After thinking about everything that happened from the moment he broke down the door, to the seemingly contrived banquet, to the way Tenth Prince arrogantly took out the bag of holding, Xu Qing was left thinking one thing.3

It seems entirely possible this Tenth Prince isn’t the silkpants everyone thinks he is....13

Although it seemed like a case of Xu Qing making a big splash and Tenth Prince acting domineering, the reality was more nuanced. There were deeper things going on.1

That said, in many instances, one isolated incident isn’t enough to make a broad judgment. The only way to determine if Tenth Prince really had set the entire thing up would only become apparent later as he took other actions. Given that, Tenth Prince’s actions actually made a lot of sense. He didn’t care if people other than Xu Qing and Ningyan realized what was really going on, as the power of words could overcome many obstacles.0

As Xu Qing thought about those things, Ningyan was at his side, his eyes also flickering thoughtfully. As an imperial prince, Ningyan was naturally not an idiot, and he had picked up on some of the same clues. He looked over at Xu Qing, and Xu Qing looked back and nodded. Together, they returned to Ningyan’s mansion.7

Back inside, Ningyan took Xu Qing to the mansion’s shrine hall. There, he opened the bag of holding to reveal a scroll painting. There was nothing else inside. Apparently, it wasn’t something that would normally be stored in a bag of holding, as it took effort to extract it without destroying the bag itself and losing the scroll to spatial rifts. The scroll painting was wrapped up in a special package that was designed to facilitate its storage...1