Your Majesty is Poisonous – Chapter 113
by Little PandaThe Empress Dowager Refuses
After finishing dinner with Yuanqian Gugu at Ning’an Palace, Yao Xi led her attendants back to the Empress Dowager’s palace.
Along the way, she was still thinking about what Meng Li’an had said. Had the Empress Dowager never let her into the vault because she truly didn’t trust her?
After careful thought, Yao Xi felt that might not be the case.
It wasn’t as if the gugus and the palace maid jiejies went into the vault to play; they only did so on official business, carrying items in and out, which always required people on hand. The Empress Dowager probably didn’t forbid her from entering; she likely just felt there was no need.
Everyone serving at Her Highness’s side, whether palace maid or eunuch, had their own designated duties. Her job was to attend to the Empress Dowager personally. Other matters weren’t her concern, so why would she enter the vault for no reason?
With that thought, the disappointment in Yao Xi’s heart finally dissipated. Yet, even if the Empress Dowager truly didn’t trust her, it was only reasonable. She had hidden far too many things from her.
The probability of her ever returning to the future was practically zero. She would likely spend the rest of her life here in the Yongtai era. The Empress Dowager was the person she was closest to and trusted most in this world. If she kept secrets even from her, who else could she share her innermost thoughts with? It would be far too lonely.
She couldn’t keep hiding things from her! Yao Xi made up her mind.
Soon, she reached the Main Hall. Yao Xi took a deep breath, pushed the doors open, and stepped inside. The Empress Dowager was sitting at her writing desk, composing something.
“What took you so long?” Wan Bi raised her head to glance at Yao Xi, then immediately returned her gaze to her writing. Fearing Yao Xi would return early, she’d quickly sent Longyi and Yao Shuanglan away after their brief chat. Yet while they had left early, Yao Xi had delayed. If she had been another hour, Wan Bi would have ordered someone to Ning’an Palace to check if something had gone wrong again.
Perhaps the incident of Yao Xi being smuggled out of the palace by Longyi had left a shadow on her mind. Whenever Yao Xi wasn’t before her eyes, her heart would grow uneasy, constantly worrying that something would happen to the girl.
“I was chatting with Yuanqian Gugu for a bit over there,” Yao Xi replied, turning to close the hall doors.
Seeing Yao Xi close the doors the moment she returned, a smile tugged at the corners of Wan Bi’s mouth. This girl is quite proactive! Is she planning to serve me in bed1?
“Why are you closing the doors out of nowhere?” Wan Bi asked with a mischievous grin, instinctively licking her lips.
“This slave has something to tell Your Highness.” Yao Xi walked over to a chair beside the desk and sat down, facing the Empress Dowager at an angle. “This slave has never told Your Highness my real name or where I came from. It wasn’t my intention to hide it from you, but the implications were too vast, and I didn’t dare speak of it lightly.”
Wan Bi set down her brush. Her expression softened considerably, and her eyes held a warmth far gentler than usual. She knew that this child, Yao Xi, had finally and completely placed her absolute trust in her—willingly placing her own life, and even those of her family, in her hands.
“We can speak of it in the future. This bereaved one is tired today,” Wan Bi cut her off with a smile. If Yao Xi confessed everything now, wouldn’t the surprise she had so painstakingly prepared for her be greatly diminished?
Hearing her say this, Yao Xi actually breathed a sigh of relief. Ever since she’d decided to come clean, her mind had been a jumbled mess. She wanted to tell the Empress Dowager everything, but who was she, really? She possessed a soul born at the end of the twentieth century, yet she inhabited the body of Sun Xibao, and her official, registered identity in the palace was Yao Xian.
“Let this slave attend to Your Highness’s rest.” Yao Xi rose and stepped forward to support the Empress Dowager back to the bedchamber. Along the way, her face filled with confusion, and she couldn’t help but ask, “Is Your Highness not curious at all about this slave’s identity?” The Empress Dowager was acting so strangely, as if she were deliberately refusing to listen. No matter how tired she was, she couldn’t possibly be unable to listen to a few sentences.
“No matter what you were called in the past, in the eyes of this bereaved one, you will always be Yao Xi. No matter what your identity was outside the palace, from this day forward, you have only one—” Wan Bi stopped in her tracks, gently cupping Yao Xi’s small face. Tilting her head down, she pressed a kiss to her lips and said, “And that is this bereaved one’s woman!”
Yao Xi felt her identity crisis dissolve in an instant with those words.
The Empress Dowager was right. No matter how many identities she had in the past, from now on, she had only one. If her previous life was like a series of fragmented, dotted lines on a blank sheet of paper, her future would be a brand-new beginning written on a fresh page. And the turning point was that day she and Zheng Dayun had chanced upon the Empress Dowager in the cherry blossom grove outside Concubine Kang’s palace.
It didn’t matter what she had hidden from her in the past; she only needed to love her wholeheartedly and without reservation from now on.
Smiling sweetly, Yao Xi hugged the Empress Dowager’s arm tightly and whispered with a blush, “Your Highness once said that if you initiated physical contact with this slave, it would cost a thousand taels. Just now, you kissed me…”
With a thousand taels in hand to secure her safety, Yao Xi now had a brand-new savings goal—save up ten thousand taels to sleep with Her Highness!
Ten thousand taels was no small sum. She had to seize every single business opportunity!
“…” Wan Bi nearly spat a mouthful of old blood from sheer anger. This girl had drawn her so hideously, yet she still dared to demand a thousand taels for a single kiss? Had she lost her mind? Wan Bi pushed away Yao Xi, who was clinging to her, and snapped, “Stay away from this bereaved one! This bereaved one cannot afford to touch a eunuch with such an astronomical price tag!”
“But wasn’t the price set by Your Highness in the first place?” Yao Xi leaned in again with shameless persistence, grinning cheekily. “A kiss is a thousand taels, and serving in bed is also a thousand taels. Does Your Highness not want to get your money’s worth?”
Wan Bi rolled her eyes at Yao Xi, leaving her behind as she walked coldly toward the bedchamber.
Yao Xi hurried her pace, catching up in a light jog. She found the Empress Dowager sitting on the small daybed in the warm pavilion, a pair of delicate copper shears resting before her. “Come here and trim this bereaved one’s fingernails.”
“As you command.” Yao Xi sat down opposite the Empress Dowager with a smile. Holding the Empress Dowager’s hand in one of her own, she picked up the small copper shears. She gestured around the fingernails for a long moment, hesitating to make the cut. Finally, she couldn’t help but say, “This slave has never trimmed anyone else’s nails before. Please bear with the pain, Your Highness!”
Shears lacked the curved edge of a modern nail clipper, so the process was bound to hurt a bit—something Yao Xi knew from experience when she’d tried using regular scissors back before she transmigrated.
Wan Bi felt a sudden urge to pull her hand back. Why on earth would trimming nails hurt?
Snip!
Yao Xi made her first cut. She worked with immense concentration, shortening the nail slightly and carefully shaping it into a neat curve. “Take a look, Your Highness. One is done.”
Wan Bi examined her right index finger, which Yao Xi had just trimmed. It looked neat enough, but it was still left a bit too long. “Trim it even shorter.”
Yao Xi spent another long moment shaping it.
Wan Bi withdrew her hand and looked at it again, still unsatisfied. “Be bolder, Eunuch. Trim them down to the quick.”
“It won’t look good if I trim them too short.” Eunuch Yao, acting as a nail technician, really couldn’t flatter the Empress Dowager’s taste.
“If you aren’t afraid of pain, Eunuch, then by all means, leave them long!” Wan Bi then extended her middle finger to Yao Xi. To make it easier for her to work, she considerately curled her other fingers in.
Yao Xi froze. Who was Her Highness flipping the bird at? She reached out to straighten all of Her Highness’s fingers, but as the underlying meaning of those words suddenly registered in her mind, her face flushed crimson.
“Should this slave trim them a bit shorter, then?” She was, of course, afraid of pain. But for that sort of thing, trimming the middle finger was more than enough. Why did Her Highness insist on having her index finger trimmed too? As this thought crossed Yao Xi’s mind, her face burned even redder.
Before the dawn had even broken, Longyi hauled the deeply sleeping Sun Yan out of bed.
“Dali, the palace gates are open. Pack your things and get on the road immediately!” Seeing Sun Yan still in a daze and trying to burrow back under the covers, Longyi yanked the covers off with force. Leaning close to Sun Yan’s ear, she roared, “Sun Dali! Wake up right now!”
Yawning, Sun Yan sat up and grumbled, “I traveled through the night with Eunuch Yao yesterday and barely got any sleep. Leaving a little later won’t matter, just let me sleep a bit more, alright?” With that, she collapsed back onto the bed.
Longyi struggled to pull Sun Yan up from the bed, helped her slip into her clothes, and pulled her to the washstand. Picking up a handkerchief, she messily wiped the face of the dazed Sun Yan, who kept her eyes closed. “Listen to me, if we’re even a little late, we might not be able to leave.”
“Why?” Hearing her cousin say this, Sun Yan jolted awake in alarm. Remembering that her cousin and Yao-jiejie had visited the Empress Dowager’s palace the previous night, she couldn’t help but ask, “Is the Empress Dowager going to cause trouble for me because of Eunuch Yao?”
“It’s my Imperial Brother.” Longyi felt she needed to give Dali a heads-up. “When you entered the palace and saved my Imperial Brother back then, did you lie and tell him you were my reading companion?”
Sun Yan tried hard to recall, brushing off the thick dust from that memory. “I think so…” Back then, she’d snuck into the palace just to play, and she’d been terrified of being caught by the Late Empress—her maternal aunt.
“Your Yao-jiejie entered the palace precisely because of those words of yours. My Imperial Brother—” Longyi let out a long sigh. “Because of your saving him, he has always had you on his mind. In the past, he mistook Shuanglan for you. But after crossing paths with you yesterday, he immediately restored your Yao-jiejie’s freedom.”
“I…” A wild wind swept through Sun Yan’s heart. Was this a self-inflicted disaster? Not only did her good deed of saving someone keep her cousin and Yao-jiejie apart for years, but she was now going to drag herself in as well. “Even if I return to the fiefdom, it’s still your Imperial Brother’s realm!” Sun Yan’s face was filled with worry. Of all the people she could’ve provoked, it had to be the reigning Son of Heaven.
“Once you return, quickly find a family to get falsely engaged to, and put an end to Imperial Brother’s thoughts first.” What Longyi feared most was that Imperial Brother would issue an unreasonable imperial decree to fetch her into the palace, just like he did when he summoned Shuanglan back then. Fortunately, Imperial Brother was not a shameless scoundrel who coveted other men’s wives and concubines. Dali only needed to hastily arrange any marriage back there, and Imperial Brother would have to let it go. Once he gave up, she could quietly break off the engagement.
“Alright.” Sun Yan was now completely wide awake. She nimbly threw on her clothes, casually tidied her hair, and headed outside.
Longyi followed her out to see her off, but Sun Yan waved a hand. “I’m riding out of the palace. If you see me off, cousin, it will only slow down my pace. Say goodbye to Yao-jiejie and Eunuch Yao for me!”
“Be careful on the road.” Longyi escorted Sun Yan to the palace gates, watching her ride off into the distance before turning back to return to her palace.
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