The Forbidden City.
It was the third month of the year, a time of fluctuating temperatures as winter gave way to spring.
A spring rain had fallen unexpectedly the night before. The drizzle was fine and the mist was hazy, but it stopped after only four hours. It was as if the dark clouds had been swept away, clearing the gloom that had shrouded the entire city. The whole of the Forbidden City was instantly refreshed, as placid as a mirror.
In a cluster of side rooms not far from the Forbidden City, within a dimly lit chamber, a slender figure was slumped listlessly over the edge of a bed. Her expression was languid, and her clear, watery eyes, tinged with a hint of despair, slowly roamed over the wooden furniture in the room, inch by inch.
“Sigh…” She let out another faint sigh. Then, she slowly propped herself up. Her soft, raven-black hair cascaded from her shoulders onto the bedding in a slight disarray, but she had no mind for it at the moment.
After sitting up, Li Shutiao raised a hand to rub the corners of her eyes, which were dry and sore from a night of weeping. Unexpectedly, the movement pulled at the wounds on her cheeks—she had just been slapped ten times, and without any cold compress or medicine, the stinging pain from her tender cheeks was no less than the ache in her eyes.
Li Shutiao had no choice but to lower her hand again. She turned to get off the bed and, following the original owner’s memory, found a basin of completely cold water behind a screen in a corner of the room.
She picked up a clean cotton cloth from the rack, dampened it slightly, folded it again and again, and finally placed the strip of cloth horizontally across her slightly swollen eyelids. It felt as if a basin of cold water had been poured over her head, and her muddled consciousness instantly cleared considerably—
Li Shutiao had transmigrated eight hours ago.
Before she crossed over, she was just a sophomore in college. One night, while getting out of bed, she wasn’t paying attention, missed a step, and her head slammed hard against the iron ladder of her roommate’s bed across the way. Before she could even register the pain, she plunged into darkness.
When she regained consciousness, she felt utterly exhausted, her cheeks burning and stinging. Her eyes felt as if they were weighed down by a thousand-pound weight—sore, dry… as if she had been crying like this for hundreds of days and nights.
Before her was a soft wooden bed with the bedding already laid out. Overcome with extreme fatigue, Li Shutiao didn’t think twice. She kicked off her shoes, climbed on, pulled up the covers, and closed her eyes, all in one smooth motion. It wasn’t until half an hour ago that she fully woke up.
Upon waking, memories belonging to another person came flooding in. Paired with the antique furnishings and accessories that filled the room, Li Shutiao was forced to recognize an incredibly cruel fact—
She had transmigrated.
She had transmigrated into a Qing Dynasty Palace Intrigue novel she had read during summer break, becoming a cannon fodder character who appeared for only two and a half chapters but died a horribly tragic death.
And this cannon fodder character shared her name.
For a moment, Li Shutiao couldn’t tell who was more unlucky.
The only silver lining was that when she had first noticed the cannon fodder character shared her name, she had read and memorized the original text—
Of course, that was impossible. The original book was over two million words long, detailing with great substance and precision the glorious life of the palace maid Wuya Shi, from her struggles as a Bao Yi palace maid after entering the palace to her rise as the Empress Dowager of a new dynasty. The instances of Palace Intrigue she experienced were too numerous to count on ten fingers. There were betrayals upon betrayals, falling out of favor and regaining it, until she finally saw through the vanity of it all, renounced love, and single-handedly supported her own son, the Fourteenth Prince, Aisin-Gioro Yinti, to ascend the throne, beginning a decades-long career of ruling from behind the curtain. [1]
It was a serious departure from actual history!
How could Li Shutiao have genuinely memorized the original text? She had merely read it a few more times, noting down some important plot points. Of course, she had paid particularly close attention to the parts featuring “Li Shutiao,” wishing she could chisel every word and sentence into her brain.
The original “Li Shutiao” was from the Han Army Five Banners and had entered the palace through the Minor Draft last year. Among the palace maids who passed the Minor Draft with her were two other important characters. One was the aforementioned Wuya Shi, who in history was the birth mother of Emperor Yongzheng, Empress Xiaogongren. The other was a famously long-lived consort of the Kangxi era, Consort Ding, Wanliuha Shi.
The three of them were quite lucky; upon entering the palace, they were assigned to work around Qianqing Palace.
Three months ago, it was time for the annual Minor Draft again. However, this year’s draft did not go smoothly; the number of selected palace maids was only two-thirds of the previous year’s. Because a grand conferment of titles for the imperial harem was scheduled for the end of the eighth month, most of the newly selected maids were sent to the Six Eastern and Western Palaces. Only the staff structure around Qianqing Palace remained largely unchanged.
With one exception.
This person was the great villain who ran through the entire novel, the historically famous Consort Yi, Guo Luoluo Shi, who was particularly renowned for her stunning beauty that outshone the entire harem.
For whatever reason, the Department of Household Affairs sent Guo Luoluo Shi to Qianqing Palace as soon as she entered the palace. The head momos were not only outwardly kind and gentle to her but also took great care of her during her duties, causing the other palace maids to treat Guo Luoluo Shi with great hostility.
But “Li Shutiao” was a simple-minded person. Seeing that someone was beautiful, she approached her and called her “sister.” After calling her that many times, the two naturally became best friends. They brought Wuya Shi and Wanliuha Shi into their group, intentionally or unintentionally “isolating” the other palace maids of Qianqing Palace.
However, the good times did not last. Ten days ago, due to a shift swap, Guo Luoluo Shi was covering for “Li Shutiao” guarding the storeroom when she caught the eye of the Kangxi Emperor, who had come to select rewards. She was made an Imperial Attendant on the spot and, after her Bedchamber Service, received his continuous favor.
According to the novel’s plot, Guo Luoluo Shi stayed in the rear quarters of Qianqing Palace for three months. In the sixth month of the sixteenth year of Kangxi’s reign, she was promoted past several ranks to Consort Yi and, as an exception, was allowed to reside in the main hall of Yikun Palace. During the grand conferment of titles at the end of the eighth month, she was smoothly promoted to Concubine Yi, becoming the mistress of Yikun Palace. In the twentieth year of Kangxi’s reign, she was promoted again, leaping directly to the rank of Consort, enjoying a period of unrivaled prominence.
These events did align with actual history.
But what followed was completely different. She repeatedly opposed the female protagonist, Wuya Shi. Yet, because Wuya Shi still harbored love for Kangxi, she endured it time and again. It wasn’t until the thirty-seventh year of Kangxi’s reign, when the Seventh Princess, born to Wuya Shi and only twelve years old, died due to harem machinations, that Kangxi remained indifferent. Not only did he not come to see her, but he even stayed in Yikun Palace for many days… Only then did Wuya Shi see the true face of the man who shared her bed.
The consequence of “abandoning love” was that her counterattacks became more ruthless each time.
—The eldest prince was put under house arrest; the crown prince was deposed; the third prince was severely reprimanded; the fourth prince’s face was disfigured; the fifth prince was banished from the capital; the eighth prince committed suicide by fire; the ninth prince died by assassination; the tenth prince, though lucky enough to escape, had to spend the rest of his life bedridden; the eleventh prince was poisoned and died shortly after birth; the thirteenth prince fell into water as a child and grew up to be a timid and submissive person, unfit for great responsibility.
Among all the adult princes, only the seventh and twelfth met a rare peaceful end.
Starting from the forty-seventh year of Kangxi’s reign, consorts in the palace began to die mysteriously. In the fifty-first year of Kangxi’s reign, the emperor, his body gradually ravaged by a slow-acting poison, passed away in Qianqing Palace. The imperial edict he left on his deathbed was altered by Wuya Shi, followed by the Fourteenth Prince’s ascension to the throne and Wuya Shi’s rule from behind the curtain.
As for the villain, Guo Luoluo Shi, her retribution came even earlier. Around the fortieth year of Kangxi’s reign, she was secretly guided by people planted by Wuya Shi to become addicted to opium… [2]
The outcome was easy to imagine.
The damp cotton cloth on her slightly swollen eyelids soon absorbed Li Shutiao’s body heat, and the coolness gradually faded from her brow.
Li Shutiao raised her hand to remove the cloth, dipped it in the basin, wrung it out again, but this time she didn’t place it on her eyelids. Instead, she unfolded the damp cloth and buried her entire face in it.
Her cheeks were already somewhat red and stinging. Stimulated by the cold, the pain instantly intensified, a wrenching sensation that felt as if her very soul was in agony.
Li Shutiao furrowed her brows and endured it with all her might. A moment later, she removed the cloth from her hand and tossed it back into the basin.
She turned and walked to the dressing table on the other side, sat down, and picked up the blurry bronze mirror to examine her reflection. In the end, she felt a sense of relief; her face wasn’t disfigured, it just looked severe on the surface.
Putting down the bronze mirror, she ran through the novel’s plot in her mind. After confirming the current timeline, Li Shutiao picked up a box of white powder from the table. By the dim yellow light in the room, she carefully covered the red marks on her face one by one, using the bronze mirror as a guide.
After finishing all this, she quickly returned to the bed and sat down, lowering the curtains on both sides of the bed to hide herself completely in the shadows.
She didn’t have to wait long. The door to the room was gently knocked on twice from the outside, and a melodious, ethereal female voice drifted in: “Sister Shutiao, are you in?”
Li Shutiao did not respond.
The person outside knocked twice more.
Li Shutiao, pretending to have just woken up, coughed lightly and replied in a seemingly weak voice, “I’m here. You can come in.”
She kept reassuring herself inwardly that the female protagonist at this stage was not as ruthless as she would be later. Like her, she was just an ordinary palace maid. There was really nothing to be afraid of.
Right, no need to be afraid.
Even as she thought this, she unconsciously burrowed deeper into the quilt, hiding the lower half of her face, from the nose down, in the plain, cloud-patterned embroidered quilt.
Almost as soon as her voice fell, the door creaked open. After opening it, the person did not enter immediately but stood outside for a moment before slowly stepping in.
She walked extremely slowly, her soft cloth shoes making almost no sound on the floor.
—This was natural. After all, working in Qianqing Palace, even in its outermost circle, required one to be light-footed and silent.
What if you disturbed the master?
It didn’t take long for Wuya Shi to reach Li Shutiao’s bedside. She had probably just gotten off her shift, as she was still wearing the light green palace maid’s uniform. Her hair was neatly styled in a Xiao Liangbatou hairstyle, adorned only with two simple plain silver hairpins.
Yet her figure was delicate and graceful. As she walked, her slender waist swayed slightly, and the silk handkerchief in her hand traced rippling arcs in the air. Every movement was filled with a meticulously designed deliberateness.
It didn’t look like a visit of concern, but more like… showing off.
Only the original “Li Shutiao” couldn’t see it. Not only did she consider Wuya Shi her best friend after Guo Luoluo Shi’s “betrayal,” telling her many bad things about Guo Luoluo Shi, but she also unabashedly revealed her own desires. In the end, she mindlessly became a pawn for Wuya Shi to test the waters. After a failed attempt at Bed-Climbing, she was ordered by the grim-faced emperor to be put to Death by Batons.
Her total appearance was two and a half chapters. Counting the days, that was only about seven or eight days away.
Thinking of this, Li Shutiao almost regretted letting her in. It would have been better to just pretend she was asleep and hadn’t heard…
“Sister Shutiao, how is the injury on your face?”
But Wuya Shi spoke, her tone inquisitive.
Hiding in the quilt, Li Shutiao trembled imperceptibly but quickly composed herself. She slowly sat up, leaning weakly against the headboard. She lifted the bed curtain slightly, revealing half her face, and looked at Wuya Shi with somewhat moist eyes, her voice very low. “It’s… it’s fine.” A hint of grievance could still be heard.
Wuya Shi’s face instantly softened.
She stood by the bed, raised her hand, and hooked up Li Shutiao’s side of the curtain, fully exposing her. Then she sat on the edge of the bed, her delicate, fair face showing just the right amount of concern and worry. She said, “It’s good that you’re fine.”
“When I came back from my shift yesterday, I heard from Yueshu that you were punished by Jiya Momo. I was very anxious and wanted to come see you right away. But Yueshu reminded me that it was almost time for lights out. I thought that if I came to your place, I probably wouldn’t make it back to my own in time. If Jiya Momo saw, I would surely get a punishment too.”
Wuya Shi sighed again. “Yueshu also said that you must be feeling very wronged after being suddenly punished. If you knew I was punished by Jiya Momo for coming to see you, you would probably feel even worse. That’s why I didn’t come.”
“Sister Shutiao, you don’t blame me, do you?”
Li Shutiao immediately shook her head. “Of course not. How could I blame you, sister?”
“I’m very happy that you could come.”
…As if.
Wuya Shi smiled and raised her hand to touch Li Shutiao’s cheek, her voice laced with pity. “Let me see the injury on your face… Is it much better?”
Her fingertips were clearly soft and delicate, with a lingering warmth, yet Li Shutiao felt as if she were being watched by some cold, sinister viper. A shiver shot up her spine.
Li Shutiao squeezed her palm hard, her delicate face showing no sign of her inner turmoil. She answered obediently, “It’s much better. It’s probably because Jiya Momo didn’t use much force.”
“Is that so.” Upon hearing this, Wuya Shi’s dark eyes, for reasons unknown, suddenly became extremely profound.
Li Shutiao looked at her expression: “…”
Help me.