The Pox Palace
Consort De's panic mounted as her logical expectations crumbled. The Sixth Prince, Yinzuo, was not merely unconscious; his body was consumed by pustules and dangerously high fever.
Assuming personal control of his care, Consort De dismissed the assigned maid, Yujuan. For three days, she covertly fed Yinzuo water infused with her secret trump card: the Spiritual Spring. This liquid was a limited resource she had hoarded, previously proven effective in strengthening Yinzuo's constitution and curing minor ailments. She reasoned that a standard Cowpox inoculation, combined with the Spring, should have meant a swift two-day recovery.
Instead, Yinzuo's condition rapidly deteriorated. He was now vomiting the infused water. Consort De lacked medical expertise; her entire strategy relied on the Spiritual Spring. Facing its failure, her stoicism broke.
"Why isn't it working?" she muttered, wiping his burning skin. "This water is a divine artifact. Why can't it save him?"
***
The Emperor's Fury
Elsewhere, Emperor Kangxi's rage silenced the room of kneeling imperial physicians.
"Liu Songqi! You developed the Cowpox vaccine!" Kangxi demanded. "Explain why it reduced Yinzuo to this state!"
Physician Liu trembled, delivering the fatal diagnostic truth. "Your Majesty... the Sixth Prince was not infected by Cowpox. He contracted Smallpox."
The distinction was a matter of life and death. Cowpox was a safe, controlled vaccine. Smallpox (often referred to historically as 'Human Pox' inoculation before vaccines) was a highly lethal virus. Finding Smallpox in a facility strictly sanitized for Cowpox inoculation implied a catastrophic breach.
"Investigate!" Kangxi slammed his hand onto the table. "Tear this palace apart. Find the source of the infection. And if the Sixth Prince dies, none of you will be spared."
The order sent a shockwave through the Pox Palace, rippling outward to the Inner Court.
***
Chengqian Palace
Amidst the growing chaos, Consort Tong Jia remained chillingly composed. She calmly copied the Rebirth Mantra.
"Ensure these are burned for the Little Princess," she instructed her maid, Chunzhi.
On the third of July, news arrived: The Sixth Prince had died at the end of the 'Wei' hour (3:00 PM).
Tong Jia's brush paused. A calculated realization flickered in her eyes. "The 'Wei' hour. The exact time my Little Princess passed away. How fitting. Perhaps she came to escort him, so they wouldn't be lonely on the road to the afterlife."
She spent the entire night copying scriptures in a brightly lit room. Watching her, Chunzhi felt a surge of anxiety. Her mistress's reaction was too abnormal. Yet, Chunzhi knew Tong Jia had few usable agents, and no suspicious orders had been given recently. She forced herself to believe it was merely a coincidence.
***
毓庆宫 (Yuqing Palace) - The Crown Prince's Domain
Crown Prince Yinreng was stunned by the news. "The Sixth Brother is dead? How? Consort De has the Spiritual Spring!"
He possessed a System, an AI entity from the future, which immediately shut down his flawed logic.
[Host, you misunderstand the Spiritual Spring. It is merely a heavily diluted, low-tier medicinal compound from my creator's era. Its efficacy limit is capped at boosting general immunity and curing minor debuffs like the common cold.]
"But a strong constitution should resist viruses better," Yinreng argued rationally. "Even if it can't cure a severe illness, it should mitigate the symptoms."
[Host, the disease is Smallpox, not a minor infection. Historically, Smallpox wiped out 150 million people in 18th-century Europe. It slaughters populations at the city and national level. The virus destroys the body at a cellular level faster than the Spiritual Spring can repair it. The Spring is functionally useless here.]
The raw statistics chilled Yinreng. The scale of the threat recalibrated his understanding of the era's mortality rate.
"Could his immune system have fought it off?" Yinreng asked, a brief flash of guilt hitting him. "I recently traded his high-nutrition snacks for toys. If I hadn't, would his body have been stronger?"
The System swiftly cut off this emotional liability.
[Illogical. The Spiritual Spring is fundamentally a drug. The human body develops resistance. Yinzuo had consumed it since birth; his physical attributes had already hit their hard cap. Extra nutrition or Spring water would have yielded zero additional benefits.]
Accepting the objective facts, Yinreng discarded his guilt and pivoted to problem-solving. "Do you have a cure for Smallpox? What mission must I complete to unlock it?"
[Negative. Smallpox was completely eradicated centuries before my era. No modern medical researcher wasted resources developing a cure for an extinct disease. I only possess the Cowpox vaccine data because my creator specifically sourced it from archaic historical databases.]
Yinreng fell silent. There was no cheat code for this.
***
The Investigation
Back at the Pox Palace, Kangxi stared at a child's scooter.
Physician Liu twisted the scooter's handle, revealing a hidden seam connecting the grip to the pole. Smeared inside the crevice was a thick residue. "Your Majesty, this is the purulent discharge from a live Smallpox pustule."
The assassination method was ingeniously covert. The pus was hidden deep enough to avoid casual detection, but Yinzuo's obsessive use of the toy meant his hands were exposed to the microscopic viral load seeping from the friction of the joint over an entire day.
"Where did this scooter come from?" Kangxi's voice was lethal.
"The Crown Prince gifted it to the Fourth Prince (Yinzhen)," a maid answered. "On the day he left for the Pox Palace, the Fourth Prince gave it to the Sixth Prince."
Kangxi's mind raced. Yinzhen was far too young to engineer a biological assassination, especially against his full-blooded brother. The scooter was a mere vector. Someone had utilized Yinzhen's gift to bypass security.
"Investigate the Inner Court," Kangxi ordered, shattering his teacup. He tolerated harem politics, but weaponizing a lethal virus against imperial blood crossed the absolute bottom line.
***
The West Fifth Palace
Eunuch Liang Jiugong arrived at Yinzhen's residence with the Imperial Guard, systematically detaining servants for interrogation. Yinreng arrived shortly after, assessing the tactical situation.
"Eunuch Liang, does this concern the Sixth Brother?" Yinreng asked.
"Yes, Your Highness. Smallpox pus was found inside the scooter. Because the toy sat in the Fourth Prince's courtyard, everyone with access must be screened."
The dragnet was wide. The toy was kept in the open, meaning almost any servant could be the saboteur.
Consort Tong Jia arrived, smoothly inserting herself into the narrative. "Since this concerns the harem, I should preside. However, to avoid conflict of interest, I leave it to you, Eunuch Liang. I visited the Fourth Prince recently and my maid, Chunzhi, delivered medicine. Feel free to question her."
By volunteering her maid, Tong Jia projected absolute innocence. Eunuch Liang, lacking the authority to interrogate Consort Tong directly, took Chunzhi.
Recognizing that Yinzhen's residence was now critically understaffed and potentially compromised by spies, Yinreng made a decisive tactical move. "Eunuch Liang, the Fourth Brother will stay at my palace until the investigation concludes."
He would not allow Consort Tong to install her own personnel under the guise of 'helping' Yinzhen.
***
Yonghe Palace
Consort De sat in a catatonic state, obsessively cleaning Yinzuo's toys. Her trusted maid, Yuchan, tried to urge her to eat, but Consort De was trapped in an escalating cycle of grief and displaced blame.
"I told him not to ask the Fourth Prince for toys," she whispered. "If he hadn't taken the scooter... he wouldn't be dead."
When informed that Yinzhen had arrived to comfort her, Consort De's response was an immediate, instinctual refusal. "Send him away. I cannot see him."
Her internal logic was twisted but unyielding. She knew rationally that Yinzhen was an innocent pawn. However, she suspected Consort Tong Jia was the mastermind. The chain of causality haunted her: 'She' had previously harmed Consort Tong's daughter to protect Yinzhen. In retaliation, Consort Tong used Yinzhen's toy to murder Yinzuo.
Yinzhen was the catalyst for her karmic retribution. She could not look at him without seeing the reason her favored son was dead. To preserve her relationship with her surviving son, she chose isolation.
Outside, Yinzhen accepted the refusal gracefully, prioritizing his mother's mental state. He left, unaware of the complex psychological warfare occurring within.
Meanwhile, Yujuan, the maid dismissed from the Pox Palace, eavesdropped with mounting terror. If Consort De couldn't even face her own biological son, what mercy would she show a servant when the investigation inevitably escalated?
***
The Climax: Information Warfare
At Yuqing Palace, Yinreng received an encrypted intelligence report from the managers of his external commercial enterprises. Reading the slip of paper, his demeanor turned glacial. He immediately headed for the Imperial Study.
He arrived just as Minister Zhang Jiwu of the Shuntian Prefecture was briefing the Emperor.
"Your Majesty," Minister Zhang reported, "Highly structured rumors have flooded the capital. The populace is claiming the Cowpox vaccine is either a lethal failure that killed the Sixth Prince, or a deliberate government conspiracy to use citizens as test subjects."
Yinreng sneered at the tactical manipulation. The rumors were contradictory, but logically, that didn't matter. The mastermind was exploiting the "herd mentality" and the lack of scientific literacy among the commoners. By attaching 'insider knowledge' to the rumors, they engineered a public panic aimed at destroying the government's vaccination initiative.
Yinreng stepped forward, isolating the core strategic flaw in the enemy's operation.
"Imperial Father, consider the timeline. The Sixth Brother died late yesterday afternoon. The rumors hit the civilian sectors at dawn today."
Yinreng's eyes were cold, his deduction absolute. "It takes time to organize a city-wide disinformation campaign. To deploy it with such precision, the mastermind outside the palace must have known the outcome instantly. Which means only one thing: They have a high-level mole embedded directly inside the Pox Palace."