The Last Dahlia

017

After Naying had finally drifted off to sleep, Yuehwa motioned to Baixun to leave the room. Stepping outside, she quietly shut the doors behind her and made her way down the stairs, pouring herself a cup of water and sitting down at the table.

"What's the matter?" Baixun asked.

"The tips of those darts had been dipped in poison," Yuehwa said, placing one of the silver darts on the table. They looked innocuous enough, but whoever had masterminded this attack was far more vicious than it would seem. "The name they call it is 'Hell's Water'—extremely rare—colourless, scentless and evaporates within half an hour so it's almost impossible to detect. This dart probably doesn't have a single trace of the poison remaining now."

Frowning, Baixun picked up the dart and examined it carefully. "Is it fatal?" he asked.

"Yes, but it's a slow-acting poison which means that it'll drag out the victim's pain for as long as possible, until all of the victim's organs fail and death is the inevitability. I haven't actually encountered this before, but the stories have it that most people who suffer from this poison kill themselves before the poison actually kills them, simply because the pain is unbearable towards the later stages."

"If you haven't encountered it before, then what makes you sure that this is Hell's Water?"

"Not many books have records of this poison, but I happen to have come across one that did. According to that book, the tell-tale sign of being poisoned by Hell's Water is a fine web of faint purple radiating from the wound just minutes after the poison enters the bloodstream. After a while, the purple tinge fades and it might well be impossible to identify the poison from then on—I saw that on Naying earlier. One of the key ingredients of Hell's Water is the white mountain laurel, which can only be found in the mountains west of Jin."

"Is there a cure?"

"The book didn't have any record of a cure unfortunately," Yuehwa replied, shaking her head regretfully. She had tried her best to recollect every single bit of information she had read about this poison, but when it came to the cure, her mind was drawing a blank. Hell's Water was one of the deadliest poisons in existence, not because of its effects (there were plenty of other poisons that could kill a person in more gruesome ways), but because it always vanished without a trace, vanishing so quickly that it was impossible to research a cure. From the time it was made, there was only a window of half an hour before there was none left.

Baixun sighed and leaned back in his chair, tapping his index finger against the wooden tabletop thoughtfully. He took out the pendant that he had obtained from the dead assassin and placed it on the table. "A pendant representative of the Jin army and a deadly poison of which an ingredient can only be found in the mountains of Jin. It appears as if someone wants us to believe that Jin is responsible for tonight's attack, don't you think?" he said.

"And you disagree?" Yuehwa arched an eyebrow, looking across the table at Baixun.

"You could say that I've been through so many assassination attempts to know that the easy answer is usually the wrong one," he replied with a dry laugh. "Other than these two pieces of evidence, we have nothing else to go on. My guards have searched all the dead assassins and they've come up with nothing else. There are two possibilities: either someone from Jin wants us dead, or the real perpetrator wants us to believe that. I'd like to think that General Im isn't that stupid to have his men wear their identification pendants when going on such missions. But I wouldn't rule out someone from Jin wanting him dead."

Yuehwa laughed. Just like Baixun, she had connected the dots and come to the same conclusion. In fact, she had gone two steps further and already had an inkling of who the real culprit was. The question now was whether or not Baixun was going to play along.