Chapter 91: Interrogation

When Qiao Feng looked at Liu Xie again, the teasing warmth that had once been in his eyes was gone, replaced by a sharp, pressing intensity.

Qiao Feng rarely saw Liu Xie look at her like that, so for the first time she felt a little flustered.

As Liu Xie had said, though she did not know who Conan was, it was obvious that her little act of spying had already been caught.

“Come on. For all that this is only a temporary palace, there are still too many ears and eyes around here. If certain words get out, it will be troublesome. Let’s find a more private place and talk back in the bedchamber.”

After speaking, Liu Xie turned and walked toward the bedchamber. Qiao Feng hesitated briefly, but in the end followed after him step by step like a young wife who knew she had done wrong, entering his bedchamber.

The bedchamber was a very private place for Liu Xie. He knew Sun Ce had not subjected him to any sort of all-around surveillance, and unlike in Xuchang, there were not two eavesdroppers standing outside whenever he and Fu Shou were intimate inside the room.

But given the present circumstances, he could not be sure whether Sun Ce’s approach to him was the kind of “loose on the surface, tight underneath” strategy. So sensitive matters naturally could not be discussed in broad daylight outside.

Once they were inside, Liu Xie shut the door quietly, then sat down on a long couch and, in the gravest tone he had ever used with her since he had known Qiao Feng, spoke.

“Although you sisters were obtained from Sun Ce by my request, I never once believed you could be his spies. But these past days, you have watched me with all the diligence of a sentry. I have no choice but to wonder: who exactly put you up to this?”

At those words, sweat burst out across Qiao Feng’s face.

She was dumbstruck. She had never imagined that this emperor, who seemed to have nothing in his heart but women, would possess such keen powers of observation.

She had thought that her sneaking around after Liu Xie had merely not been hidden well enough today, and that was why he had noticed.

Besides, outside just now, Liu Xie had even been joking with her, and then all at once he had made a turn so sharp it might as well have been a hundred and eighty degrees. It left her at a complete loss.

“Your Majesty, I... if I say that no one instructed me, would you believe it?”

Qiao Feng was a woman with an almost desperate hunger for knowledge.

She had read many books, so in a situation like this there were naturally many thoughts crowding her mind. She could vaguely sense the uneasy currents beneath the apparently cordial relationship between Liu Xie and Sun Ce.

She had come from Sun Ce’s side, and now in this temporary palace she had been tasked with spying on the emperor. To say she had nothing to do with Sun Ce, even she found it hard to believe.

“I would like to believe you, but then you need to explain this: these past days, why were you following me, and why were you secretly drawing up on paper the relationship between me and the two ladies of Guan Yu and Liu Bei? What was it all for?”

At this, Qiao Feng’s heart jolted again. Only then did she remember that one night she had fallen asleep at the desk, and when she woke, the relationship chart she had drawn of Liu Xie and those people was gone.

At the time, she had immediately asked her younger sister. Qiao Shuang had insisted that no one had entered the room the previous night, and that it had merely been her sister who had dozed off over the desk.

Though she never found that sheet in the end, so long as it had not fallen into Liu Xie’s hands, it had hardly mattered. But now it was clear that Liu Xie knew exactly what had been on it.

This was clearly not the time to wonder how he had learned of the paper. It was time to explain her motives and clear her own name.

Not to mention that she had not been doing it to aid Sun Ce; even if she had, in all these days in Liu Xie’s palace, he had already tried every sort of wild indulgence on her body.

Back then, Sun Ce had indeed wanted to marry her, but at that time she had still been untouched.

The only person her sisters could rely on now was Liu Xie, and that was the very thought Qiao Feng grasped at once.

“Your Majesty, my sister and I truly did think we would spend our lives following Sun Ce, but we never imagined that soon after arriving in Wu Commandery, he would send us to your temporary palace. During all this time, my sister and I hardly even saw Sun Ce, let alone plotted anything with him!”

Usually, no matter how intense her movements were, Qiao Feng did her best to stay calm. But now she was finally beginning to panic.

Some expressions and gestures simply could not be faked. Although Liu Xie had not been a professional interrogator in his previous life, during the years he had studied at police academy, this had been mandatory training.

A young woman with little worldly experience was standing before him, and he could still tell whether she was lying.

“Then why were you following me, secretly investigating the relationship between me and the two ladies of Guan Yu and Liu Bei? And going into the rooms of Liu Bei’s two ladies on the sly to question them—did you think I didn’t know?”

It was obvious that everything she had assumed was being done in secret had already been laid bare before Liu Xie.

Qiao Feng no longer had the luxury of worrying about social death.

She knew that if she lost even that little bit of favor Liu Xie held for her over this matter, she alone would be ruined—and her sister would surely be dragged down with her.

“Your Majesty, this has nothing to do with anyone else. Qiao Shuang doesn’t even know about it; I alone conducted the investigation in secret. The reason I did this was because ever since you knocked Sun Ce off the platform at the martial contest, I began to suspect that Your Majesty was not the puppet they all said you were. I only had a feeling in my head, however, not proof. And after Your Majesty has spent these recent days favoring me, I grew even more determined to uncover your true background, which is why I...”

What Qiao Feng said was all true, but naturally the truth did not sound very much like the truth.

“How can you prove that only you know about this?”

Since arriving here, Liu Xie had kept many of his own foundations and plans hidden even from Fu Shou.

He understood that much of what he was now doing did not match his former circumstances at all; in fact, it was even disconnected from them.

Although anyone investigating him would likely find little enough, he still wanted to present the image of a lustful puppet who had no desire to meddle in affairs.

Under such circumstances, anyone who claimed he was not a puppet was highly suspicious.

“This... Your Majesty, I truly cannot prove it. And even now I have not uncovered anything. What you have done seems no more than helping Sun Ce win over Guan Yu. The only question mark left is this: since the road from Xuchang to Wu Commandery is so perilous, why did Your Majesty insist on bringing along Liu Bei’s two ladies?”