A/N : in this test arc until she is inside the palace her name will be Su Chen and Su Mi will not be used.
Su Chen looked at the looming palace and walked twice while taking the look around. Then he went and sat near the small tea shop built for normal people who stood there discussing the politics and many ministers in hush voice.There were some curses because of lack of food supply in draught ridden area and people sold in slavery are increasing daily.
When Su Chen heard about slavery he made his way to job bulletin board which carried news about the recruitment going on inside the palace. There was one about to happen for small jobs around various departments. Su Chen quickly prepared himself and followed crowd inside the palace.
Men and women were given seperate entrances which made the job easier. Su Chen wished he could get the chance to work at dark palace which would make his job easier to spy on crippled nephew of king.
Before coming here she had the chat with old lady Gong and she got the basic details that supposedly the crippled Prince was mad and he killed his mother and king's personal concubine in the palace fire and his residential place was called black palace. But that information was too hard to obtain and old lady Gong heard it the prime minister Go's residence.
But the information that could get her the job in Long Jian tea house would need her to earthen deep rooted secrets and if required she wanted to captivate crippled Prince with mental cultivation and make him tell all his secrets but before that she needed to test his mental strength.
As she was planning she was called inside she did not want to use her trick so early so, she waited for getting any job inside the palace and then she would manipulate her way to dark palace.
After a while she was given a wooden badge which told her she worked inside a garden. Reaching her location where she was told to go she stood near an old stooped man. He was the main gardener and it was told he worked here for so long that noone knew when he started working here.
His name was Lao Hu and Su Chen was given job to pull weeds around the palace garden. Su Chen relaxed this would not be too tedious but it was later realised that it was not just one palace garden but the whole palace had twelve gardens and they were around 100 yards long each. Apparently each prince and princess had his or her own personal garden.
Out of twelve the main king's palace was
managed personally by Lao Hu and noone took care of dark palace so, it was ten garden left for her to pull weeds. Whole day she worked on that.
Su Chen always loved nature but now his hands constantly digging this mud made him wanting to curse this mother earth she thought.
When it was night time and she was given opportunity to take break, another problem came for her, it was to find secluded place to take bath. So, after taking look everywhere he found a stream flowing in the secluded area.
He jumped inside the stream with his clothes on and rubbed the water around his body. Just as he was finally getting relaxed he saw a figure leaning on the giant rock and looking at him calmly.He was wearing clothes of royal guard and his face was hidden behind the mask.
When Su Chen saw him, at first he didn't react and then swiftly made his way out of the stream. Thanking God that he didn't change the dress, he was calm and already excuses were running in his head but still part of him wished he would be ignored by the guard. Just as escape route was near him,a voice called out to him " you dare to take a bath inside the stream connected to dark palace. Haven't you heard about the maddening poison that is said to be released from inside".
Su Chen paused, " sir, I am just a small gardener I lost my silver coin that I got as my inheritance from my beloved grandfather. I was washing inside the similar stream like this and I may have been misdirected and came here to search for it".