Chapter 1

Chapter 1

When the Late Emperor killed someone, the blood splashed all over me.

He had always been an exceedingly particular man. The Imperial Kitchen would spend three whole days refining the presentation of a single meal. He could hardly bear not to arrange every dish into a work of art.

But when it came to killing, he was brutally crude.

The always-noble and haughty Son of Heaven wielded a chopping knife, his eyes bloodshot as he swung it wildly.

Before him, the Empress, dressed in plain cloth, slowly collapsed.

Neither of them was young anymore. Silver threaded through the jet-black hair they had once possessed.

The Late Emperor panted, harsh wheezing sounds rising from his throat. His eyes were scarlet.

He cursed hoarsely, “You… you vicious woman!”

The Empress gave a soft laugh. The fingers that had once been fair and smooth were now covered in calluses from hard labor.

The marks of time had also settled upon her beautiful face.

Yet she remained as elegant as ever.

Just as elegant as she had been when I entered the palace at seventeen and she graciously drank the tea I offered her.

The Empress said, “Your Majesty, you have never treated our lives as lives worth cherishing.”

“Then why should we be loyal to you alone?”

Amid the man’s furious shouts, the Empress was stabbed again and again until her body was riddled with holes.

She smiled and gave me a small nod.

And I stood to one side, numbly holding the tray.

This was my thirty-fifth year in the palace.

It was also the thirty-fifth year I had seen those consorts off.

The first person I saw off was Consort Zhen.

She was as adorable as a little jade figurine, with round cheeks and an especially lovely pair of brows. When they moved, they resembled delicate distant mountains.

The Late Emperor doted on her. In bed, he often toyed with her tiny feet.

He said, “Even the most exalted women under heaven may not possess a pair of golden-lotus feet as exquisite as these.”

After that came the emperor’s favor and grace, showered upon her day and night.

Once Consort Zhen gained his favor, she soon became pregnant.

But she was only sixteen that year.

A sixteen-year-old girl was still a child herself, yet somehow she had become a mother.

At the time, I was sweeping fallen leaves at Qingliang Hall.

She happened to pass by in a sedan chair. The moment she saw me with my head bowed and my lips sealed, her eyes suddenly lit up.

“Sister, you look exactly like my sister!”

Later, I was assigned to serve at her Wantang Hall.

It was Consort Zhen’s first pregnancy, and she often vomited and felt weak in all four limbs.

I patiently wiped her face clean. I also mixed fresh fruits into a fragrant fruit drink, and asked my sisters in the Imperial Kitchen to make sour apricots.

After eating the sour apricots, she truly felt much better.

When she was four months pregnant, she made a tiger-head cap for the baby.

Then she smiled and said, “The one this child must never forget is his Aunt Chunye.”

My name is Chunye.

I heard that the year I was born, a great drought struck the land.

So that she could feed me, my mother chewed rotten tree leaves for several days, barely managing to produce a little breast milk.

After I grew older, I too drank the juice from those leaves, barely managing to stay alive.

Listening to Consort Zhen’s gentle laughter, I suddenly fell into a daze.

I forgot the distinction between high and low. I forgot that I was overstepping my place.

Before I knew it, I had placed my hand on her belly.

The baby inside gave me a tiny kick.

I felt that faint movement.

This child would be born in an age of prosperity, in a palace overflowing with wealth and honor, and in the midst of his mother’s love.

I hoped he would be born soon, would come into the world quickly, and take root and sprout like a little tree, growing swiftly enough to provide his mother with a patch of shade.

But in the end, that never happened.

In the fourteenth year of Zhenyuan, Consort Zhen miscarried.