Chapter Twenty-Two: Cat Button

  "The young master has returned!" a male servant shouted.

  At once all the servants got busy, starting to prepare lunch. A large table was placed in the hall, with Fan Xian and the old lady sitting opposite each other on either side, with seven or eight dishes scattered in between them.

  The atmosphere in the room was a bit strange, as those idle servants were also staring at Fan Xian's chopsticks and didn't go to the backyard to eat. A few younger maids were secretly swallowing their saliva, seemingly hungry.

  This was an unwritten rule in the Earl's residence, under Fan Xian's strong request and after Old Madame's tacit consent, everyone had long been accustomed to it - at the Earl's estate, as long as Young Master Fan was having a meal, he must taste every dish first and indicate his satisfaction before others were allowed to eat.

  Although it was not clear why the gentle and lovely young master would have such a brutal idea, when Fan Xian's closest servant, Dong'er, tasted the salty and bland food before Fan Xian ate, she was brutally driven out of the house by Fan Xian. After that, everyone knew that this young master still had an unscrupulous side as a noble son.

  And when Dong Er left in tears, the old countess just watched coldly and didn't say a word.

  The entire room was filled with only Fan Xian's chewing sounds and the soft slurping sounds of him drinking soup, all the servants stood quietly by his side with their hands hanging down. Just like in any large household, the leftover food from the master's meal would always be sent to where the servants lived as a reward for the lower class people - therefore Fan Xian didn't eat much of each dish, he just picked up a small amount with the tip of his chopsticks and put it into his mouth.

  But he ate slowly and carefully, his thin lips moving slightly, looking like two bright lights opening and closing.

  The old lady of the earl's mansion kept rubbing a statue with her hands and murmuring prayers in a low voice, but no sound came out.

  After a long time, Fan Xian finally finished all the dishes and smiled sweetly, with a gentle light in his eyes. He pointed to a dish of stir-fried bamboo shoots on the table and instructed the servants: "I like this dish."

  The servants and maids let out a sigh of relief, hastily starting to add rice, those who had no duties could finally go to the backyard to eat, but another servant went to the kitchen, bringing all the remaining stir-fried bamboo shoots to the hall and placing them in front of Fan Xian.

  "Grandma, have some food."

  Fan Xian stood up, bowed respectfully to the old lady, and then took over the rice bowl with both hands, politely placing it in front of her. As for himself, he held a bowl of rice, constantly picking at the stir-fried bamboo shoots on his plate, chewing while his eyes flashed with a hint of a smile, but that smile looked particularly strange on his handsome face, as if he had finally found something he had been searching for a long time.

  But for some reason, the maidservants standing by couldn't help but feel a chill in their hearts as they looked at the smile on this twelve-year-old boy's face, thinking of the resounding slap that Steward Zhou had received that morning.

  ……

  ……

  "I went back home to eat."

  Fan Xian said something to the maids beside him, then carried the plate of stir-fried bamboo shoots and a bowl of white rice towards his own bedroom in the side courtyard. At this time, Old Madam had not finished eating yet, and it was very impolite for a junior to leave the table, but Old Madam did not say anything.

  He returned to the room, took some emetic powder and swallowed it directly, then inserted his fingers into his throat and dug desperately, finally vomiting out the remaining food in his stomach. Immediately afterwards, he didn't dare to delay, took out a few pills from the drawer that he had prepared himself, and swallowed them down with clear water. He then circulated his true energy throughout his body and found that there seemed to be no problem, only then did he put his mind at ease.

  He took a glance at the stir-fried pueraria in the plate, smiled bitterly, and then poured it into the chamber pot behind his bed - there was poison in the dish, "cat buttons" often used by those spies from the Surveillance Bureau.

  "The cat's eye" is a kind of citrus fruit that grows on the southern island, which looks very beautiful when it blooms, and has a strange spicy fragrance in its flowers, while the toxin is contained in the fruit itself.

  Because the cat's button fruit juice is mixed into the rice, it won't easily change the color of the food and doesn't have any unusual smell, but rather increases the fragrance of the food. Therefore, it is often used by the Inspectorate's spies for covert assassinations that require secrecy. After ingesting this poison, its effects will start to take hold around evening time, causing the person to convulse all over and die, resembling a death from some kind of infection, making it very difficult to determine the true cause of death.

  Fei Jie was the ancestor of the Imperial Censorate's poison concoction, and Fan Xian was Fei Jie's only apprentice. So when he took his first bite of the stir-fried bamboo shoots, he immediately detected it - the cat's claw had no particular taste, its only weakness being a slightly bitter aftertaste. The assassin who poisoned him actually knew to mix the cat's claw juice into the originally somewhat bitter bamboo shoots, really a formidable figure.

  Fan Xian didn't leave immediately after the detoxification, just because he was afraid that Old Lady would be frightened. But at this moment, he suddenly felt a little scared, and his courage had also increased a bit. If it wasn't for the cat's button he thought, but some kind of acute poison, he might have been dead by now.

  After being warned by Fei, he had been very careful with his diet, fearing that the aunt in the Kyoto Sannan Earl's mansion would poison him, which is why there was a strange scene during dinner earlier. He was afraid that the poisonous medicine he ate did not kill himself but killed the lower officials in the mansion, so he required all dishes to be tasted by himself first, just like the eunuchs in the imperial palace who were responsible for tasting food.

  Fan Xian believed his own life was more important than anyone else's, but he also didn't want innocent people to die because of him.

  ———————————————————————

  Seeing the young master come to the kitchen, the servant quickly stood up, fetched a stool for him to sit on, and asked with a smile: "Young master, didn't you eat enough earlier? Do you want to have some more?"

  Fan Xian chuckled and said, "Zhuo Shi really likes to eat."

  The chef stood by and chuckled: "As long as the young master likes it."

  "Hmm, it's quite fresh, when did you buy it?" Fan Xian nodded vigorously and asked carefully.

  "Bought in the morning, naturally fresh."

  "By the way, has anyone from outside the mansion come to the kitchen today?"

  "The old man who delivers vegetables is sick, his nephew came over."

  "Nothing, I'll go first." Fan Xian took a piece of smoked meat from the plate handed over by the chef and ate it while chewing, blushing and smiling, "Don't tell grandma that I sneaked into the kitchen to steal food."

  As the young boy left the kitchen, the servants began to discuss him, saying that the earl's illegitimate son was really good and didn't have any of the bad habits of a nobleman's child, except... his table manners were somewhat lacking.

  In a narrow alley in the port of Langzhou, Fan Xian hooked his fingers over the back wall of a certain building and with a flex of his arm, he slipped inside like a ghostly cat. This was the home of Old Ha who delivered vegetables.

  The Earl's estate had only a dozen or so people, except for the maids who were replaced in batches, they were all local people, and after so many years, it was not worth suspecting. Although Old Fan, who delivered vegetables, had also seen him, but hearing that he fell ill at such an opportune time, he knew something was fishy.

  Lao Ha's room was pitch black, but in Fan Xian's eyes, it was as bright as day. He walked silently into the room, his nose picking up a hint of blood scent.