"A saboteur?" Nie Jing narrowed his eyes.
"Or…" Elder Yu Xuan tilted his head, "an idiot who mixed things without reading the labels."
Nie Jing grunted. "This couldn't have been a normal prank. Even some of the elders were affected! I spent half the day trying to stop Elder Qin from conducting a symphony with kitchen utensils."
Yu Xuan nodded solemnly. "He said the soup ladle was his 'final instrument.'"
The two fell into a moment of grim silence.
Then Nie Jing's eyes narrowed further. "We need to find out who was near the pavilion before the explosion. Surely someone saw something."
Elsewhere, in a quiet corner of the Outer Sect, Han Yu sneezed.
He sat on a wooden bench, casually carving a peach with a small knife.
"Hmm. Someone must be talking about me," he muttered, smugly admiring the spiraling fruit skin. "Hopefully not about the duck."
