Description

Suicide or Murder? Jinshi is still sulking from the shock after Maomao's homecoming, though slowly recovering after knowing the truth from Gyokuyou, when a eunuch barged into his office reporting of Kounen, a high-ranking official, dying after a heavy drinking session during a party. After investigation, and after reading Kounen's lifestyle history, Maomao concluded that the excessive salt added to his drink, Kounen being mostly a serious sweet tooth, killed him. Salt that could have been placed by someone at the party out of pranking him or because they hated him. She dropped hints as to his killer, but does not want to hold responsibility for naming that person. Jinshi also scores payback on Maomao by teasing her about passing a law on underage drinking, which shocked the liquor-loving apothecary. Later, Maomao and the doctor was called to the scene of a crime, that of a servant woman found drowned in the moat. The doctor asked her to perform the autopsy, but refused because it is taboo for her as an apothecary, as humans can become medicinal ingredients, too. She finds herself middling whether it was a suicide, given the bloody fingers on the victim (out of probably trying to scale the wall surrounding the moat); or a murder, given circumstances surrounding the wall, as it is impossible for a servant woman with wooden shoes and bound foot to scale the wall without tools. It is later ruled out as a suicide due to added evidence, the woman being at the garden party which killed a minister by poisoning. Here, as she collected her thoughts on how easy it was for the victims to pass away, combined with thoughts of her past, Maomao thought about what poison she'd use when she dies, which put Jinshi off, and the more when she requests him that if he were to execute her for some reason, it would be by poison. Meanwhile, Jinshi gets a report on whoever else had burns on their arms, relating to the "curse" from two months ago. It was Fengming, Lady Ah-Duo's head lady-in-waiting.