Chapter 3

Qin Zhi took me back to the palace.

The woman he’d brought over was already in the dungeon.

A young guard told me the emperor had flown into a rage that night, demanding how a prostitute could have the nerve to covet the empress’s position.

Having finished his story, the guard made sure to flatter me.

“Your Majesty, you’re still the one who matters most to the emperor.”

I rolled my eyes and went into the bedchamber.

Qin Zhi reclined on the bed, a sword in one hand. With the other, he kept scratching his groin.

“My empress, my empress. You knew what that woman was, yet stood by and watched her approach me. Were you trying to get me killed?”

My face didn’t change.

“You gave me a pleasure boat full of explosives. I was merely returning the favor.”

Now that I’d exposed him, he dropped the pretense and drew his sword, pointing it at my throat.

“Any last words?”

I paid him no attention. I calmly sat down and had a cup of tea.

“Before I left, I set your phone to require facial recognition every three days. Kill me, and you’ll never unlock it again.”

Qin Zhi sneered.

“You dare threaten me?”

I smiled too. “And what if I do?”

“I could cut off your head and keep it chilled in the cellar. Bring it out whenever I need to unlock the phone.”

Still smiling, I said, “Facial recognition requires blinking, nodding, and opening your mouth. How would a dead head manage that?”

Qin Zhi fell silent.

Ridiculous. Fine, he had a little sense. But he was no match for someone from the twenty-first century.

Our kindhearted selves had died in that pandemic. Those left standing were more devious than the last.

So what if he was the emperor?

When it came to ways of screwing people over, he was a raw recruit.

Qin Zhi couldn’t kill me, and he didn’t dare torture me. If I smashed my head against a wall and died, he’d never get to enjoy that wonderful phone again.

After much thought, he could only confine me to the Cold Palace and announce that the empress had gone mad.

I was happy to oblige.

Whenever he came, I acted deranged and sang at him:

“Your phone will blind your eyes, your phone will rot your hands, your phone eats up your brain, your phone gives you a pain in the neck!”

It drove Qin Zhi mad. Helpless to stop me, he could only scratch viciously at his groin.

Yes, his filthy disease was getting worse.

Unable to touch me, he turned on someone close to me.

That evening, he seized Cuilan and demanded that I tell him how to cure it.

Not wanting to make things difficult for me, Cuilan immediately raised her head and bared her neck.

“I won’t put Her Majesty in a difficult position. Please grant me death, Your Majesty.”

“Death? You haven’t earned that mercy!”

“Empress, tell me, or I’ll rape her right now!”

I knew his disease had already left his thighs ulcerated. He wasn’t even capable of carrying out the threat.

But I told him what to do anyway.

“Start with antibiotics. Amoxicillin or a cephalosporin would do.”

Then I sighed in feigned regret. “But this is ancient times. Where would you buy medicine…?”

Qin Zhi wasn’t worried. He smiled, looking certain of victory.

“What’s so difficult about that? I have my ways!”

He swept out, leaving a terrified Cuilan behind.

“Your Majesty, does he really have a way?”

“Of course.”

After all, I’d taught him how to use PDD. No—PXX, the knockoff version.

The pirated PXX app had been banned long ago. It gathered every disreputable seller blacklisted by other platforms. A proper den of heartless swindlers.

Qin Zhi, naturally, knew none of this.

Ever since getting the phone, he’d admired everything modern and trusted it without question.

He had no idea that, as the times advanced, people’s kinks had grown ever stranger. Today’s internet was darker than the dark web, more hellish than hell itself.

And this phone was the long con I’d prepared just for him.

At first, all the livestreams on it were thirst traps.

If Marry, the woman who would fly nationwide, failed to hook him, I still had a bearded guy from Sichuan and Chongqing waiting in reserve.

PXX was another trap of exactly the same kind.

Soon, my spare phone showed me Qin Zhi buying a box of antibiotics.

He was cautious, I’ll give him that. He deliberately chose a listing marked “Tenfold compensation for fakes,” then paid with my card.

But getting it transported here proved a problem.

So Qin Zhi had the seller write “I agree” on the medicine box. Then he turned on the camera and shouted:

“Little parcel! Would you like to travel to my world?!”

With those two words written on it, the parcel flashed white. A blink later, it was in his bedchamber.

The seller was stunned. He immediately invited Qin Zhi to become his deliveryman, at eighty fen per parcel.

Qin Zhi cursed furiously. “I’m the ruler of a nation! I have mountains of gold and silver! You think I care about your lousy eighty fen?!”

He angrily hung up and blocked the seller for good measure.

To show off, he brought the parcel to the Cold Palace.

“Empress, look what I have!”

I lounged in my rocking chair, drinking tea without a care.

“Why don’t you open it and see for yourself, Your Majesty?”

“Stubborn to the bitter end.” Qin Zhi sneered—then froze as he opened the parcel.

“I only bought one box. Why has he sent me eleven?”

Before I could answer, he smiled triumphantly again.

“He must have learned who I am. He sent extras to curry favor.”

“Hah. At least he knows his place.”

You absolute moron. Tenfold compensation for fakes!

The damn medicine was fake, so the seller had simply sent eleven boxes up front!

I rolled my eyes and had Cuilan cover her nose and mouth, take a quick look, and recite the ingredients on the box to me.

When she finished, I laughed on the bed until my stomach cramped.

That seller was a fucking genius. He’d sent veterinary medicine!

Specifically for mules. The strongest stuff they made.

Once I’d finished clutching my stomach with laughter, I went to the door with some sunflower seeds to watch the fun. There was the young eunuch from Qin Zhi’s quarters.

He was always flattering me. I’d had a reasonably good impression of him.

So I kindly warned him, “His Majesty isn’t himself. You’d better not go back just now.”

But the eunuch who’d always been so polite seemed to have become another person. He lifted his chin, glanced at me, and said in his shrill voice:

“Oh, Your Majesty, do worry about yourself. Stuck in the Cold Palace, unable to get a hot meal, and still fussing over me?”

“His Majesty isn’t your concern anymore, either. I’ve just helped him take his medicine. He’s resting now.”

My mouth fell open. “All that medicine—he took all of it?”

“What else?” The eunuch looked me up and down, then glanced at the dilapidated palace gates. “Will that be all?”

The speed of his change left me speechless.

Cuilan couldn’t stand it. She rushed forward. “How dare you speak to Her Majesty like that?”

“Her Majesty? Hmph!”

He gave me a contemptuous snort, then swayed off toward the emperor’s quarters.

“Your Majesty, just look at him! He goes wherever the wind blows. What a snob!”

I held back the furious Cuilan and sighed.

“Leave it. Leave it.”

Afraid of being mocked for his disease, Qin Zhi had long since dismissed all his attendants except one eunuch to serve him personally. No wonder the boy thought he’d risen in the world.

By my reckoning, the veterinary drugs were about to take effect.

Running back to Qin Zhi now… I wondered if that eunuch’s backside would survive.

That night, I sent Cuilan out of the Cold Palace to investigate.

She was gone for a full eight hours. According to her, the eunuch had screamed for eight hours, and Qin Zhi had been busy for eight hours too.

I waved my palm-leaf fan.

“Good to keep busy. Good to keep busy.”

Cuilan gave me a vivid account.

“The moment I got there, I saw His Majesty beating Laifu. Laifu was so frightened he cried for help. Then His Majesty dragged him into the room.”

“What about everyone else in the palace?” I asked.

“That eunuch thought the emperor favored him, so he bullied all the other servants. Always shouting at them to vent his temper. They’ve all gone to work in other palaces.”

Here, Cuilan spat in disgust.

“Hmph. Even if they’d been there, they might not have wanted to help! Throwing his weight around just because of his master!”

Before long, the story was all over the palace.

Not only did the emperor now have a taste for men, he’d gone after his own eunuch.

The empress dowager was so furious she fell ill and took to her bed. The ministers felt utterly disgraced.

Somehow, the tale reached the streets outside. Someone even turned it into an illustrated story:

Palace Secrets: The Irresistibly Adorable Little Eunuch.

What had actually happened was that Laifu had been tortured all night. The next morning, he couldn’t even get out of bed. He lay there barely alive.

The imperial physicians went in with their medicine chests and came out retching.

They said the injuries to his lower body were so severe that there was no point trying to treat him.

Once Qin Zhi came to his senses, he found the whole thing humiliating. He killed Laifu with a single stroke of his sword. At least it was a quick end.

That night left Qin Zhi’s condition even worse.

He finally realized the medicine was fake.

But he’d already blocked the seller. Even if he unblocked him, it was far too late.

His entire lower body was ulcerated. Red pustules began appearing elsewhere too, itching unbearably whenever the disease flared up.

The physicians who had examined him that day began showing the same symptoms.

Once word got out, some of them fled in the night. They would rather die than treat him.

The itinerant doctors in the capital took off too, putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the palace.

Qin Zhi developed a high fever. He couldn’t even leave his bed.

His only pleasure was scrolling through his phone.

He no longer dared watch thirst traps.

Fortunately, I’d installed a certain little-book app for him. He browsed it to pass the time, occasionally dispensing his wisdom in the comments.

But every time he opened his mouth, it was about women’s obedience and virtues, and his own collection of wives and concubines.

The screen reeked of male chauvinism.

The app’s users were mostly women. Qin Zhi’s posts were soon labeled misogynistic, and replies piled up beneath them.

“The Three Obediences and Four Virtues? I can tell your gender at a glance. OP is definitely a toxic man!”

“It’s the twenty-first century and you’re still on about wives and concubines? Who do you think you are, the emperor?”

“Why are there bros everywhere? Stop shitting up the place!”

“Does that extra piece of flesh make you so special? Is that why you don’t have to treat women as people?”

No one had ever spoken to Qin Zhi like that. He immediately turned on speech-to-text and began hurling abuse back.

“I am superior because I’m a man! The throne has always passed to men. Have you ever seen a woman emperor?”

Of course. Qin Zhi knew nothing about Empress Wu Zetian.

“Besides, I am the emperor! I do have wives and concubines! Women who’ve never learned proper feminine virtues aren’t fit to touch my toes!”

“You lowly maids dare speak to me like this? I need only lift a finger to have you all killed!”

“You call me disgusting? Women are disgusting! Where I live, ten taels of silver will buy ten women! Cheaper than livestock!”

That last remark sent the women in the comments over the edge.

Just as Qin Zhi was congratulating himself, convinced no one dared defy him anymore, someone dropped an image into the thread.

[Name: Qin Zhi. Mother: Li Xiaomei. Father: Qin Zheng. Address: the main hall of the imperial palace. Picture attached.]

It was an ink painting of three-year-old Qin Zhi in his parents’ arms.

I burst out laughing when I saw it.

Even Cuilan could hardly believe it. “That painting must be over ten years old! Even the empress dowager hasn’t kept it. How did they find it?”

Of course they had. Pick a fight with those women and they’d dox you, whether you lived in the modern world or the ancient one.

Qin Zhi was so enraged he spat a mouthful of black blood and passed out.

That outburst broke what spirit he had left. His body gave out completely.

The ministers urged him to choose a successor and rest.

But Qin Zhi wouldn’t give up. He abandoned affairs of state and spent every day searching his phone for a cure.

They say a desperate patient will try any doctor. I never imagined he’d find his way onto the dark web.

Early one morning, Chancellor Shen came to the Cold Palace. The moment he saw me, he began pleading.

“Your Majesty, please save the emperor! You know everything. There must be something you can do!”

I was dragged to Qin Zhi’s bedchamber. As soon as I stepped inside, I saw him muttering at his phone.

“I’ve found it. I’ve finally found it!”

He was staring at a dark-web advertisement:

[Sawasdee! The miracle medicine you need.]

[One pill cures all illness. Two restore your youth. Three bring back the dead.]

Qin Zhi was clearly losing his mind. He tapped the link as if he’d found his salvation.

Seeing that he was beyond help, I could only shake my head and leave.

But I hadn’t expected him to retain one last shred of reason.

Afraid of being cheated, he didn’t simply order the medicine. Instead, he transported the doctor on the other end directly to the palace.

A flash of white light, and a thin, dark-skinned man stood before us.

He wore the obligatory Southeast Asian flip-flops. Across his T-shirt ran a slogan:

“Want to get rich? The compound can make it happen!”

I stared in complete disbelief.

Qin Zhi hadn’t been scammed this time.

How had he managed to summon the scammer himself?

The man looked around, then at Qin Zhi in his dragon robes. He froze for two seconds before throwing back his head in delighted laughter.

“Hahahaha! I’m finally out!”

“I’ve traveled through time! No prison for me! No more electric shocks!”

My mouth twitched. Qin Zhi had already flung himself at him.

“Doctor, where’s the miracle medicine? Save me!”

The man looked at him, greed flickering in his eyes. Then he held out a hand with an air of mystery.

“Not nine hundred and ninety-eight a pill. Not eight hundred and eighty-eight. Just eighty-eight…”

Qin Zhi nodded without hesitation.

“Eighty-eight taels? Nothing! Take this gold ingot. Give me two pills to start.”

Watching him be such a fool, even an enemy ought to have found some peace.

I sighed. In the end, I couldn’t help reaching out to stop him.

“Enough, Qin Zhi. Stop being stupid. He doesn’t have any pills…”

Before I could finish, the man opened his palm. Two black pills lay in it.

Holy shit. Where the hell had those come from?

I turned toward him, stunned. There was a newly pale patch on his dark neck, clearly just rubbed clean.

The grime he’d rubbed off…

Before I could stop him, Qin Zhi snatched the pills and swallowed them.

…

My stomach lurched. I turned and ran back to the Cold Palace.

This time, I wanted nothing more to do with Qin Zhi.

Once he discovered the pills didn’t work, he’d kill the scammer. Then he could go back to waiting for death.

What I hadn’t expected was Cuilan’s gossip that evening. The scammer had been rewarded and settled comfortably in the palace, with fine food and drink.

I was surprised.

“And the emperor?”

“They say he’s much better.” Cuilan looked just as incredulous. “I peeped through the doorway earlier. He could even walk around the courtyard!”

Unbelievable.

Could the grime on a human body really cure illness and fight infection?

How was that possible?

The more I thought about it, the less sense it made. I had Cuilan watch him secretly for a few more days. Somehow, Qin Zhi really did improve day by day.

But the pills grew more expensive day by day too.

Eighty-eight taels on the first day, a hundred on the second, three hundred on the third… Now they cost a thousand.

Qin Zhi was furious enough to kill him. The man simply stuck out his neck.

“I make every pill fresh. Kill me, and you won’t get any more.”

So Qin Zhi changed tactics. He decided to torture him slowly.

But several strokes of the punishment paddle left the man completely unfazed. He even started taunting Qin Zhi instead.

“Is that all your punishment bureau can do?”

“I had it much worse in the compound. You lot are amateurs!”

Without the pills, Qin Zhi seemed drained of all life. He was listless, anxious, and constantly seeing things, so distraught that he kept banging his head against the wall.

Watching his reaction, I was almost certain of my suspicion.

Drugs.

The man probably hadn’t just been running scams in that compound. He’d been making drugs too.

They made Qin Zhi feel energized, but kept drawing him further into addiction.

Qin Zhi lasted three days before he broke. He hurriedly had the man released from the punishment bureau, gave him ten thousand taels of gold, and kept him supplied with the finest food and drink.

Ever since the emperor fell ill, the country had ground to a halt. Money flowed out of the treasury without any coming in. Soon, there was a deficit.

When that news leaked, a neighboring country immediately attacked our border.

The ministers were frantic. They crowded outside Qin Zhi’s bedchamber.

Qin Zhi merely reclined on his bed. He wasn’t even pretending anymore. White powder coated the skin around his nose. Lost in bliss, he heard nothing they said.

The ministers were nearly in tears. Some even tried to prove their loyalty with their lives, striking their heads against the pillars by his door. Qin Zhi didn’t so much as lift an eyelid.

I couldn’t bear it.

He deserved a thousand deaths. The people of this country hadn’t done anything wrong.

Covering my nose and mouth, I walked inside through the haze.

At the sight of me, Qin Zhi finally stirred.

“Empress. Are you satisfied, seeing me like this?”

I looked at him calmly. “Qin Zhi, tell me now. Is there any way to send me back?”

He watched me for a long time, then shook his head.

“No.”

“What if I killed you? Would everything go back to the way it was? Could I return to my own world?”

Qin Zhi shook his head blankly.

“I don’t know. But you could try. This body of mine is no different from a dead one anyway.”

I drew the sword beside him. But I couldn’t find the courage to bring it down.

If he died, I’d truly have no way home.

Looking at his ruined state brought me none of the satisfaction of revenge. Only endless despair.

I missed my mom and dad, my brother and sister. I missed the home waiting for me to return.

Qin Zhi was practically a wreck now. My dream of seeing my family again was still no closer.

What good would killing him do?

I turned to leave. Then another possibility suddenly occurred to me.

My parents were retired. These days, they did little besides drink tea and go fishing.

My older sister was a surgeon. She was always complaining she had no time to rest, and she’d developed all sorts of work-related ailments.

My younger brother had XYY syndrome. He spent all three hundred and sixty-five days of the year in juvenile detention; we only got to see him at New Year.

Everyone wanted to escape the lives they had.

Why shouldn’t I bring them here?

If I couldn’t go back, couldn’t we all be together in this world?

I hauled up the barely conscious Qin Zhi and made a video call home.

They answered at once. Mom’s familiar face appeared on the screen.

“Sweetheart, why haven’t you called all month?”

“How’s getting home coming along? Any progress? We all miss you so much!”

I shook my head and took a deep breath before cautiously asking:

“I can’t get back just yet. But… I can bring all of you here. Would you like to come for a visit?”

Nervously, I watched my parents’ expressions. Then an unexpected face leaned into view.

“Hey! Aren’t you going to invite me?”

I brightened. “Sis! What are you doing at home?”

“Your sister quit her job,” Mom said, taking over with a sigh. “She collapsed from exhaustion three times last month. The doctor said her body couldn’t take the workload. She resigned for her health.”

“We were about to go traveling. Since we’re going away anyway, why not come see you?”

“Do you really want to come?” My voice grew quieter. “I still haven’t found a way back. If you come, you might be trapped here like me…”

“Honestly, child, what do you mean, trapped?” Mom scolded. “We’ll bring your brother. As long as we’re all together, what’s the difference where we live?”

My eyes stung. I wiped away a tear, then looked at Qin Zhi, lost in his stupor beside me.

A nameless fury surged up. I kicked him and roared, “Bring my family here right now, or I’ll kick you to death!”

Even that barely got a reaction. Only when I snatched the pills from his hand did he respond.

Qin Zhi panicked and grabbed at my skirt. “Quick! Give them back! I’ll bring them right now!”

And just like that, a few flashes of white light brought me face-to-face with the family I hadn’t seen in three years.

There was no time to catch up. I took everyone back to the Cold Palace, then turned eagerly to my sister.

“Did you bring what I asked for?”

“Yes, yes.” She pulled a heap of things from her bag.

Antibiotics, IV tubing, medical alcohol, masks—even scalpels.

Over the phone, I’d used a code with my sister: what had happened during those years was happening again. I’d told her to bring what she’d need.

Qin Zhi knew none of this.

We first put on our own protective gear, then disinfected the entire Cold Palace. Only then did we start catching up.

Mom and Dad held me and cried, saying over and over how thin and worn I looked.

My sister, on the other hand, pulled Cuilan aside to gossip about whether there were any handsome men in the palace.

The whole family was happy together. Only my brother sat to one side without a word.

When I went over, I heard him muttering, “What kind of shitty place is this? I still want to go back to juvie. You can hit anyone you like there. Damn it, I was so close to being top dog…”

My brother was very good at fighting.

He’d been unruly since childhood. The doctor had suggested redirecting his attention or finding him an outlet.

So our parents signed him up for taekwondo and jujitsu. That wasn’t enough for him, so he took up sanda and judo too.

Basically, if it involved fighting, they’d enrolled him.

No one had expected him to use it all to beat people up.

At that thought, I had an idea.

A country couldn’t go a day without a ruler. Word of Qin Zhi’s condition was everywhere. Neighboring countries were eyeing us hungrily, and fighting was almost upon the border.

There was no chance of Qin Zhi leading an army now.

So I pulled my brother up and asked, eyes shining, “Haven’t you always wanted to kill someone? What if I gave you a chance?”

Now that my family was here and we wouldn’t find a way back anytime soon, I had to have the power to protect them.

I might be empress, but I was still one of the wives and concubines dependent on Qin Zhi. Even as a broken wreck, he could replace me with a word.

I needed to win people over and secure my position.

My brother’s eyes lit up. “Really? You don’t think I’m a burden and want to trick me into killing someone so I’ll get locked up?”

“What are you talking about?” I kicked him. “No one’s arresting you! If you win, you can be a general!”

He understood at once and sprang up excitedly.

“I’m in!”

“But one condition first. Treat this like a game. The moment you think you can’t win, or you’re tired, come straight back. Nobody will call you a deserter. Understood?”

He nodded hard.

I immediately ran to discuss it with the ministers.

I lied that my younger brother from Jiangnan had come to join me. He was a brave, skilled fighter, willing to lead troops to the border and put down the war.

They had their doubts. But at this point, if an old ox had shown up, they’d have put a rope around it and sent it to the front.

And so my brother got the suit of armor he’d always dreamed of. He mounted a horse and rode off to kill the enemy.

Within a day, he’d driven them back and come home without a scratch to eat with us.

At the table, his face shone with happiness.

“Sis, that was so much fun! I killed loads of them!”

“And for the first time in my life, people applauded when I hit someone! No one locked me in solitary. They called me a hero!”

I stroked his head and continued his lesson.

“Because that was a war.”

“But don’t forget the ground rules we agreed on. No hitting or killing anyone anywhere except the battlefield.”

He nodded obediently.

Meanwhile, my sister hadn’t been idle.

With practiced efficiency, she set up isolation areas in the palace, gathered all the infected patients together, and began treating their infections.

Then she directed the other servants to disinfect everywhere those patients had been.

In less than half a month, more than half of them were better.

The ministers came to thank us. They called my sister a miracle doctor. As for me, I was the hero who’d brought heavenly reinforcements.

Ministers past fifty knelt before me in tears.

“Your Majesty, without you, we might have lost our country!”

“Indeed! Thanks to the miracle doctor and the general you brought us, our country has come back from the brink!”

“I beg Your Majesty to leave the Cold Palace!”

“As do I!”

And so, surrounded by well-wishers, I moved my whole family into Chengqian Palace, the largest palace of all.

When Qin Zhi saw me move in next door, his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.

I hadn’t seen him in three months. He’d grown much thinner.

The scammer had long since used up his drugs, then grabbed the money and fled.

At first, Qin Zhi had only managed to calm himself by raving and banging his head against the wall. Later, he brought in a physician. Whenever he felt unwell, they immediately served him a sedative brew with an increased dose.

He was rarely lucid now. Most of his time passed in sleep.

I looked at him, overcome by a complicated sadness.

Only half a year ago, he’d been so full of life. Now his eyes were vacant, his body skeletal. There was barely a trace of life left in him.

He stared at me for a long time. A glimmer of reason seemed to return to his clouded eyes.

Suddenly, he asked, “If I hadn’t found that thirst-trap livestream… would none of this have happened?”

I shook my head firmly.

“Even without that livestream, there were plenty of other lures I’d set for you.”

“From the moment you tricked me into leaving my own world, I was going to take revenge.”

“You’re greedy and stupid. You had no respect for the technology of the future. This was always how you were going to end.”

His eyes bulged. Frustration and regret twisted across his face until, at last, he slumped back, powerless.

I didn’t argue any further. I turned to chat happily with my family.

Another half a year passed like that.

My brother became Grand General, Protector of the Realm. He drove every enemy army from our borders.

My sister became the finest physician in the imperial medical service. She cured all the infected patients and taught the other doctors how to prevent the disease.

Then another great event shook the palace.

The emperor died.

No one knew exactly when Qin Zhi had gone. He was always asleep. Over those last few days, he woke less and less often, and his volatile temper kept everyone from daring to disturb him.

So it was a long time before anyone found his body.

With no new ruler, all the ministers urged me to become empress regnant.

I didn’t refuse.

The moment I sat in the wheelchair, a system’s voice rang out in my ears.

“Congratulations to the new sovereign!”

“You have unlocked the transmigration system. With the other party’s consent, you may transport them to any time or world.”

So that was it.

Only the emperor could use the system. Now that I was sovereign, it had automatically bound itself to me.

That evening, I went back and asked my family what they wanted. This place was lovely, but it wasn’t our home.

We decided to go back.

Before leaving, I found a minister I was close to and arranged everything that would follow.

That night, I used my ability to send everyone trapped in ancient times back home.

Then, just before we left, I shut the system down.

Never to activate it again.