Your Majesty is Poisonous – Chapter 73

The Empress Dowager Refuses

Longyi and Wan Bi talked a lot. In truth, the two shared many similarities. For example, they were close in age, both had lost their parents, and neither liked to meddle in the trivial affairs of the harem.

It wasn’t that Longyi enjoyed talking to Wan Bi. She was merely somewhat moved by the matter of the dowry, which had significantly lessened her dislike for Wan Bi, though it was still far from liking her. She rambled on about this and that, trying her best to talk to Wan Bi just to buy Noble Lady Lan and Yao Xi more time together.

            

It was not easy for the sister and brother to get a chance to speak. If she left, and the Empress Dowager happened to summon Yao Xi for service, only to find him not here, but rather in her palace talking to Noble Lady Lan, she would definitely misunderstand that something untoward was going on between them again.

However, for two people who had been at odds for over ten years to suddenly reconcile, the topics they could discuss were truly limited. Longyi gradually found herself unable to keep it up. She chatted with Wan Bi about the weather and food, the latest popular jewelry and clothes in the capital, and even shared some amusing anecdotes from her time in her fiefdom.

Wan Bi wasn’t faring any better than Longyi. She even felt somewhat nostalgic for the old Longyi who used to ignore her.

            

Today, Longyi truly seemed like a changed person, trying very hard to find topics to talk about with her. Wan Bi knew Longyi had good intentions and was doing her best to ease the relationship between them. But keeping up her end of the conversation was absolutely exhausting. She really wasn’t very interested in the topics Longyi brought up; she could only smile politely, nodding from time to time or offering a few exclamations to play along.

She had never felt so stifled chatting with someone. In the past, she always scolded people if she wanted to, turned hostile if she felt like it, and drove people away when she didn’t want to talk anymore. But right now, she was playing the role of an amiable, great mother who had just buried the hatchet with her stepdaughter. She couldn’t show a bad attitude or lose her temper; she could only smile radiantly and give slight nods.

This was also the reason why she didn’t want to pretend to be a good person—it was too stifling!!!

            

Fortunately, just as the two ran out of things to say and fell into silence, Longyi saw Yao Xi flash past the outside of the main hall and return to the duty room.

“After such a huge incident last night, the Empress Dowager must be tired. Longyi won’t disturb you any longer.” Longyi smiled as she stood up to take her leave, looking as if a heavy burden had been lifted.

Wan Bi also nodded benevolently and said, “Alright.” Longyi is finally leaving. Wan Bi secretly let out a long sigh of relief in her heart.

            

As Longyi left, she actually felt quite anxious. Wan Bi’s concern about her marriage might have stemmed from good intentions, but it was absolutely not a good thing. The Ministry of Rites had brought up the matter of selecting an Imperial Son-in-Law countless times over the years, but she had pushed them all away. She had no desire to choose an Imperial Son-in-Law—she hadn’t had that thought since not long after Noble Lady Lan entered the palace as her reading companion in their youth. However, she was the Eldest Princess; her marriage was not just a family matter, but an affair of state.

The Eldest Princess of Daxing was twenty-seven years old and still unmarried. Among the common folk, she was already a joke.

She didn’t care, but the other members of the Feng family might not feel the same, such as her siblings who loved to fan the flames. Not to mention the many old officials who believed they were thinking of the Feng family’s face, constantly urging her all day long. She could withstand all of that; what she feared the most was concern from Wan Bi.

            

Once Wan Bi started worrying about her marriage, Imperial Brother, given his temperament, would definitely agree. With both the Emperor and the Empress Dowager giving the word, the rest of the Feng family and the court officials would surely swarm in and force her until she yielded. She had no father or mother, and Imperial Brother was not her full biological brother. If she wanted to avoid submitting, she would inevitably have to kick up a massive fuss when the time came.

Longyi was the kind of person who wore her emotions on her face. Upon returning and seeing that Noble Lady Lan was still waiting for her, she forced a smile.

“Why are you so downcast?” Yao Shuanglan could tell that Longyi had something on her mind. After finishing her conversation with her didi, she hadn’t immediately returned to Qianqing Palace, thinking she would wait for Longyi to come back so they could say goodbye before she left.

            

“The Empress Dowager seems to be worrying about my marriage…” Longyi said with a bitter smile.

Yao Shuanglan’s heart suddenly ached. Was the Empress Dowager going to select an Imperial Son-in-Law for Longyi?

Seeing Noble Lady Lan’s expression turn grim upon hearing this, Longyi finally felt much better in her heart. However, in order to draw Noble Lady Lan’s heart closer to hers, she deliberately said, “You always used to tell me to give up. I can’t entirely make decisions about my own marriage either. Mother Empress is no longer here. If the Empress Dowager personally steps in on this matter, I won’t be able to hold out. How about…”

            

Yao Shuanglan knew what Longyi wanted to say. Longyi must want to say: How about we just forget it!

She had said those words to Longyi countless times before, and every time, Longyi had remained resolute, never giving up and quietly staying by her side. This time, it seemed it was her turn to stand by Longyi without abandoning her. But she couldn’t bear to do it. From the day the Emperor brought her into the palace, she no longer had the right to ask Longyi to wait for her. “I hope Your Highness can pick an ideal husband! This subject-concubine wishes the Eldest Princess and the Imperial Son-in-Law…” As Yao Shuanglan spoke, she choked up a little.

“Are you silly or what!” Longyi tenderly pulled Noble Lady Lan into her embrace and said, “What’s the point of saying things contrary to your heart? Besides, do you even know what I was going to say before you tried to drive me away?”

            

“Weren’t you going to say, ‘how about we just forget it’?” Yao Shuanglan said quietly. It was the first time she had been so afraid of losing Longyi. Perhaps Longyi’s unwavering loyalty over the years had given her confidence. She really was a glutton for punishment. In the past, she had always wanted to push Longyi away, even thinking it was for Longyi’s own good. But now, realizing that Longyi might truly recruit some man as her Imperial Son-in-Law to spend the rest of her life with, an indescribable pain welled up in her heart.

Longyi leaned against Noble Lady Lan’s ear and whispered, “I was going to say: how about you take me? So I won’t be snatched away by anyone else.”

Yao Shuanglan smiled through her tears. “If I don’t take you, you’ll be snatched away by someone else?”

            

“Well, not really…” Her cunning scheme having failed, Longyi refused to give up and said, “I was just thinking that it’s rare for Imperial Brother to be too busy to pay attention to you today… Of course, I won’t touch you. You haven’t served him in bed yet, so you still have your intact maidenhood. But you can touch me. Touch me however you please!” After she finished speaking, she gave a wicked smile and tugged at Noble Lady Lan, wanting to head toward the bedchamber.

Yao Shuanglan smiled, standing rooted to the spot. She grabbed Longyi and pulled her back into her embrace, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed Longyi. “I have matters to discuss with Eunuch Tang. I must return to Qianqing Palace.” Eunuch Tang was a good friend of her father’s. Over the years, he had been secretly investigating, hoping to help overturn the Yao family’s case. Her didi entering the palace made her suspect that the case from back then might be connected to Meng Delai of the Eastern Depot. She wanted to ask Eunuch Tang if he had found anything.

Longyi was clearly not satisfied with just a light peck. She hugged Noble Lady Lan’s waist, lowered her head, and kissed her deeply for a long time before reluctantly letting go. “Come over whenever you have free time.”

            

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The first thing Yao Xi did upon returning to the duty room was to latch the door and untie her chest binding cloth to let her breasts catch their breath. Last night she had been fleeing for her life and saving the Empress Dowager. After fainting, she had slept in Her Majesty’s bedchamber for a whole night. Having her chest bound tightly for two days was truly unbearable.

This was actually good news. It meant that Her Majesty hadn’t taken advantage of her being asleep to get handsy. She still had to thank the miraculous arrival of Auntie Flo! If Her Majesty hadn’t thought her castration wound had split open and found her disgusting, given Her Majesty’s utterly uninhibited nature, it was entirely possible she would have stripped her bare.

Her Majesty had a fetish for toying with unconscious people—she still remembered this clearly. Her Majesty hadn’t taken off her clothes, but whether or not she had done other weird things to her while she was unconscious was uncertain. Last time she got drunk and pretended to be asleep, Her Majesty had used her head as a wooden fish¹ and knocked on it. She had no idea what kind of games she had played this time.

            

She didn’t dare think too deeply about it; the more she thought, the creepier it got.

The moment she untied the chest binding cloth, Yao Xi revealed an expression of pure relief. When would these days ever end! Yao Xi looked down at the two jiggling lumps of flesh on her chest and started worrying about the silver again. With Princess Longyi’s help, leaving the palace wouldn’t be difficult. The difficult part was money! She wouldn’t dare actually go stay at the Eldest Princess’s fiefdom after leaving the palace.

She had barely caught her breath when a despair-inducing voice rang out from outside the door.

            

“Eunuch Yao! The Empress Dowager summons you!” The person delivering the message was a palace maid.

“Right away!” Yao Xi, a miserable expression on her face, picked up the incredibly long chest binding cloth and began the final step of the mummy-making process she had repeated countless times.

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While Consort Liu was having her morning meal, she casually asked her gugu, “Have you ordered someone to spread the rumor that the Empress is having an affair with a fake eunuch?”

            

The gugu replied, “Do not worry, Your Highness. This slave-girl followed your orders and had someone find a beggar who loves to brag. The rumors that the Empress is committing adultery with a fake eunuch and that the Second Prince is not His Majesty’s flesh and blood will likely spread through every street and alley soon.”

“Mm.” Consort Liu didn’t ask anything else. Whether the Empress was actually committing adultery was completely unimportant; the rumors and gossip would quickly spread from outside the palace to the inside. Words were a fearsome weapon. As long as the Emperor grew suspicious, Feng Xin’s reputation as a bastard could never be washed clean, and the Empress’s good days would come to an end.

Fake eunuchs had appeared in the palace, but there were a few princes and princesses who would absolutely not be suspected by the Emperor of not being his own flesh and blood. That was because anyone could see they bore some resemblance to the Emperor, whether in their eyes and brows, their nose and lips, or their facial contours. But that Feng Xin truly didn’t look the slightest bit like the Emperor. Perhaps he really was a bastard.

            

In a teahouse, the beggar A Jin swaggered in under everyone’s gaze and found an empty table to sit down at. The patrons, who had been drinking wine, sipping tea, and chatting about everything under the sun, all revealed expressions of disgust when a filthy, stinking beggar suddenly appeared beside them.

The waiter, acting on the shopkeeper’s orders, came over to shoo him away. “A Jin, you little punk, instead of squatting properly by the door to beg for food, you’ve come inside to ask for a beating?”

A Jin fished out a few pieces of loose silver² and slammed them onto the table, straightening his back until it was ramrod straight. “Serve this master a pot of good wine. And bring half a catty³ of pig head meat, one tael of sesame candy, two taels of peanuts, and two taels of boiled chestnuts!”

            

Among the patrons were those who frequently saw A Jin, and they asked with a laugh, “Yo, A Jin, struck it rich?”

A Jin just smiled without saying a word. After waiting for his wine and food to arrive, he began drinking on his own. After a few cups of wine went down his belly, he started bragging to people just like in the past: “Lord Jin is in a good mood today, so I’ll tell you gents an earth-shattering secret—”

The teahouse patrons ignored him.

            

Seeing that keeping them in suspense was useless, A Jin suddenly blurted out to get everyone’s attention: “The Second Prince of our Daxing! He was actually born to the Empress and a fake eunuch.”

If official runners heard this kind of talk, one would be thrown into prison. The teahouse shopkeeper, afraid of being implicated by A Jin, personally came over to chase him out. But the patrons had grown interested and pressed A Jin, “Who did you hear that from?”

A Jin forcefully slammed his hand on the table and yelled at the shopkeeper, “This old man is spending his own money to eat and drink properly! Since you accepted the silver, you can’t drive this old man away!” After the shopkeeper sighed and walked away, A Jin said, deliberately mystifying, “I heard it from the Second Prince’s biological father! The Empress was afraid the matter would be exposed, so she sent that fake eunuch out of the palace. In the end, that eunuch got addicted to gambling, lost all the money the Empress Dowager had given him, and became a beggar. One day, I ran into him under the Tianqiao⁴ when he was about to die of illness, and that man told me so himself.”

            

“Now that you mention it, I have indeed heard people who have seen the Emperor and the Second Prince say that the Second Prince doesn’t look like our Emperor at all,” one of the patrons who had seen a bit of the world said thoughtfully. His words seemed to corroborate A Jin’s claims. The patrons, who had initially just treated it as idle chatter, now believed it almost entirely, and asked A Jin about many other things.

A Jin enjoyed the feeling of people surrounding him and relentlessly asking questions. Following what others had told him to say, he spoke with vivid and convincing detail. He was doing this not just to show off, but more importantly to earn the fifty taels of silver he hadn’t yet received. That person had told him that as long as he spread this matter, aside from the five taels of loose silver given to him up front, there would be another fifty taels once the deed was done.

How could he let go of such a good deal where he could earn fifty taels just by moving his lips? As for criticizing the Empress… it wasn’t a capital offense in Daxing; at worst he’d be thrown into prison. Going to jail meant he would have prison food to eat. For a beggar like him who never knew where his next meal was coming from, it was a good place to be.

            

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