Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The little maid’s name was Luo Fei, and she said she was a transmigrator.

She came from another world.

A world where everyone had enough to eat, and where everyone was equal. Back there, she had been a police officer.

What was that?

Luo Fei told me, “It’s… basically a martial arts master.”

My eyes lit up. “Then you can definitely help me! We’re a match made in heaven!”

Later, I discovered she knew far more than martial arts.

“I can leave over the rooftops of the imperial city and gather information for you.”

That could not have been better.

Ah Fei really was highly skilled. The first time she slipped out of the Cold Palace in the dead of night, she brought me back two chicken legs.

The two of us lit a fire in the Cold Palace and roasted them. She asked me, “How are we going to get out of the Cold Palace?”

I looked up at the gray, square patch of sky framed by the Cold Palace walls and told her, “Have you ever seen a black bear? Bears hibernate when it’s coldest.”

“The first thing we need to do is lie low.”

That was what my mother had taught me.

I said to Ah Fei, “Next time you go out, can you get me some books?”

I knew far too little about the court. I had to learn more.

Ah Fei somehow procured a great heap of books for me.

The two of us huddled together to read.

She read military treatises. I read histories.

At night, we sorted and categorized all the information we had gathered.

The most important things we learned were as follows:

1. The Emperor was obsessed with cultivating the Dao and refining elixirs. Whatever the National Preceptor said, he believed.

2. The Emperor currently had three sons left: Crown Prince Li Cheng, Second Prince Li Jing, and Fifth Prince Li Xi.

3. Crown Prince Li Cheng was addicted to women and had always been in poor health.

4. The Crown Prince was born to the First Empress. The Emperor and his first wife had been deeply in love. Fifth Prince Li Xi was born to the Current Empress.

5. The Crown Prince was the legitimate heir and had the support of the entire court’s civil officials.

6. The Current Empress came from a military family, and the Fifth Prince secretly had the backing of the military faction.

Ah Fei looked at the power map I had drawn and snapped her fingers.

“Hell-mode opening.”

She was always coming out with strange new words. I had long since gotten used to it.

Gradually, I came to understand what those words meant.

I asked her, “That System of yours-does it know what will happen in the future?”

Ah Fei shook her head. “It says if I want to know, I have to exchange points for it.”

“How many points do you have now? And how many points would it cost?”

She gave me two numbers that were worlds apart.

I nearly fell over.

“Where did all your points go?! You wasteful child!”

How could she only have single digits left?

She glared at me. “Wasn’t it because I exchanged them for your Adam’s apple?”

Oh? Oh.

I touched the thing growing on my throat.

At first, she had asked me whether I wanted to exchange for a male body.

But after thinking it over, I shook my head and refused.

“I like having a woman’s identity, and I like being a woman.”

Even though this was, in Ah Fei’s words, “an extremely patriarchal” world.

But to deceive the world, I still had to grow an Adam’s apple.

Ah Fei comforted me. “It can be removed.”

When?

“When you ascend the throne.”

The most urgent task was to get out of the Cold Palace first.