As soon as the Celestial Fragrance Pill was released, the room was filled with fragrance.
At this moment, not to mention the millennium cassia soul, even if ten thousand years of sandalwood is no comparison.
In just an instant, the entire morgue where Xu Qing stood was filled with a rich and fragrant aroma.
Do you wonder why there is such a strange fragrance?
It turns out, this incense pill is made from the essence of hundreds of flowers, refined with the glow of sunset, sunlight, moonlight, and dew as the medium.
The scent can change with the seasons and time, differing in sunny or rainy days, frost or snow, and varies from dawn to dusk.
Holding the incense pill, Xu Qing's hands were fragrant, and then looking at the body of Xiangfei, the fragrance unknowingly had faded significantly.
The once Xiangfei, now the Empress Duanrong, was originally just an ordinary beautiful lady, besides some beauty, she was not very special among the beauties in the harem.
Until she received the incense pill gifted by the green-haired fox, she finally had the opportunity to stand out.
Looking through Xiangfei's life like a revolving lantern, it seemed that Xiangfei always schemed, using the Fox Immortal and the Pure Soul Ghost to climb to a high position. But Xu Qing realized that from beginning to end, it was the green-haired fox that controlled everything.
During a spring hunt, the green-haired fox encountered a human tribulation, was shot by the Emperor's arrow, and then gave the incense pill to make Xiangfei favored. Finally, it even predicted Xiangfei's end early on.
As an audience, having watched the whole palace intrigue drama, Xu Qing did not think it was a coincidence.
Hu Baosong once told him about the cultivation of foxes.
Foxes rely on learning from humans to cultivate immortality, and in terms of scheming, ordinary people can't match the slyness of foxes.
Therefore, apart from the three disasters, if a fox wants to attain the Dao, there is another tribulation called the human tribulation.
As the name suggests, it is a calamity caused by humans, or the suffering of life and death, or the pressure of profit and desire, or the entanglement of love...
The green-haired fox's human tribulation was obviously related to that Emperor at the time, but the other party cleverly used a carefully refined incense pill to avoid the human tribulation, and in the end, it was Xiangfei who died under the human tribulation.
Xu Qing initially thought it was just a coincidence. However, when the green-haired fox predicted that Xiangfei would seek help from the former dynasty ghost official, Yu Qian, he felt that this play was mostly deliberately staged by the fox.
The opponent understood Xiangfei to a degree that it seemed like they were prepared in advance, and Xiangfei, who always wanted to rise in rank, was the target used to ward off the tribulation.
It's just that the human tribulation does not necessarily result in death. The green-haired fox once intentionally gave Xiangfei a hint to take care of herself.
If Xiangfei simply lived as a concubine, without vying to bear a prince, or coveting the Empress's position, she wouldn't have died as a result.
All the gifts from fate have long been marked with a price in secret, and the price of the Empress's position was Xiangfei's life.
Xu Qing looked at Xiangfei's body, besides the Celestial Fragrance Pill, he also obtained a technique regarding the art of Nightmares and Towns.
The so-called Nightmares and Towns is an Evil Technique that uses various ominous 'town objects' to bring disaster to others.
There are many records of "Nightmares and Town Techniques" in the Luban book.
In addition, folk storytellers also love to tell these kinds of stories.
For example, a landlord builds a house, defaults on goods payment, or verbally insults a craftsman, and the craftsman then buries ominous 'town objects' as revenge.
When the new house is completed, the employer moves in, only to encounter various disasters, with minor disturbances at home or major destruction of the family.
Such common town objects include miniature coffins, images of female ghosts, bloody murderous knives, or broken saws, broken tiles, nails, small grass figures, small papermen, statues of the Evil God, etc.
The art of Nightmares and Towns is a remote witchcraft. Although secret and convenient, it has drawbacks; if you fail to harm others, you will inevitably suffer backlash from the town objects. If one's cultivation is low, it might even result in immediate death.
Xiangfei destroyed a white-haired turtle and threw it into a well, causing the Empress to suffer from headaches and unable to get out of bed, for such reasons.
Xu Qing had encountered many unique witchcraft techniques before, such as Fishing and Hunting Witchcraft, the Green Cicada Returning Money Spell, and the Gold Cicada Molting Technique. They mostly had connections.
Now, by analogy, Xu Qing looked at the lifelike Empress before him and already had the answer in his heart.
This Empress, posthumously awarded the title, showed no signs of being a Medicinal Corpse, yet looked just like a living person, even the limbs were no different from those of the living.
Initially, Xu Qing thought it was due to the Celestial Fragrance Pill, but now that he obtained a pill with similar effects, there wasn't even a preservative effect within.
Considering the faint sinister aura on the Empress, it was likely she had an item that could prevent body decay.
Xu Qing once again examined Empress Duanrong's body, more thoroughly this time, and finally discovered something wrong.
Why did the Empress have additional objects inserted in her?
Opening up Empress Duanrong's still tender red lips, Xu Qing found a two-inch-long nail on her tongue.
Besides the nail, Xu Qing also found some plant tuber-like debris stuck in Empress Duanrong's mouth.
Xu Qing reached out his hand, extracting the debris from Empress Duanrong's throat.
Gingerly holding the plant tuber, Xu Qing, proficient in medicine and familiar with herbs, recognized it immediately.
It was a cluster of coptis rhizomes.
Xu Qing suddenly understood. The old saying goes, 'a mute eating coptis, bitter but cannot express'. Someone feared that Empress Duanrong would cry injustice in the underworld, so they devised such a diabolical trick, stuffing a mass of coptis in Empress Duanrong's mouth.
Entering the palace is as deep as the sea, and palace intrigue is like a battlefield, killing without blood. A good Empress, unable to rest in peace after death, shows that palace struggles can be even more ruthless than battlefields.
Xu Qing took out the tongue-chaining throat-locking town object, then reached out and tapped Empress Duanrong's abdomen. In the next moment, the sinister energy trapped in the Empress's throat dispersed entirely into black smoke that spewed out.