Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I’ve been ruthless and unscrupulous since childhood.

My grandmother said so.

The reason was that I ate two extra sweet potatoes she’d made for her darling grandson.

I got a beating from my dad and was ordered to stand in the corner and reflect.

I looked at my scrawny reflection in the puddle on the floor, then compared it to my dad’s burly, strong build, and came to a conclusion:

The main problem was the disparity in strength.

To get stronger, I had to eat more, and I’d do it again.

“You’re going to be traded for a bride price someday-how dare you eat meat!”

I didn’t reflect at all.

If I was going to be exchanged for a bride price, then I was more useful than my two-year-old brother.

Why should that pig-fat infant get greasy-mouthed every day, while I was skin and bones and only got his leftover soup?

It was as if in this family, my brother was a person, and I was livestock.

I went to snatch the meat my brother couldn’t finish, and my grandmother slapped me so hard half my face swelled up.

A sharp ringing started in my ear.

Unable to bear it anymore, I viciously bit down on the old woman’s arm.

No matter how my dad and uncle beat me, I wouldn’t let go, eventually tearing off a chunk of flesh.

I chewed that chunk of meat vigorously, mouth full of the metallic taste of blood, and forced it down.

I stared at my dad, baring a huge grin.

They decided I was crazy.

A mad person couldn’t bring them a bride price.

The imperial palace put up a notice, recruiting innocent commoner girls for the lowest menial sweeping and washing work.

My dad sold me, earning 20 taels of silver.

He was delighted to finally be rid of me.

I was delighted too-surely in the palace, I wouldn’t go hungry.

But after entering the palace, I found out it really might be possible to go hungry.

When I entered the palace, I was eight, and was assigned to the most remote and dilapidated Cold Palace.

When other girls were led away, they all cried for home.

When the old maid led me to the Cold Palace, I was strangely excited.

The old maid couldn’t stand the Cold Palace’s dank, moldy smell, and covered her nose. Seeing my excited face, she sneered, “Going to the Cold Palace and still so happy-you must be a fool.”

I’d heard way worse back home, so I grinned and sidled up, asking ingratiatingly, “Ma’am, in the palace, can you eat your fill?”

She rolled her eyes and laughed scornfully. “So all you care about is a mouthful of food.”

What else would I care about?

I entered the Cold Palace, and the door was immediately locked tight from the outside. The old maid said that was the rule.

I quickly asked how I’d get food. She impatiently knocked on a dog hole under the wall. “They push it through here.”

I obediently swept fallen leaves in the Cold Palace for half a day. At mealtime, a young eunuch pinched his nose and pushed a food box through the hole.

I opened it, and a rancid smell hit my nose.

I immediately stuck my head out the dog hole and called to the little eunuch, “Sir, the food’s gone bad.”

He twisted his waist around and rubbed his fingers together at me.

I didn’t understand what he meant.

He spoke in a thin, reedy voice, like a duck.

“No money, and you expect good food?”

So even in the richest palace under heaven, you couldn’t always eat your fill.

I smiled at him, showing my tiger teeth.

“I have money. Sir, put your hand over here.”

He snorted through his nose and stuck his hand through the dog hole.

I struck suddenly, grabbing his hand fiercely.

“No good food? Then I’ll eat your flesh!”

My sharp teeth bit into the little eunuch’s arm.

I pulled out a medicine bottle I always carried-my mother’s keepsake.

My mother was once a female physician, but after she married my dad, the whole family forbade her from practicing medicine in public.

Bored, she taught me her medical skills.

My dad insisted on having a boy, and she died in childbirth after delivering two girls in a row.

I sprinkled the powder on the little eunuch’s wound, and a piercing scream rang out.

Like a pig being slaughtered.

Soul-Eating Grass-it causes an unbearable, bone-deep itch.

I wasn’t afraid of him reporting me at all.

Who cares about us? Even ants can crush us.

If he reported, the outcome would be both of us dead.

Only he cared most about his own life, so I had him under my thumb.

Sure enough, he scrambled away, and before long, he scrambled back.

The little eunuch brought me a plate of pig’s head meat.

Afraid of poison, I made him eat a piece first.

Once I saw he was fine, I started eating.

Thanks to the medicine powder my mother left me, the little eunuch never dared mistreat me again.

I thought life would go on like that.

Then suddenly one day, the person delivering my meals changed.

The new eunuch was very straitlaced, but he didn’t short my meals either.

From him I learned two pieces of news:

“The previous little eunuch is gone.”

“Consort Yu was ordered to take her own life, and the palace is under martial law.”