into the vessel she would use to temper her poison. She repeated this extraction process on all the poison herbs required for the first kind of poison. She injected her spirit qi into the poison tempering vessel and carefully mixed the liquid together. Just as Cai Ling was about to serve her lunch, Bai Luochu completed the refinement of her first bottle of poison. 

“Young Lady, this servant is here to serve your meal.” Cai Ling’s voice came from outside the door. Bai Luochu didn’t hide the things in her hands and simply allowed her to enter.

Bai Luochu didn’t stop what she was doing. After refining the poison, she quickly coated the poison on the silver needles around her waist.

Just as Cai Ling opened up the meal box, she exclaimed, “Ah? What is all this?!”

Bai Luochu might not have seen it, but the stench of rotten food assaulted her nose. A frown appeared on her face. In her mind, she thought about how she had only returned for a day but someone was already trying to climb over her head. It seemed like they knew that their backer was coming back and were starting to show off their might. Since that was the case, Bai Luochu would do whatever it took to screw them all over.

“Take away the food. I am not eating this afternoon.” Bai Luochu was infuriated right now.

“Young Lady, won’t you go hungry?” Cai Ling obviously didn’t expect things to turn out this way. She didn’t expect that her mistress, who was the true young lady of the general's residence, would be ostracized the moment she returned.

Bai Luochu raised her brows slightly and replied to Cai Ling. “It doesn’t matter. The hungrier I am, the larger the hammer falling onto some unlucky soul’s head. The only problem is whether or not they will still be alive when the time comes for me to collect the debt!”

The corner of Bai Luochu curled upwards as she revealed a cold sneer. There was a dark and ruthless look in her eyes. Since they were going to make things difficult for her, none of them would get off easy.

Cai Ling was startled as she didn’t expect to see her mistress’ infuriated expression. She had heard from Commander Ying that their mistress was someone who didn’t reveal her emotions easily. She also heard from Commander Ying that when Bai Luochu revealed this expression on her face, someone was going to be in a world of pain.

“Mistress, if you need this servant to do anything else, please say the word. This servant will never disappoint Mistress.”