Chapter 23: Midnight Visitor

By the time the group of four returned to Prince Jing's Residence, the sky had completely darkened.

As Su Han stepped through the main gates of Prince Jing's Residence alongside Su Xiao'Er and the two young maids, Qin and Hua, he thought he saw the hem of a robe disappear around a nearby corner. That familiar hem seemed to belong to the notoriously unreliable Prince Jing.

He instinctively glanced toward the corner. The place separated by just a single wall... seemed to be the Governor's Residence, where a century-old apricot tree had just been ignited by his "fury," wasn't it? Su Han gave a hard sniff. He smelled the scent of a conspiracy.

He turned around and raised his hand. SMACK! A delicate, pale little hand was swatted away, and Su Han rolled his eyes in annoyance.

"Su Xiaoyan, you're eighteen years old. Can you stop being so childish?"

"How did you find me?" Su Muyan curled her lips and resentfully withdrew her hand. She instinctively hid both hands behind her back, as if that could conceal the evidence of her guilty conscience.

"Heh, your hands reek of garlic juice," Su Han sneered. "I'd have to be a ghost not to smell it."

"But..." Su Muyan puffed her cheeks. "You never caught me when we were kids."

Su Han was rendered speechless. Was he supposed to tell her that her younger brother was now a genuine three-star Alchemy Master, making him exceptionally sensitive to the scent of herbs and plants?

"I just let you win when we were little," he replied.

Having found a somewhat plausible excuse for himself, Su Han did not wait for Su Muyan to say anything else. He turned to look at Miss Feng, whose looks, temperament, and twin peaks were all a tier higher than those of the kingdom's Eldest Princess.

"Have you been busy these past two days, Miss Feng?" he asked.

Looking into Su Han's attractive eyes, Miss Feng smiled and shook her head. "I've been alright."

Seeing that she didn't want to elaborate, Su Han did not press the matter. Since they had coincidentally all returned to Prince Jing's Residence at the exact same time, the group walked to the dining hall together.

After dinner, the Princess Consort pulled the Eldest Princess aside for some small talk. During their chat, the Eldest Princess mentioned that she and Miss Feng would be staying in Lingzhou City for at least another month. The Princess Consort naturally welcomed the news.

Afterward, Miss Feng slightly apologetically brought up that her older brother might have some business in Lingzhou City in about half a month, and asked if he could temporarily stay at Prince Jing's Residence. The wealthy and expansive Prince Jing's Residence naturally wouldn't mind preparing an extra guest room and setting another bowl and pair of chopsticks, so the Princess Consort agreed without hesitation.

Miss Feng expressed her sincere gratitude, and the three women gathered together to thoroughly gossip about domestic affairs.

Because she had grown up with Su Han since childhood, Su Xiaoyan had been influenced by him and had a somewhat erratic personality. However, she was the Imperial Princess after all; in non-private settings where she wasn't alone with Su Han, she was quite reliable.

Despite having the aura of a goddess, Miss Feng was not the least bit difficult to approach. She was very gentle in her interactions with others and showed no resistance to the intimacy displayed by the Princess Consort. No matter what topic the Princess Consort or Su Muyan brought up, she always seemed to be able to appropriately carry the conversation.

As a result, while Su Han zoned out and nodded off, the three women chatted idly for a long time before finally dispersing.

Once the gathering ended and everyone went their separate ways, Su Han finally returned to his own courtyard, yawning endlessly. He had spent a whole day and night without sleep or rest during his Foundation Establishment, and after eating, he had run out to fool around for an entire afternoon. Already mentally exhausted, he had then been forced to listen to three women—who were noisier than a flock of five hundred ducks—talk for over an hour. As soon as he returned to his room, he threw himself onto his bed and fell fast asleep without even washing up.

He slept deeply and heavily. When Su Han was woken up by the urge to pee, a sky full of stars still hung outside.

Getting up, he draped the clothes over his shoulders—which Xi must have taken off for him after he fell asleep—and walked out the door, heading straight for the restroom.

After relieving himself in the restroom—which the Prince's Residence had specially built with a modern flush toilet based on his suggestion—he gave a comfortable shiver. Su Han straightened his clothes and walked out, yawning.

Still groggy, he was just about to return to his room to continue sleeping. Before he could even lift his foot, his movements suddenly stopped, and he instinctively turned his head to look toward the east.

"Who's there?"

No movement came from the darkness, but Su Han was almost certain that in that brief moment, he had heard the sound of a leaf falling to the ground over there.

"Did I mishear?" he wondered. After waiting for three breaths, there was still not the slightest sound from the darkness. Su Han shook his head, muttered to himself in confusion, and continued walking toward his room.

PHEW. It wasn't until Su Han returned to his room and shut the door from the inside that a relieved exhale echoed through the dark.

In the very next moment... "Found you!"

The door was suddenly thrown wide open. Su Han stood in the doorway, his shadow stretched long by the dim yellow light. His eyes stared unblinkingly at the spot in the darkness where the sound had come from.

Knowing they had been exposed, the presence in the shadows no longer bothered to hide. With a furious HMPH, a figure entirely shrouded in black darted out from the dark corner, rushing straight toward Su Han at the door.

As the figure moved, their right hand raised high, aiming a knife-hand strike at the back of Su Han's neck. Surprisingly, they were trying to knock Su Han unconscious rather than take his life.

However, before the black-clad intruder's strike could land, in the instant they closed in on Su Han, they suddenly noticed a faint, mocking smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"Not good!" the intruder thought. Just as a sense of danger arose, before they could even react, the intruder was horrified to find that Su Han, who had been standing right in front of them a moment ago, had abruptly vanished into thin air.

"Looking for me?"

Su Han's voice rang out from behind. The black-clad intruder only felt a numbness in the back of their neck before their vision went black. With a muffled groan, they collapsed to the ground.

Having succeeded in one strike, Su Han revealed his figure from behind the intruder, but he didn't feel particularly proud.

The mysterious old grandaunt who had left behind the Moon Shadow Step did not seem to be an ordinary cultivator. The profundity of the Moon Shadow Step she left behind even surpassed the Royal Family's most exquisite legacies. Furthermore, he had broken past the limit of Foundation Establishment, and his maximum single-arm strength had reached a staggering nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine catties. Catching an opponent off guard with a premeditated move to take down a sneaky intruder wasn't anything worth celebrating.

In fact, if this black-clad intruder hadn't held back from landing a killing blow—only attempting to knock him out even after being exposed—his counterattack wouldn't have merely knocked them unconscious. It would have directly claimed their life.

"Let this Crown Prince see the identity of a shameless, sneaking scoundrel like you."

Lowering his head and bending over, Su Han reached out to roll the black-clad intruder's body over. His fingertips accidentally brushed across their chest, causing his hand to pause slightly.

Soft! Bouncy! Perky!

"It's a female thief!" he muttered with a weird expression on his face, reaching for the mask covering the intruder's face.

However, before his hand could even touch the mask, a sudden sense of impending danger surged in his heart. Instinctively activating the Moon Shadow Step skill to shift sideways, he dodged an incoming silver needle while simultaneously throwing a full-force punch in retaliation.

UGH! A muffled groan sounded beside him. The black-clad intruder spun around and fled into the darkness, as if they had completely merged with the shadows, weirdly vanishing once again.

"Huh?" Su Han couldn't help but show a bit of surprise. He looked down at the bloodstain on the ground, his brows furrowing slightly.

Who exactly was spying on Prince Jing's Residence? And what was their motive?