Don’t worry, sister-in-law will stuff one for you.
That night, Ning Yue slept very soundly and did not wake up until early the next morning.
When she woke up, she was already lying inside the gauze curtains.
The sky was already quite bright, and the window of the back chamber was open. Looking past it, she could see birds flying toward the eaves and clouds drifting out from the window. Her imperial sister-in-law was sitting at the dressing table not far from the bed, combing her hair and applying makeup. The early morning light shone upon her, and Ning Yue always felt as though a kind of vitality was radiating from her.
It was growing vigorously upward, expanding with each passing moment.
Seeing that she had awakened, her sister-in-law turned her head back to look at her and asked with a smile, “Has the emperor gotten up?”
“Huh?” Startled awake by the address, Ning Yue looked blankly at her sister-in-law for a moment before remembering.
She was supposed to be playing the role of her brother.
“The head palace attendant will be coming to pay respects to the Emperor shortly,” Yan Lingyi said. “Your Majesty should get dressed earlier.”
The head palace attendant was a trusted confidante of the Empress Dowager. Hearing that the emperor was seriously ill, she had deliberately made the trip on behalf of the Empress Dowager. Since she hadn’t seen anyone yesterday, she definitely had to see him today.
As they spoke, Zhilan stepped forward and began styling Ning Yue.
Trimming the eyebrows and adjusting the lip color made her look almost identical. As for her voice, Ning Yue would pretend she had not yet recovered from a cold, speaking with a coarse tone, which should allow her to mumble her way through.
Ning Yue and Emperor Wenkang were born of the same mother and were both sixteen years old that year. With slender and tall frames, their figures were quite similar. Ning Yue was only slightly shorter than Emperor Wenkang, which could easily be remedied by putting shoe inserts in her boots.
While getting dressed, Ning Yue inevitably felt nervous and chatted with her sister-in-law: “I, I have become my brother, but what about me?”
What about Princess Ning Yue?
“This consort has ordered someone to take the princess’s place, telling the outside world only that the princess has a pollen allergy, has injured her face, and is wearing a thin veil,” Yan Lingyi said as she stood up. “Your Majesty need not worry.”
Ning Yue let out a sigh of relief.
Her sister-in-law was truly reliable!
While they were talking, Zhilan brought a pair of men’s undergarments for Ning Yue to wear.
Men’s undergarments were somewhat different from women’s. Thinking of something, Ning Yue suddenly became extremely terrified and said, “Sister-in-law! I don’t have one!”
How was she going to deal with the women of the inner palace in the future?
Ning Yue suddenly felt that her future life probably would not be as simple as she had previously imagined.
And Yan Lingyi came prepared: “Sister-in-law will stuff one for you.”
She pulled an object out from the side. Ning Yue took a closer look and saw it was a fresh white radish, with a tender skin that looked like a crescent-shaped fingernail mark could be pinched into it at any moment.
The thicker upper part of the radish was tightly bound with a string. When the string was swung, the radish swayed along with it.
As long as it was tied around the waist, it would look pretty much like a man’s.
“Huh?”
Wait, sister-in-law, that’s actually not what I meant!
“Huh?!”
What on earth is this? Isn’t a radish for eating? How am I supposed to look a radish in the eye, sister-in-law!
“Huh?!”
Wait a minute, sister-in-law, I’m not my brother either, and the two of us aren’t close enough to be this open, you really don’t have to do it yourself!
“Sister, sister, ah!”
On this morning filled with the fragrance of lotus dew, the willful and cute little princess grew a third leg.
Could it be this small? Storybooks don’t describe it like this!
The process of turning from a woman into a man was truly unpleasant. Ning Yue was completely exhausted, feeling as though all her vital energy had been sucked away by such an odd contraption.
The little princess, having suffered a major blow, could not get up at all and lay weakly on the bed, feeling that every time she lifted her leg, that unfamiliar part on her body would start swaying from side to side.
Was this normal? Why did it even move?
This little gadget rubbed back and forth inside her trousers, feeling very strange. Ning Yue felt entirely uncomfortable all over and lay flat on the bed, unable to move at all. This state actually made her look quite a bit like someone who was seriously ill.
She had only been lying there for a brief moment when the head palace attendant requested an audience outside.
Yan Lingyi invited the head palace attendant inside and conversed with her. At the critical moment, Ning Yue lifted the gauze curtain of the bed to reveal her face. Seeing that Emperor Wenkang was able to move freely, the attendant outside felt reassured.
During their conversation, the head palace attendant added, “Your Majesty, the Empress Dowager heard that the Emperor is seriously ill and is extremely worried. If the Emperor’s health has improved, please return to court earlier.”
Yan Lingyi had anticipated this long ago.
The Empress Dowager doted far too excessively on this only son of hers, loving him to the point of losing all sense of priority. As long as Emperor Wenkang had the slightest issue, the Empress Dowager would ask about it in minute detail.
In her past life, Yan Lingyi was afraid of being punished by the Empress Dowager, so she had tightly suppressed everything that happened in the mountains, including her own injuries, and minimized the existence of Li Niang as much as possible so the Empress Dowager would accept it. But in this life, in order to coax Ning Yue onto the ship, Yan Lingyi had added fuel to the fire and meddled slightly, failing to completely conceal the matter, which caused the Empress Dowager to catch wind of it and led to the interruption of their prayer retreat.
“Indeed,” Yan Lingyi nodded and said, “We will return to court tomorrow.”
For Yan Lingyi and Ning Yue, the trials and hardships had only just begun.
Ning Yue had no inkling of the road ahead and was completely following step-by-step behind her imperial sister-in-law, but Yan Lingyi seemed to already envision the boundless realm of the future.
She puffed out her chest and marched toward it step by step.
Sanling Mountain was only the beginning; Jianye was her true battlefield.
Early the next morning, the crowd praying for blessings in the mountains successively packed their belongings and left Sanling Mountain with the fake emperor.
The fake emperor had left, but where had the real emperor gone?
The real emperor had followed Li Niang to Li Niang’s home.
Li Niang’s home was a very ordinary small village. This place was far away from human habitation, consisting of only about a dozen households that got along quite harmoniously and freely. In summer, the mountains had plenty of rain and dew; sleeping in a thatched cottage while listening to the rain, moss grew long in dreams.
This was the first time Ji Mingshan had broken away from the imperial court.
There were no annoying official duties, no rigorous rules, and no magnificent cage. He did whatever he wanted; no one would blame him for not wanting to read official documents, no one would scold him for saying the wrong thing, and there were no tedious regulations, nothing at all, save for rolling mountains and winding rivers.
When a person stood atop a high mountain and felt his hair blown by the wind, he experienced an unprecedented sense of freedom.
He felt comfortable and extremely happy, as if his whole body were flying.
Li Niang smiled with him, making a promise with him to stay in this place for a lifetime, and pulled him along as she ran toward her hometown.
Ji Mingshan ran along with Li Niang.
He should have been extremely happy, but for some reason, once he truly confirmed that he had left the imperial court, he felt an inexplicably strange reluctance.
In truth, he was not born loving to play; he had simply been using a way to rebel against the oppression of the Empress Dowager and the Empress. Those people were always disciplining him and demanding he be obedient, but he deliberately refused to submit. Previously, he used self-indulgent pleasure to rebel; now, he was using Li Niang to rebel.
An unwavering lover created a sense of novelty for his boring life, and Li Niang’s appearance brought his rebellion to its absolute climax. Yet when he truly succeeded in rebelling and broke away from everything, he couldn’t help but look back.
Was he really going to abandon everything in the past? Those things didn’t seem quite that bad after all, did they?
This thought popped up for only a split second before it was interrupted by Li Niang’s laughter.
Ji Mingshan looked back at Li Niang again. Gazing at her profile, he smiled as well.
He wouldn’t regret it; being an emperor was not happy at all, and he wanted free love.
Ji Mingshan cheerfully ran toward the distance together with Li Niang. As for that group of people in the mountains, the news of his running away, once it reached Yan Lingyi’s ears, might just frighten Yan Lingyi to tears! Yan Lingyi would definitely search the mountains frantically for him. The mere thought of Yan Lingyi probably panicking to the point of being unable to sleep all night and turning the whole mountain upside down looking for his figure made him feel amused.
Haha, let them continue searching the mountains with dust-covered faces!
And what was Yan Lingyi doing at this moment?
Yan Lingyi also had a major matter to attend to. On the night before leaving the mountain, Yan Lingyi summoned Zhilan into a secluded spot and gave her the most crucial task.
Previously at Sanling Mountain, there were simply too many people around, making it inconvenient for her to send away Zhilan, her most trusted personal maid, at a critical moment as it would easily draw attention. Only after everyone else had left could she dispatch Zhilan.
Since she wanted to carry out the Princess Replaces Emperor plan, she had to ensure the original emperor would never appear again.
What kind of person would never appear again?
“A dead person,” Yan Lingyi grasped Zhilan’s hand tightly and told her word for word, “I cannot trust anyone else except you, Zhilan.”