Feng Xin brought Xie Lian’s usual white training garb out of the closet and threw it at him. “What did I say wrong?”
Xie Lian replied as he slipped on his boots. “I can’t tell you. Either way, come with me to find him and tell him it was all a misunderstanding, that you weren’t accusing him of anything.”
Feng Xin frowned. “What can’t you tell me?”
Xie Lian’s lips were sealed tight. Feng Xin was growing more suspicious and thought back on Mu Qing’s furious expression just now.
He spoke up suddenly. “He didn’t actually steal from you before, did he?”
Xie Lian immediately made a vigorous shushing gesture with his hand. “No! No!”
Seeing him like this, Feng Xin was even more sure. “So that’s it! No wonder his face changed so drastically—it’s because I touched a raw nerve! When did he steal?”
“Not so loud!” Xie Lian hushed anxiously.
Feng Xin hushed his voice. “Something like that happened and you didn’t tell me?! Tell me now!”
Since Feng Xin was already suspicious, Xie Lian figured if he kept lying, it would come out either way. He had to woefully relent.
“It doesn’t really count as stealing, but…” Xie Lian sighed. “I’ll start from the beginning. Do you remember, two years ago when I first entered the Royal Holy Temple, there was a time when I lost a leaf of gold foil?”
Hearing this, Feng Xin’s eyes widened, and he slapped his thigh. “It was then?!”
Three years ago, Xie Lian begged and pestered in all manner of ways until his parents finally relented and allowed him to enter the Royal Holy Temple for training before the age of twenty. A year later, when construction was completed on the Palace of Xianle, Xie Lian jubilantly entered the mountain.
When Xie Lian first moved in, the amount of luggage he brought personally wasn’t particularly large. He had only two carriages full of books and two hundred treasured swords. But the queen loved her son dearly and was afraid that the ascetic life would be too quiet and austere, so later she ordered twenty servants and four large carriages full of the crown prince’s most beloved trinkets to be sent to Mount Taicang. It was an impressive, dramatic sight as those caravans drove up the mountain. Included in this care package was a set of the one hundred and eight leaves that made up a Golden Foil Palace; building a palace out of gold foil was a popular game enjoyed by the Xianle nobility.
At the time, so much luxury appearing on the mountain caused a small wave of complaints. The Royal Holy Temple consisted of serious cultivators who weren’t that familiar with the prince’s character just yet, and although they couldn’t say much publicly, there was much grumbling behind his back: Did His Highness the Crown Prince come to train or to play? What could this son of the royal family cultivate if he only came for the fun of it?
When Feng Xin heard those complaints, he had a mind to dispute them, but Xie Lian told him not to worry about it with a smile.
“It’s only natural they should think that way. They’ll know soon enough that I’m not here to play games. And they’ll also know soon enough who among us is the true number one in this generation of trainees.”
However, not long after, there was an incident.
Xie Lian was trying to send back as many of the four large carriages and servants from the queen as possible. But when he was going through the inventory, he found that in the pack of one hundred and eight leaves of gold foil, one was missing.
That set of gold foil sheets had been packed in the carriages, and once at Mount Taicang, it had never left the Palace of Xianle. If it wasn’t lost on the road, then it had been stolen. Nothing was found on the road, so Xie Lian brought it up offhand to the State Preceptor.
Assuming it had been stolen, the State Preceptor was enraged that someone within the Royal Holy Temple would commit the crime of robbery under the allure of golden foil. He was determined to recover the golden leaf at all cost, and if it should be found on anyone, the punishment would be severe to the utmost. Thus, the over three thousand disciples of Mount Taicang were caught completely off guard when they had to drop what they were doing to be forced into teams to search room after room, chamber after chamber, of every single training hall.
It was a huge rigmarole that exhausted everyone. Yet unexpectedly, halfway through the search, Xie Lian abruptly changed his tune and apologized for causing everyone trouble and said he suddenly remembered that he had already lost a leaf from that set of gold foil while he was still at the imperial palace. There should only be one hundred and seven leaves total after all.