Shen Ying was extremely dissatisfied with the tyrant, muttering and complaining under her breath for a long time. However, a glimmer of relief still surfaced in her heart afterward.
At least the tyrant wasn’t completely devoid of conscience; he hadn’t forced them all to squeeze together in a communal bunk room, so everyone still had their own private space.
If he had made everyone cram together to sleep, Shen Ying really would have cursed the tyrant to high heaven. Of course, Golden Bean would have been cursed as well—who asked it to bring her here in the first place?
Though this private space wasn’t large—its decor worse than the bathroom in Shen Ying’s own home, making even using the washroom inconvenient—the wardrobe for her clothes was also just a small cabinet, far inferior to her walk-in closet back home.
Of course, as a *Cai Nv*, she had no extra clothes to put away anyway, so more than half of the wardrobe remained empty. After all, *Cai Nv* was the lowest position among imperial ranks. Under normal circumstances, a *Cai Nv* would still have to perform various chores and basic labor.
Yet because there was no master of the inner palace, nor any other imperial concubines besides them, the emperor simply let them fend for themselves without requiring them to do any labor.
Even so, not being allowed to bring personal maids from home meant the palace maids assigned to serve them worked strictly within set time slots. For many things, these noble young ladies had no choice but to do the work themselves.
In the beginning, everyone found it awkward, but after two months, they had grown accustomed to it.
Shen Ying was a pampered young lady too, but she knew how to handle simple tasks. Still, she could not help feeling melancholy inside.
Surveying the room, Shen Ying rubbed her forehead. If this had been in the past, she would have despised it to the extreme. However, a while back, she had accidentally injured her head and spent several months in a coma at the hospital. Having hovered on the boundary between life and death, she had attained a sort of epiphany. In the words of her bad group of friends, she was no longer as delicate and fussy as before.
In her current situation, although she still disdained the environment, she didn’t feel overly repulsed by it.
The consequence of having all the women who entered the palace hold the exact same rank and live together was that it was exceptionally noisy. Every day, people got into arguments. Since everyone held the same rank, what did it matter if their family backgrounds differed? Once inside the palace, they were all simply the emperor’s women.
Those who had held grudges in the past were now quarreling so fiercely it felt like turning the heavens upside down.
It wasn’t as though no one had tried to arrange a chance encounter with the tyrant. The women who were selected into the palace naturally possessed good looks; what if the emperor happened to be captivated by their beauty?
Yet, without exception, all returned empty-handed. According to rumors Shen Ying had overheard, the tyrant’s eyesight seemed quite poor, to the point where he couldn’t even see someone standing right in front of him.
There were also those who were actually seen by him. According to their memories, the tyrant was said to be an extremely distant man—so cold that even in the sweltering heat of midsummer, a single sweep of his gaze made them feel as if a chill were creeping up from the soles of their feet, leaving them shivering from the frostiness.
Some attempted a roundabout tactic, intending to win over the tyrant’s only child—the current little crown prince.
That also ended in failure. At such a young age, the child already possessed the potential of a future tyrant. Whenever he ran into these *Cai Nv* trying to stage a meeting, he would either throw insects onto them or release snakes to slither around.
The future little tyrant’s pet was a snake, and he even liked to coil it around his wrist like a bracelet.
Shen Ying felt even less inclined to approach the tyrant and the future little tyrant. She was terrified of insects, and even more terrified of snakes.
“Golden Bean, is there really no way for me to go back? Isn’t there any shortcut I can take?”
“No, there isn’t. You can’t leave. Failure means death. Host, do you want to die?” Golden Bean said in a muffled voice.
It was on the verge of dying itself.
Shen Ying remained silent. Fanning herself a few times with the round fan, she felt her arm grow sore and the heat become unbearable again. She raised her hand to pass the fan to the side, but after waiting a while, no one took it.
Only then did she realize that aside from herself, the only other thing in this room was that fat orange cat system, Golden Bean.
She did have someone assigned to attend to her, but because the tyrant forbade these *Cai Nv* from bringing personal maids into the palace, they had entered alone and were then each allocated a palace maid.
At night, the palace maids went back to sleep in their own quarters.
Drenched in sweat from the heat, Shen Ying got up to pour herself a cup of tea to drink. Before she had drunk even two cups, the teapot was empty.
If she wanted to drink more water, she would have to wait until tomorrow when the palace maid came to work.
Shen Ying sprawled on the table, pressing her forehead against the tabletop to feel the cool sensation emanating from the wood. When the spot warmed up, she switched directions and pressed against another spot, changing again whenever it grew warm.
If all else failed, she would go hug the wooden pillars in the room to absorb whatever cool sensation they gave off.
This Golden Bean was truly too stubborn; no matter what she said, it refused to send her back no matter what.
“Host, just give it a try,” Golden Bean urged in its usual listless tone.
Shen Ying knew what it meant and refused decisively, “No.”
Golden Bean let out a sigh, but said nothing more.
Shen Ying was so hot she couldn’t sleep. Covered in sweat, her body felt sticky and miserable. Outside, there was a slight breeze, but opening the window meant mosquitoes and insects would fly right in.
She either had to choose between being slightly cooler or being bitten by bugs.
Shen Ying wanted to choose neither. She wanted to go home—she wanted to leave right now, this very instant.
“But my energy is running out. If we can’t stop the tyrant from destroying this mini-world, I will die here, and you won’t be able to go back either, Host. You will be erased.”
“Liar! Didn’t you say earlier that you could send me back?”
“That was under the premise that I had the capability! The tyrant’s blackening value is so high that bringing you here consumed a vast amount of energy. Right now, I no longer have the power to help you return.”
Shen Ying felt a sense of having been duped.
She suspected Golden Bean was lying to her.
She had read transmigration novels like this before; she wouldn’t be fooled by Golden Bean so easily.
“This isn’t my real body anyway. Who’s to say that after I die here, I won’t just wake up back home?”
Speaking of death, and recalling Golden Bean’s words just now, Shen Ying grew somewhat suspicious—was Golden Bean hinting that she could only return home by dying?
“Then why don’t you give it a try?” Golden Bean sighed.
This gave Shen Ying an idea. She immediately scrambled off the bed, searched around in her wardrobe for a moment, and found a long silk sash.
Emulating what she had seen on television, she stood on a stool and tried to toss the silk sash over the ceiling beam.
She threw it several times without success. The silk sash was light and flimsy, making it impossible to toss up easily—it wasn’t like in television dramas at all where it hung up effortlessly on the first try.
Shen Ying even came close to falling off the stool.
In the end, she tied a teacup to the front of the silk sash, and only after two or three more attempts did she manage to loop it over.
Shen Ying hurriedly tied the silk sash into a knot and carefully slid her head through the loop.
Taking a deep breath, she prepared herself and kicked the stool away.
The sensation of hanging was naturally unbearable. The moment Shen Ying kicked the stool away, regret washed over her instantly. She struggled wildly, wanting to get down. She wanted to call out to Golden Bean, to tell it that she didn’t want to die anymore.
Yet with her throat tightly constricted, she couldn’t utter a single sound.
She could only kick her legs frantically in the air.
Just as the room door was pushed open, the silk sash snapped, and Shen Ying tumbled down to the floor.
“Shen Ying!” Seeing this, Jiang Wei hurried over and pulled the fallen Shen Ying up from the floor.
There was no candlelight inside the room, but as the moonlight filtered in, Jiang Wei caught sight of the red mark on Shen Ying’s fair neck.
Her expression grew complex as she looked at Shen Ying, letting out a sigh before saying, “Why must you bring such suffering upon yourself?”
Although Jiang Wei and Shen Ying were not close friends, the Jiang and Shen families were neighbors, and their fathers were fellow officials in the court. Jiang Wei knew a bit about the affairs of the Shen household.
Shen Ying’s current mother was her stepmother. Although she presented herself to the outside world as a benevolent woman, the Jiang family lived close by—how could they not have heard some of the inner details?
The lady of the Shen family was nowhere near as kind to the daughter left behind by the late first wife as people claimed.
This time, the emperor’s agreement to hold a broad selection of talented women for the harem was not as simple as it appeared on the surface.
The emperor had been on the throne for four years, and everyone knew his style of doing things. His sudden agreement meant he was likely preparing to deal with someone.
Those selected this time all felt more or less uneasy in their hearts. Yet some held onto the off chance that if their daughter caught the emperor’s eye and bore him a child, their family could become imperial relatives.
Jiang Wei wasn’t entirely clear about the circumstances of the others, but she had entered the palace of her own accord. As the eldest daughter of her family, she couldn’t very well let her younger sisters come in her place.
There was another detail Jiang Wei had never mentioned to anyone: her own marriage prospects had been far from smooth. She was already nineteen years old this year. At her age, she should have been married long ago. Years prior, when the late emperor was still alive, he had actually arranged a marriage for her. Back then, His Majesty was still the crown prince, and she was promised to him as a side consort, to enter the Eastern Palace once she reached her hair-pinning ceremony.
By then, the crown princess had already passed away, and the crown prince was unwilling to marry anyone else. He had neither concubines nor handmaidens in his quarters, much less any desire to take another crown princess into the Eastern Palace.
She had actually breathed a sigh of relief at the time.
It was far better for the crown prince to defy the imperial decree than for their Jiang family to do so. However, with the engagement broken off, her prospects for marriage became even more difficult. It was said that after the crown princess passed away, the crown prince went mad, unable to tolerate anyone mentioning her death, and even less willing to let anyone take the crown princess’s place.
She had also heard rumors claiming that the crown princess had actually leveraged a past favor to force her way into the Eastern Palace. Yet judging by His Majesty’s various behaviors, it didn’t seem to be the case at all.
Fortunately, mad as the crown prince was, knowing that the engagement had been decreed by the late emperor, he did not make things difficult for the Jiang family. All his rage was directed entirely at the late emperor. There were even rumors that the late emperor’s early passing was largely due to being angered to death by the crown prince.
After the crown prince made such a scene, everyone said he had gone mad. Although she hadn’t managed to marry into the Eastern Palace, her reputation hadn’t suffered much damage.
Later, after the crown prince ascended the throne as emperor, she had almost become betrothed again to a man her father held in high regard. Although his family background had fallen on hard times, he was a good person and a fine scholar. Yet two days before the marriage discussions could be finalized, that prospective match was executed by His Majesty for secretly plotting rebellion.
Because the marriage had not been finalized, she narrowly escaped disaster. Her family counted themselves lucky and refrained from speaking of it everywhere, insisting firmly that they had never had any contact with him.
Thus, she had been delayed at home all this time. She had originally intended to remain unmarried and find a Taoist temple to become a priestess, but when news spread of His Majesty taking concubines, the Jiang family name was listed among the candidates, meaning her family had to send a daughter into the palace.
So, she had volunteered to come.
Among the nine selected maidens who entered the palace, only she and Shen Ying had refrained from actively attempting to approach His Majesty and the little crown prince.
Jiang Wei held back because of her past misfortunes, lacking the energy to fuss over it further; after all, her parents no longer harbored high hopes for her.
Looking at Shen Ying by the moonlight, Jiang Wei couldn’t make out what was going through Shen Ying’s mind.
Her face was pale, the red mark on her neck starkly clear, her eyes reddened, and her lips somewhat dry and cracked. She simply sat there without speaking a word.
In her impression, Shen Ying had been unwilling to enter the palace and had been forced into it by her family.
Jiang Wei didn’t know how to comfort her either. One should make peace with where one landed; besides, she couldn’t bring herself to talk about her own messy past either.
Shen Ying had no idea what Jiang Wei was thinking. Just a moment ago, she had genuinely thought she was going to die; right now, she was secretly rejoicing over her narrow escape, having no mental energy to spare wondering how Jiang Wei viewed her.
Once she caught her breath, Shen Ying asked curiously, “How did you know I was hanging myself?”
“I couldn’t sleep and heard some commotion next door,” Jiang Wei spoke truthfully.
She lived in the room right next to Shen Ying’s. Hearing the sound of an impact, followed by the shattering of porcelain and the noise of a stool being knocked over, she couldn’t contain her concern after all and came over to take a look.
Shen Ying: “…”
This place wasn’t just small; it wasn’t even soundproof.