8
After that day, Kỷ Linh never summoned me again.
But in this harem, Empress Dowager Thẩm had eyes and ears everywhere. Finding out what I wanted to know was all too easy.
Kỷ Linh still hadn’t given up her ridiculous fantasies.
She kept rummaging through the knowledge in her head, trying to come up with inventions that surpassed the technological level of ancient times.
She presented all those designs to the young emperor.
The young emperor, thinking he was being secretive, had trusted men smuggle the designs out of the palace and secretly assemble a group of craftsmen to build them.
The young emperor also secretly sent people overseas by ship.
I didn’t need to be told what he was after: sailing across the ocean to the Americas and bringing back high-yield crops like corn, potatoes, and sweet potatoes as soon as possible.
Foolish. Utterly foolish.
Never mind that maritime technology was still underdeveloped; it simply couldn’t support an expedition on that scale.
Modern crops yielded so much because generations of scientists had improved them and bred better varieties.
Under the conditions of ancient times, introducing crops like corn and potatoes wasn’t entirely useless, but the benefits would amount to little more than a small improvement.
The people of Huaxia had struggled with food shortages for thousands of years. How could the problem be solved so easily?
But there was nothing to be done.
Most of her inventions were far beyond the technological development of ancient times.
With her half-baked knowledge, she couldn’t possibly provide a sound theoretical foundation or complete technical support.
She learned one chemical equation and thought she could produce industrial alkali?
She looked at a diagram of a pistol’s parts and thought she could mass-produce them?
It wasn’t that simple!
Kỷ Linh didn’t know that everything she was trying so hard to do now, I had already done before.
Back then, to help Prince Tấn take the throne, I had also risked everything trying to create great inventions ahead of their time, hoping to crush the ancients.
But most of those “great inventions” ultimately failed.
Not a single fleet sent overseas on a transoceanic voyage avoided sinking in the ocean’s towering waves.
Failure followed failure.
Prince Tấn never blamed me aloud, but for three whole months, he didn’t set foot in my courtyard.
Only after the mask of gentle affection was torn away did I see the cruelty of the reality I truly faced.
Talent, vision, knowledge beyond one’s time…
Once I lost Prince Tấn’s favor, I was nothing but the lowliest concubine in the inner court, someone anyone could bully.
I had neither favor nor influential connections, and my reputation was utterly ruined.
In the entire prince’s residence, I was like a blade of grass anyone could trample.
To survive, I had no choice but to cast aside my modern pride and flatter Prince Tấn.
I used to look down on time-traveling women who plagiarized the poems and writings of the ancients and passed them off as their own.
But to regain his favor, I had no choice but to do the same.
Compared with these ancient women born in this world, I had no influential family, my looks were nothing extraordinary, and I had no skill in music, chess, calligraphy, or painting.
Aside from stealing the ancients’ poetry and prose, I couldn’t think of any way to turn things around.
Every poem and piece of writing I produced was credited to Prince Tấn.
Before long, countless talented scholars and men of letters began seeking him out.
I became useful to him again.
And so, I regained his favor.
But I knew I was nothing more than a cheap tool.
The moment I lost my usefulness, I could be discarded without a second thought.
I just never expected that day to come so soon.
On the day Prince Tấn ascended the throne, a palace servant brought me a cup of poisoned wine.
When the fish is caught, the trap is forgotten.
When the bird is caught, the bow is put away.
How could an emperor, the supreme ruler under heaven, allow a stain on his name for plagiarizing a woman’s poetry?
So I had to die.
9
Just as I expected.
Half a year later, Kỷ, once so pleased with herself, suddenly fell out of favor.
The emperor sent her straight to the Cold Palace and forbade anyone from visiting her.
Few in the palace cared what she had done to incur the emperor’s wrath.
If she had come from a prominent family and had promising brothers or a father with a bright future, then no matter how much the emperor disliked or despised her, he would at least have had to pretend otherwise.
But she was merely a common woman of unknown origins,
With neither power nor outstanding beauty or virtue.
Even when she was most favored, few in the palace truly gave her a second glance.
She was just a plaything: cherished while she was new, cast aside once they tired of her.
How often did things like this happen in the palace?
More than a month later, I finally found an opening and slipped into the Cold Palace to visit her.
Kỷ Linh no longer looked so pleased with herself. She was skin and bones, tortured until she was barely clinging to life.
She had been far too smug before, and many people had wanted to make her suffer. Now that she had fallen from favor, those people had all sorts of ways to make her wish she were dead.
When Kỷ Linh saw me, she struggled to smile.
But in the end, the tears came first.
“I used to laugh at you for being stupid and not knowing how to judge people—for letting that scumbag deceive you completely.”
“But it turns out that those involved are blind, while those looking on can see clearly.”
“I thought he was different from the others, that he truly admired my ideals and talent.”
“But later I learned that all he wanted was to put my talent to use for his own ends.”
“I was just a tool he used to fight for power.”
“When I was useful, he treated me with sweet words and tender care.”
“When I was no longer useful, he kicked me aside and that was that.”
I sighed. “At least you’ve seen the truth now. It’s not too late.”
“But I can’t accept this!”
A vicious look flashed across Kỷ Linh’s gaunt face.
“Do you know what I’ve been put through over the past month?”
“Every last one of them is a fair-weather friend who kicks you when you’re down.”
“The moment they saw me fall from favor, they did everything they could to torment me.”
“I won’t accept this!”
“I won’t accept spending the rest of my life here!”
“I still have a way. I can still turn things around. I can still…”
“You can still pass off poems from the ancients as your own, right?”
I cut her off coldly.
Kỷ Linh froze. Her face slowly turned red, and she fell silent.
At last, she huddled up helplessly, her broken sobs filling the Cold Palace.
“I didn’t want things to turn out this way, either…”
“I know what I did was wrong.”
“But I really don’t want to spend my whole life in the Cold Palace.”
“This place is no place for anyone to live.”
“If this goes on, I’ll either go mad or be tormented to death.”
I sighed and took out the gold and silver I’d prepared beforehand.
“This is enough money to see you through the rest of your life without worrying about food or clothes.”
“I’ve arranged for someone to come get you.”
“Someone will come to take you out of the palace tonight, at the hour of the Rat.”
“Leave this place and live out the rest of your life in peace.”
Kỷ Linh turned to look at me, her expression shifting from surprise to astonishment to joy…
And finally, suspicion.
“You’re just an ordinary palace maid. How do you have so much money?”
“And before this, several consorts who’d fallen out with me wanted to come into the Cold Palace and humiliate me. They were all stopped outside. How did you get in?”
“And what kind of all-powerful connections do you have that let you spirit me out of the palace without anyone knowing?”
Kỷ Linh looked at me, her eyes full of wariness and suspicion.
That was right.
At last, she’d learned from experience and realized she couldn’t trust people too easily.
For this young woman from my hometown, who reminded me so much of my younger self, I always felt an inexplicable softness.
So, before her eyes, I tore off the human-skin mask I’d worn over my face for more than twenty years.
When she saw that my face bore a five-in-ten resemblance to the current emperor’s, Kỷ Linh could only look horrified.
10
When Prince Tấn ascended the throne and became emperor,
I drank the poisoned wine, thinking I would die in a foreign land.
But when I opened my eyes, I found myself in a small secret chamber.
The person who saved me was someone I never would have expected.
Thẩm Phù Nhược.
Once Prince Tấn’s Princess Consort, now Her Majesty the Empress, and one day the Empress Dowager.
My longtime imagined rival.
She switched the cup of poisoned wine without anyone knowing, faking my death.
Then she secretly brought my “corpse” to this secret chamber.
“Why did you save me?”
I looked at her in astonishment.
As far as I was concerned, she should have been the person in the world who wanted me dead most.
I stole her husband from her. She should have hated me to the bone.
“What a shame.”
Thẩm Phù Nhược sighed softly.
“You have a wealth of learning and remarkable insight.”
“But Triệu Diệp sees you only as a tool in his struggle for power. It’s truly a shame.”
I looked at her.
This woman I’d always found dull, pitiful, and pathetic, whose knowledge fell far short of mine.
This woman who seemed to know only music, chess, calligraphy, and painting, needlework, and household management—the picture-perfect traditional gentlewoman.
This woman who always wore a gentle smile and could accept her husband taking concubines without batting an eye, seemingly the perfect embodiment of the traditional “three obediences and four virtues.”
Now, she spoke her husband’s name with indifference, even mockery.
Triệu Diệp.
As if he were nothing more than some trivial thing, unworthy of notice.
I suddenly realized that perhaps I’d never really understood her.
I stared at her in indescribable horror, even instinctively shrinking back on the bed.
“What are you going to do?”
I asked without thinking.
Thẩm Phù Nhược still wore the faintest smile.
“Back when we were still at Prince Tấn’s residence, you were always saying that women weren’t necessarily inferior to men, that women could have careers of their own…”
Thẩm Phù Nhược suddenly moved very close, nearly pinning me into the corner between the bed and the wall.
Her voice was still gentle, but it held a force that made her impossible to resist.
“So, in your view, between Triệu Diệp and me, who is more likely to build a greater empire?”
The ambition in her words was unmistakable.
I looked at her, my expression beyond even horror.
In that moment, my mind went blank.
I’d never imagined that a woman I’d always seen as the embodiment of the feudal system could have such ambition.
The things I’d said, meant only to ease my own guilt, had ignited such a great fire in her heart.
I couldn’t help bursting into laughter.
Ha ha, ha ha ha…
I thought of myself as enlightened and knowledgeable, a modern woman, but in the end, all I’d thought to do was help some man become emperor, relying on his favor to achieve my ambitions.
But she, a woman born and raised in ancient times, wanted to kick Triệu Diệp out herself and become emperor.
How fascinating! How fascinating!