Chapter 476: This Illness Left Him with Lingering Effects

Chapter 476: Chapter 476: This Illness Left Him with Lingering Effects

A cold wind swept over the mountains and wilderness, raising waves of rustling leaves.

The sun had completely sunk behind the endless mountain range.

When Shen Ningning first suggested opening the coffin, Xie Suzhi had been vehemently against it.

The dead deserve respect. Wouldn’t opening the coffin disturb the peace of the departed?

However, his daughter’s words had planted a seed in his heart.

As he tossed and turned at night these past few days, even Xie Suzhi himself had begun to have doubts.

’Did Lady Xin truly die back then?’

He had checked for her breath and felt for her pulse. He had held her, reluctant to let her be buried, and felt her body gradually grow cold.

’If he could have been wrong about all that, then... could Lady Xin truly still be alive?’

So, unbeknownst to anyone, he had come to open the coffin alone.

He never expected that the truth would be just as his daughter, Ningning, had said.

The body wasn’t in the coffin!

Xie Suzhi felt a chill run through him. He muttered to himself, "I changed her clothes with my own hands. I buried her coffin with my own hands. If she’s not in the coffin, where could she have gone?"

Xie Ming’an’s first reaction was that someone had stolen his mother’s body.

With a grim expression, he inspected the coffin and the grave mound all over.

His meticulous inspection revealed that the coffin only showed signs of being pried open once—this very time, by Xie Suzhi’s own hand.

Other than this one opening, the four sealed corners of the coffin were completely undamaged.

The coffin, crafted from the finest golden silk nanmu, had not decayed after years in the ground, nor did it show any signs of being broken into.

This ruled out the possibility that the body had been stolen.

The father and son were distraught, their brows furrowed in suspicion.

Only Shen Ningning was overjoyed.

Once the little girl processed what had happened, a smile lit up her bright, watery eyes.

"This is wonderful! It’s just like Mr. Gu said. Mother must have found a way to leave. She’ll come back!"

Xie Suzhi’s sad, deep-set eyes gazed at his daughter’s radiant smile.

"I hope so..."

He looked up, watching the bleak, cold wind sweep across the empty grave. He had paid respects to his departed wife here for years. The stone monument and the scholar tree remained, but she was not lying within her tomb.

’Lady Xin, will you really come back?’

*

After Princess Consort Qi’s death, the Emperor learned that she had dared to pass off another man’s child as his own imperial heir.

Therefore, he ordered a bloody purge of all the palace attendants and servants who had attended to her.

The enraged Emperor even ordered the imperial guard to level the very palace where Princess Consort Qi had lived.

He didn’t want to see a single trace of what that woman had left behind.

While the imperial guard was demolishing the palace, they made an unexpected discovery.

Princess Consort Qi had buried six large chests of jade beneath the bluestone tiles of her bedchamber!

According to an imperial guard who was present: "It was already dark when we found the chests. But when Lord Lu opened them, a brilliant, colorful light burst forth. Once all six chests were open, the hall was lit up as bright as day. Every piece of jade was of the finest quality."

These items should have been added to the state treasury, but Mo Lingwei intervened and had them all sent to Shen Ningning, who loved jade.

The little girl was dumbfounded when she saw so much jade.

"No wonder I couldn’t find any better jade in the markets. It seems Princess Consort Qi hid away all the finest jade in the world."

Shen Ningning casually picked up a piece of jade and saw that it was a stunningly translucent, hibiscus-pink color.

She had been collecting for years and probably couldn’t have found a single piece as precious as this.

And yet, Princess Consort Qi had hidden six chests of it!

Mo Lingwei scoffed, the gold in his coronet glinting faintly and reflecting the cold light in the young man’s eyes.

"I always suspected she was some kind of jade-eating demon."

Shen Ningning let out a laugh, but then had another thought. "No, that’s not it."

Her bright eyes glinted. "I think she must have known the thing my mother left me needs jade to grow. Since she couldn’t get the Immortal Realm that my mother gave me, she tried to stunt its growth by hoarding all the good jade she could find."

"Didn’t Master Gu say that if their Moon Landing project succeeded, resources of all kinds would be scarce on the moon? But because of its unique climate and terrain, the moon has countless jade mines."

"Then, jade would be the most common thing around, making it easy to feed the Immortal Realm."

Hearing this, Mo Lingwei raised an eyebrow. "You keep mentioning the Immortal Realm eating jade. So all that fine jade I gave you... it ate it all? What does it give you in return?"

"It brings endless rain and sunlight. And recently, it produced something new, something as beautiful as a snowflake." As she spoke, the little girl plucked a snowflake from the Immortal Realm to show him.

The snow in her palm was crystalline and translucent.

The moment Mo Lingwei reached out to touch it, the snowflake instantly melted.

His eyes widened in surprise. "It really is snow."

Shen Ningning lifted her pretty little face, looking proud. "Of course! Would I lie to you? The Immortal Realm my mother left me is the best!"

If the Natural Disaster System that Princess Consort Qi had seized represented destruction, then what Shen Siyi had left her daughter represented new life.

It could even prevent natural disasters from forming.

Mo Lingwei grew thoughtful. "Is the moon really covered in jade?"

Shen Ningning nodded decisively. "In a book my mother left me, there’s a story about two people in ancient times who got lost in a forest. They met a peculiar person dressed in white and asked for directions. In their conversation, the person claimed to be a craftsman who repaired the moon."

"Not only that, he took out some ’jade-dust rice’ he carried and shared it with them, saying that eating it would guarantee they’d never get sick for their entire lives. See? The people on the moon really do eat jade!"

Every time he heard her speak of her mother, Mo Lingwei noticed the little girl’s eyes would invariably start to sparkle.

It made him smile as well.

As long as Shen Ningning was happy, he was happy too.

Suddenly, Mo Lingwei’s smile stiffened. His sharp brows furrowed, and he lowered his head slightly, pressing his hands tightly to his temples.

Shen Ningning jumped, startled, and rushed over. "Brother, is your head hurting again?"

When Mo Lingwei opened his eyes again, they were bloodshot. His dark, sharp eyebrows and the straight bridge of his nose only served to enhance the wild, unrestrained aura that suddenly surrounded him.

He forced himself to endure the discomfort. "I’m fine. The pain usually passes after a little while, but it’s been happening more frequently lately."

Worried, Shen Ningning quickly poured him a cup of Spiritual Spring Water.

The poison that Qi Jingchun and the State Preceptor had used on Mo Lingwei, though neutralized, had still left behind some aftereffects.

Namely, the occasional, splitting headaches.

The Divine Doctor and the Ghost Doctor had both examined Mo Lingwei and concluded that if the pain continued, he might go berserk and be unable to recognize anyone.

The Emperor was consumed with guilt. In his desperation to cure his son’s strange affliction, he had let the State Preceptor take advantage of the situation.

When Mo Lingwei had been reluctant to wear the poisoned Buddha Beads, he had even urged his son to put them on.

He never imagined that this was precisely what had caused his "cold affliction" to flare up so often.

Now the cold affliction was cured, but it had left behind the latent danger of him going berserk.

Mo Lingwei drank the Spiritual Spring Water, but the headache didn’t immediately subside.

Shen Ningning quickly helped him lie down and summoned the Imperial Physicians to treat him.

The commotion lasted late into the night.

Eventually, both the Divine Doctor and the Ghost Doctor rushed over, checking Mo Lingwei’s pulse and performing acupuncture on him.

They both explained his condition to the Emperor.

"For now, we can only control it with herbal medicine. We fear that in the future, whenever His Highness suffers one of these splitting headaches, he will lose his senses, fly into a rage, and harm people. Your Majesty should prepare for this possibility."